Southeast Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer and Chair: Susan Darlington, Hampshire College
Discussant: Donald K. Swearer, Swarthmore College
Faced with growing consumerism, secularization, environmental degradation and social problems, new and modern forms of Buddhist practice and belief continue to emerge in a variety of Southeast Asian contexts, including diaspora settings. Buddhists in Southeast Asia and elsewhere increasingly view social and political activism as appropriate practice aimed at ameliorating the conditions that produce suffering. Through anthropological and historical studies of Buddhists in Southeast Asia and among Southeast Asian communities living in the United States, panel contributors explore social, political, economic and religious factors that motivate or discourage socially engaged Buddhist activism or offer alternative modes of modern Buddhist practice. The panel explores religious and social change and its effects on individual activists and larger communities. The papers consider both local monks and charismatic Buddhist leaders (lay and religious) as they respond to social crises in their communities. Darlington explores networking among Thai conservationist monks in the face of intense public scrutiny. Smith-Hefner considers forms of Buddhist practice among Khmer communities in the U.S. where, despite pronounced social needs, many Cambodians opt for more traditional forms of practice, including the support of religious institutions in their place of origin. Schober contextualizes the socially engaged Buddhist visions of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Laureate and charismatic resistance leader. Queen examines the personal histories of three charismatic socially engaged Buddhist leaders. While focusing on specific cases, each presentation addresses comparative issues in the study of modern Buddhist forms in Southeast Asia and beyond and opens broader discussion.
Susan M. Darlington, Hampshire College
A number of Buddhist monks currently engage in independent activities promoting ecological conservation in Thailand. Their actions are based on interpretations of the dhamma calling for the sangha to make concerted efforts to relieve the sufferings of all sentient beings while also following their own spiritual practice. Such actions place these monks in the public eye and raise debates and criticisms as to the appropriateness of the social engagement of monks. The more prominent ecology monks, such as Phra Prajak and Ajarn Pongsak, disrobed in the face of controversy, legal action and potential scandal. As activist monks come under intense public scrutiny, they have created informal support networks which cross regional and sectarian boundaries. Active monks attend up to five or six seminars for monks a year in which they share the experiences and challenges they face through their social, and even political, engagement. Most of these seminars are organized by environmental non-government organizations, one of the major oppositional forces in Thai society today. These seminars provide insight into the social and political context within which ecology monks work, who these monks are, why they undertake environmental action, the social, religious and personal obstacles they face, and their relations with each other, the Sangha hierarchy, NGOs and the government. Examining these seminars sheds light on the Buddhist sangha’s continual process of trying to balance a centuries-old tradition, the social expectations of monks developed over history, and the challenges of contemporary society.
Nancy Smith-Hefner, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Metropolitan Boston is home to some eighteen to twenty thousand Khmer, the overwhelming majority of whom identify themselves as Theravada Buddhists. Over the past fifteen years the community has invested significant time and money into the rebuilding of the Khmer Sangha. There are now at least seven Khmer temples and forty monks in eastern Massachusetts alone. In general new monks are not recruited from the ranks of Boston-area Khmer. Instead, young monks are brought over from Cambodia to fill positions for which Khmer American monks are unavailable. Young Khmer American men are not entering the monkhood for any but brief periods of time, and many of the monks who earlier came over as refugees are now sick and elderly. Meanwhile, the Khmer American community is faced with serious social problems, including gangs, delinquency, gambling, substance abuses and domestic violence. Community leaders would like to see the temples taking a more active role in addressing these issues; however, most monks have adopted a decidedly non-activist attitude. Rather than addressing the practical needs of Khmer and engaging in religious outreach, they see their role as encouraging general acts of merit making and the reconstruction of the Sangha back in Cambodia. Examining the social, political and economic context of Khmer American Buddhism in metropolitan Boston, this paper considers the reasons why Khmer monks emphasize merit making over community activism, and projects in Cambodia rather than the expansion of the sangha in the United States.
Juliane Schober, Arizona State University
In her recently published writings (i.e., a weekly column in a major Japanese daily newspaper and a new book, entitled "Voice of Hope"), the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi speaks to the role of socially engaged Buddhism in her vision of a politically plural and participatory Burmese nation state. Beyond her political appeal, her supporters among Burmese include Buddhist monks within Burma and abroad. Yet, her charismatic, religious appeal as a modern world renouncer akin to Mahatma Gandhi is especially strong among largely Western converts to Buddhism. This paper presents Aung San Suu Kyi’s views on modern Buddhist ethics, universal human rights, economic development, and political participation within an ethnically and religiously diverse nation state. It further contextualizes her vision of socially engaged Buddhism with: (1) the history of socially engaged action within more traditional Burmese forms; and (2) within the broader range of socially engaged Buddhist activism as a form of modern Buddhism in Southeast Asia.
Christopher S. Queen, Harvard University
Leaders of the engaged Buddhist movements in 20th-century Asia are often, like religious prophets and saints of old, towering personalities who have taken a stand against the mainstream values and institutions of their day. For figures like B. R. Ambedkar of India, Thich Nhat Hanh of Vietnam, and Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand, the social and political conditions into which they were born became increasingly intolerable. Each bore witness to oppression in their societies: caste hatred for Ambedkar, civil and colonialist warfare for Nhat Hanh, and economic and environmental injustice for Sulak; and each responded in highly original ways that reflected both their emotional temperament and their interpretation of traditional Buddhist teachings.
In this essay I shall argue that social engagement and personal formation are inseparable, and that in the case of Buddhist activists in Asia, a degree of personal alienation preceded their emergence as movement leaders. In the struggles that characterized the public lives of these figures, not only were they and their societies transformed, but so were the traditional teachings and practices of Buddhism they invoked.
This study is presented in the spirit of Frank E. Reynolds’ and Donald Capps’ 1976 collection, "The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion," in the hope that as Buddhist Studies moves to encompass the social and political dimensions of its field, the psychology of suffering and leadership are not forgotten.