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Buddhisms

Thai Buddhism

Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life by Joanna Cook (Cambridge University Press) In contemporary Thai Buddhism, the burgeoning popularity of vipassanā meditation is dramatically impacting the lives of those most closely involved with its practice: monks and mae chee (lay nuns) living in monastic communities. For them, meditation becomes a central focus of life and a way to transform the self. This ethnographic account of a thriving Northern Thai monastery examines meditation in detail, and explores the subjective signification of monastic duties and ascetic practices. Drawing on fieldwork done both as an analytical observer and as a full participant in the life of the monastery, Joanna Cook analyzes the motivation and experience of renouncers, and shows what effect meditative practices have on individuals and community organization. The particular focus on the status of mae chee - part lay, part monastic - provides a fresh insight into social relationships and gender hierarchy within the context of the monastery.

Meditation practice has only become available to large numbers of Thai laity since the 1950s. In that time Buddhism in general and meditation specifically have been incorporated as representative markers in the presentation of Thailand as a modernizing nation state and a self-consciously `traditional' kingship. The widespread adoption of meditation by the laity since the 1950s is identified by some scholars as the greatest single change to have come over Theravada Buddhist countries since the Second World War (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988: 237). Today meditation is taught in monasteries throughout Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma and, latterly, Nepal and is a widely popular and influential movement. Furthermore, the global interest in meditation practice is leading to its inclusion in varied syncretic and often secular practices. However, such inclusion is also feeding and informing the ways in which such practice is understood and propagated in the emblematic religious institutions of Buddhist monasteries.

I take the ethnographic study of a meditation monastery in northern Thailand, Wat Bonamron, as my window on the process of renunciation, forms of which are found in all major religions. This study analyses the impact and meaning of renunciatory moral practice from the perspective of the Buddhist renouncer. I consider monastic practitioners' experiences and understandings of themselves, the significance of renunciation, ascetic discipline, rituals and duties as well as the place of community in the renunciatory project and the historical development and changes in monasticism and meditation.

THE PROPAGATION OF VIPASSANA MEDITATION

Theravada Buddhism has been a powerful influence in Thailand for over 700 years. Thailand has a population of 69 million, the majority of whom are ethnic Thais. While there is total religious freedom in Thailand, Buddhism is followed by over 90 per cent of the population. Buddhism is also closely associated in the minds of Thai people with Thai national identity and it is an important part of Thailand's self-representation to outsiders. There are approximately 33,00o Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, which act as the focal point for the formal practice and reproduction of Thai Buddhism. As Kirsch (1985: 305) puts it, the practices of almsgiving and ordination are 'key socialisation mechanisms for the introduction of abstract Buddhist values into the everyday life of ordinary Thais'.

In many ways the monastery where I lived and carried out fieldwork is a typical Thai monastery where monks and mae chee (Thai Buddhist nuns) live lives of renunciation and contemplation. The idea of detachment is central to the monastic community's imagining of itself. At the same time, much daily activity surrounds collective commitment to the monastery's well-being and observance of monastic hierarchy. Moreover, Wat Bonamron is set apart from other similar institutions in Thailand by the teaching of vipassana meditation. It has functioned as a vipassana meditation centre since it was re-founded in the 1970s. It has a stable monastic community, the largest mae chee population in the region and each year thousands of lay people attend the monastery to do a retreat. For individual monastics, periods of retreat are tempered by long periods of time in which they work and teach. The scale of teaching, and the work involved, makes extended periods of isolation difficult for members of the community and as such monastics have relatively little opportunity to do retreat themselves, though all work in the monastery ideally provides an opportunity to develop the state of mind engendered by meditation: mindful awareness. The work of teaching also fosters a great sense of community among people who feel that they are doing good by combining engagement with and withdrawal from the world.

The burgeoning popularity of vipassana practice as both a lay and a monastic responsibility has had important implications for the ways in which monastic subjectivity and community are understood. Rather than revealing meditation practice as a predefined entity, I begin Chapter 2 by tracing the historical development of Thai lay meditation practice in its current form. Processes of nationalism, internationalism and engagement with practice have made meditation what it is. This should seem obvious, but it is often the case that meditation (certainly in the popular imagination) is presented as timeless and without history. In contemporary meditative practices, as in Yoga (Alter 2004), we see a historically specific converging of religion, cosmology and philosophy with concerns for physiological and psychological well-being. I trace the historical context in which some monasteries in Thailand became devoted to the propagation of meditation to the laity and I locate this in the context of hybrid processes of reform in Thai Buddhism. I begin with a historical account of the introduction of Burmese vipassana to Thailand in the 1950s in the context of sectarian rivalry and the popularization of alternative forms of meditative discipline in a changing religious landscape. The Mahanikai sect of the Thai ordained monastic community (sangha) has enlisted monasteries as 'satellites' in its project of promoting meditation as a practice appropriate for lay people as well as monastics since the 1950s. This intensification of lay practice was linked to increasing standards of literacy and the rise of a nascent middle class. Many urban meditators became attracted to meditation because it was promoted as a Buddhist intellectual response to Western Scientific theory. Meditation centres were modelled as 'research centres' and meditation was presented as a 'rational' and 'authentically' Buddhist practice for salvation.

Subsequent decades have witnessed a proliferation of diverse religious movements within and peripheral to the sangha. Through providing a brief overview of the reformist trends that have characterized Thai Buddhism in recent decades I account for the concurrent patterns of localism, commoditization, engagement and soteriological imperative. Trends have included a critique of Buddhism by reformist thinkers, fundamentalist movements, the commercialization of Buddhist practices, the decentralization of religion, increasing numbers of spirit-cults, and social and environmental reform movements based upon Buddhist ethics. Such trends are often accompanied by discourses of localism, in which Buddhist practice and philosophy are interpreted as an 'authentically Thai' response to the pressures of the capitalist world economy. Locally relevant forms of economic development and self-sufficiency are promoted as being founded on core Buddhist values.

Religious resurgence and revival can be seen in the increasing popularity of alternative forms of religiosity. With such variance in practice and focus, the concerns of the laity and monastics become to discover the moral purity of 'true' Buddhism and the extent to which individual monastics are able to embody the dhamma (teaching of the Buddha; lit.: law/truth). The laity seek out monastics who are renowned for their ethical and ascetic purity. The relatively recent meditation movement is incorporated into a landscape of localist and nationalist concerns. The shift towards lay proselytizing is reflected in different Buddhist traditions around the world (Gellner and LeVine zoos; Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988; Houtman 199o). The meditation movement has led to a changing responsibility and role for the laity and monastics. In the plurality of practices and statuses in contemporary Thai Buddhism it is possible for people outside the official sangha hierarchy to be defined as 'monastic' without this calling into question the authority or hierarchical superiority of the official institutional sangha.

MONASTIC COMMUNITY AND THE CHANGING
STATUS OF MAE CHEE

In Chapter 3 I focus in detail on Wat Bonamron. I examine the monastic routine and the duties of monastics, considering the daily routine of the different members of the community and the very differently structured routine of those doing retreat. Of significant interest in Thailand is the part that women, in the ambiguous role of 'nuns' (mae chee), are now playing in monastic religion. The twentieth century saw rising numbers of women, particularly young women, becoming precept-holding 'nuns' (on Thailand see Collins and McDaniel 2010; on Nepal see Gellner and LeVine 20°5; on Sri Lanka see Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988). The monastery on which this work is based has the largest mae chee community in the north of Thailand. I argue that the propagation of meditation to the laity has been crucial in the development of monastic identity for these mae chee. I show that these changes offer a radical reform and may be interpreted as the monasticization of popular Buddhism. A marginal and institutionally unrecognized group, mae chee have been gaining growing respect and prestige in recent years and are increasingly recognized as monastics, even though they are debarred from full ordination.

Although full ordination for women, known as bhikkhuni ordination, was once widespread in Theravada Buddhism, the practice died out around the tenth century and has never existed in Thailand. Bhikkhuni ordination was only to be found in the Mahayana countries of Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and China. In order for a woman to receive full ordination it is formally necessary to have a quorum of fully ordained monks and a quorum of fully ordained nuns to conduct the ritual. Because the Theravada order had died out it was believed to be impossible to find the bhikkhuni to perform the ordination ceremony.' Women who wish to take ordination in Theravada traditions do so by taking 8 or 10 precepts rather than the 10 for novice monks, the 227 precepts taken by monks, the 311 precepts taken by fully ordained Theravada nuns, or the 5 observed by lay people (lay people may also take 8 or 10 on religiously significant occasions). In Thailand these precept-holding nuns are known as mae chee': they commit themselves to a life of renunciation, living in monasteries and nunneries. This commitment is also marked on their bodies: they shave their head and eyebrows once a month, wear a white shirt and skirt with a large white robe over the top, which goes underneath the right arm and pins on top of the left shoulder. Collins and McDaniel (2010: 7) report that the word mae chi (Romanized here as chee) consists of the word mae, mother, often used as an honorific in hierarchical as well as familial relationships and the word `chi/ji', an honorific used for persons who occupy positions of respect, including male and female ascetics. The first records of mae chee date from the seventeenth century when their presence was noted by a French missionary (La Loubere 1986 [16911: part 3, p. 113).2 Today, there are perhaps twenty thousand mae chee living in temples or nunneries throughout Thailand (Lindberg Falk 2007). The monastic office of mae chee' is complicated. It is conveyed through the ritual adoption of religious vows and is usually undertaken for life. However, mae chee ordination is only partial and its status is far below that of monks. In Thai law mae chee are regarded as pious lay women (upasika) and the Department of Religious Affairs does not mention them in its annual report. Because of this they do not receive the same benefits as monks, such as reduced fares on public transport. Even so, because they are said to have renounced the world they do not have the right to vote.

There is variance in the practice and status of mae chee throughout Thailand. While some mae chee go on daily alms rounds, others are debarred from doing so. The institutional marginalization of mae chee means that their options are considerably more constrained than those of monks. On the one hand monastic practice seems to confirm dominant modes of gender difference and separation, while on the other it dissolves them. Mae chee engage positively evaluated Buddhist practices that confer prestige and respect: meditation (Tambiah 1984: 38), controlled comportment, shaving the head, continuing commitment to the sangha (religious community), and wearing white robes, all are expressions of purity and renunciation of sexuality.

Whereas some reports of mae chee give information on groups of women living as 'temple-servants' (Sanitsuda 2001), living lives of 'hardship and poverty' (Barnes 1996: 268), more recent research has revealed that the status of mae chee is influenced by age, social background, educational level, aspirations and motives. There is variance in the roles and responsibilities of mae chee throughout Thailand. Mae chee are taking active roles as meditation teachers and practitioners, in social welfare work (McDaniel 2006a) and as teachers. These developments are related to a broader expansion of educational and professional possibilities for women in Thailand.

While monastic identity and ascetic practices such as vipassana meditation have historically been the preserve of monks, requiring full ordination and celibacy, in contemporary Thailand 'monastic' and 'lay' are not fixed or mutually exclusive categories: temporary ordination for short periods of time has always been available to Thai men; large numbers of laity now enter monasteries as meditation students for short periods and accept monastic precepts for the duration of their retreat; and finally, the subsequent monasticization of popular Buddhism is enabling mae chee, though outside the ordained monastic community (sangha), to define themselves in ways which are, critically, religious, monastic and associated with prestige. Moreover, as this ethnography will show, vipassana is providing a vehicle for the actualization of renunciation through the monastic duty to teach and embody the principles of meditation. The involvement of mae chee in teaching and practising meditation is leading to the incorporation of women in religious and monastic roles; mae chee are able to define themselves and be defined by others as monastics. While monks are controlled by the 227 precepts of the vinaya, the relative lack of formal rules for mae chee means that their performance of monastic identity is crucial in their self-placement between the sangha and the laity. Even though or indeed partly because the status of mae chee is ambiguous, they are playing a decisive role in transformations in Thai Buddhism.

I examine the heterogeneity of the monastic community by looking at the difference between the ordination rituals for monks and mae chee, some of the diverse reasons people choose to ordain, variance in age, educational attainment and social background prior to ordination and the ways in which such prior experiences influence ordination and the distribution of monastic duties. For all members of this community, however, ordination is conceptualized as an opportunity to 'do work' on oneself through meditation.

PRACTISING AND LEARNING

This book aims to examine the ethical significance for monastic practitioners themselves of teaching wide swathes of people. A nexus of community, individual and lay interests, I argue that meditation practice is also the fulcrum around which this religious monastic community is structured and by which the monastic self is formed. Through an examination of meditative practice I examine the domain of 'the self' as it is meaningful for Thai monastics in the context of rapidly developing global and national discourses about the benefits of meditation for all. It is an account of the ways in which people come to understand themselves through ascetic practice and of how subjectivity is reshaped through religious experience. I argue that meditation, which is often thought of as an asocial activity, has an important social dimension and that this profoundly influences the psychological benefits that people experience and intend to experience as a result of practice.

In Chapter 4 I examine the practice of vipassana meditation in the monastery in order to understand what it is that people do when they meditate, why this is an appropriate practice, what is achieved by it and what changes are effected by it. Meditation practice is intended to bring about a change in perception in the meditator, one that is consistent with Buddhist ethical principles. In order to understand these principles and their significance for individuals in other areas of monastery life it is necessary to understand how these specific bodily and mental practices bring about the experiences that are recognized and valued as religious in this context. I consider in detail the very specific techniques by which the religious tenets that inform practice are actualized through the meditation practice. A central argument of the book is that monastics learn to engage with experiences in specific ways: they learn to reinterpret subjective experiences and responses in ways that are consonant with religious principles. These principles then become the context in which all apperception of phenomena are carried out and the renunciate learns to experience her activities, both physical and mental, as evidence for the importance of renunciation.

I begin with the basic meditation course, the first introduction to meditation that most people in the monastery have, both lay and monastic. I describe the experiences of the basic meditation course as it would be learnt by a novice meditator. It is through these introductory disciplines that the compelling importance of renunciation is first realized for those who later come to understand their renunciation in terms of the imperative to cultivate mindfulness. I examine meditation as a 'technology of the self', a practice through which people intend to effect a change upon themselves that is consonant with religious tenets. The practitioner wills, observes and experiences the changing nature of the mind and the body through a very conscious process of self-fashioning. I focus on the paradox of will and spontaneity in religious attainment. I demonstrate that the spontaneous experience of meditative attainment at the end of a meditation retreat is an embodiment of the ideal telos of Buddhist practice. The insight into non-self, impermanence and imperfection that is thought to be attainable through the retreat provides an experiential resolution between Buddhist soteriology and ascetic practice for meditation practitioners.

In Buddhist philosophy all things are thought to be 'causally interdependent': everything is interconnected and everything affects everything else. Thus, no phenomena are independent or self-originating. This principle extends through all things, and all aspects of existence are thought to be connected and interrelated, from physical conditions, to events in a person's life, and happiness or suffering in the mind. Thus, how the world is experienced and lived is, in part, how it is created; acting in a morally good or bad way creates the conditions and causes for future experiences and actions.

The three tenets at the heart of Theravada Buddhism are impermanence, suffering and non-self (Pali: anicca, dukkha, anatta):

• Impermanence: Anicca refers to the ever-changing nature of all phenomena. All conditioned things are in a state of flux and eventually cease.
• Suffering: Sometimes translated as suffering, pain or unsatisfactoriness, dukkha is philosophically closer to disquietude. Nothing in the physical or psychological realms can bring lasting satisfaction or happiness.
• Non-self: Not only does Buddhism teach that there is no external salvation (no theistic deity) but also that there is no essential core of identity (no soul). What is normally thought of as `self' is revealed through Buddhist teaching and practice to be a conglomeration of changing mental and physical constituents. Clinging to a delusional sense of self is thought to lead to unhappiness and suffering. The Buddha declared that all things are not-self (anatta).

These three principles are thought to characterize all phenomena. By bringing the three characteristics (as they are referred to) into their awareness on a moment by moment basis through the mental discipline of meditation the Buddhist monastics with whom I work explicitly intend to change their world view, cut attachment to a sense of self and thereby attain enlightenment, the perfect peace of a mind that is free from craving, aversion and anger. It is believed that through the practice of meditation it is possible to realize and experience ultimate truth: that there is no self that exists, that all things are imperfect and impermanent.

These Buddhist renunciates learn to recognize the principles of Buddhism in their bodies and in their minds. Of interest to me were the ways in which people learn to use cognitive concepts to interpret their experiences and responses. For example, as an interpretation of physical sickness or mental restlessness, impermanence, suffering and non-self come to be compellingly in evidence: the uncontrollability, imperfection and transience of mental and bodily states are readily enough available. Interestingly, through the dedicated practice of meditation each mental and physical movement becomes evidence of religious principles at the same time as people actively learn to interpret their subjectivity through such principles. People engage in specific practices in order to change their experiences in relation to religious concepts, that is, they learn and practice with intent and in so doing, religious tenets become real.

The experience of non-self arises through meditation as it is taught and learnt. Practitioners are encouraged to interpret the everyday flow of their own awareness in terms of impermanence, suffering and non-self and to see in it evidence of these religious truths. Thus, people are encouraged to experience moments of their own subjectivity as illustration of religious concepts. Life in this monastery is centred on a specific practice that is focused upon developing awareness of interiority. The meditation technique is intended explicitly to enable the practitioner to attend to internal phenomena and to cut involvement in external or sensorial stimuli. The practitioner learns to engage with and interpret internal and external sensory phenomena in specific ways. The development of monastic identity and meditative discipline involves a process of both learning to reinterpret subjective experiences and learning to alter subjectivity. On the one hand, monastics recognize their pre-trained experiences to be replete with the suffering brought by ignorance and attachment, and on the other, they recognize that their subjectivity has changed as a result of the practice.

The point of vipassana meditation for these monastics is to achieve awareness of the tenets of Buddhism, such that one experiences that there is no self which exists and that attachment to a delusional sense of self is the result of ignorance and the cause of all suffering in the world. Thus, the goal is to develop a very specific and vivid subjective awareness. This meditative development occurs in the context of community interaction. I consider narratives of the lives of monks and nuns within the larger context of social norms, monastic duties and discourse in Thailand, taking into account theoretical considerations of renunciation as a practical and ongoing process.

In Chapter 5 I examine understandings of language in ritual, meditation and daily monastic life. I consider in more detail the cognitive impact of meditative practice for monastics and laity through a consideration of the advanced meditation technique. I examine understandings of Pali and language use in the monastery more broadly and I then consider the ways in which use of Pali is understood as a method for self-improvement. Pali language is thought to have an immediate physical and psychological effect upon meditators. Each time the practitioner does retreat he or she gains more insight into the nature of the words summoned in Pali, through cultivating mindful detachment. The cultivation of mindfulness is understood as an ongoing fostering of forms of perception. Practitioners intend to move progressively towards a realization of ultimate truth. This requires particular subjective responses to the experiences of meditation in the ongoing cultivation of such perceptual capacities.

Use of language in the monastery reflects an emphasis on non-verbal or non-conceptual knowing. On the one hand, meditation is learnt and becomes important through solitary practice and in this sense language is insufficient as a pedagogic aid. On the other, Pali provides the meditator with an unmediated experiential access to ultimate truth. The experience of truth through Pali language is distinct from the rationality or irrationality of beliefs in that truth. This reflects broader culturally specific distinctions between the heart/mind (jai) and the brain, knowledge and wisdom, behaviour and speech. I suggest that belief may not always be prior to religious experience and that private meditative experience is often taken as persuasive evidence of changes in and by the meditator.

A central focus of the book is the ways in which monastic involvement becomes compelling. I consider how becoming a monastic changes one's relationship with mental, physical and emotional processes as well as how one interprets subjective experiences. My argument is that in this monastery monastics' subjectivities are shaped by the 'work' that they do on themselves and that this creates a personal commitment to practice, precept and community that operates simultaneously on several different levels —psychological, social and political — as understanding of the ascetic self and relation to others (both at close quarters and more widely) develop. In some ways these changes are similar to those engendered by ascetic practice for laity, but there are also ways in which they are crucially different.

While renunciation constitutes a removal from the world and meditation is conceived of as a solitary practice, asceticism and renunciation are necessarily shaped by social dimensions.

In considering how we might explore the processes through which monastics make of themselves the kinds of people who, on reflection, they think they ought to become I employ Foucault's writings on ethical self-formation. I argue that Buddhist renunciation may be understood as a process of self-formation even though the end result, the ideal `telos' of practice, is the realization of 'non-self': to completely cut attachment to all sense of self. Thus, I argue that it is through ascetic practice that the ascetic self is made.4 Through religious training monastics learn to experience the world around them and all internal states (such as emotions, desires, thoughts, aversions and physical sensations) as that from which ascetic discipline brings detachment. It is through strict discipline in intensive retreat periods, in daily practice, and in the conscious effort to imbue all daily activity with the same quality of mental being found in intensive retreat, that monastics develop a change in interpretations, perceptions and dispositions — a transformation of subjective experience that is understood by monastics themselves to indicate a progressive and embodied realization of Buddhist soteriological principles. The monastics with whom I work understand the process of religious formation as a shedding of a delusional perception of `self', the ultimate conclusion of which is the realization of enlightenment: the cessation of suffering and the cycle of rebirth.

PARADOX AND BEHAVIOUR

Having examined meditation in detail I return my focus to monastic identity at a time when the techniques for attaining meditative detachment are increasingly available to people who are not themselves renouncers. What, in such a situation, is becoming of monastic identity? Moving away from a rules-based understanding of morality I analyse the impact and meaning of renunciatory moral practice from the perspective of the Buddhist renouncer. Chapter 6 examines monastic practitioners' experiences and understandings of themselves, the significance of renunciation, ascetic discipline, rituals and duties as well as the place of community in the renunciatory project. The mindfulness engendered in meditation is articulated and embodied by monastics in the wider context of intersubjective relationships. If meditation and meditative attainment are available to all people irrespective of ordination status, in what ways are monastics distinct from laity? I demonstrate that the performance of religious identity is one way in which the moral self is formed and communicated. I examine the way through which monastic performance may actualize the Buddhist principle of non-self (anatta) while simultaneously being a question of social hierarchy, judgment and duty. I examine the practice of mindfulness in monastic duty and the relationship between this and the social transfer of merit and individual morality.

During fieldwork and analysis it became apparent that there appeared to be a paradox between internal processes of renunciation for individual monks and mae chee and the importance of public demonstrations of 'non-self'. As shall be explored in more detail later, vipassana meditation involves a process of detaching from a sense of self. Such detachment is evidenced through the level of sartorial neatness exhibited by the individual. The appearance of the body of the monastic reveals an inner state of moral attainment: others bear witness to moral qualities and virtues in monastic physical performance. Sitting up straight, speaking quietly, eating slowly, and so on, therefore become a question of morality for the monastic. Ideally, appropriate emotional and physical control comes as an automatic result of ascetic practice. Yet by refining behavioural characteristics and holding them up as indicative of a virtuous state of mind, one's behaviour becomes not only a question of individual morality but also social responsibility.

Members of the laity relate to monastics as those who have renounced a sense of self but there is necessarily a discrepancy between this and one's own awareness of the ongoing process of renunciation: between oneself as a spectacle of asceticism and the reality of one's own imperfection. Monastics are 'on show' to the laity for much of the time. If the monastic appearance communicates how the monastic is to be treated by the laity then it also communicates how the monastic is to behave for the laity. The appearance of the monastic both physically and performatively acts as a buffer zone between the social world and the bounded self. It is the space in which lay impressions of renunciates are realized, and where renunciates communicate themselves to others in the light of the religious ideal. The body may speak to others about one's personhood but after ordination one's body becomes part of the public domain — one has a moral duty to behave in an appropriate way.

Multiple displays of sensory and physical control become a central focus in renunciates' lives, but this necessarily creates a dynamic paradox between understandings of self and the moral context of public action. My aim in this book then is to examine the ways in which individuality, subjectivity and interiority stand in relation to social and monastic duty in the context of the propagation of meditation to the laity by monastics in contemporary Thailand. I argue that ascetic practice gains its force as the means by which individual monastics develop subjective processes of interiority within the context of the monastic community, which ultimately lead to the removal of individuality. In Dumont's terms it is through ascetic practice that people become 'individuals' (1980 [1966]): they develop a 'self which it is their duty to patrol and fashion. At the same time, however, it is through such practice that the person cultivates, what Flood (2004) terms, an 'ascetic interiority' through which self, desire and volition are eradicated. This ethnography focuses on how ascetic practice becomes meaningful for practitioners; that is, what is meant by the renunciation of self for these Buddhist monastics.

The monastic body becomes a spectacle of religious perfection for the laity, and as such it is never appropriate to see a monastic body misbehaving or in the wrong place. The morality of monastics paradoxically presents a process of self-aware reflection, on the one hand, and, on the other, absence of self in the performance of one's moral duty to the laity. Monastics may be restricted in their emotional expression by cultural conventions prescribing appropriate behaviour, but the extent to which people's behaviour is influenced by such restrictions or the points at which one may choose to express emotion depend upon personal placement and negotiation. Mindful awareness emerges as a moral injunction: a way of establishing who one is in the moral landscape of intersubjective relationships. Crucially, the duty to behave in accord with such an ideal creates the cognitive space required to actualize spiritual development and it is through such a performance that people become members of a community of practice.

COMMUNITY CONCERNS

I concentrate both on the formation of a community of practice through the monastic duty to teach and practise meditation and on the experience of individuated ascetic discipline. In so doing, I consider the ways in which the personal process of becoming a monastic is in direct dialogue with the concerns of community living and the broader issues of modernization and cultural change in Thailand. In the community on which this study is based mae chee are afforded considerable veneration and respect. However, their involvement in monastic practice and duty is highly qualified and without question they are hierarchically inferior to monks. I argue that the propagation and practice of meditation by mae chee, among other factors, is leading to their inclusion as religious professionals within the community, while also maintaining their hierarchical inferiority.

In Chapter 7 I examine the ways in which the inclusion of women within the monastic community is reflected in the emblematic religious practice of alms donations. Mae chee in this monastery are debarred from going on the morning alms round. They also donate alms to individual monks and to the monastery, as do laity. However, they receive alms from laity on both an individual basis and as an important part of many rituals. They also handle lay alms donations on behalf of the monastery. By donating alms to monks, mae chee appear to reaffirm their status of partial ordination, yet in order for them to be able to receive alms and handle the alms donation on behalf of monks they must see themselves, and be recognized by the laity, as an integral part of the monastic community. I consider the alms donations in detail, questioning how we might understand such gifts. I argue that in their highly qualified involvement in alms donation, mae chee mediate between monks and laity in a process of generalized exchange. They understand their donations of alms as both a way of making merit and also a way to cultivate the ethical virtues of generosity (Pali: danapararni). Mae chee understand the practice of receiving alms from the laity as an opportunity to cultivate non-attachment in order to offer a fertile 'field of merit' for lay donors.

In considering mae chee's involvement with religious practice my primary focus is upon women's engagement with particular forms of life rather than the degree to which women's subordination is legitimated through particular practices and institutional structures. I argue that understanding the forms of practice that mae chee engage in on their own terms enables insight into the choices and motivations of monastics. The moral imperative to behave mindfully is the result of self-monitoring and entails particular ways of relating to the self, to the body, to emotional responses and thought patterns requiring constant analysis and reinterpretation in the light of religious ideals. This points towards an analysis of the work that such practices do in the formation of subjectivity.

In Chapter 8 I examine the gendered hierarchy of the monastic community in more detail, asking how we might understand women's involvement in practices and institutional structures that appear to reaffirm their subordination. I argue that cultivating the virtues of mindfulness and equanimity should not be understood as a performance of identity, but, rather, as the ongoing experience of shaping the ethical self through ascetic practice. It is through repeated mental and bodily acts that one learns how to be moral. This is highlighted in the understandings of monks and mae chee, located within a gendered hierarchical community, of enlightenment as a non-gendered state. I argue that the transformations that we are seeing in the position of mae chee in Thai monasticism must be considered with reference to the specific practices that make particular modes and presentations of subjectivity possible. Thus, mae chee's embodiment of the virtues of humility, selflessness and service may be understood as a positive and affirmative way of acting in the world.

To conclude, through a consideration of the preceding ethnography I question what is meant by 'individuality' for renouncers, in what ways the self and the person are distinct and in what ways they may be related. I analyse the ascetic self as it is formed in monastic practice and ask what it is about ascetic practice that may produce a unique or differentiated 'self'. As a consequence of the propagation of vipassana meditation to the laity, ascetic practice is becoming the responsibility of all, without the social and cosmological hierarchy of Thai Buddhism being overtly questioned. At the same time duty, hierarchy and performance are focused upon individual liberation for the monastics with whom I work. I argue that the often powerful experiences of meditation and the changes they effect and are intended to effect within the person are connected to the moral duty of mindful performance, through which monastics cultivate an ascetic interiority, creating the cognitive space in which spiritual development may be actualized. I revisit the scholarship of Dumont, central to academic understandings of renunciation, and I argue that the renouncer has a singular agency, which Dumont fails to problematize: he writes as if renunciation were accomplished once and for all through the act of retreat from the world. I propose that renunciation may fruitfully be considered as an ongoing project irreducible to the moral rules which inform it. As such, I argue that the challenges of ascetic practice are the means by which the religious self is formed.

ASCETICISM IN THE MONASTIC CONTEXT

I interpret the intended shaping of the monastic self through disciplined meditative work in this monastery as a form of ascetic practice. Buddhist monasteries in Thailand vary widely in focus and institutional organization and we must be careful not to assume a necessary correlation between monasticism and asceticism, or indeed between meditation and asceticism, in any given context. Only a small minority of monastics in Thailand are focused on the vipassana meditation that is the central concern of the people on whom this book is based. I do not use the term 'ascetic' to describe all people who 'renounce the world' or become monastics: to be a monastic one does not have to engage in ascetic practices and vice versa. It is not necessarily the case at all that monastics, though they have renounced home, sexual activity and marriage, are necessarily then to be understood as engaging in ascetic practices.

I employ an analysis of 'asceticism' in the Greek sense of askesis' , or way of life by which some forms of activity are inhibited, while others are developed, through specific strenuous forms of religious discipline. I understand asceticism to be the disciplined practices and forms of self-regulation that become imperative for practitioners as they cultivate an understanding and experience of what Hick (1995: ix) has termed a 'believed in sacred reality'. The focus of a study of asceticism rests upon the training involved in becoming virtuous: the personal development of particular virtues, more than adherence to moral laws or the avoidance of vice. Freiberger defines asceticism as 'the enduring performance of practices that affect bodily needs for religious purposes'. It is understood as enduring because it is understood as a lifestyle rather than a mode of religious practice (which could be adopted temporarily). It suggests a particular attitude to life and to the futurity of the self: what the practitioner imagines their self to be and the self that is to be realized in the future.

In a comparative analysis of Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, Flood (2004) argues that the subjectivity of the ascetic self must be located in accordance with the goals and practices of a religious tradition. 'Claiming that constraints within scriptural traditions form the ascetic self is not simply to give an account of a cultural construction but is also to give an account of the discovery or opening out of an interior world' (Flood 2004: ix). He understands asceticism as the internalization of tradition, in which the ascetic life is shaped in accordance with tradition and tradition is performed through the ascetic body. Flood highlights the necessary paradox of ascetic practice: the eradication of the will through the affirmation of will in ascetic practice (see Nietzsche 1996). He argues that the performance of the ascetic self both looks back to an origin and forward to a future goal firmly located within traditional religious cosmology. For Flood, asceticism entails subjectivity and a self who renounces, but after renunciation the self is expressed through the structures of tradition. 'The ascetic submits her life to a form that transforms it, to a training that changes a person's orientation from the fulfilment of desire to a narrative greater than the self. The ascetic self shapes the narrative of her life to the narrative of tradition' (Flood 2004: 2).

Meditation and monasticism

Flood argues that, The ascetic conforms to the discipline of the tradition, shapes his or her body into particular cultural forms over time, and thereby appropriates the tradition. This appropriation of tradition is a form of remembrance, the memory of tradition performed through the body, and is also the vehicle for change or transformation' (Flood 2004: 6). The change that Flood speaks of in this context is internal rather than external: it is through submitting to the discipline of a predetermined cultural form external to the ascetic that her body becomes a vehicle for internal transformation. While the willed practice of asceticism seeks its own destruction this is enacted through the performance of tradition.

This highlights the tension identified in the Thai Buddhist context between the intention to eradicate the will through meditative practice and the experience of the dissolution of the will as a result of that practice. I will argue that through ongoing mindful self-examination, the permanent mental articulation of all bodily and mental processes and sensations, the meditator creates a hermeneutic relationship with herself (Foucault 2000b). During the retreat mindful vigilance becomes an ethical imperative, and enlightenment is potentially attainable in the final hours when ideally the purchase of self-identification on the meditator is loosened and, if possible, extinguished. The paradox of the eradication of the will through self-willed practice is addressed through the use of Pali in the retreat context, believed to bring about the spontaneous experience of enlightenment. Meditative attainment then is understood here as the spontaneous extinction of volition and a result of concerted and willed discipline.

Flood's focus is the ascetic self as it appears in historical, textual accounts. His assumption, therefore, must be that textual accounts are faithful representations of cultural practices, and that it is tradition as found in the text that is 'remembered' and performed through ascetic practice. When reading Flood's account we must be aware that the Buddhist textual record may not be wholly divorced from the vested interests of its writers, and that within it specific groups of people or employments of practices may remain muted, without ever being compliant with or resistant to historical representations of power.'

[In basing an analysis on text alone, as does Flood, there is a danger that the illusion of continuity with past tradition may be maintained, such that what has always been done is done now, or, conversely, what is done now is what has always been done. Ascetics from diverse cultural and temporal locations are understood by Flood to affirm the continuity of a cultural past. This being so, the cultural others of Flood's account take current events (though each is presumably at a temporal distance to the other) and subordinate them within the structures of tradition. Flood identifies a contrast between 'tradition' and 'modernity' and thus creates an ideological structure against which to ground the novelty of the modern cultural moment. If textual examples are made to stand for 'what we do now' it is easy to see how this reality may then be contrasted with 'modernity' in Flood's work. This comparison creates a friction and contrast where contemporary ascetic practitioners may not necessarily feel one. Flood's conclusion that texts reveal `how the ascetic self is set within a cosmological tradition that runs against contemporary sensibilities' may itself be the result of his focus on text rather than the reality of contemporary ascetic practice.]

Asceticism incorporates the whole realm of methods and disciplines, including fasting, celibacy, obedience as well as formal meditation and monastic duty that are employed in the project of cultivating purity, mindfulness and self-discipline understood by monastics in this context to be necessary for realizing the ultimate truth of 'non-self' in their own bodily concerns. In this monastery, I identify asceticism in the quite extraordinary forms of self-control and self-restraint that are intentionally cultivated by monks and mae chee. This is a small group of religious professionals who do not assume that the majority of people will have the opportunity to achieve the specific social, religious and personal goals that they progressively work towards (Olivelle 2006). This distinguishes monastic practice from that of the laity who enter the monastery for given periods of time in order to do intensive meditation retreats. Though such periods may be important and transformative for lay practitioners they are understood by the monastics teaching them to be so because they enable laity to live more harmonious familial lives, to which they will return. Through working towards the cultivation of mindfulness, monastics intend to renounce personal satisfactions in order to better appreciate the dhamma (truth) and this is not a focus that they expect to share with the laity (which is not to say that it may not be the case).

'EFFING' THE INEFFABLE

One cannot overestimate the importance of meditation in this monastery. It is the activity around which the entire daily schedule, spatial layout, bureaucratic organization and social interaction of the monastery are centred. It is understood as the central act of life: activities such as listening to music, chatting and entertainment are minimized in order that monastics are not distracted from meditative practice. Meditation is the means by which one comes to understand oneself. It is said that one should try to maintain meditation at all times. The state of mind — mindfulness — cultivated in formal meditation practice should, ideally, develop and become a continuous state of mind in all activity, waking and sleeping. And while few in the monastery feel that they are actually able to maintain this at all times, they recognize it as an achievable goal and something towards which one should strive.

The experiences of meditation can be described and identified; they are vivid and emotive and must be made sense of by the experiences as she makes sense of herself and the changes that she effects, and intends to effect, through meditation practice. Talking about meditation in the monastery is frowned upon. It is considered that learning is by doing, not by talking and there is a limited amount that can be transmitted verbally. Meditation may be understood as a prescribed embodied practice. It is associated with psychological states, such as 'mindfulness', that are the result of physical and mental discipline. And, it may be considered through the terms by which these states and practices are articulated and understood by individuals.

For me as an anthropological fieldworker, experiential knowledge of meditation was of paramount importance if I was to have any understanding of how meditation becomes meaningful and why people commit themselves to what is often a gruelling practice. In order to translate theoretical issues of individuality, renunciation and practice into researchable empirical questions I spent fifteen months in Wat Bonamron and for one year of this time I took ordination as a mae chee.

I had some experience of my field site before I began research. While travelling around Southeast Asia at 21 I did a one-month meditation course at the monastery and ordained as a mae chee for a subsequent four months, taking a vow of silence for much of this time. As a child my parents had taught me various different meditation techniques and our family holidays were often organized around meditation retreats in a variety of traditions. Thus, when I first entered the monastery I already had some experience of meditation and the tenets of Buddhism. I took ordination at this time because I saw it as a way of developing my meditation practice and I disrobed in order to complete my undergraduate degree. My later research work on meditation presented a way of returning to the monastery and taking ordination for longer.

Prior to embarking upon my first serious, long-term, research I imagined that ordination and my life as a mae chee would be straightforward. Having had a brief flirtation with ordination a few years previously, I naively thought that I knew what it entailed. However, nothing prepared me for the effect and challenges of the relative longevity of my second ordination period. My ordination as a mae chee was both central to my research and a monumental personal commitment. It was understood by people in the field and by me as a demonstration of respect for monasticism and the monastic project. My religious position was unambiguous. I was a Buddhist and I was committed to the ordination and meditation. It was known in the monastery that my ordination would be limited to one year and that I would be doing anthropological research. My interest lay in finding a way to understand not only the monastic code, but also the practices, patterns, responses and experiences of monasticism: to know why people do what they do, to describe human action as it is variously motivated, the cognitive force of meditation as well as the ascetic interiority engendered by monastic duty and discipline.

Through a combination of extensive participation, socialization and formal and informal interviews I began to understand how monastics come to find their meditation practice engaging. As a mae chee my explicit duty was to offer an example of monastic piety for the laity and to act as daughter to senior monks and mae chee. Learning what was appropriate in my behaviour with particular people was also central to learning about what it means to be a monastic in Thailand. It was through this process of `gradual familiarization' that I learnt how to act and behave sensitively and become aware of the feelings of those around me.

The emphasis placed upon the experiential dimension of meditation makes it a particularly thorny challenge for anthropology: in many ways research about meditation is an attempt to 'eff' the ineffable. In translating the daily instructions of the meditation teacher I was struck by the number of questions that were met with responses such as 'acknowledge' or 'meditate and you will know'. Houtman found that because of similar strictures in a Burmese meditation centre, cultivating social contacts was difficult. Houtman makes the further point that, in comparison with a monastery not focused on meditation, in the meditation centre the pursuit of a very limited type of knowledge was encouraged:

In the monastery my every question was taken seriously by the monks, but in the meditation centre questions about the organisation of the centre, and the way people experienced meditation, were all considered tangential to the knowledge they thought I should be seeking — 'If you meditate yourself you will find all answers to your questions'. (1990: 131)

Temporary ordination is common in Thailand and remains an important part of the life cycle of most men. As a cultural ideal every Thai Buddhist man should ordain as a monk as a rite of passage between adolescence and marriage, usually for one phansa, or Buddhist Lent of three months, during the rainy season (Tambiah 1970). Men at this age or later are granted paid leave from government employment in order to ordain temporarily. Both monk and mae chee ordination are considered as temporary in the first instance, even if the ordinand remains in the robes for a lifetime. This is fitting with the Buddhist principle that all things are impermanent.

The knowledge engendered by meditation is highly valued and considered the only appropriate area of enquiry for meditation students: 'While in the monastery knowledge can be received in a social context and transmitted between people, in the meditation centre knowledge is not conceived in its "received" form but only as an experiential knowledge derived from lengthy private dedicated "work"' (Houtman 199o: 156). By choosing to ordain and practise meditation I experienced the effects of religious practice on my own feelings and sense of self. Long-term participant observation enables the anthropologist to think about a multiplicity of bodily practices in order to examine cultural processes of physical learning. This emphasizes 'a mode of fieldwork that focuses on the mediations of corporeal experience and that locates what has been called "the mind" . . . in the body' (Fernandez and Herzfeld 1998:11o). I suggest that, while being careful not to generalize from the individual to the collective, the anthropologist who wholeheartedly participates in cultural practice can draw on such experiences when reflecting on their stated impact for other people. As Luhrmann writes, often human experience is stimulated in similar ways by similar activity. Being deprived of food in an initiation ceremony, undergoing group-led imaginative `journeys', dancing until exhausted in a group ritual — all these have a significant subjective impact upon the participants, and some features of the subjective response to each will be common to many. (1989: 14-15)

Through one's own involvement one can begin to understand what others may have been experiencing. Without resorting to assumptions about mental actions one may cautiously develop some awareness of the psychological landscape in which assertions are made.

In order to understand what it is like to be a monastic and the way monastic identity is formed through ascetic practice it was necessary for me to ordain and to practise. A combination of in-depth and long-term participant observation with formalized research methods provided me with abundant and varied data on the lives of renunciates. As well as ordaining, meditating, striving to cut attachment to a sense of self, I busied myself conducting surveys, employing questionnaires, doing formal and informal interviews, collecting life-histories, documenting rituals, researching the meaning of symbols, writing everything down in notebooks of varying sizes, and so on. I undertook regular intensive meditation retreats, as all monastics do in Wat Bonamron, going for up to five days without sleep, and cultivating mindfulness, the state of mind sought in meditation. The research incorporated the narratives and life stories of members of the monastic community, a group of people seldom accessible to research because of the community's focus on meditation and monastic detachment from lay concerns. I was able to explore understandings about the propagation of meditation to the laity, gender hierarchy and the changing roles of mae chee, as well as engaging directly with the duties and responsibilities of a mae chee myself: I had shaved my head, renounced the world and strove in all things to cut attachment to a sense of self, as do all monks and mae chee within the community.

Throughout fieldwork I was fully involved in life at Wat Bonamron, performing my daily monastic duties and participating in rituals as a monastic. I would wake at 4 a.m., meditate or chant for two hours before breakfast, work in the office during the morning giving information and meditation instruction to foreigners. I observed fast for eighteen hours a day (from noon until 6 a.m.) and conditioned myself to sleep for six hours a night. I translated the Abbot's meditation teaching for foreigners during the daily meeting between teacher and meditation students. I received alms from the laity and donated alms to the monastery and monks.' I tried to maintain six hours of daily meditation practice when not on retreat. I also assisted in the meditation retreats of large groups of Thai laity, usually comprising school children, university students or work colleagues. My duty was to speak on the microphone about the benefits of meditation. At such times my status as a young scholar from Cambridge was always emphasized and it was suggested that my level of education at a renowned institution and my ordination directly resulted from my meditation practice. I was thus endowed with symbolic capital that reflected well on the monastery, the community and the monastery's project to teach meditation to large numbers of people.

During fieldwork I participated in numerous meditation retreats both as a personal practice and that I might develop more understanding about meditation. Initially, this process was greatly aided by personal conviction and faith in the technique and the teacher. Intensive embodied practice of this sort provided a way of understanding abstract concepts of 'truth' in the field while remaining 'true' to the roles of mae chee and meditator adopted in the field: alternative `me's' in relation to the cultural world I had come to inhabit. Through executing my duties to behave impeccably, practise meditation and observe monastic hierarchy, I was taught how to be a mae chee.

My fieldwork was distinctive in that I committed myself to ordination as a Buddhist nun and to intensive meditation practice. However, my experience of being a mae chee was coloured by my reasons for ordaining and my experiences of meditation in the past. I understood the different meditation techniques that I had learnt from an early age as options that I could draw upon depending on how I felt and this mix and match approach to meditative practice was very different to the belief in the monastery that vipassana meditation is the only path to enlightenment. This presented a clear contrast between my own understandings of meditation and those of the people around me. Surprisingly, given the hybridity of the Thai religious landscape (examined in the next chapter), I never encountered monks or mae chee in the monastery engaging in or promoting any other meditative techniques. While other techniques, traditions and religions were discussed they were understood to be inferior to the practice of vipassana and it was thought that, as such, practising them would be a waste of time. Even common Thai Buddhist meditations such as samatha techniques were discouraged in discussions with meditation students. In contrast, while I had practised vipassana intensively for five years I had not conceived of this to be at the exclusion of other possible techniques on anything other than a temporary basis.

Although my fieldwork involved a heavily participant form of participant observation it had limits: it was informed by my doubts as to whether or not I could remain as a mae chee; that these appeared as doubt is indicative of the degree to which I committed myself to participating as a mae chee. Thus, my doubts were less a question of belief — whether or not meditation 'works', whether the principles of Buddhism are true — than a question of my own commitment to Buddhist monasticism as a vocation.

For me, the greatest trial of the fieldwork period was lack of exercise. Prohibition on exercise is intended to enable monastics to cut attachment to the body. Prior to entering the monastery I was surfing and dancing regularly and I found that after a number of months of ordination without exercise my body became sluggish, my skin became sallow and I had very low energy. Furthermore, though it is prohibited to eat solid food after noon," every evening a group of mae chee and I would have sweet tea with condensed milk. By the end of my ordination my blood sugar was fluctuating wildly and I frequently felt hypoglycaemic. When I expressed concern about my health to a mae chee the same age as me, she responded that if we were crippled later in life it would not matter because we would have no attachment to our physical form; I was not so convinced. I tried to improve my physical condition by doing the exercise that is appropriate for monastics. I swept the paths of the monastery vigorously and hand washed my robes and towels more than I needed to. Towels were particularly useful because once wet they took effort to lift. When I disrobed I went on holiday in the south of Thailand. I relished the sheer physicality of Frisbee, swimming in the sea, the sun on my skin and eating green vegetables regularly. But how I perceived my own and other people's bodies changed dramatically during fieldwork. I was given a photographic atlas of the body as a meditative tool to assist me in cutting attachment to the body. At first I found the images of dissected corpses upsetting but soon I became fascinated by the construction of the human body and the ways in which the pictures on the pages corresponded to my own imagining of my body. In a short time this coloured my perception of other people as well: I would be aware that their skull was made up of plates that meshed together, or that with a turn of the head countless tendons and muscles were activated in the neck. I was encouraged, and was keen, to view the corpses at funerals I attended." In ways I had never experienced before I became imaginatively aware of not only other people's mortality but my own also. In the context of the meditation this was a fascinating experience: I felt as though I was experiencing and accepting the Buddhist principles of non-self, impermanence and suffering (anatta, anicca, dukkha) in my own self-perception.

If we assume that the anthropologist is affected or changed by the process of participant observation this does not necessarily suggest a before and after, so often seen in the narrative structures of entry stories such as the flight from the cock fight immortalized by Geertz (1973). As Beatty has argued (1999), such epiphanic immersion stories do nothing to hint at the confusion and incompleteness of formative processes of participation. My emotional commitment to ordination positioned me in relation to monastics and laity but my ultimate withdrawal from the monastic project, my inability to understand my doubts about my vocation and vipassana as my sole practice as a site for meditative awareness, in some ways placed me in opposition to people in the monastery. In different ways, then, during fieldwork, I both shared in and resisted religious experience. However, this ambivalence was fruitful and interesting in and of itself and my involvement in the monastery, robes and all, led to ways of understanding both my self and monasticism through the learning process of fieldwork.

This book focuses on the experience of monasticism for monks and mae chee as they practise and teach meditation. It is concerned with the processes by which ascetic discipline creates meaning in the context of a rapidly developing Thailand. In order to open up a theoretical consideration of asceticism, the self and the reform and revival of religious practices, I address a variety of issues currently at the fore of the anthropology of religion and ethics: the construction of identity; the processes by which the religious self is formed; the personal significance of religious practice for practitioners; the relationship between men and women and the ways in which gender differences are negotiated and negated in a community where religious hierarchy is clearly inscribed in bodily practice. Drawing on a broad spectrum of anthropological literature I situate the popularity of meditation practice in Thailand within trends of increasingly syncretized and secularized Buddhist popularity. It is through the shifting and situated negotiation of the ascetic self in the contemporary context that ascetic practice finds its significance: that is, how it becomes meaningful for people.

 

 

 

 

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