Patrice Ladwig

Ontology, materiality and spectral traces: methodological thoughts on studying Lao Buddhist festivals for ghosts and ancestral spirits

The study of ghosts and spirits, and the ethnographic evidence associated with this, is a fertile area for developing methodologies. By employing theories of materiality and the anthropological study of ontologies, I argue that looking at the traces of spirits and ghosts in the material domain can reveal crucial insights into their nature, position and relationships with the living. Two ethnographic case studies from the Buddhist ethnic Lao are used to demonstrate how material traces can explain the ‘ontic shifting’ of certain ghosts. I will then explore how through the modernization and rationalization of Buddhist cosmology there have evolved competing ideas of the nature of ancestral spirits addressed in Buddhist rites. While in an older interpretation these spirits are accessible through objects and the exchanges between layperson, monk and spirit, ‘modernist’ Buddhist monks advocate that the dead cannot be reached through objects. Finally, I argue that the material traces of spirits and their different readings hint to important transformations regarding the conceptualization of ghosts and spirits through the socialist revolution and the rationalization of Buddhism.

Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures

The statement that ‘death is the origin and the center of culture’ (Assmann 2005: 1) might at first sight seem like a simple generalisation that misses out on many other aspects of culture. However, when the study of death is not simply reduced to a rite of passage, we believe that approaching Buddhist cultures through their ideas, imaginaries and practices related to death can help us to understand crucial facts that reach beyond the domain of death and dying. First, death offers a unique departure for understanding the relations between people, monks, ritual experts and other entities that are commonly labelled as ‘the dead’, but can in fact comprise a multitude of entities of various ontological statuses. Second, death reaches out into such diverse domains as agricultural fertility, human reproduction, political cults and the economy and therefore constitutes a total social fact (Mauss 1990). Jan Assmann’s statement also has a particular relevance for the history of Buddhism. Death indeed was and is at the centre of Buddhist culture and has on a ritual, ideological and even economic level played a crucial role in its development and spread. Death was from its beginning an event that was seen as particularly central to Buddhist interests. Throughout Asia it has always been recognised that Buddhists are specialists in death. One of the things that attracted Chinese (and Tibetans, for that matter) to Buddhism was its clarity about what happens at death, the processes needed to ensure a successful death – the welfare of the dead person and his or her mourners – and its clarity about what happens after death and its links with the whole way someone has lived their life. No other rival religion in Asia had at that time such clarity. It was a major factor in the successful transmission of Buddhism from its original Indian cultural context. Why was Buddhism so successful in explaining death? Death was written into Buddhism from the beginning. It is universally accepted in the various hagiographies of SiddhārthaGautama (died c. 400 bce), the wealthy aristocrat

Millennialism, Charisma and Utopia: Revolutionary Potentialities in Pre-modern Lao and Thai Theravāda Buddhism

Abstract With reference to (mainly Pāli) textual imaginaries and historical data on outbreaks of millennial movements in southern Laos and parts of Thailand around the turn of the twentieth century, this essay discusses the revolutionary potentialities embedded in Theravāda Buddhist thought and its localised cosmologies. The essay begins with an examination of the various sources of charisma and the roles of charismatic leaders in these movements, focusing on the tension between institutionalised state Buddhism and peripheral figures such as lay ascetics, holy men or forest monks who are more likely to be involved in millennial movements. Next, eschatological visions of the decline of the dhamma, utopian imaginaries of renewal and the (re-)instantiation of righteous kingship are discussed. I argue that many of these movements can be understood as forms of ‘restorative millennialism’. In order to better understand the rebellious and revolutionary features of the cases presented, in the final section I discuss theories relating to potentialities and messianic time, and suggest that the activation and actualization of millennial imaginaries are – despite failure and disenchantment – always immanent to society and reflect the friction between its actual and virtual dimensions.

Schools, Ritual Economies, and the Expanding State:The Changing Roles of Lao Buddhist Monks as “Traditional Intellectuals”

In 2004, I walked into the office of UNICEF in Vientiane to interview a Lao member of staff. I was interested in a program set up by UNICEF with the Lao Buddhist Fellowship Organization, in which monks were engaged in prevention work by disseminating information about HIV in remote villages. The project was supposed to combine “traditional” methods of teaching on compassion and Buddhist precepts with new forms of information distribution. In this project, monks were praised as ideal disseminators due to their elevated status, knowledge, and authority in moral matters (Mettathamma, 2003; Ladwig, 2008, p. 475f). After a friendly and long conversation, my counterpart—himself a devout Buddhist in his late fifties—and I came to the million-dollar question of the development of the business at hand: the efficiency of the program and its overall impact. He gave me a critical look, and after a short moment of hesitation answered: I think Buddhist monks in Laos have lost their leading position in society. There were so many fields in which they were involved in the past. What has remained of this? The development of modern Lao society has overtaken them and the ideas of most monks’ haven’t changed very much although society has. There are many reasons for this, like, for example, Laos’ isolation in the past, the missing possibilities for monks to study new topics and so forth.

Haunting the state : rumours, spectral apparitions and the longing for Buddhist charisma in Laos

Abstract Buddhist ascetic monks and hermits that move largely outside of the institutional structures of the monastic order (sangha) have a long history in mainland Southeast Asia. In Lao Buddhism these figures seem to have largely disappeared, but due to their charismatic qualities they still occupy a crucial position in the social imaginary. This article explores rumours and narratives about the existence of ascetic monks and hermits in contemporary Laos. I argue that rumours about, and narratives of, spectral apparitions of these figures express a longing for Buddhist charisma that is partially rooted in Laos’ revolutionary past, and in recent social and economic changes. As Buddhist charisma can point to alternative, personalised sources of power, I argue that rumours and spectral apparitions can be interpreted as haunting, and therefore afflicting and challenging the current politics of religion of the Lao state.

Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China: Preface

The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual practices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continuities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term fieldwork and cover material on Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture.