2014 Volume 78 Issue 4 Pages 492-514
World religions with established canons, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, have doctrines about what salvation is and how it can be achieved. We can define religious practices of world religion as activities that aim at achieving such doctrinal ideals. They include not only particular kinds of activity, such as rituals or ascetic training, but also everyday life. What, then, does it mean to live as a believer of a world religion? What types of problems do those believers have, and how do they respond to them? This paper discusses those issues by investigating the example of a Theravada Buddhist monk in contemporary Myanmar. It will be helpful to reveal the complicated and dynamic relationship between doctrines and practices in world religions. To 'renounce' society means to refuse every social role and leave the social order. At the same time, no one can live without relating to society. Such is the case with Theravada monks, who are known as complete renouncers of society, as they are prohibited from doing any economic or productive activity by the Vinaya [monks' rules]. The most important principle for them is to live as beggars, and to depend on Dana [religious gifts] given by lay people. In Theravada Buddhism, such a monk's life is thought to be the optimum approach-though not the only one-to achieve Nibbana [the doctrinal ideal of Theravada Buddhism]. In that way, a monk's life in Theravada Buddhism is ambivalent in nature. On one hand, it is assumed to be separate from society, while on the other hand, it is not economically viable without support from society. According to M. Mauss' The gift, such a life is impossible for monks, as they, having received Dana, inevitably owe a debt to society. If they repay their debt to society through a variety of social or religious services, that strengthens the connection between monks and society. But if they fail to repay their debt, they are subordinate to society. In any case, monks are involved in society, and cannot avoid departing from their ideal of becoming a renouncer of society. In fact, ethnographies about Theravada Buddhist society have developed the image of monks who develop gift-exchange relationships with society. Is it impossible to transcend the secular world established by the gift-exchange relationship? To answer that question, one must reconsider the relationship between monks and society from the monks' point of view. In this paper, I analyze the efforts of monks aspiring toward the ideal of renouncers of society and the consequences of those efforts, using T monastery in Myanmar as an example. First, I point out the unique missionary viewpoint of T monastery, namely, the belief that attaining the ideal of a renouncer of society does good not only to the monks themselves but also to lay people, as it enhances the faith of the lay people and leads them to profitable Dana. Second, I indicate that the efforts to renounce society by the monks in T monastery appear to society as a socially evasive attitude; that includes their decision to settle in a forest and their refusal to give and receive gifts, as well as any service that I regard as an attempt to avoid the gift-exchange relationship. Finally, I analyze how T monastery is accepted by society, and reveal that by gaining support from urban residents who wake up to the importance of Buddhism in a new way, it has overcome the two major risks that inevitably go with efforts at renunciation: the economic risk, and the risk of being worshipped.
