Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet

Caple, Jane

doi:10.2307/j.ctv7r42r5

Cited by 6 publications

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“…They also commit to lifelong celibacy and any breach of this vow is sanctioned severely and may lead to expulsion from the monastery. While it has become more common in recent years, traditionally monks that returned to secular life faced public disapproval and ostracisation, so this was exceddingly rare (Caple 2019). Monks support themselves financially by performing various religious rituals for private households or the whole community during festivals (Jansen 2018).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Monks relax sibling competition over parental resources in Tibetan populations

Zhou

Micheletti

et al. 2022

Behavioral Ecology

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Why parents in some societies induce some of their sons to become religious celibates is an evolutionary puzzle. Some have speculated that this might be associated with brother competition for family resources. However, the behavioral ecology of monks and the possible links with competition between brothers remain unexplored. Here, we use demographic data from Amdo Tibetan agropastoralists in western China to evaluate what factors determine the probability of becoming a monk and explore the possible association between wealth and having a monk brother. We found that boys with at least one older brother are more likely to become celibate monks. Patrilocal heads of household, who inherit parental property, are more likely to be first-born sons, whereas men who marry uxorilocally, that is they move to their wife’s household, are generally second- or later-born sons. Moreover, we find that men with at least one monk brother are wealthier than men who only have non-celibate brothers. Together, these results suggest that sending a son to the monastery is a way for parents to decrease competition between brothers over family resources. Harsh and resource-limited environments, like the one we consider, can lead to the emergence of communal households, including polyandrous families, which used to be common in Tibetan areas. Directing one son to become a religious celibate offers a potentially effective solution to brother competition in our population.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Monks relax sibling competition over parental resources in Tibetan populations

Zhou

Micheletti

et al. 2022

Behavioral Ecology

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“…Where the majority of Childs' work looks at large trends through their effect on the inhabitants from particular valleys in Nepal and their descendants, of which monastic education is only one of many components, I focus here on one particular monastic school in order to look at the same time period and trends, but from a very different point of view. The findings here are relevant to studies that have looked at the development of Buddhist education across the Himalayas such as Buddhist education for secular university students from Ladakh (Williams-4 Oerberg 2016), the preservation of the traditional monastic curriculum in Bhutan (Dukpa 2016;Gyeltshen and Lopez 2021a-b), and historical development of monastic curriculum and present political presssure in Tibet (Cabezon 2008;Caple 2019). In contast, my study focuses on the dilemmas monastic officials face in developing a curriculum, which is at cross-purposes: secular education to satisfy the desires of parents and the needs of graduates, whom they wish would choose a life-long religious vocation.…”

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confidence: 85%

“…School Competitions for 20192003Lempert 2012). In Tibet, the best debaters were famous in their areas, clashing with challengers from rival colleges within their monastic universities or traveling long distances to seek out new opponents (Chopel 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

A Buddhist Educated Person

Warner¹

2023

Anthropological Perspectives on Education in Nepal

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Demographic, migrational, and educational shifts in Nepal have placed tremendous pressure on monastic institutions in the Himalayan region, especially in Nepal. Increasingly, Himalayan families are opting to have fewer children. At the same time, those families are spending more time each year in Kathmandu or migrating out of Nepal, instead residing in their high Himalayan villages. Concomitantly, the increasing number of secular schools and secular job opportunities, both in rural districts and Kathmandu, have resulted in families from high-altitude districts choosing government and private schools over sending their sons and daughters to be ordained as Buddhist monks and nuns. However, some monasteries have responded to these pressures through reforming their curricula to provide a secular education alongside monastic training. This chapter will focus on one such ‘monastic institute’ in the Pokhara region in which officials expect that 90 per cent of school-age boys who enter the monastery will leave as young adults and engage in secular work. In response to these pressures, this monastic institute provides a secular education alongside contemporary monastic training. From the point of view of monastic officials, what is the value of being trained in a monastery to work in secular vocations? How does the monastic institute work with local secular schools to define a modern education for Himalayan children? This research has implications for ascertaining the future development of the educational sector in the Himalayas as well as the future of institutionalized Himalayan Buddhism writ large.

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“…69-70) describes, to purify the corruptions in Tibetan Buddhism arising from the Cultural Revolution and who put considerable thought, as Gayley (2011) shows, into the long-term interrelated survival of both Tibetan Buddhism and wider Tibetan culture. An important difference, however, is that Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro came to maturity through the period of major socioreligious transformation in Tibet from the 1980s onwards, with the result that the corruptions he observes and seeks to address in his discourse are less those arising from the Cultural Revolution-the desecration of monasteries, the harming of lamas, the breaking of vows, and so forth-and more those arising from unwholesome trends within the Tibetan Buddhist revival, such as an excessive emphasis on building material culture, such as temples, stupas, and statues, and the problem of incompetent, or even fake, Buddhist leaders exploiting the commercialisation of society to offer flamboyant initiations and superficial spiritual guidance to those able to pay (KTL 2000, p. 299) (see Caple 2019). 17 Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro's solution to the corruptions he observes likewise follows that of his guru in emphasising monastic ethics and monastic education as key.…”

Section: 'The Earlier Period'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16 Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro was also active in the creation of a 'Buddhist Association' (nang bstan mthun tshogs) that brought together monastic leaders in Northern Kham across regional and sectarian lines to discuss monastic education, lay ethical reform, and other matters of common interest from 2010-2013. As Caple's (2019) work on Geluk monastic revival in Rebkong shows, deepseated moral concerns of this nature have been pervasive among Tibetan monastics and lay people throughout the post-Mao revival of institutional Buddhism. Inasmuch as Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro follows in his guru's footsteps in criticising corruptions in his midst, he is also participating in, and helping to shape, a transregional, trans-sectarian and polyvocal moral discourse on the appropriate course of Tibetan Buddhist monastic development in a drastically reconfigured and rapidly changing historical context.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shouldering His Guru’s Legacy: Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro’s Discourse in Relation to thos-bsam-sgom after the Death of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok

Hardie

Hobhouse

2021

Religions

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This article contributes to the growing discussion of the ways that Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok’s legacy has been carried forward by his spiritual successors at the Larung Five Sciences Buddhist Academy (or Larung Gar), in contemporary Eastern Tibet, by focusing on the contribution of the Larung vice principal and leading second-generation luminary, Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro (1962–). Drawing on a range of Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro’s spoken teachings and writings over a twenty-year period, this article undertakes a contextualised analysis of how he has shouldered his guru’s legacy in the areas of Tibetan Buddhist monastic education, monastic governance, and monastic–lay relations. It explores how the threefold framework of thos-bsam-sgom (listening, reflecting, meditating), whether in its parts or its entirety, lies at the centre of his reformist discourse in these matters, articulated in relation to a wide range of Buddhist and secular concepts, as well as to concrete institutions and organisational structures. It is argued that, while Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro expounds the entire framework of thos-bsam-sgom throughout the years in question, in ‘the earlier period’ (c.2000–2012), from shortly before his guru’s death until approximately a decade afterwards, he subtly privileges the intellectual attributes associated with thos-bsam, while in ‘the later period’ (c.2013–2021) he reweights his exposition to give a balanced emphasis to the practice of sgom.

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Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Monks relax sibling competition over parental resources in Tibetan populations

Monks relax sibling competition over parental resources in Tibetan populations

A Buddhist Educated Person

Shouldering His Guru’s Legacy: Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro’s Discourse in Relation to thos-bsam-sgom after the Death of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok

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