Kate Crosby

Poetic dhamma and the zare: Traditional styles of teaching theravada amongst the Shan of northern thailand

In the Theravada Buddhism of the Shan peoples of northern Burma and Thailand, the main medium for the transmission of complex teachings is an elaborate form of poetry. The scholars who preserve and perform the readings of such teachings are called zare. Mostly they are laymen, although some are women and a few are monks. This article examines how the zare acquire their extraordinary erudition, the challenges confronting the tradition in the face of political suppression, modernity and minority language status, and the ways in which zare culture undermines common preconceptions about Theravada Buddhism.

Kamma, social collapse or geophysics? Interpretations of suffering among Sri Lankan Buddhists in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami

In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami, those affected struggled to come to terms with the scale of the disaster. This article documents the initial response in religious terms to the calamity by Buddhists in Sri Lanka. It looks at the interpretations they proposed for the causes of such suffering.1 The account given here is based mainly on conversations and fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka within the first fortnight after the tsunami.2 The places, temples and organisations I visited included some directly affected by the tsunami, some indirectly affected and some not affected or affected only through their voluntary involvement.3 By way of background to the flourishing of religious interpretations of the tsunami on the ground, I give brief summaries of the involvement of temples in relief and fundraising work, when monks and temple attendees extended and adapted traditional roles and practices to assist those affected by the disaster. I relate the interpretations given to relevant Buddhist literature, often the traditional authorities for the underlying doctrines and legends. Some follow up was possible during temple preparations for the three-month death anniversary of victims, which served as a focus for more medium-term relief work and fundraising.

Changing the landscape of Theravada studies

A rift divides the academic study of Theravada, marking two landscapes not obviously linked. These landscapes are at root surprisingly similar, yet in the context of competitive academia are often in a state of diplomatic tension. On the one side stretch the principalities of philology and textual criticism, which sprang up from early colonial attempts to extract from quasi-Biblical textual authorities the essence of the religious traditions beating at the heart of the new and unfamiliar worlds that European powers strove to master. On the other side of the rift range social anthropological studies. These too have their origins in the colonial adventure, plotting the framework of interconnected arteries and the fundamental power dynamics that embodied the societies European powers sought to manipulate. More recently scholarship has developed ways of thinking that help to undermine such power dynamics: postcolonial, gender and subaltern studies all guide us not only to question the dynamics of the relationship between interpreter and interpreted in any representation, but to ask whose narratives we can hear and to whose we listen. Moreover, the power relations that set these patterns have long since shifted. Suspicion has increasingly been replaced with appreciation, even emulation. Yet even with changing attitudes and developing safeguards, the shared ancestral genes that shaped these two main areas of Theravada studies are still manifest. Textual scholarship has continued its plan to decoct the essence of a canon that it has itself selected, often with little reference to social or experiential context. Textual studies often continue to equate Theravada with that dogmatic unicorn ‘early Buddhism’, changing only the name in the outdated linear model that sees Buddhist history in terms of consecutive Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana ‘phases’. The textual, religious, geographic and human developments and diversity that characterise the past two millennia of Theravada remain largely ignored.

Heresy and Monastic Malpractice in the Buddhist Court Cases (Vinicchaya) of Modern Burma (Myanmar)

Abstract Over the past four decades, Buddhists in Burma, mainly monks, have been brought before Sangha courts charged with heresy, adhamma, and malpractice, avinaya, under the jurisdiction of the State Sanghamahanayaka Committee. This body, established under General Ne Win in 1980, oversees the regulation and conduct of the Sangha. The religious courts that try these cases have the backing of state law enforcement agencies: failure to comply with their judgements is punishable by imprisonment. A guilty verdict has been passed in all seventeen cases to date. There is no opportunity of appeal. The system not only protects Burmese Buddhism against corruption, but also stifles innovation and dissent. These cases, not previously discussed in scholarship outside of Burma, are significant for understanding the power of the State over the Sangha as well as the conservatism and antisecularism of Burmese Buddhism, which have set it at odds with the relativist approaches of modern, global Buddhism.

Popularising Buddhism: Preaching as performance in Sri Lanka

Mahinda Deegalle, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2006, xiv, 241, (hardback), ISBN-13: 978-0-791-46897-5 The coverage of Theravada Buddhism in Western languages remains divided, on the ...

Streams of the salween: currents and crosscurrents in the study of Shan Buddhism

Like other lowlanders in Southeast Asia, most Shan practise Theravāda Buddhism, yet the Shan or Tai/Dai, to use the name they always call themselves, remain little represented in the many writings and courses on Theravāda available around the world. This volume seeks to redress the invisibility of Shan Buddhism by bringing together the papers relating to Buddhism that were presented at a two-day international conference on ‘Shan Buddhism and Culture’ held in London on 8–9 December 2007 CE to mark the Shan New Year of 2102. We believe that this was the first international conference to be dedicated to the Shan, although some conferences in Asia in recent years have been, either wholly or partially, dedicated to the Tai, the broader range of ethnic groups to which the Shan belong. Ethnically, the ‘Shan’ or ‘Dai’ (Tai) include a number of closely related Tai ethnic groups, the Tai Long (referred to as ‘Tai Yai’ in Thai), Tai Khun and Tai Lue. The Shan states, the traditional homeland of the Shan peoples, now lie across several modern state borders, forming part of southern China, north-eastern Burma, and north-western Thailand. Historically, Shan have had a crucial role as cultural, political and mercantile intermediaries between the dominant and minority groups of the nations within whose modern boundaries their own former kingdoms now lie, as well as between the transnational cultures of mainland South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. They also, of course, preserved and developed their own unique cultures and sub-cultures. From this perspective, we can see the Shan territories as crossroads between cultures, a central and significant place. Yet, looked at by historians recording history from the centres of dominant cultures with which the