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Michael K. Jerryson, Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 262; maps, tables, photographs, appendix, bibliography, index.
Reviewed by Tim Rackett.
Buddhist Fury explores the relationship between religion and violence in the far South of Thailand, where Buddhist monks are a marginalized local minority. Michael Jerryson focuses on the Buddhist and monk “side” of the Thai state’s conflict with Malay Muslims and thus explores a previously unexamined dimension of that conflict. His book is also a welcome corrective to the received wisdom in Thailand, which demonizes Islam as a violent religion causing conflict in the country’s far South. Building on the work of Mark J├╝rgensmeyer, Stanley Tambiah, Duncan McCargo and Brian Victoria, Jerryson debunks the myth of Buddhism as a moderate, moral spiritual force operating “above” the political and outside the state.
Whilst Buddhism is not violent in and of itself, as a lived tradition it can lend itself to dark and deadly uses. There are Buddhist dimensions to the Thai state’s violent struggle to control the country’s far South. To make sense of insurgent violence and the response to it, we have to understand the intricate interdependencies and interconnections among “race”, rule and religion in Thailand. To that end, Buddhist Fury examines “the role of Thai Buddhist monks in a religio-political conflict” (p. 5): the impact of violence on Buddhist monks and the ways in which, as actors in their own right, those monks have an effect on the ongoing violence. Its author asks whether the practices and habits of Buddhist monks in a violent environment exacerbate or ameliorate violence.
The performance of monasticism entails being a dhammic vessel, blessing people and amulets, purifying, offering merit on alms rounds, conducting rituals, living an ascetic lifestyle. Each of these roles and forms of agency is interrupted through and changed by violence. Being a Thai monk is not the same in all parts of the country. How to be a monk is prescribed by socio-political parameters and fantasy. Buddhist Fury demonstrates the ways in which religious identifications “interact with concepts of race, ethnicity and nationalism” (p. 185). Thus, whilst the cause of violence in Southern Thailand has ecological, economic, drug and political dimensions, for Jerryson, the “most pervasive, persistent and systematic problem is based on identity-formation” (p.183). Thai religious nationalism sets out the norm: to be Thai is to be Buddhist. This norm combines race and religion in a form of rule. Any solution to the conflict, argues Jerryson, requires making a space in Thainess for Malay-Muslim identity. It demands an inclusive “reworking of Thailand’s concept of racial formations”, which act to “displace minority identities by measuring their ethnic and religious identities against the norm of Thai Buddhism” (p.183).
Buddhist Fury is divided into five interrelated chapters, each examining Buddhist dimensions of violence in southern Thailand.
Chapter I provides historical context for the southern conflict. It addresses how and why a “master narrative” of Thai historical truth predominates in accounts of the region, justifying Thai Buddhist rule by excluding and delegitimizing Malay-Muslim claims to autonomy and ethno-religious identity. The political role and representations of southern Thai Buddhist monks in relation to the conflict are explored in Chapter II, “Representation”. How did Thai Buddhist monks come to be “walking embodiments of Thai nationalism”? (p. 50). What exactly do monks signify? Thai monks’ roles mean that they are agents of both state and sangha, representing the sacred and the profane, as living symbols of the dhamma and representatives of Thainess, of the Thai polity. It is monks’ political agency that explains their being targeted by insurgents. As representatives of the Thai state, monks are, unintentionally, a catalyst for escalating religious violence and identity politics. Jerryson argues that the conditions for evoking Buddhist violence are a space of conflict; politicized Buddhist images, roles and representations; and any defacing assault upon the sacred status and incarnation of those latter.
Chapter III, “Practice”, focuses on the ways in which being a Thai Buddhist is learnt and performed in a specific way in the southern Thai conflict zone. Using the personal narratives of southern monks, Jerryson shows how the role of Buddhist monk has been politicized as a response to violence and, furthermore, how it incites Thai religious nationalism. Monks incarnate and signify the legitimacy of the Thai state in a “convergence of Thai sacrality and governance” (p. 81). The theme of being a Buddhist and what this role entails is pursued in Chapter IV, “Militarization”. Mobilizing religion transforms security forces into “moral guardians, sacred avengers of the nation, not mere State servants, whose sacred duty is to uphold and protect the integrity of Thai Buddhism” (p. 75). The consequences of the defense of monks and local communities against insurgent attacks, as that defense is undertaken by Buddhist soldiers and police, are the militarization of Buddhist identities and spaces. Temples become fortresses and military camps. We have seen the advent of a seemingly enigmatic figure of the military monk, the “thahan phra”.
Jerryson’s most astute and perspicacious insights and interpretations–in Chapter V, “Identity”–concern the under-investigated notions of “race” in Thai identity, the phenomenon of state racism in Thailand and the relationship of those notions and that phenomenon to religion and violence. Jerryson shows that race and ethnicity are mobilized and combined with religion. Being Thai is a state-produced racialized identity, with its source in Siam’s response to Western colonization and Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions. Thai identity politics doubly excludes Malay Muslims from Thainess: for their other religion and for their racialized status as “khaek”.
The comparative and historical narrative in Buddhist Fury helps render the religious violence in southern Thailand intelligible as a norm and not an enigmatic exception. Buddhism, in thrall to Thai state nationalism, functions as a fundamental marker of ethnicity and imagined “race” to the end of domination and rule. In Jerryson’s analysis the political issue at stake in the far South of Thailand seems to be Malay Muslims’ desire “for autonomy based on ethno-religious identification” (p. 8) and the Thai state’s denial of their voice and of space for their socio-political aspirations and interests. This political drama is, however, reconceptualized through nationalist fantasy as an anti-Thai clash threatening to destroy Thai civilization and unleash anarchy. Buddhism is used to manage the “state of emergency” in the South.
Buddhist Fury concludes by suggesting ways in which ethno-religious conflict can be ameliorated by a different use of Buddhism. Rather than as an instrument of rule to handle a religious security threat, and thus as fuel for Buddhist nationalism and strife, it could be deployed in conflict resolution, fostering inter-faith communal bonds.
Jerryson’s iconoclastic analysis draws on interviews with thirty abbots, with monks and with soldiers. It is based on participant observation of different southern Thai Buddhist communities. It does not centre on Buddhist doctrine and texts but rather on “local situational performances” (pp. 17, 83) of being a Buddhist. Buddhism as a “lived tradition”, outside Western idealized “Platonic” representations, is diverse, fluid and contradictory. Buddhist truth and traditions are not universal and eternal but are rather enmeshed with particular interests and power relations.
How, then, is the non-violent image of Buddhism maintained? Such an image is achieved, argues Jerryson, because its practitioners and its analysts create a fantasy version of Buddhism: “fictitious people and practice–virtual religious models, morally airbrushed to enhance the message” (p. 185). The problem with this mythic Buddhism is that its dark side is ignored: extreme phenomena such as monks with guns, “soldier-monks”, militarized temples, Buddhist militia. In Thailand, religious nationalism legitimates violence, offensive and defensive, against the enemies of “nation, religion and king”. Monks as spiritual exemplars are credited with the power to purify and order hearts and minds and social relations, as Christine Gray has argued.
This sacred role is not discrete from politics and power. Under Thai state purview, monks have had a political role as emissaries, as agents for building a new national identity and fostering unity. Indeed, the advent of political monks was first set out in the work of Tambiah and Somboon. The Thai state is sacralized as an imaginary repository of pure dhammic practice, which monks politically defend on the front lines with their sacred bodies, as agents of the sangha and state. Anyone who wishes to change the socio-political order, to create division and disharmony, becomes an enemy of the state. In the 1970s Thai communists were enemy Number One; today, it is “separatist” Malay Muslims and “republican” Red Shirts.
To understand the uses of Buddhism we must not view it as abstracted from social relations, a philosophically or spiritually pure form of knowledge, but rather as an historical practice of truth and a technique of power shaping people’s socio-political identities and mundane reality. Its sacred “ultimate truth” as performed is neither other-worldly nor discrete from oppressive forces which justify and legitimate violence.
Buddhist Fury marks a significant advance in understandings of Thai racialized identity and the Buddhist spiritual dimensions of ultra-nationalism and racism. Why are ethnic Malays, categorized as “khaek”, excluded from Thainess but Sikhs included? It seems that Chinese can become Thai overnight but not “farang”, in spite of their alluring lighter skins, idealization and privileged status in Thai society. Jerryson’s bold hypothesis is that the primary cause of violent conflict in Thailand’s far South is racial inequality; state-led exclusionary policies together with conditions of poverty give rise to separatist strife. Malay Muslims are neither ethnically Thai, nor religiously Buddhist (p. 144). There is thus a need to examine the relationship among religion, historical Siamese and Thai notions of race and contemporary racism in the South.
The category of “khaek” subsumes multiple ethnicities–South Asians, Malays, Arabs–aggregated by the shared attribute of having dark skin, which is read by Buddhists as a sign of impurity and inner badness. It is not ethnicity that causes racism, exclusion and inequality in Thai society but, rather, the ways in which race and religion are combined in identity formation. Religion, central to Malay Muslims’ identity, excludes them from Thainess. Malay ethnic identity has become fused with Islam. But it has not always been so; history reveals the existence of Malay Buddhists.
Thai racism identifies Malay Muslims as “khaek” not by using a Western biological notion of race, but rather one based on skin colour, a sign of spiritual purity. Chinese are included within Thainess on the grounds of shared customs and Buddhist beliefs, socio-economic roles and status. Thai Buddhism is the normative measure of identity and civility, which others lack. It becomes a racial identity. “Khaek” is a racialized identity including a religious marker, a negative classifier of “people of another religion”. Jerryson points out, following Charles Keyes, that “khaek” are associated with the Buddhist evil figure of Mara, demons and their human followers, imagined as dark-bearded figures representing Malays and South Asians. The Thai social order embodies racialized distinctions and statuses, and to this degree it has traces of the Hindu caste system as re-worked in Thai Buddhism and politics.
Jerryson’s analysis reveals the weakness of David Streckfuss’s path-breaking account of the Siamese “creative adaption” of Western racial categories to resist colonization by forging a new notion of identity combining nation and race and citizenship into “chat”. However, pace Streckfuss, this does not entail a Western physio-anthropological category of race. Streckfuss fails to note the religious dimension in the new concept of chat: being a Thai Buddhist, a racialized religious identification. Having a dark or light skin is not just a sign of a poor socio-economic status, or an aesthetic issue. It is an indigenous Buddhist classifier of moral and spiritual purity. Buddhism is not, in the end, an exception to religious traditions that assign people to superior and inferior racial groups.
The Brahmin and Buddhist origins of “chat”, in Sanskrit “jati”, signify rank, caste, family, race and lineage; membership of a “divine race”; becoming or being born a Buddhist. Caste, purity and pollution, the sacred and mundane, are all entailed in the term’s meanings: a spiritual and socio-economic status and the racial formation of superior pure and impure inferior castes. One sign of membership is of course light skin color. “Jati” was taken up in the nationalist ideology of Rama VI to render Buddhism a signifier of being civilized, the member of a superior race, not among the savage others within Siam, on the international imperial stage. Siam needed savages and inferior beings for its appearance of being civilized; ethnic and religious minorities took on this role. Siamese Buddhism became part and parcel of Siamese racial identity through the exclusion of Malay Muslims as “foreign and semi-barbarians” as Chao Phraya Yommarat expressed it, but the inclusion of ethnic Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese as they were closer, as Buddhists, to the Siamese race.
Violence stems from racial inequalities rooted in religious and ethnic identifications. Jerryson shows how in a zone of conflict identities become racialized into incarnations of goodness and badness as effects of the trauma of violence. Faith becomes fate when identification is fixed to an essential racialized and primordial religiosity. Buddhism is used to construct the otherness of those who question and oppose Thainess. Regimes of religious and racial truth identify who and what people are, worthy of living or dying. The master narrative of Thai history and the myth of national unity confirm Schmitt’s notion of the political entailing/deciding of existential friend-enemy relations by positing a permanent Thai self which needs a bad or enemy other in order to be itself. Enemies “within” are both created and desired.
Buddhist Fury also suggests that the legitimacy of “network monarchy” and the inviolability of the kingdom’s sacred “geo-body” might not be the primary issue in the southern conflict. Malay Muslims are not attacking the monarchy, but rather the racist and religious form of “colonial” rule and domination emanating from Bangkok. Malay Muslims are asserting their counter-truth, their history and identity, which have been silenced and subjugated. What is occurring is not a sovereign struggle over land but a conflict over ethno-religious identity and forms of life. Malay Muslims are attempting to “de-colonize” hearts and minds of religiously enforced Thainess.
Furthermore, Jerryson’s analysis suggests that Buddhism is not a Thai coping strategy for handling anxiety and uncertainty–about succession, Malay-Muslim autonomy in the South, the future of Thai society. Rather, it actually generates fear and insecurity to feed religious nationalist fantasy. Thus Buddhist religion is used to maintain a state of exception that manifests itself as permanent crises and “holy war” against impure others. Buddhist-inspired violence in the far South of today’s Thailand is, rather than an abhorrent exception to the rule of peaceful and sacred uses of the religion, just a modern version of an Asian Buddhist tradition of defensive war and warrior monks.
Tim Rackett is an associate professor on the faculty of HELP University, Kuala Lumpur. He has spent more than a decade and a half in Thailand researching Thai Buddhism, religious nationalism and forms of truth and rule.
References
Gray, C. Thailand: The Soteriological State in the 1970s. Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1986.
J├╝rgensmeyer, M. Terror in the Mind of God. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, third edition, 2003.
Jerryson, M., and M. J├╝rgensmeyer, editors. Buddhist Warfare. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
McCargo, D. Mapping National Anxieties. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012.
Somboon Suksamran. Buddhism and Political Legitimacy. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Research Dissemination Project, 1993.
Streckfuss, D. “The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai Racialist Thought 1890-1910.” In L. J. Sears, ed., Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: Essays in Honor of John R. W. Smail. Madison: University of Wisconsin Center for South East Asian Studies, 1993.
Tambiah, S. J. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Tambiah, S. J. Buddhism Betrayed? Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Victoria, B. Zen at War. New York: Weatherhilt, 1998.
Zizek, S. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003.
Wow. I am trying to think of just one counter example from news stories of the past 8 years, one counter argument? Anybody? I am not convinced that khaek = skin color, but that is a very minor quibble. And I think I know people who were khaek and became Thai, but I know too that not everybody thought they had. This synopsis of Buddhism and the South rings true.
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I’d love to see a debate between Jerryson and Sam Harris.
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I expect they would agree on most things.
Religion as an excuse for enforcing authority is pretty much pure Sam Harris.
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I expect they would agree on most things.
Indeed, that’s why I think it would be every interesting to see where they disagree and why.
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1. Who is Sam Harris?
2. The appearance of “Buddhist Fury” raises some very interesting questions. Does the book seek to contribute to the “global studies” agenda? To enriching our understanding of modern Thailand? Does it seek to do both at once? Is that latter objective even possible? What will specialists on Buddhism, serious specialists, make of the book? To judge from what one finds in Prof Rackett’s review, it is difficult to accept the book’s apparent emphasis on racialism. One has to wonder, that is, if the author is not over-reaching, relative to his data, offering that emphasis. Best that I leave my comments at these for now.
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1. Sam Harris
Author and “New Atheist”
The End of Faith is brilliant, but seemed, to me, to be his peak. He’s not super-relevant to this thread,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_(author)
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Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and philosopher who has published a few books on the neuroscience of religious experience. He tends to be critical of religion, but he is especially critical of the Abrahamic faiths as ideologies to maintain power.
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To my knowledge, the Thai word for *guest*
is *khaek* . . . but at times used derisively to refer to Thais of South Asia descent, particulary Sikhs, who found refuge in the kingdom after an appeal by Nehru following the partition of India and Pakistan.
The struggling refugees’ turned to money-lending and drew much scorn. Thus, they became *kha–ek*.
I’ve also known Thais to refer to southern Malays as *Abung* (brother).
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If the book is as incomprehensible as the review, I doubt it will get the author into any trouble.
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All that R.N. England said was that academic prose is often turgid, and the comment gets a red flag by NM readers? National sentiment can be mobilized in poisonous ways, and that is as true in Australia and Sri Lanka, suggests Bruce Kapferer (Legends of People, Myths of State, recently reissued). This happens on and off in Thailand, and in many other countries. I don’t know about finding the “cause” of this particular violence, the military made several outrageous moves and then the PM praised them for it. Pointing to Buddhism as implicated may simply make secularist westerners feel good about them selves.
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The idea of stirring up a hornets’ nest of 63 post-modernists fills me with childish glee. I’d be bitterly disappointed if it was only one of them clicking 63 times.
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Why is it important to think outside the box, dogma and commonsense? Concepts and theory are necessary as a tool kit to tackle imortant problems not elitism or intellectual masturbation? I cannot stand post modernism personally I was raised on Foucault
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I do not doubt that book critic Tim Rackett and book author Michael K. Jerryson could understand what they say or write to each other, because apparently they do from Rackett’s commentary on the very interestingly titled book “Buddhist Fury”.
But I must wonder whether Messrs. Rackett and Jerryson communicate to their wives (or family) at their dinner tables in their particularly convoluted ‘phd’ dictions and styles to get their days’ events told.
If the book is nonsense from the start, neither heavy breathing or really tedious grammar can make the nonsense disappear.
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Thanks to Prof Jonsson for engaging with the subject of the book and the review. Too bad that he seems to be alone.
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It’s a detailed review, giving me the impression that the book is factually wrong about a long list of things. However, as it now stands, I can’t really address these points with the assumption that they directly reflect Jerryson’s thesis (rather than the reviewer’s opinion, or an admixture of the two). Nevertheless, in this forum, it may be worth noting that there are many “red flags” as to flaws in the factual basis of the argument (specialists should notice them without my pointing them out).
The assertion (in this review) that Thai propaganda about racial purity warmly includes (i) the Lao, (ii) the Khmer, (iii) the Burmese or even (iv) the Chinese (or Sino-Thais) is both absurd, and controverted (if not contradicted) by all of the specialized studies on each of those respective groups within the history (and politics) of Thailand.
Seriously: you can’t read anything about the history of any of those groups (within Thailand) without reading about the history of racism against them. To say that the fact of their “shared Buddhism” is embraced is controverted by the suppression of all forms of Buddhism other than the one issued by Bangkok’s central authorities (including regional variations of Buddhism native to Thailand, but seen even more starkly with “rival Buddhisms” from neighboring states).
A Lao specialist can easily rattle of a list of sources on the extent to which Thai nationalism excludes (and is even defined in contradistinction to) the Lao –and so on for Burmese specialists, Khmer specialists, etc.
Reciprocally, the Lao, Khmer and Burmese all have to describe their own recent history in terms of their wars with the Thais, and so on.
The extent to which Thai nationalism presumes racial animosity toward precisely these groups (Lao, Burmese, etc.) has been a frequent topic of discussion on this same website (New Mandala) and is almost impossible to ignore in the history and politics of any given period of any of these countries. Yet, nevertheless, here it is ignored (in this summary of Jerryson’s work, I cannot say if the work itself really reflects this summary).
The contrast here offered between some kind of pan-Buddhist inclusion and the exclusion of Muslims would be difficult to demonstrate in any historical period, both because the inclusion on one side of the equation is so flawed, and also because the Thai Royal Family’s relationships with specific Sultanates (governing specific coastal towns, etc.) does not hold up the other side of the equation.
Racism in Thailand is a huge subject; however, an argument that the attitude toward the “khaek” is toto genere different from (e.g.) attitudes toward the Vietnamese or Burmese seems to proceed on a very false footing.
Incidentally, the history and meaning of khaek is not hard to know. What’s stated above isn’t it (and this is another red flag). Again, I can’t ascribe blame to Jerryson without seeing what he actually claims on the matter (as opposed to this reviewer’s synopsis, etc.).
Among other obvious contradictions, take a look at the Lao border: there’s a town called “Tha Khaek”. Now take another look at the history of the word “Khaek”.
Along with many other questionable details, the material on “chat” qua “jati” also seems to me amateurish in the extreme (I’m guessing that neither Pali nor Sanskrit are Jerryson’s forté) –but, again, I haven’t seen the original book, so I have to suspend my judgement.
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Khun Mazard I find your appeal to facts very interesting and naive. As for Jati Jerryson and I are following Tambiah, Christine Gray and David Streckfuss well known amatuers in the field! Please for arguments and reason not emotivist and opinioned twaddle
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One has to hope that Dr Mazard gets his hands on a copy of the book soon, as his critique is important. All the same, the point about “Tha Khaek” is lost on me, I must say.
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Does he know what he is talking about.
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Even though I’ve heard it was used in the past, I’m under the impression that the term ‘khaek’ isn’t really used much at all in the Malay Muslim south anymore. Malay-speaking Muslims seem to most often be referred to as ‘khon Isalam’ by Buddhists; in recent years the more politically correct term ‘khon Melayu’ has been on the rise.
On a couple of occasions I’ve heard the term ‘pasa khaek’ used by Buddhists to refer to the local Malay language, only to be told that this was not a polite term to use.
Interestingly, I’ve even heard an ethnic Malay man I know use the term ‘pasa khaek’ a couple times. One time he said this to me in front of a group of villagers. Since I had always heard that Malay-speaking Muslims considered this a very derogatory term, I was a bit surprised that no one commented on his choice of terms.
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I like the following extract: “The problem with this mythic Buddhism is that its dark side is ignored: extreme phenomena such as monks with guns, “soldier-monks”, militarized temples, Buddhist militia.” I have heard that some monks who used to be soldiers or policemen sometimes hid their guns under the yellow robes. In the Buddhist vinaya forbids monks to touch any types of weapons. The penalty is to do the so-called the Apattiyo not the P─Бr─Бjika, being the gravest of the monastic offences, admits of no remedies or atonements. However, monks with guns in the South is just the way of protecting themselves.
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Can you please provide a citation to where in the vinaya monks are forbidden to touch weapons? I ask this because the connection of Buddhism to the martial arts of East Asia is long and inseparable. Though, I’ll admit that Bodhidharma wasn’t always the most “orthodox” of monks.
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This was a really interesting review. Clearly the book, if it’s as controversial as this review, will be a hit.
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I don’t know if I’d say Buddhism is necessarily a peaceful religion by mandate, but I’d say it can’t be much worse than Islam. You don’t see Buddhist armies converting the Arabs to their religion throughout history, do you?
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Thailand and many so-called Buddhist nations are smearing the otherwise racially and politically neutral religion by politicisation and nationalisation. Political ambitions of demagogues as well as the long-entrenched dictators who want to have a say in the new democratisation process of a fledgling, quasi-democracy like Burma certainly have a role in demonising religion.
Religions, when taken at face value, are just like food choices we make at a restaurant table. You eat what you like and I eat what I like. There are different flavours and there is nothing wrong with people preferences of one flavour over another.
Problems arise when people start manipulating opinions and have their own hidden agendas.
And so-called experts need to realise that there are nominal Buddhists who merely assume the religious identity and not practise its teachings, in the case of
Buddhism, contrary to the Buddha’s teaching. We should never confuse them with devout Buddhists who, when they turn fundamental, would never harm any living thing and just retreat peacefully into solitude. And there is that sensationalism behind the term “warrior monk”. Warrior monks? I think NOT. We have yet to see any evidence of a legitimate monk (exception: soldiers assuming the guise of a monk trying to drive a wedge between religions)holding weapons actively engaging in acts of war against people of other religions.
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Much needed and welcome comment.
But predictably contradictory of confused proposals and assertions as the subject itself is.
Buddha was supposed to be clear about not worshiping (sucking up to) him or idolatry- a fact weirdly similar to the Salafists’ view on Mohammedanism as opposed to the Sufi’s practice. And Buddhism is simply a philosophy. Living beings are simply a culmination of ignorance. Awiza pyit-sa-ya thin-kha-ra. Aim is to understand that. Four (Noble) Truths.
No where in the Buddhist instructions one will ever find any little reference to kill the Kalars or screw the Thai/ Laos/ Bamas’ etc or that stupidest suggestion- “spread of the faith”.
On that score, the suggestion that (unfortunate use of word) “fundamental” Buddhist would retreat to self reflective solitude is spot on. Buddhism is nothing what-so-ever to do with spread of religion/ (populism/ showy donation, etc so popular in today’s Burma), leave alone hatred.
But this book and review was about the social use and abuse of something called Buddhism- something that can simply be packaged and flogged it to unwary punters along with Coke and chips- among the so-called Buddhist countries of Teravada brand.
It would be naive and self delusional to suggest the practitioners in these countries are lily white stickers of Buddhist teaching as it would be contradictory as true Buddhist adherent could hardly be heard from or seen. In all countries, each version is touted as true Buddhism (how absurd!) and there is plenty nationalism to go with that and racism for sure.
The “wishful” suggestion that all the bad things done recently and still going on in Burma are by the military as bogus monks is simply Ostrich.
Since 1996 or so, funded by CIA (and its different subsidiaries like NED, International Center for Non-conflict of Ackerman, etc.,etc.) Gene Sharp who wrote a book (printed in millions, translated widely and used to foment instability world wide as currently seen in Ukraine) to advise the so-called dissidents in “peaceful” resistance and countless workshops in Rangoon and the Thai borders has recruited critical mass of bored, restless, highly self-conceited and highly influential and connected young men in robes with false ideals. That was the very root of 2007 “Saffron Revolution” as one of the feathers in the cap of Sharp along with his other color revolution collections around the world.
But that ready made united, well organised using modern technology of text and iPAD army of highly motivated, restless young (some old) men is easily and simply snatched by Than Shwe and Aung Thaung to attack on the long despised Kalars on religious and racial ground showing the ugly and despicable face of the country Burma which one must have honesty and courage to accept as true face.
Only then one would realize these monks- duly ordained and are practicing in traditional way are on the wrong path and it is nothing what-so-ever with Buddhism which is now simply usurped for their ig-noble purpose and they are themselves by their own conceit and stupidity being stooges and ready highly destructive instruments to their evil masters abroad and at home.
One always has to face the truth. It has that nasty habit to catch up with one.
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Sann Myint is correct to criticize the sensationalism inherent in the books attention to “warrior monks”. And his comments on the “nationalization” of Buddhism are likewise on the mark. Perhaps he could write more about the relative importance of monks’ participation in Burma’s anti-colonial movement on the one hand and of the dictatorship’s politicization of Buddhism in explaining recent developments in Myanmar.
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Suriyon Raiwa rightly points out the double-edged nature of monks’ participation in anti-colonial movement and their role in recent developments in Myanmar.
As a rule, Buddhist monks are not supposed to have any role in the mundane affairs of the laity and that is what Buddha strictly prescribed. Their job is to take care of the laity’s Hereafter. Away from places where few hundred politically-active monks reside, there are hundreds of thousands of other monks doing what they are supposed to do: preaching, practising meditation and guiding the laypeople along the right path of life – and staying away from dirty politics.
That said, things could not have been so different from the idealistic scenario where Buddhists are emanating loving kindness towards all beings in the universe.
In nations where most Theravada Buddhists reside, we have seen increasingly cases where monks in saffron robes are involved in political affairs, taking part in demonstrations for or against authorities on a variety of issues. Some of the state-sponsored monks would engage in fiery rhetoric which could have landed them in hot water had they been railing against the authorities themselves. But it is difficult to connect the dots. The new quasi-civilian government keeps religious mavericks at a distance and takes no action against them. The shades and nuances of the political setting here is apparently black and white for beginners. However, if you take a closer look, things could not have been more complex. You start seeing the connection only when some of the rhetoric spouted by authorities begins to trickle out of the mouths of some religious mavericks in saffron robes. And these monks speak against the opposition citing nationalist agenda.
Involvement of religious personnel in state and political affairs was regarded favourably by Myanmar people in the colonial times when people thought twice before getting involved themselves. This reluctance is understandable in the light of heavy-handed tactics used by the British in crushing boycotts and demonstrations.
Monks were better placed to get involved in politics due to their privileged, iconic status in Buddhist nations. And get involved they did and some have even been honoured with streets and roundabouts named after them.
With the new developments here, these maverick monks are not fighting against colonial powers. They have become embroiled in the vicious infighting among Myanmar against Myanmar for no reason other than unscrupulous former dictators keeping avenues open for their continued existence, that of their cronies and most important, immunity from any prosecution for their past mismanagement and atrocities.
An average Buddhist citizen does not want to see any monk becoming political instrument of any party. Now, things are so far gone that silly rhetoric by these gullible saffron-robed people, a minority if compared with a well-meaning majority, is taken seriously. These misguided people do not represent Buddhists. The real face of Buddhism is the other side.
I just hope that the voice of reason would prevail against all odds.
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One of the differences between the struggle for national liberation and today’s class struggle is the nationalistic Buddhist clergy can now fall prey to divide and rule. Unsurprisingly the so called mavericks and rogues tend to serve the same side as the senior official appointees. In due course they’ll be swept away.
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In Islamic faith and Buddhist tradition of Teravada branch there is no supreme authority like the Pope. Of course in Buddhism it is simply a philosophy one can choose to understand or not Buddha could not care the least. Monks got rules complied according to local traditions and checked by nearby clergy and laity. Drunken monk would simply be forced to leave buy communal derision rather than a military court order and forcible removal.
Now the Burmese society is changed and confused with total loss of compass not knowing good from bad anymore, Monkhood also seems to have equivalent of a Brigadier General with so many councils and functionaries on command along with executioners. A position occupants, predictably seem to enjoy very much involving well frequent touted foreign travels and endless perks at time majority public in the country are simply kicked off the aldn on pains of death and left to starve on the streets by their extended families as this WONDERFUL Great Democratization Comedy, ASEAN-ing, Chinese -sucking, American -sucking is happily surging forth.
Either people realize their foolishness,greed,ignorance and Mawha is leading them to their imminent rapid and abysmal demise or they will simply continue to wrap around their own neck ropes given out freely and profusely by the Japanese, Chinese and those Ultimate Protectors of Human Kind (Plan B’s) the “WEST.” or is it “Civilized Countries”- as opposed to barbarian the rest of the world- as one Ukrainian clown described this week?
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“Monks were better placed to get involved in politics due to their privileged, iconic status in Buddhist nations.”
In true Buddhism, nothing matters compared to finding or understanding the truth of being an being.
These are just cowardly, dishonest men hiding inside the robe of Buddha’s sons, to usurp the position and privilege. They do not deserve to be called monks. But simply cowardly agitators committing usury.
It simply reflecst the general deterioration of morality and loss of compass on the part of the society not knowing good from bad enabling the rise of these greedy, showy, scheming, and evil people in the ranks (or in the clothes) of the monkhood.
In today’s Burma one sees monk’s preaching advertised on “vinyls” everywhere as if they are movie stars. And are treated as ones. Supermarkets sell “Monk drinkable wine”. This and that monk will give sermon in such plush hotels and donate such exorbitant amount of money flying in on military arranged special airplane, etc, etc, talking non-stop about such and such foreign trips, all of which seem so downright divergent from what any religious person should do, leave alone a monk. And now in Rangoon one sees the “Swan-dan’s” blatantly crossing the road stopping the traffic as if putting a mark of power on laity, a detestable trait they went all the way to Sri Lanka to learn.
Sri Lanka where Sinhalese Buddhist monks are always “in” with the ruling Sinhalese government is partly explained by their tumultuous cycles of total annihilation between the themselves and the Hindu Tamils at least from the time of Duttagamani.http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/bud-srilanka.pdf
Thai’s have quite an overlap with the Muslim south with neighboring Muslim nation.
But Burma has none of those troubled times and there has never been bloodshed for religion except for the ones committed by the Burmese on Thaton Mons in the past. Khin Nyunt’s season of religious division did topple invincible KNU and it is now norm to divide and rule every which way one can divide and it appears a simple and easy task as people are themselves full to the brim with nothing else but solid Lawba, Mawha and Dawtha.
This “democratic change” (one must be almost brain dead to truly believe that) is indeed humongous amplifier of Lawba (must have this, that, car, roads, buildings, anything Singapore and Yanks have, etc.) and Mawha ((Burmese are the top, top, top people, betteeeerr than the Thai’s, Loatians, anyone that comes to mind, leading the Asia in this and that, biggest and best,that sort of crap).
Such fools are always easy pray. Such fools enable such monks to grow rapidly and strongly.
Remember the maxim of the opportunists:
“Mazur 1928, “Any community that lives on staples has relatively few wants. The community that can be trained to desire . . . to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed yields a market to be measured more by desires than by needs. And man’s desires can be developed so that they will greatly overshadow his needs.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
With those attitude, Burmese (all tribes) in and out of Burma are easy preys.
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Ohn
Do not be grip by ‘Dawtha’.
The monks are the only source of guidance in the rural part 60%+ of Myanmar.
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As you could see from miles, hard not to be permanently mired in Dawtha.
When one sees all the time this one of the most lovely millennium old society still full of virtue, charm and most of all “contentment” (remember Paul Mazur’s statement of agricultural societies)is now impatiently rushing along headlong toward the most odious cesspool of individualism (Nga Tae Mar-ism), Want-want-want-ism (Lawba), shameless-ism (great to get some money from Japanese, Chinese, Europeans, even miserly English, Soros, IMF, Yakusa supported Sasakawa – sorry- Nippon Foundation-of motorboat gambling, anywhere, really!) and most of all CUT-THROATISM.
This is of course well shepherded by the (again) Soros- supported Pwint-Lin crowd (88’s), CIA (and its subsidiaries like USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and Freedom House ) supported monk and other crowd, your “West”‘s planted woman Aung San Suu Kyi.
Yes. Monks have been “useful” for the rural communities. Yes. U Sann Myint could be right there may yet be some “good” monks left.
But in today’s Burma, all one sees is Hna-lone-htee monks, tour-guide monks, Chaung-thar vacation-ing monk, foreign travel monks, millions of dollars “donating” monks, investment advising monk, and violence agitating monks. Like the pigs in Animal Farm, the longer the time is the more the monks act like the soldiers.
Their model seems to be the most overbearing and bellicose monks from Sri Lanka which incidentally is ruled by true blood brothers of Than Shwe, Rajapaksa brothers who were supported by the same “West” (or the honorable Civilized Nations in cahoot with the United Nations) fronted by baby-faced Norway in killing unarmed civilians in tens and tens of thousands at a time in COLD blood without blinking an eye and not a murmur of dissent from the Buddhist Sinhalese.
These less than virtuous acts and examples are definitely something the people of Burma can do without.
Hna-lone Htee? anyone?
Or lets build the BIGGGGEST pagodassss in the world because we are the mostest biggest Buddhists.
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The bad comes with the good my friend. Would you be truthful of answering this question: Have you benefit from a new policy which embraces the market economy in Myanmar? Furthermore, have you noticed any improvement in the life of the ordinary people?
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Insightful good points Guest, Thank you.
Funny Shwe Mi thought exactly the same once she was in Bangkok or so she remembers although memory is rather dim nowadays in the grim realty of Thaketa AIDS hospital just off the bridge.
As the Cycle of Idiocy would have it, everywhere, people do not learn at all. Yet think they do know everything, delicious, making predator-ing boringly so easy.
Starting from Detroit and spreading around like a sewage over-spill, this glitz and glamour circus reducing everything in its wake to rusty, rotten debris have been unstoppable. Most important loss is the societal degradation and what every one realizes but still loath to discard “me,me,me” society. South America is so destroyed. Please say YOU or some other clown with DDSSCC or PPHHDD’s or whatever can regrow the Amazon or something funny.
In old days -ie. two decades ago, people can grow a house full of children and fill with laughter with Dad working alone. Now with all these PROGRESS, how come all these equal opportunities crowd is sleeping on the street with all working and not much to eat? Go to Sule Road tonight. And please say that word “good” with some conviction to yourself.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/14/growing-focus-on-inequality-puts-asia-in-spotlight/
Is it really a great opportunity to sell out the rivers and poison the land and level the forest which NO ONE can un-do and buy some trips to Disney Land. Is this really,really progress?
Even the loss of land and river is still alright. Most hurtful thing to lose is the “contentment” of the caring society which is till there in Burma. Already there are full of reports about unprecedented violet crimes, husband strangling wife, child being raped and killed, siucides, wife hkilling the husband with a hammer,children being kidnapped and sold for shark-bait, Yaba/ heroin/ ephedrine all aplenty in Latpadaung of Daw Daw Suu’s blessing and all the metropolitan areas in unprecedented way, people hiring security firms which did not exits in Burma before.
Really? All good?
Greed and short-sighted-ness do have a soothing effect.
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“Or lets build the BIGGGGEST pagodassss in the world because we are the mostest biggest Buddhists.”
It was customary for ancient kings to seek and affirm divine rights by using religions to their own ends. In the case of building pagodas and images, they were not necessarily the biggest ones. That war-mongering Aung Ze Ya had the gall to name himself Alaungpaya (Future Buddha) after razing many cities in Burma and Siam (the old Thailand) to the ground and bloodletting of biblical proportion. Recorded history indicates genocides and wholesale displacement of entire races. Back in Myanmar, he built a small pagoda entirely made of pure gold three feet in height (Needs reference: U Tun Aung Chain, Prof: History, Rangoon University, year?) thus claiming the title of the merciful, missionary king.
This is in stark contrast from dynasties in Innwa and earlier periods when smaller images of Buddha were covered up with bigger images and these images with still bigger images – nothing religious, but out of the belief that it could improve their power and glory, ever greater than their predecessors.
This preoccupation with size has reached chronic proportion recently. I have read news about a monk building world’s largest bell. And there is the construction of four Buddha images claimed to be largest.
The catch is – there are few who stop and ask “So, what?”
Once an official from Bangkok asked me “Why so big?” We were on a tour of pagodas around Lower Myanmar.
We were climbing up a long flight of stairs inside the arguably largest reclining image of Buddha and the official was visibly agitated and out of breath. The official tour was organised by the usual crowd of people and it involved rushing from one pagoda to another under the scorching sun – eleven pagodas that day, if I recall it correctly. Even the devout Buddhists from Thailand (at least the ones on the tour)could not see any sense in building these enormous images.
At that time, I had no answer to that question “Why so big?” because I was caught up in that “biggest” “tallest” trend, not really believing in it but unable to unravel the riddle no one has the will nor the reasoning faculties to solve.
Then I start to see patterns – places where the biggest and tallest trends are all the rage tend to have populist quasi-religious people pushing their agendas. Their sponsors are none other than flashy Myanmar officials who want to prolong their cling to power by adhering to occult practices. The monks behind these efforts are somehow or other believed to be associated with shady practices – either worldly or other-worldly. That said – a casual survey of the landscape around one of the biggest, tallest places I have been to is heart-rending: a desolate moonscape with scattered rickety huts here and there. I don’t reserve the right to tell anyone how to use their large stash of cash but I can’t help thinking the funds could have been put to a better use to improve the hearts and minds, and consequently the life of people.
A building architect from Australia once chided (two decades ago, Newsweek, can’t remember which issue) the biggest, tallest trend saying we should put an end to the boy game of building taller-than-ever skyscrapers. Wanting to show one is bigger in size is indicative of inner-insecurity.
Then, we should not forget that there is the other side – the well-meaning, devout practitioners of the religion, any religion for that matter. The issue is complicated and contradictory in itself as a gentleman pointed out in an earlier post.
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Sooner rather than later, there will be a ‘self purging’ of the order. This is the beauty “tissah”(faihfulness) of this religion. Even during the BSPP era.
The excesses under way due to years of useless careless deprivation, not witness in Thailand must speak volume.
As many are self serving, more especially in the most rural where the most deprived are well served by their learned Sayadaw.
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The giant statues at Naypyidaw, the Ananda replicas and Shwedagon replica, all the ostentatious pretensions and conspicuous opulence, white elephants aplenty literal and metaphorical. Definitely a great tradition. Defender of the Faith and Controller of the Clergy.
Fits in so well with the New World Order based on endless consumption and expanding market share (for some) with moralistic pretensions. Besides they have already made a good start by wholesale land grabbing.
The future is bright. The future is Orange? Not only will it purge itself, Saffron hand in hand with varsity, hammer and sickle, some of the battle green on side, will in the end put paid to the status quo.
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The tide rises and the tide falls. During the countless millennia, Mother Nature just took her course. Kingdoms rose and after a few thousand years they were reduced to dust.
People behind the ostentatious roadshows have egos either equal to or larger than the sizes of the structures they build.
The show will go on till the folly of their actions gradually dawn on them – which I believe will be ‘never’.
And, in the mean time, the ‘well-meaning’ crowd will continue their side show, not caring about being recognised or acknowledged.
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A few thousand years is not in the dictionary anymore. We are now counting the duration of a good, stable, enjoyable, full of laughter (not so much drugged hyena-ing ) society only in seconds. Ask the Greeks. Go see how the Latin Americans are enjoying their “West” inspired and established “progress”.
http://www.ibtimes.com/latin-america-wealth-gap-climbing-despite-progress-against-poverty-un-752885
And poor humans think they are so, so progressed!
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“That war-mongering Aung Ze Ya had the gall to name himself Alaungpaya (Future Buddha) after razing many cities in Burma and Siam (the old Thailand) to the ground and bloodletting of biblical proportion. ”
Thank you U Sann Myint.
Until the Burmese, one and all, has the wisdom to see it and courage to rectify it and strive for the true deliverance, simply free of Lawba, Dawtha, Mawha, Burmese, one and all, will simply be easy prey to any opportunists (eg. continue to believe Sasakawa- sorry Nippon Deliverance- is their father or Clinton is their benefactor or IMF/ Soros/ CIA/ Hollande/ Abbott is desperate to help him or her or building ASEAN Lan MA Gyi for his/ her benefit or Greater Mekong Committee is to help his mother or being in that sort of sick, sad, beggar-like state) in all guises and shapes and forms to their own cesspool in the abyss. And soon!
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