ETHICAL DISCOURSE AND ECONOMIC ACTION IN A BUDDHIST COMMUNITY1

by Charles F. Keyes

Comparative Ethics and Practical Thought

In their book, Comparative Religious Ethics, David Little and

Sumner B. Twiss (1978) set forth a rigorous methodology for the

comparison and contrast of ethical systems in any or all

religious traditions. While acknowledging a debt to Max Weber

(1978: 4), they have formulated their enterprise much more with

reference to the approach to moral philosophy in which discourse

is emphasized that was developed by John Ladd in his The Structure of

a Moral Code (Ladd 1957; see Little and Twiss 1978: 8). As I have a

marked interest in the effort to effect a synthesis between

Weber’s interpretive sociology and discourse analysis, I find

much of value in Little and Twiss’s approach. Yet I also feel

that the approach does not succeed, primarily because it does not

accord centrality to the fundamental Weberian concern with

rationalization. My reflections on the Little and Twiss

methodology have been formulated not only with reference to my

1An original version of this paper was presented at a seminar, “Moral Values in Comparative Perspective II: Individual Perfection and the Social Good: Wealth and Poverty as Moral Values,” sponsored by the Berkeley/Harvard Cooperative Program in Comparative Religion and held at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, June 17-20, 1981. The paper was subsequently revised and considerably shortened and published under the title of “Buddhist Practical Morality in a Changing Agrarian World: A Case from Northeastern Thailand,” in Ethics, Wealth and Salvation, ed. by Russell Sizemore and Donald K. Swearer (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 170-189. This version is the 1981 paper with some editorial changes made in 1989 and a few more, mainly grammatical and typographical, in 2014.

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own reading of Weber but, more importantly, with reference to my

thinking through an analysis of the relationship between ethical

discourse and economy action in a Buddhist community in Thailand.

Since both Little and Twiss (1978: chap. 8) and Weber (1958b and

inter alia in his other writings) have given explicit consideration

to Buddhist ethics, it is possible to juxtapose my own analysis

for the purposes of highlighting the insights and limitations of

their approaches.

Let me begin by considering the definition of morality

offered by Little and Twiss since they insist that a rigorous

approach must start with clear definitions2:

First, we assume that morality “functions” to guide the conduct of persons and human groups in such a way that it constitutes an institution or a shared system of expectations for regulating behavior. Second, we take morality to be an action-guiding institution having to do, in an important sense, with relational action, that is with the mutually interacting and impinging conduct of persons and groups. Though there may be exceptions, something counts asa “moral notion,” generally speaking, when it fulfills the “restrictive condition … that it can be adopted as a means of initiating or preserving or extending some kind of cooperation or social activity between human beings” (Kemp 1964: 196). In other words, morality, among other things, provides a way of responding to what we call the “problem of cooperation” among self-interested, competing, and conflicting persons and groups. (Little and Twiss 1978: 26-27, emphasis in original)

2For purposes of brevity, I will give extended attention only to Little and Twiss’s discussion of morality and will not give the same attention to their discussion of religion and law.

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The definition, as the last statement makes clear, is predicated

upon an assumption that the “problem of cooperation” – what I

have termed elsewhere (Keyes 1982) the “social imperative” – is

universal. They also distinguish the ontological problem of

cooperation from another universal problem, that of

“interpretability” (Little and Twiss 1978: 56). Whereas the

problem of cooperation is resolved by cultural constructions that

take the form of moral systems, those of interpretability – what

Weber called problems of meaning – are confronted by means of

religious constructions.3

The assumption of a universal problem of cooperation poses

no difficulty for social scientists who, at least since Durkheim,

have taken it as the starting point for their approach to the

study of the structure of society. Moreover, Durkheim (1965) also

used the term “moral” to label those culturally diverse

constructs that humans use in the actions that reflect such

structure, a usage that is found in much subsequent

anthropological writing. Other social scientists have also used

“moral” when concerning themselves with economic cooperation

3It is significant to note that while Little and Twiss borrow Clifford Geertz’s notion of “interpretability,” they do not follow him in positing thatreligion functions to resolve both problems – what Geertz calls “bafflement” (“interpretability” in Little and Twiss’s sense) and “a sense of intractable ethical paradox” (Little and Twiss, “problem of cooperation”). Geertz also adds to this list the problem of suffering (Geertz 1973: 100; the original version of Geertz’s paper appears as Geertz 1966). Little and Twiss do not address themselves directly to the problem of suffering and one would suppose,thus, that they take it to be subsumed within the other two problems. By dissolving or ignoring the problem of suffering, Little and Twiss are ill-equipped, I suggest, for constructing an interpretation of Buddhism wherein this problem is accorded primacy.

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(see, for example, Scott 1976) and with the social basis for

obedience to and revolt against authority (Moore 1978). As Little

and Twiss point out in their critique of Fürer-Haimendorf’s

Morals and Merit (1967), such usage by social scientists tends to be

rather loose and imprecise (Little and Twiss 1978: 4-6). I would

agree, but would also maintain that in the name of rigor Little

and Twiss have made an assumption that is, in the end, untenable.

They have, as the first part of the statement quoted above

implies, predicated their definition upon the universality of

moral action-guides.

We need, thus, to consider their definition of moral

action-guide since so much of their argument flows from it.

A moral action-guide aims to resolve the problem of cooperation by claiming a distinctive sort of superiority based on a characteristic type of legitimacy that satisfiescertain general conditions of other-regardingness. In otherwords, we take a moral statement to be a statement expressing the acceptance of an action-guide that claims superiority, and that is considered legitimate, in that it is justifiable and other-regarding. (Little and Twiss 1978: 28-29, emphasis in original)

As with Ladd (1957: 85) the body of moral statements constitutes

for Little and Twiss a moral code, although it is to be observed

that for whom this code exists is rather vague in Little and

Twiss’s treatment. Not only are moral action-guides universal,

but the structure of justification for moral codes is also

universal, although the content they express varies. “We propose

that although the specific content of practical code varies, the

structure of justification among all codes involves several

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formal features that exist in fixed relationship with each other”

(Little and Twiss 1978: 99). A model of the structure of

practical justification is then offered as a valid model to use

for the description of any moral code, and they themselves

proceed to use it in an analysis of Navajo, Christian (as found

in the Gospel of Matthew), and Theravāda Buddhist ethical

systems.

The structure of justification entails the syllogistic

deduction of an appropriate moral orientation toward action from

a norm. “One is less than likely,” Santurri (1980: 300) observes

in his review of Little and Twiss, “to find unambiguously

presented in any historical tradition the neatly syllogistic

inferential pattern that mark the mode of direct deduction.”

Santurri continues: “In fact, it is reasonable to think that any

syllogistic representation of a tradition’s practical code will

involve a reconstruction of its discourse in accordance with the

principles of deductive logic. The question we have before us is

whether such reconstruction has a place in an enterprise which

purports to be wholly descriptive.” In other words, Little and

Twiss offer us a methodology that necessitates the forcing of the

moral notions of other people into a logical mode that may be –

probably is – alien to them. Little and Twiss are themselves not

unaware of this danger for they observe in their discussion

of Navajo ethics that while the Navajo “prize rationality in

practical discourse,” “it is . . . not clear that the Navajo

reason in the form of tight syllogistic argument in their

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practical discourse. (Who does?) And they are certainly not aware

of all or even some of the philosophical distinctions that will

be used to reconstruct their patterns of reasons” (Little and

Twiss 1978: 140).

What gets lost in the application of the same method of

reconstruction to all moral systems are the differences that were

so much the concern of Weber – namely, the degree to which one

system was more or less rationalized than others. Weber, it will

be recalled, distinguished between two types of “rational” – here

meaning consciously reflected upon – action and two types of

“non-rational” – unreflective – action:

Social action, like all action, may be oriented in four ways. It may be:

(1) instrumentally rational (zweckrational), that is, determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the environment and of other human beings; these expectations are used as “conditions” or “means” for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends;(2) value-rational (wertrational), that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospect for success;(3) affectual (especially emotional), that is, determined by the actor’s specific affects and feeling states;(4) traditional, that is, determined by ingrained habituation. (Weber 1978: 24-25)

In many of the preliterate societies studied by anthropologists,

much action that functions to promote social cooperation is

oriented not by consciously held moral action-guides (or by

means-end calculations) but by unreflected customs hallowed by

tradition. While it would be possible – as, for example, Durkheim

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more-or-less did for the Australian aborigines – to reconstruct

for such societies moral codes that could be said to be implicit

in such customs, such a reconstruction would make such societies

appear to have as rationalized systems of ethics as do those

societies in which morally-based action is clearly distinguished

by natives themselves from customary action.

If we adopt Weber’s interpretive method (one that Little and

Twiss at one point – p. 120 – say that they use) rather than a

method of reconstruction, then we are led to approach any

particular case not with an a priori model that will permit us to

describe a moral code that can be compared with all other moral

codes but with an open mind regarding the degree to which action

is oriented by reference to ethical norms. We can also then take

into account the relative significance of rationalized ethical

norms vis-à-vis other rationalized values, rationalized means-end

relationships, as well as non-rationalized custom and affect. The

typology that is generated by the interpretive method is based

upon ideal typifications of actual systems rather than upon

logical contrasts deduced a priori.

To gain access to the meaningful basis of action in any

particular society, we might well follow Ladd in looking to the

set of statements that constitute a discourse on specified

issues: “I shall consider “statement” to be the generic term

standing for the explicit acceptance of either a proposition or a

prescription. … [D]iscourse will be used to refer to a string of

statements regardless of what type these statements may be” (Ladd

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1957: 23, emphasis in original)4. Given his interest in morality,

Ladd focuses upon those statements by Navajo that he deems,

following a definition similar to that of Little and Twiss, to

embody moral notions and that together constitute “ethical

discourse” (his term, see Ladd 1957: 85). While Ladd starts, as

do Little and Twiss, with an assumption that ethical discourse

concerns a universal problem, he distinguishes, as Little and

Twiss do not, between the conscious ethical statements that

constitute an explicit ethical system for the natives themselves and a

reconstructed ethical system that is developed by an observer for the

purpose of explaining and predicting “statements made in an

explicit ethical system” (1957: 85). In other words, Ladd attends

in the first instance to the rationalized ethical content of

native discourse.

Ladd was very struck by the degree to which ethical

discourse was evident in Navajo public affairs such as, for

example, in the formal moral talks given by “certain elderly wise

men who are ‘good talkers’… at important gatherings: at weddings,

curing ceremonies, before and after a person’s death, as well as

during the airing of disputes” (1957: 108). Such moral emphasis

in public deliberation “embodies,” Ladd reflected, “the essential

4I am indebted to Little and Twiss for bringing Ladd to my attention. Despite the fact that Ladd based his philosophical consideration of morality upon ethnographic materials he himself collected among the Navajo, his work has apparently had little attention from anthropologists (one exception being Fürer-Haimendorf 1967). Given the current interest among anthropologists in discourse analysis, Ladd deserves to be better known. It should be obvious at this point that I find Ladd more valuable for what he has to say about discourse than for his method of philosophical reconstruction.

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core of ethical rationalism – the view which stresses the crucial

and necessary function of reason in the moral life” (1957: 203).

Ladd here, as elsewhere in his study, gives attention to the

moral content in the practical thought of the Navajo, that is to

the means; whereby meaning is articulated with actual social

action. In this connection his work foreshadows more recent

methodological advances by Geertz (1973, 1980),5 Ricoeur (1971,

1976), Becker (1979), M. Rosaldo (1980), among others, who seek

the meaningful basis of social action in the public traffic in

signs that constitutes form discourses (or “texts” in Ricoeur’s

broadened sense of the term). Such discourse shapes ideas into

coherent wholes or relate them to underlying premises, albeit not

necessarily in syllogistic modes. Such discourse may be, as with

the Navajo and other preliterate peoples, public “talks,” rituals

dramatic performances, artistic creations; in literate societies

they may also be written texts made public through being read

(directly, or indirectly as when recited by a speaker). For me

(cf. Keyes 1983a: 3) such formal discourse constitutes the

primary locus of cultural ideas, including, insofar as they are

present amongst a group of people, those of moral or ethical

character.6

5While Geertz has not, to my knowledge, made use of Ladd’s work, he does sharea common mentor with him – Clyde Kluckhohn.6While Weber did not have the methodology of discourse analysis available to him, his best discussion of ethical thought – that contained in parts of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958a) – attends to those formal discourses– sermons, popular tracts, and the like – that linked ongoing social life withparticular modes of orientation towards social action. He is at his worst – asin some parts of The Religion of India (1958b) – where the texts he considers are not situated in historical contexts.

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If Ladd had focused solely upon the public discourses of the

Navajo, he would have produced an exemplary study. Instead, he

also analyzed statements that were elicited from informants

through interviewing and in his “reconstruction” he unwittingly

shaped the resultant discourse according to criteria of coherence

that were his own rather than those of the Navajo.7 The

“structure” of the Navajo moral code that he describes thus

embodies features that, even as Little and Twiss have recognized,

are not necessarily known to the Navajo themselves. Still Ladd

remains much closer to the practical thought of the Navajo then

have many anthropologists to the thought of the people they study

since they have not distinguished between the functions of

customs identified with their methodologies and the conscious

cultural notions that the natives use in orienting themselves

toward action.

By attending to the practical thought of a people as

expressed in their formal discourses and as articulated with the

actual exigencies of their lives, we have a solid basis for the

comparative study of ethics. Comparison proceeds not by a

systematic juxtaposition of ethical ideas that while drawn from

diverse cultures have been fitted into the same categories;

7This is not uncommon in ethnographic accounts since ethnographers write for audiences different than the natives from whom they have gathered their material and are guided by criteria of coherence that are common in the writings addressed to such audiences rather than by native criteria of coherence. Insofar as the ethnographer appears to suggest that the logical structure he/she employs is shared by the natives, then he/she has fallen intowhat might be termed the “ethnographic error.” Becker (1979, unpublished-a, unpublished-b) has been especially effective, I believe, in attempting to overcome this error (some of Becker’s essays are published in Becker 1995).

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rather, it proceeds hermeneutically. Starting from what we have

learned from previous studies of ethics in particular cultures

(typically those associated with Judaeo-Christian traditions), we

then engage the ethical system of another culture as expressed in

its own terms, seeking at the end or in the next study a

metalanguage that will permit us to talk about both together,

thereby expanding the understanding with which we began.8

The interpretive approach to the ethical thought of a people

leads to results that are quite different to those emerging from

the analysis of the ethical content of some set of texts taken

out of context. I would insist strongly that whatever ethical

ideas are to be found, for example, in Buddhist canonical texts,

they cannot be said to constitute an ethical system until they

are shown to have been articulated with the lives of peoples

living in historical communities. If there is an underlying

similarity amongst the ethical systems of different Buddhist

communities, it can be shown only after studies have been made of

each and not assumed to be a given beforehand. The approach I

advocate, starting as it does with a particular community and

looking for the discourses, including written texts, that serve

to shape the ethical ideas of those living in the community finds

common ground with the new breed of philologists – sometimes

8My approach is, I believe, coincident with that of Professor Robert Bellah who, at the beginning of the conference in Berkeley at which this paper was first read, admonished those present to attend to the “practical reason” of other peoples and to adopt a hermeneutical approach to the comparative enterprise. See in this connection the reader, Interpretive Social Science, ed. by Rabinow and Sullivan (1979). My own thinking has been strongly influenced by the work of Paul Ricoeur (see Ricoeur 1977 and 1978).

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represented among historians of religion – who, having abandoned

an older preoccupation with ur-texts starts with particular texts

and then looks for the historical contexts within which these

texts were accorded significance (Reynolds 1990 provides a good

example of this approach; also see the interesting papers by

Becker – 1979, unpublished-a, unpublished-b, 1995 – that set

forth the approach of the “new philology”). In this paper I will

attempt to make use of the interpretive approach in a

consideration of ethical discourse that is couched in a Buddhist

idiom with reference to the economic life of a particular people

for whom this discourse is salient.

Theravāda Buddhist Ethics and Economic Action

The starting point for any consideration of the relationship

between Buddhist ethics and economic action is the discussion of

the subject by Max Weber in his sociology of world religions;

indeed, Weber can be said to have been the first person to give

any serious attention to the subject. Weber is usually credited

with having drawn a sharp distinction between monks who were the

true adherents to the tenets taught by the Buddha and the laity

who remained mired in magic or savior-worship. In his essay, “The

Social Psychology of World Religions,” for example, he says:

“Buddhism was propagated by strictly contemplative, mendicant

monks, who rejected the world and having no homes, migrated. Only

these were full members of the religious community; all others

remained religious laymen of inferior value: objects, not

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subjects, of religiosity” (Weber 1946: 269). If Buddhism were a

religion of radical world-rejection, then economic action, like

all worldly action, could have no religious value whatsoever.

Thus, Weber drew the following conclusion:

For characterization of the influence upon external behavior of the Buddhistic type of salvation the following is decisive. Assurance of one's state of grace, that is, certain knowledge of one's own salvation is not sought through proving one's self by any inner-worldly or extra-worldly action, by “work” of any kind, but, in contrast to this, it is sought in a psychic state remote from activity.This is decisive for the location of the arhat ideal with respect to the “world” of rational action. No bridge connects them. Nor is there any bridge to any actively conceptualized “social” conduct. (Weber 1958b: 213)

Weber was led to this conclusion, I suggest, not by his own

methodology but by the writings of some of the Buddhologists on

whom he drew as sources. When Weber was true to his own

historical method, the method that he made such effective use of

in The Protestant Ethic, he gives us a rather different interpretation

of Buddhism.

In a section of Religion of India that constitutes Weber’s most

extended discussion of Buddhism, he concerns himself with the

transformation of the salvation ethic of “ancient Buddhism.” This

ethic, he points out, entailed a radical devaluation of worldly

action. After considering the implications of such radical world-

rejection – and it is in the context of this consideration that

the passage quoted above appears – he then recognizes that such a

stance vis-à-vis the world cannot be adopted by whole societies.

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He then discusses how, under King Aśoka, Buddhism was transformed

such that it became, in my terms, a popular religion. In a

passage (1958b: 242) that has not, I believe, been given proper

attention by scholars, he points out that under Aśoka, the sangha

was incorporated into lay society, a pattern that persists, he

observes, to this day. Ordination into the sangha ceased to be,

at least for most members, a step towards uncompromising other-

worldly mysticism and became “a specifically meritorious work

furthering rebirth chances” (1958b: 242).

While Weber did not make a consistent argument following

from this point, he does recognize in various places in his

writings that as a popular religion, Buddhist thought led to an

ethical rationalization of social life. Consider, for example,

the following characterization of law in Theravāda Buddhist

societies: “Within the territory where Buddhism prevailed as the

religion of the state, i.e., in Ceylon, Siam, Malaya [sic], Indo-

China, and especially Cambodia and Burma, the legislative

influence of the Buddhist ethics was far from slight. . . . The

whole law came to be permeated with ethical elements . . .”

(Weber 1978: 817-18).9 It is Weber being sensitive, as he is

here, to historical context rather than Weber pigeon-holing an

ahistorical Buddhism in his category of other-worldly mysticism

that provides us with an adequate starting point to pursue an

inquiry into the relationship between Buddhist ethics and

economic action.

9 This passage is from the section of Economy and Society usually known under thetitle of “Sociology of Law”

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The literature on Buddhist ethics per se is, for the most

part, less useful for this inquiry (for a review of this

literature, see Reynolds 1979). For the most part it consists of

ferreting out the “ethical language [that] abounds in the

discourses of the Buddha” (King 1964: 1) and attempting to

construct systematic interpretations of this language. Insofar as

the question is not asked about the extent to which this language

has been appropriated as part of the ethical discourse of

historical communities, the results have a rather abstracted aura

about them. Moreover, the literature on Buddhist ethics has

tended to be characterized by a preoccupation typical of most

Buddhist scholarship, namely that Buddhism is a religion that

accords centrality to world-rejection. As Orlan Lee has said:

“For European Orientalism, and for most of the popular studies of

Buddhism it has inspired, the withdrawal aspect of Buddhism has

had a particular fascination and has received preponderant

attention, at least in English and German scholarship (this is

not so much the case for the French)” (Lee 1978: 70). The

abstract aura and Orientalist character has remained, for

example, in the derivative study of Buddhist ethics made by

Little and Twiss in their Comparative Religious Ethics (1978, chap. 8).

There has been a shift in recent years among some scholars away

from the search for coherent thought within the scriptures and

commentaries as an end in itself to studies that also attend to

the history of such thought. I would point here, as an example,

to John Holt’s excellent study, “Bhikkhu Discipline: Salvation

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and Community in the Vinaya-pitaka” (1977). In a related vein,

some other students of Buddhist ethics have begun to give

attention to formulation of such ethics, based on scriptura1 and

commentaria1 sources, by contemporary Buddhist theologians. The

work by Swearer (1979) and Gabaude (1979) on the thought of the

Thai theologian, Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, is noteworthy in this

regard. The writings of such theologians themselves, such as

those by Cao Khun Rājavaramuni (see, for example, 1978, 1979,

1980, and 1990), are also of considerable value because knowledge

of their historica1 context and of the audience to whom they are

addressed is accessible. While I shall not attempt to do so in

this paper, a fruitful comparison can be made between the ethical

thought as made relevant to the communities of early Buddhists,

the thought today advanced by contemporary Buddhist theologians,

and the practical thought of such ordinary Buddhists as those in

northeastern Thailand considered in this paper.

There is another literature, mainly by historians and

anthropologists, but also including contributions by other social

scientists, including a number of economists (e.g., Ayal 1963,

Mya Maung 1964; Puey 1969; Schumacher 1979; Kolm 1979), that

considers the influence of Buddhism on the social patterns of

particular communities. Some of these studies have taken up

explicitly Weber’s argument regarding the relationship between

religious ethics and economic action in their interpretation of

the relationship between Buddhism and society (see, for example,

Ames 1964; Piker unpublished; Tambiah 1973, forthcoming; Kirsch

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1975; Obeyesekere 1968; and Saram 1576; also see Nash 1963;

Pfanner and Ingersoll 1962; and Spiro 1966 where Weber is not

mentioned, but the issues addressed are those Weber considered).

This is not the place to review this literature (for partial

reviews see Keyes 1977, 1979), but some genera1 points can be

drawn from it. First, these studies clearly demonstrate that

Buddhism has never been, nor is it today, a religion of those who

withdraw from the world to seek salvation; indeed, even the

ascetic monk has been a rarity among all the monks in the history

of Buddhist societies, most monks being well-integrated into

social life. In other words, Buddhism qua religion has been

adapted to the social imperative (cf. Keyes 1982); unless it had

been, it would have remained a highly restricted sect rather than

a popular religion equivalent to Christianity, Judaism, Islam,

Hinduism. At the same time, the radical devaluation of the world

that is characterized by suffering, impermanence, and absence of

eternal individual essences (dukkha, anicca, anatta) as the Buddha

stressed in his dhamma, his teaching, has not been excised from

the Buddhist doctrines contained in the popular discourses of

most Theravāda Buddhist communities, past as well as present. The

juxtaposition of a popular religion of people who remain very

much part of the world and a religious message that points to the

salvific necessity of severing all bonds of dependence on that

world would seem paradoxical.

Some scholars (e.g., King 1964; Spiro 1972; Halverson 1978)

have attempted to resolve this paradox by positing, in an echo of

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Weber, that there really exists two modes of Buddhism in Buddhist

societies, the one followed by the masses and the “socia1” monks

and the second followed by the religious virtuosos intent on

achieving the ultimate goal of Nibbāna. Spiro (1972) has called

the latter “Nibbanic” Buddhism, and has characterized popular

Buddhism as “kammatic” because it accords centrality to the law

of kamma that conditions all (temporary) states of being within

the world. While not denying that there are different modes of

religious action engaged in by those who adhere to Buddhism, I

would agree with Aronson (1979) that it is misleading to draw a

sharp distinction between “kammatic” and “Nibbanic” Buddhism. As

Aronson says: “The supramundane goal of freedom from rebirth

[Nibbāna] is approached through mundane [kammic-conditioned

samsāra] ethical activity. The mundane serves as the matrix for

the transcendent” (Aronson 1979: 34).10 Conversely, and I would

stress this point, the Nibbanic goal serves as the source, when

not obscured by unreflective ritual practice, for a critique of

mundane activity that conduces toward a rationalization of social

life in accord with Buddhist idea1s.11

10King (1965) has suggested that this notion of seeing samsāra as the context for Nibbāna has been consciously developed in recent Buddhist thought. While Iwould agree that there has probably never been a radical distinction between kammatic and Nibbanic modes of Buddhism, I do agree with those who have arguedthat the Nibbanic goal has been quite markedly rethought in modern Buddhism. See in this connection the writings of Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, the influential contemporary Thai theologian (Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu 1971; Swearer 1979; Gabaude 1979).11Kolm (1979:501-505) has made a similar point, but it is constructed in theoretical terms. I have in mind not the possible implications of taking the Nibbanic goal seriously, but the practical effects of the growing lay meditation movements in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand as well as some other activities even found in peasant communities (see below).

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The historical, ethnographic, and other social science

literature all points strongly to an historical change in the

relationship between Buddhism and society that occurred following

the imposition of colonial domination on all Buddhist societies

save for Siam and the impact of Western influences on all

societies including Siam. These changes have entailed a

rationalization of Buddhist ethics that some scholars, writing

primarily on the basis of researches carried out in Sri Lanka

(then Ceylon) and Burma in the 1950s and 1960, suggest are more

suited to a socialist than a capitalist system. For example,

Michael Ames has written:

[R]ecent religious changes in Ceylon have more of a political than an economic orientation; group loyalties and civil disobedience are emphasized more than individual entrepreneurship. . . . There is in Ceylon an emerging political puritanism – similar to what David Apter has called “the new puritanism of socialism” (1960: 344-347; 1963: 91) – that combines Buddhism with nationalism and government in the interests of state sponsored economic development. (Ames 1963: 70; for similar assessments of Burma, see Mya Maung 1964 and Sarkisyanz 1970)

Such an interpretation of Buddhist ethics was indeed

championed by some Buddhist reformers in Sri Lanka and Burma, and

has been advanced more recently by some influential Thai Buddhist

thinkers (see Swearer 1979 on Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu and Sulak

Sivaraksa 1979) as well as by some in Laos who are attempting to

find an accommodation with the Marxist regime that has been in

power there since 1975. A model of Buddhist socialism, based upon

experience in Burma, has even been offered as worthy of emulation

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by the late economist, E. F. Schumacher in his book, Small is

Beautiful (1973, see the chapter entitled, “Buddhist Economics”).

Such interpretations aside, the markedly capitalistic character

of Thai society throughout the postwar period and the more recent

partial retreat from socialist policies in Sri Lanka suggest that

“the spirit of socialism,” to use a term suggested by Singer

(1956: 86) for Hindu India, is no more an inevitable outcome of

reform Buddhism that “the spirit of capitalism” was of reform

Christianity (see Walzer 1965).

Once it is recognized that Buddhism has, in certain

societies, become a popular religion, that is a religion of

people who pursue the full array of social roles, it then becomes

relevant to inquire, following Weber’s methodological

suggestions, as to the salience of Buddhist ethical notions to

particular interest-situations. Moreover, what notions those in

such interest-situations hold will, as I have argued, be a

function of what can be known from the discourses that constitute

their cultural milieu. With these dictates in mind, I will now

turn to a particular case, that of peasants living in conditions

of underdevelopment in northeastern Thailand.

Economic Context of Northeastern Thai Rural Communities

The actuality that provides me with my case material derives

from research I have carried out in rural northeastern Thailand,

and especially in the community of Ban Nông Tün, a Thai-Lao

village located in the central northeastern province of

20

Mahasarakham.12 I first carried out research in this village in

1963-1964 and have gathered material there on a number of

occasions since, most recently in an extended stay in the

community in the summer of 1980.

Ban Nông Tün is a poor village located in the poorest region

of Thailand. The northeastern region has a long history of

underdevelopment relative to the rest of the country. In 1977 per

capita income in northeastern Thailand was $112 per year as

compared to a national average of $266 per year. Northeastern

Thailand still remains overwhelmingly rural, particularly when

compared with the country as a whole. In 1976, 95.7 percent of

the population of the Northeast resided in rural areas and the

agricultural households of the region accounted for forty percent

of all agricultural households in the kingdom. As a recent World

Bank study (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

1978) has shown, the rural poor in Thailand are most heavily

concentrated in the northeastern region. The rural poor are not,

however, evenly distributed throughout the Northeast; rather,

they are mainly to be found in rainfed agricultural communities.

Ban Nông Tün is one such community.

During the past three decades, Thailand has experienced one

of the highest rates of economic growth of any Third World

country. The villagers of northeastern Thailand have shared to

some extent in this growth. For example, in Ban Nông Tün, average

12 I am grateful for support of my various research projects in northeastern Thailand to the Ford Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the University of Washington.

21

household cash income in 1963 was about $150; in 1980 average

household cash income in the village was $655 and even allowing

for inflation it is clear that villagers were enjoying a higher

level of income. Such gains notwithstanding, the relative

economic position of the Northeast vis-à-vis the rest of the

country has actually deteriorated in recent years. Taken as a

percentage of the national average, the per capita income in the

Northeast dropped from 61 percent in 1968/1969 to 42 percent in

1977. In other words economic growth in Thailand has been much

more heavily concentrated in other parts of Thailand – especially

in Bangkok – than in the Northeast.

The problems of economic underdevelopment in northeastern

Thailand have been exacerbated by ethnoregional differences. The

vast majority of the population of northeastern Thailand are

culturally and linguistically closer to the Lao of Laos than they

are to the Central Thai of Thailand. They differ from the Lao in

that they have been exposed to significant national Thai

influences, particularly as mediated through the schools, for

several generations. It is for this reason that I call the

dominant ethnic group in the Northeast the Thai-Lao. For the

Thai-Lao themselves, they tend to couch their differences with

the central Thai, and Thai officials, in regional terms, calling

themselves khon īsān, “people of the Northeast” (see Keyes 1967).

Ethnoregional differences have been played upon by indigenous

political leaders of both the left and the right, both legal and

illegal, to bring pressure on the various governments of Thailand

22

to effect changes that will improve the economic conditions of

the populace in the region. While the government has directed a

good deal of attention to the region, both in the form of

economic programs and military campaigns aimed at eliminating a

persistent insurgency in the region, the “northeastern problem,”

a problem that is both economic and political, still very much

remains.

Villagers in Ban Nông Tün, as villagers throughout the

region, are very conscious of the problem, although they talk

about it in different terms than those used by government policy-

makers and indigenous politicians. Villagers are acutely aware of

the marked differences in standards of living as found in their

communities and those found in urban areas. This awareness has

been fueled by the stories recounted by the villagers, who may

constitute as much as a third to a half of the adult populations

of most villages in the region, who have worked as unskilled or

even as skilled laborers in Bangkok. Villagers speak of

themselves as being “poor” (čon) compared to those who live in

Bangkok.

Underdevelopment of the region notwithstanding, the economy

of northeastern Thailand has undergone significant growth in the

past three (and especially two) decades. This growth entailed

increased market demand for village produce – especially for rice

and livestock and secondarily for such cash crops as kenaf and

cassava – to which most, but not all, villagers have responded.

This growth has also been associated with some differentiation of

23

the rural economy; one now finds in most villages some families

who run such non-agricultural enterprises as rice mills,

transport firms, and shops.

The economic growth and differentiation that has taken place

within rural society in northeastern Thailand has created

differences in wealth within villages. While such differentiation

was not absent in traditional villages, it was not so marked as

it has become since villagers began to orient themselves toward

the market economy. In 1963 older villagers in Ban Nông Tün told

my wife and me that there had been few rich villagers, just as

there had been few poor villagers, in the communities they

remembered as children. By 1963, however, there was a marked

differentiation of wealth among villagers with 22 households out

of 120 having minimal annual cash income ($20 or less) while

three households had incomes of over $600 (Keyes 1966: 252). The

differentiation has persisted, although there has been a skewing

of income levels upwards. By 1980 while only four households out

of 129 had minimum cash income (less than $50), a total of 26 had

incomes of less than $250; at the other end, three households had

incomes of at least ten times that amount (i.e., over $2500).

In short, villagers in Ban Nông Tün, like those in similar

communities throughout the northeastern region of Thailand, live

in a social environment in which there are marked

differentiations in wealth. These differences obtain not only

between northeastern villagers and urbanites (and villagers

elsewhere), but also within villages themselves. These

24

inequalities are not hidden to villagers; by the time that a

Thai-Lao has reached his or her teenage years, he or she has

become fully aware of them. While some of these inequalities can

be traced by villagers to conditions over which they know they

have no real control, others, and particularly those that exist

within villages, have come about in part as a consequence of

actions undertaken by some villagers themselves. The expanding

economy, even though this expansion has not been so marked in the

Northeast as it has been elsewhere, has afforded some villagers

opportunities to enhance their material wellbeing in ways that

were not available to them in previous times.

The economic environment within which villagers live

requires that they engage in constant decision-making regarding

what courses of economic action to take. These decisions are made

fundamentally with reference to the basic economic units of

northeastern Thai society, the household. Villages are not made

up, however, of aggregates of autonomous households; villagers

constitute a world of interacting households whose actions

impinge upon and constrain the actions of each other. These

interactions, and by extension those that occur between villagers

and others who are part of the larger society in which they live,

are shaped by an ethos derived from a distinctive worldview. This

ethos subsumes some consciously held ethical notions that have a

distinctive Buddhist character.

Cultural Knowledge and Worldview in Thai-Lao Communities

25

Much of the social action engaged in by Ban Nông Tün, as

well as by other northeastern Thai villagers, is still

conditioned today, as it was in the past, by traditional

practices to which villagers have become habituated. There is a

rhythm to the alteration of seasons (wet and dry with the latter

being divided into hot and cold) and the agricultural cycle that

is articulated with it. There is rhythm also in the cycle of

rituals (called hīt sipsông, the “twelve customs”) that punctuate

the calendar. Yet, these patterns have never defined an

undisturbed order since in the past, as today, villagers have

experienced from time to time, droughts and floods, sickness and

death, and political upheavals. These intrusions into the

ordinary rhythms of life have generated problems of meaning that

Thai-Lao villagers have confronted in the past, and still do

today, in terms of a worldview that has been constructed

primarily in the context of ritual action and with reference to

ritual texts.

Central to the ritual-based culture of Ban Nông Tün and

other Thai-Lao villages is the sangha (phra song), consisting of

those who leave the ordinary life of householder and, following

ordination, subject themselves to the “discipline” (winai from

Pāli vinaya) that in its essentials is the same for Thai-Lao monks

and novices today as it was in earliest Buddhism (cf. Holt 1977).

In northeastern Thailand, as in other Southeast Asian Buddhist

societies, but in contrast to Sri Lanka, it has long (dating

perhaps to the fifteenth century) been the custom for most males

26

to join the sangha for a temporary period of time. Among the

Thai-Lao, this cultural expectation has been fulfilled typically

not, as in Burma and northern Thailand, by joining the sangha

only as a novice but, as in central Thailand (historically), Laos

and Cambodia, by joining as a monk after the age of twenty. Many

northeastern boys do become novices, fewer today than in the past

before compulsory education was introduced (in the 1930s), but

for most the novitiate is seen as a prelude to being a monk. The

cultural ideal of temporary monkhood continued to be observed

today to a marked degree. In Ban Nông Tün, for example, I found

that in 1963 60.3 percent of all men 21 years of age and older

had been monks (the figure included some who had also been

novices) and an additional 9.6 percent had been novices only. In

1980 in a restudy I found that 58.7 percent of all men 21 years

of age and over had been monks (or monks and novices), while an

additional 11.6 percent had been novices only. These statistics

reveal no significant changes in seventeen years.

While a very few village men who join the sangha remain in

the yellow robes for long periods, perhaps for life, the typical

monk remains but for one or two lenten periods.13 Of those who do

remain as members of the sangha for life, some will continue to

live in a village wat, the temple-monastery. Most others will 13Buddhist lent (Thai-Lao phansā, Pāli vassa) lasts for three lunar months and always falls during the rainy season (it is calculated according to the lunar calendar). Throughout Buddhist Southeast Asia, time spent in the sangha is calculated in terms of the number of lents that one has been a monk or novice.A man who had spent one lent in the monkhood would have been a member of the sangha for at least three months; a man who had spent two lents could have been a member of the order for as little as fifteen months or as much as two years.

27

move to a town or urban wat that is noted as a center of

learning, but a few will go to live in forest hermitages (wat

pā). The Northeastern region has a higher percentage of such

hermitages than any other region in the country and the ascetic

monks that reside in them have achieved renown not only within

the region but also nationally. Indeed, the Northeast has a

reputation for producing more ascetic monks than does any other

part of the country, rural or urban (see Burns 1971; Nangsü phap

chīwaprawat lae pathipatthā khôngphra ācān Fan Ācāro 1978; Placzek 1979;

Keyes 1981b). Yet, even these monks do not withdraw totally from

society for forest hermitages become centers for the instruction

of the dhamma and practice of meditation by laity as well as

monks. While Thai-Lao villagers hold ascetic monks in high

esteem, when they think of the sangha they typically think of

those who perform ritual roles within their communities.

Even those who become members of the sangha in village wats

live stricter lives than do those who remain ordinary lay

persons. Inasmuch as they do this with conscious reference to the

Buddhist discipline, they can be said to have acquired some

degree of tempering of the passions that conduce to bad actions.

Villagers prize this moral tempering, saying that a man who has

been a member of the sangha will make a better husband and a

better fellow villager. Those who become members of the sangha

also put themselves in a better position than other villagers to

acquire textual knowledge. Some today, as in the past, may – if

they spend longer than a single lent in the yellow robes – study

28

texts that will permit them to assume lay roles as congregation

leaders or as practitioners of folk medicine, spirit exorcism, or

securing the “vital essence” (sū khuan) of persons. Others today

may study the basic texts that form the part of the religious

curriculum established by the Thai national sangha and the

Department of Ecclesiastical Affairs in the Ministry of

Education, but only a few ever pass any of the examinations that

are part of sangha education. Whether or not the village novice

or monk study any other texts, they will make some study of those

texts that are used in community rituals. In practice, this

typically means the memorization of Pāli chants without more than

a general notion of what they mean. Some may also familiarize

themselves with vernacular texts – usually traditional, but

sometimes modern – that are used as sermons at rituals. It is in

the context of rituals that village monks (and novices)

articulate the textual tradition of Buddhism with social life in

particular communities such as Ban Nông Tün.

As Tambiah (1970) has shown well in his study of the rituals

of another northeastern Thai village, while the Thai-Lao

worldview – what he calls “cosmology” – subsumes elements that

still betray their non-Buddhist origin (e.g., notions concerning

“spirits” – phī – and “vital essence” – khuan), it has

fundamentally a Buddhist cast.14 In this context it is not 14I differ with Tambiah not only with regard to some of the particulars of hisargument, based upon my own research in a northeastern Thai village, but also with regard to methodology. I maintain that he has forced the data into a prioristructural categories that obscure important tensions between, for example, different ideas of causation. He has also not, I believe, paid sufficient attention to the way in which the worldview of northeastern Thai villagers is

29

possible to present all the particulars upon which an analysis of

Thai-Lao worldview is predicated; rather I will sketch, in ideal

typical terms, the elements that I maintain could be shown to

comprise the worldview if a more extended analysis were

possible.15 The cosmic order that villagers come to know,

primarily through their participation in rituals, is one

predicated ultimately on the Buddhist “law of kamma” (kot hāēng

kam). The law of kamma constitutes the ultimate ordering

principle of existence. Kamma refers, on the one hand, to the

force set in tow by actions with moral consequences that have

been performed in previous lives that determines the place that a

sentient being occupies on a hierarchy of relative wellbeing

(khuamsuk) and suffering (khuamthuk). In the thought of Thai-Lao

villagers, as in popular Buddhist thought elsewhere, the sentient

beings distributed along this hierarchy include not only humans

(khon) in their various statuses (male and female, royalty and

commoner, and so on), but also animals (sat), spirits (phī), and

deities (thēwādā, from devātā). The law of kamma is not, however,

equivalent to a Calvinistic idea of predestination for within the

generalized constraints of the position one occupies on the moral

hierarchy, one has a freedom, indeed a responsibility, to act in

morally positive ways that will yield merit (bun, from puñña) and

to avoid morally negative modes of behaving that will yield

used in their on-going social lives. These differences notwithstanding, I would agree with his analysis that the underlying structure of the worldview has been derived from Buddhist sources.15It should be noted that this mode of presentation tends to make the worldview of Thai-Lao peasants appear rather more static than it really is.

30

demerit (bāp, from pappa). Kamma, in the guise of merit and

demerit, thus refers to moral responsibility as well as to

cosmological determination. By devoting oneself to acts that

“bring merit” (ao bun) and avoiding acts that “garner demerit”

(dai bāp), one will ensure that in a future existence, or perhaps

even in this existence, one will attain a higher place on the

hierarchy of relative suffering. The equal importance accorded to

moral responsibility as to cosmic determinism in popular Buddhist

notions of kamma belies the assertion sometimes made by

proponents of change in Thailand that the religious worldview of

northeastern peasants conduces to a passive fatalism. Villagers,

some more than others, do accept that previous kamma constrains

their ability to act; but they also, again some more than others,

act under the assumption that they control their religious

destiny.

Northeastern villagers gain from rituals, sermons, and some

other sources some understanding of the Buddhist notion of

Nibbāna, that is, ultimate escape altogether from the realm of

sentient existence as ordered according to the law of kamma. But

Nibbāna is a goal to which extremely few villagers in

northeastern Thailand, indeed, few adherents of Theravada

Buddhism anywhere, consciously aspire. Still, Nibbanic concerns

are not absent from the Thai-Lao worldview; they are given

expression in the ideal of “detachment” or, in villagers’ terms,

“abstention” (ot) that pervades the “precepts” (sīn from sīla) to

which villagers commit themselves. At the beginning of every

31

Buddhist ritual, the laity present “request the precepts” (khô

sīn) from one of the monks, often the senior monk, present. This

monk, in turn, “gives the precepts” (hai sīn). This interchange

takes place in Pāli, but unlike much of the other ritual language

that is also in Pāli, the words chanted in this ritual sequence

are well understood, at least to most adults. The “precepts” that

are taken by the laity on most occasions are the “five precepts”

(sīn hā) that can be rendered into English as follows:

I undertake the precept to abstain from taking life;

I undertake the precept to abstain from taking what is not

given;

I undertake the precept to abstain from improper sexual

acts;

I undertake the precept to abstain from telling lies;

I undertake the precept to abstain from imbibing or

ingesting substances that cause heedlessness.

On Buddhist sabbath – literally “precept day” (wan sīn) –

during lent some older villagers also commit themselves to taking

the “eight precepts” (sīn pāēt) by which is meant that they observe

three additional precepts to the basic five for the day (if these

precepts were kept all the time, one would have either become a

member of the sangha or a lay disciple who wears white robes).

These additional precepts are more ascetic than the previous five

and include abstention from eating after noon, from sleeping on a

high bed, and from attending entertainments and adorning the

body. In addition the third precept regarding sexual relations is

32

reconstrued to mean abstaining from any sexual relations

whatsoever during the sabbath day. Those who keep the Sabbath

(cam sīn) often practice some meditation as well on the sabbath

day. While keeping the precepts is said by villagers to yield

merit, such action is not typically thought of as merit-making;

merit-making entails, for villagers, the “offering of

alms”(thawai thān) to the sangha in the context of rituals. Rather,

keeping the precepts reflects a deeper understanding of the

dhamma, namely that attachment to the pleasures of life (sex,

drinking, gambling, feasting, attending entertainments), not to

mention giving vent to one’s base passions (through anger leading

to taking of life, through greed leading to taking that which is

not given, and through deceit leading to the telling of lies),

will bring suffering. While villagers may not be able to emulate

the detachment of the ascetic monk, insofar as they do observe

the precepts, they, too, act with reference to the Nibbanic

ideal.

Traditionally villagers acquired their worldview not only

from the rituals they participated in but also from legends,

stories, and sayings that were communicated in sermons, songs,

folk opera, and folklore. While I cannot devote any extended

attention to folk culture here, I would like to make some

reference to one element that is associated with women, the songs

that are called hông sālaphan that translates something like

“general songs.” These songs are sung by young maidens,

instructed by monks, on the occasion of some rituals held during

33

lent. They are also sometimes sung at wat fairs. The songs speak

of many things, but those that I found most interesting are what

might be called “maiden laments.” One song, for example, tells of

the anticipated joy to be realized through having a child; it

ends by speaking of the pain of losing a child through death.

There is, in other words, a strong theme of “suffering” (dukkha)

in the songs that contrasts strikingly with the youth and

innocence of the maidens.

Beginning in the early-mid 1930s (1935 in Ban Nông Tün) a

new cultural institution was added to village life in

northeastern Thailand, an institution that functioned to

communicate rather different knowledge than that encoded in

rituals and folk culture. This new institution was the primary

school, equipped with a curriculum determined upon by the central

Thai government. The curriculum emphasized then, as it still does

today, the acquisition of skills in using the Thai (as distinct

from Lao) language and of a sense of being a citizen in a Thai

state ruled by a Thai king. At about the same time that

compulsory primary education was being introduced, northeastern

villagers participated for the first time (in 1933) in a new

ritual, an election. While elections have had from time to time

some real political significance, they have had a more important

expressive function, as Phillips (1958) who first talked about

elections as rituals for Thai villagers observed, namely, the

communication of a message concerning national identity. In the

post World War II period, yet other sources of cultural knowledge

34

have become important within northeastern Thai villages.

Villagers in increasing numbers began to go as young men (and,

subsequently, as young women) to Bangkok to work in the numerous

unskilled, and even some skilled, jobs being created by an

expanding economy.16 Typically, northeastern villagers would

spend a few months to a few years in Bangkok and then return to

settle down to life in the village. In Ban Nông Tün in 1980 as in

1963 about a third of all villagers over the age of twenty had

worked for a significant period in Bangkok. In other villages in

the region, the percentage would be even higher; in few villages

would it be lower. As the economy expanded, so too the role of

government grew and this expansion led to increasing contacts

between northeastern villagers and Thai government officials,

literally, “servants of the king” (khā rātchakān). These contacts

also have had, and still have, a significant expressive content,

entailing typically the use of a particular language. Since the

early 1960s, radio ownership has become common throughout the

Northeast and today it is the exceptional villager who does not

listen to a radio for a few hours a day (often while working in

the fields). While some of the programming listened to is

16Not all temporary migration has been to Bangkok. Many villagers from northeastern communities have worked in other centers of economic growth in the country—e.g., in mining centers in the South, in the processing centers ofthe Southeast, and so on. And prior to 1975, many northeasterners—including quite a number from Ban Nông Tün—also worked in Vientiane in Laos. This other work experience notwithstanding, it has been the experience in Bangkok that has been of greatest cultural significance. [By the 1980s, an increasing number of young people, mainly men, but also women, were going abroad to work – first in the Middle East and subsequently in other Asian countries – note added in 2014.]

35

traditional northeastern fare – songs, folk operatic

performances, and the like – most villagers today, if Ban Nông

Tün is typical, also listen to national news as well. In the late

1970s television sets began to appear in rural communities, a

concomitant of the rural electrification program. As yet

television has not become a major cultural influence in villages,

but it is anticipated that it will be by the end of the 1980s.

While these new cultural influences have posed little

challenge to the underlying kammic basis of the northeastern Thai

worldview, they have expanded the horizon of that worldview.

Villagers are today well aware of belonging to a Thai social

order that is distinct from the Lao order that they know in the

village. Since this order is also Buddhist, as they observe from

the symbols that are associated with the monarchy, the civil

service, elections, the school, and even the radio (which offers

sermons, albeit ones rarely listened to by villagers), villagers

conceive of its elements as fitting within the same cosmic

framework as that which encompasses them.17 At the foundation of

the Thai civic order is the Buddhist monarchy and it is from this

monarchy that the order derives, for northeasterners, its

legitimacy. The Thai king is a being who, in village terms, “has

merit” (mī bun), that is, is endowed with an extremely high

positive legacy from past existences. Moreover, they believe that

17If the national government of Thailand had not legitimized itself in Buddhist terms – if, in other words, it had emerged from a different religioustradition – then the worldview of Thai-Lao villagers might have been shaped indifferent ways. For some sense of what this would mean, see Golomb’s (1978) study of a Thai village in northern Malaya.

36

the “merit” he has will result in benefits that the ruler can

share with his subject. At the turn of the twentieth century when

Thai authority was being asserted in a new and more immediate way

over northeasterners, many villagers looked to local charismatic

leaders as being “men-of-merit” (phū mī bun) whose right to power

was deemed equal to that of the Thai monarch (see Keyes 1977b).

The uprising that developed around these “men-of-merit” was

violently suppressed and with the help of the leaders in

northeastern sangha, the central government began a successful

reorientation of village loyalty. The reorientation was finally

completed with the institution of the compulsory primary

educational system so that since at least the 1930s there has

been general acceptance among northeastern villagers of the

ultimate legitimacy of the Thai monarchy. The election rituals in

which villagers have also participated since the 1930s have also

served to define a national political order within which they

live.

Yet while northeasterners came to view themselves as

belonging to a Thai social order, other cultural influences have

led them also to see themselves as constituting a distinctive

ethnoregional part of that order, a part that is labeled Īsān,

literally, “northeastern.” In interaction with officials, who act

as čao nāi, literally, “masters,” that is, as possessors of

unquestioned authority over villagers, northeastern culture is

implicitly, and often explicitly, denigrated. Even when the

official is himself (and most officials are male), a

37

northeasterner by origin, his conversations with villagers will

typically be in Thai rather than in Lao. Of at least equal

significance to these interactions with Thai officials are the

experiences that villagers have in Bangkok. Those who go to

Bangkok literally enter another world, one that is structured in

terms that are initially, at least, quite alien. A few choose to

assimilate to that world, to become Thai; most, however, find

common cause with others from the region and create enclaves – at

wats where many of the monks are northeasterners, at restaurants

where northeastern food is served, at slum dwellings where most

inhabitants are also from the Northeast, at work situations where

most who are employed (usually in menial jobs) are also

northeasterners. It is in this context that northeasterners often

begin to speak of themselves as khon Īsān (“northeastern people”)

or, less commonly, khon Lāo in contradistinction to khon Thai.

Those who hold such ethnoregional identities take pride in their

own cultural heritage and point to the economically disadvantaged

place that northeasterners have within the Thai economy. The

recognition that northeasterners suffer more than do Thai (or do

members of such other ethnic groups as the Chinese with whom they

also have interactions) does not imply for them that they occupy

a lower rung on the cosmic hierarchy. On the contrary, they are

likely to assert a moral superiority by pointing to their ability

to “endure hardships” (ot thon) better than can other people. In

this connection, northeasterners may point with pride to the fact

38

that the most renowned ascetic monks in Thailand are mainly

northeasterners.

Many northeastern politicians, as distinct from officials,

have associated themselves with the cause of īsān and have,

whatever their ideological orientation, pushed for policies that

would lead to improvements in the economic situation of people in

the region. Such action on the part of politicians has made

elections not only civic rituals, but also rituals in which

ethnoregionalism is often strongly manifest. The Communist Party

of Thailand has also attempted to appeal to northeastern

villagers by championing the cause of the poor peasantry vis-à-

vis what they call an exploitative government. But the Communist

Party has never succeeded in constructing an image that would be

taken as legitimate by the overwhelming majority of villagers and

despite nearly twenty years of armed insurrection in the

Northeast, the Party probably commands less of a following among

northeastern villagers today than it did in the early 1960s. In

contrast to the Communist Party, there have been other movements,

all religious rather than political in character, that have

gained considerable popular support. These movements have

contributed to some further changes in the worldview of some

northeastern Thai villagers.

The most important of such movements in recent (post World

War II) times appears to be one that goes under the name of the

“dhammic group” (mū tham), the followers of which speak of having

been “ordained in the dhamma” (būat tham), rather the equivalent

39

of being a “born-again Christian.” I first became aware of this

movement in 1972 when I found that the mū tham had a considerable

following in Ban Nông Tün. At the time I thought it might be

another of the rather ephemeral cultic movements that last but a

brief time, but in 1980 I found that the movement was not only

strongly established in Ban Nông Tün but also appeared to have a

large following amongst the populace of villages throughout the

central and northern part of the region. If Ban Nông Tün is at

all typical there may be many villages in the region where as

much as a third to a half of the adult population has been

“ordained in the dhamma;” in Ban Nông Tün in 1980 I found that 58

percent of all households had at least one member of the

movement.

The ostensible purpose of those who join the movement is to

gain access to the power of the dhamma (tham) for purposes of

curing afflictions, particularly emotional afflictions, and

ensuring physical wellbeing. To gain this power, rituals are held

at which people claim to be suffused by the dhamma in much the

same way that adherents of certain Pentecostal sects believe that

they are vessels filled by the Holy Ghost. The dhamma in this

sense thus takes on a meaning rather different to that

traditionally associated with it in Buddhism, that is, as the

teachings of the Buddha, the true meaning of reality, and the way

to obtain salvation. For those who are members of the dhammic

cult, the dhamma is an imminent sacred force. Those who become

suffused with the dhamma are said to speak foreign tongues (e.g.,

40

Chinese, English) much in the same way, once again, as those in

Pentecostalism are said to be given the gift of tongues by the

power of the Holy Ghost. To attain the power of the dhamma,

adherents of the cult are led in ritual practice by a “teacher”

(āčān), a man (and insofar as I was able to discover all are men)

who has gained his position by being a disciple of another

“teacher,” the line ultimately being traced to the founder of the

movement, a layman identified to me as one Čān Man (not the same

as Ācān Man, a renowned northeastern saint).18 A “teacher” proves

himself by performing apparently miraculous cures.

Those who join the movement not only engaged in the

collective rituals held weekly (at which there is extended

chanting much of which is in pseudo-Pāli) and perform daily rites

in their own home, but also commit themselves to a rather

stricter moral code than is observed by most lay villagers.

Dhammic cult members either give up drinking entirely or else

consume very little so as to be certain of not becoming drunk;

they stop killing even small animals (although they still eat

meat); they avoid eating raw meat, a delicacy at traditional

Thai-Lao feasts, and they refuse t o gamble. Dhammic cult members

do not give up their connection with their local parish wat.

Indeed, they are often among the strongest supporters of the wat.

This said, the movement does have a strong lay-centered character

to it in contrast to the sangha-centered traditional Buddhism

18 Ãčān, literally means ‘teacher’ and is used for highly respected monks as well as for lay teachers. Čān is local title that indicates a layman had spentmany years in the sangha.

41

found in the villages. In this sense, the dhammic cult movement

reflects the changes in Thai religion in urban environments where

laypersons have come, in the twentieth century and especially

since World War II, to play increasingly important roles.19

While the dhammic cult has introduced some changes in the

ideas that northeastern villagers have about health, even more

dramatic changes have taken place as a consequence of

introduction of health care and medications based upon Western

ideas of health. Even in 1963 I found that Ban Nông Tün villagers

tended to confront health problems with cultural practices that

emphasized the importance of having one’s “vital essence” (khuan)

secured to the body, having the humors in balance, avoiding the

malfeasance of spirits (phī), and “dispelling the omens of bad

fortune” (sīa kho). Villagers were, however, beginning to make

increasing uses of Western medicines and many villagers had had

some contact with Western-style health care providers. In the

past twenty years, there has been a dramatic change so that

villagers have relatively easy access to Western medications (in

tablet or injection form) from doctors, nurses, midwives, health

station officials, pharmacists, “injection doctors” (actually

persons with little training and knowledge), and even village

shopkeepers. Moreover, many villagers have had operations and

nursing care in hospitals. These changes have not led to the

total abandonment of traditional beliefs, but afflictions are far19 By the late 20th century the ‘dhammic cult’ movement had all but disappearedfrom rural northeastern Thailand. I think this was a consequence of increasinglevels of secular education and greater experience of many in working outside rural northeastern Thailand. (footnote in 2014).

42

less likely to be seen in terms of these beliefs and to be

treated with the associated practices than they were twenty years

ago.

A final change in worldview of northeastern Thai villagers

that must be considered here has occurred as a consequence of the

expanding economy of the region. While villagers do tend to see

the main social cleavages that exist within the social world as

it exists in the Northeast as being between “villagers”/“rice

farmers” (in Lao sāo bān/sāo nā) and “officials”/“masters” (in Thai

khā rātchakān/čao nāi), there is in fact a third category that has

become significant for villagers, that of traders or merchants.

Historically, a northeastern man (never so far as I learned a

woman) who through shrewd dealings in cattle or water buffalos

became more wealthy than his fellow villagers would be recognized

by them by being accorded the distinctive title of hôi. This term

carried then, as it still does today, a generally positive

connotation. As market forces began to intrude more and more into

the region, villagers became aware of a new type of trader,

typically at first a town-based seller of manufactured goods or a

purchaser of village produce. Most of these traders were

conspicuous by being ethically distinct not only from

northeasterners, but also from Thai; most were of Chinese

descent, although some were of Vietnamese origin. Villagers often

used the term taokāē, a word derived from Chinese, but also being

homonymous with a Lao word meaning negotiator of a brideprice,

thus, by extension a middleman in an economic transaction, as a

43

label for this new category of traders. Later as villagers

themselves began to assume significant roles in trade and as

efforts were made to downplay the ethnic character of traders,

the terms phôkhā and māēkhā (literally, ‘father or mother of the

price/value’), words that distinguish the incumbent in the role

by sex, began to gain currency.

In the past twenty to thirty years, there have been an

increasing number of northeasterners who have become merchants or

traders. Many are women who monopolize petty trading roles in the

local traffic in vegetables, fruits, and some other commodities.

A few women have established themselves in such larger, full-time

firms as village shops. Typically, however, māē khā, as they are

called, are not, unless they are also married to male merchants,

members of a commercial strata of northeastern Thai society.

Rather, they are basically farmers who augment family income

through their trading activities. There are, by way of contrast,

now in almost every village at least one man, and often several,

whose primary income derives from being a rice miller, a trucker,

a shop-keeper, a middleman in the marketing of village produce,

or some combination of these. Such men are variously called,

often by the same informant, hôi, taokāē, or phôkhā. While a few

from village background have also become town-based merchants, it

is still today more likely that those in the towns will be of

Chinese (sometimes Vietnamese) descent, although now often from

families long resident in the Northeast. There is, thus,

44

something of a stratification of merchants by sex and ethnicity

in the Northeast.

In contrast to officials, merchants, even very wealthy ones

in town, do not call forth deferential behavior on the part of

villagers who deal with them. On the contrary, villagers are

inclined to haggle with even rich merchants over the price that

they are being asked to pay for something they want or for

something that they are trying to sell. Moreover, whereas the

language villagers are expected to use with čao nāi is Thai, it is

much more likely that the language used by villagers in

interactions with traders, even when such people are of Chinese

descent, is the local dialect of Lao.

The markedly different place that merchants/traders occupy

in the Thai-Lao world in comparison to that occupied by officials

stems, in great part, from the fact that merchants/traders must

be responsive to the concerns and interests of villagers if they

are to make their deals with them while officials, on the other

hand, must be sensitive only to the expectations of their

superiors, not to those of villagers. There is a more fundamental

reason for the difference; officials derive a legitimacy from a

monarch who, in turn, has an exalted place in the cosmic

hierarchy; the position in this hierarchy of merchants/traders is

much more ambivalent for while they enjoy the benefits of greater

wealth, the means used to acquire their wealth is open to moral

question.

45

Ethical Discourse and Economic Action

While much of the social action that occurs within a Thai-

Lao village like Ban Nông Tün remains non-rationalized, it is

possible for the outsider to analyze such action and to discover

that it does have consequences that serve to promote social

solidarity, that do, in other words, function to resolve the

problem of social cooperation. If I were engaged in a Durkheimian

analysis, as is typical of most social anthropological studies, I

would label such consequences ‘moral’. However, as I argued at

the outset of this paper, I wish to employ a more Weberian mode

of analysis and to restrict this label to those actions that have

been consciously rationalized by villagers with reference to

culturally constructed ethical norms.

When Thai-Lao villagers reflect upon the action that they

have performed or anticipate engaging in, they assess such

actions with reference to a fundamental opposition as to whether,

they are “good” (dī) or “not good” (bô dī). Statements that attach

positive and negative evaluations to actions are common in

ordinary conversation and derive from more formal statements

found in the various cultural sources known to villagers. When an

act is commented upon as being either “good” or “not good,” a

moral judgment has not necessarily been made. Acts that are

deemed “good” can be ones that are productive of consequences

that enhance the material welfare of oneself or one’s family,

46

ones that effect a restoration of physical wellbeing, ones that

bring pleasure to oneself, as well as ones that are morally

positive.20

It is important to villagers to succeed in achieving

productive results (dai phon) through one’s labor (het ngān). If a

family has succeeded in their agricultural pursuits and has been

able to fill its granary to capacity, this is certainly good. If

a man has been a successful trader of cattle, and has won the

title of hôi, this too is good. If a family’s income in cash

gained through a variety of efforts has been sufficient not only

to make possible the purchase of basic necessities, but also to

allow for investments that make a qualitative difference in the

life of the family, this too is good.

When productivity is insufficient to meet a family’s needs,

the situation is deemed to be “not good.” During my first field

trip in Ban Nông Tün in 1963-1964, the unfortunate state of

certain families were commented upon to me or within my hearing.

I paraphrased one conversation (recorded on July 14, 1963) as

follows: “Probably the worst and most humiliating status that a

family can be in is that of having no rice nor the means to

20I find it rather difficult to maintain a clear distinction, following Weber,between “instrumental rationality” and “value rationality” in analyzing Thai-Lao notions of “good” and “not good.” While the pursuit of economic “good” does appear to be instrumentally rational, the enjoyment of wealth can be deemed to be a good on its own, therefore value rational. Villagers can also calculate ways to increase their pleasure as well as enjoy it for its own sake. Most importantly for the concerns here, the attainment of a moral good may entail considerable instrumental behavior. I would maintain that instrumental rationality and value rationality are components of all rationalized action; but I cannot develop the argument in this context.

47

obtain it. Such a family is beyond the pale of the economic

system as it has become dependent upon others” (Charles F. Keyes,

unpublished field notes, 1962-1964).

Such dependency may not be a consequence of non-productive

action on the part of the family as a family could have fallen

because of unforeseen circumstances beyond its control. Still,

such dependency would be deemed as “not good.” The values

attached to “having” (mī) a sufficiency for wellbeing and

“lacking” (ot) such finds expression in proverbs. “If poor,” one

proverb has it, “others will not speak well of one; if rich, they

will call one kinsman and uncles and aunts will recognize one as

a nephew or niece.” Another proverb situates these values in a

cosmological framework wherein beings are ranked vis-à-vis each

other: “if rich, one is a human; if poor, one is a dog.”21

Villagers sometimes – and more often than are townspeople –

are beset by afflictions that not only inhibit their ability to

work but also to enjoy life and to engage in meritorious acts.

Such afflictions are unquestionably “not good” and they inspire

efforts to effect their end. While villagers today are more

likely to employ Western-style medicines and health care, at

considerable monetary cost to themselves, to alleviate or

eliminate afflictions, they also still make some use of

traditional practices as well.

21These proverbs come from a book of proverbs by P. Prichayan (1957) as quotedin transcription by Mizuno (1971: 315); my translation departs somewhat from that of Mizuno (1971: 230-231).

48

When villagers are not ill and when they are freed from

productive activities, they are wont to engage in actions that

bring pleasure (mūan; sanuk), actions that are enjoyable in their

own right because they “gratify the heart” (hai phôcai) and make

one happy (sambai). Pleasure is to be found in those social

activities that bring together people for feasting and ritual

events. Pleasure is also realized by males (but almost never by

women) who come together to drink rice wine or liquor. Again, for

males, “going about in search of maidens” (pai thīao sāo) – a

statement that can be applied to a range of activities ranging

from traditional courting within the village context to visiting

a brothel or massage parlor in a town – is a pleasure that can be

good.

When pleasure is not realized from acts that are motivated

by desires to gratify the heart, then the acts may be deemed as

“no fun” (bô mūan; bô sanuk). I have heard villagers make such

assessments following a performance of a local folk opera troupe

(môlam mū) at which the acting was quite poor, with reference to

feasts at which the food and drink was insufficient or of poor

quality, and to courting occasions in the village ruined by heavy

rainfall. Much conversation among villagers turns on reflections

on the relative pleasure gained or not gained from past events

and anticipated to be forthcoming in future events.

Beyond the enjoyment that comes from pleasure, villagers are

also concerned to attain a more lasting contentment (khuāmsuk

khuāmsambai; note the use of the same word, sambai, here as with

49

reference to more immediate happiness) that comes from leading a

life in keeping with the dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha. To

attain this goal, villagers engage in meritorious action (ao bun)

and attempt to control their base desires so that they will not

acquire demerit (bāp). Both merit-making and avoiding acts that

lead to demerit are primarily construed in the dhamma as it is

presented primarily in the Buddhist rituals in which villagers

participate. Within the ritual context, dhammic action is vested

with the authority of the Buddha as represented by the community

that he founded, the sangha. For villagers, most meritorious acts

are those involving the offering of alms (thawai thān) in the form

of the “requisites” – food, clothing, shelter and medicine – to

members of the sangha. Almost all rituals are structured around

such an act. Buddhist rites are, in northeastern Thai villages as

in villages in other Theravāda Buddhist societies, fundamentally

collective activities and the expectation is that for the major

calendrical rituals each household should be represented. While

adult men do attend these parish rites, women assume primary

responsibility for preparing the food that is offered to monks

and women usually outnumber men at rituals. Women also tend to be

rather more conservative than men in following the traditional

customs at which alms-offering takes place. Many villagers do

also make merit by contributing toward the construction of some

new edifice within the wat grounds. Whereas in northern Thailand

and in Burma, it was not uncommon for wealthy families to take it

upon themselves to pay for the construction of a new wat or a new

50

pagoda, in northeastern Thailand it is more likely that a new

religious edifice will have been built through the contribution

of labor and money from the community at large.

Ordination of a boy or young man into the sangha as a monk

or novice brings merit not only to the person ordained but also

to his sponsors who are usually his parents. Moreover, all those

invited to participate in the ordination festivities also have an

opportunity to make merit through making a donation toward the

costs of event. As a majority of men, at least in Ban Nông Tün,

are ordained at least once in their lives, ordination is a common

occurrence, several typically being held in every village

community every year.

Unlike calendrical rites, ordinations are not community

affairs but are sponsored by the families of the person being

ordained. Most villagers will, nonetheless, be invited to at

least one ordination during the course of a year. Like

ordination, funerary rites permit merit to be transferred from

the chief merit-maker to someone else. In the ordination rite,

merit is transferred by the male who is ordained to his parents,

and especially to his mother, as well as to his sponsors if they

be other than his relatives. In funerary rites, merit gained

through the offering of alms by relatives of the deceased is

transferred to the spirit of the dead to help the spirit in the

process of being reborn. Funerary rites are also sponsored by

51

families rather than by the community as a whole; but again, like

ordinations, others are invited to participate in the ritual.22

While merit-making activities do have important social

consequences, these are not explicitly thought of by northeastern

Thai villagers as being the result of moral behavior. Rather,

they are rather accidental concomitants of acts calculated to

achieve improvements for oneself or one’s immediate family of

relative (albeit temporary) wellbeing. Morality for villagers is

conceived of more in terms of what one does not do than what one

does do.

Moral actions are those leading to the avoidance of

“demerit” and are construed in popular Buddhist practice in

northeastern Thailand, as elsewhere in Theravādin societies,

primarily with reference to the “five precepts” (sīn hā) to which

laypersons commit themselves at every Buddhist ritual. Villagers

also learn from sermons and folklore that the cardinal vices that

lead one to the breaking of the precepts are ignorance, anger,

greed, and passion. Being aware of the desires that impel humans

and consciously working to control them are themes that are

greatly stressed in contemporary Buddhist theology. While few

northeastern villagers are well versed in the sophisticated

reflections of any of leading theologians of Thailand, they have

picked up something of this thought through the preaching of

monks who have been influenced by the theologians. The dhammic 22For discussion of ideas concerning merit-transference in ordination and funerary rites with reference to practices in northern Thailand that are very similar to those in northeastern Thailand see Anusaranaśāsanākīarti and Keyes (1980) and Keyes (1981, 1982). Also compare Tambiah (1968, 1970).

52

cult movement in particular stresses adherence to the precepts to

a degree not found in traditional village religion and the

altered state of consciousness gained by those who are possessed

by the dhamma can be seen as a direct counterpart to the trance-

like “absorptions” attained by adepts in meditation.

A village man (but not a woman) truly intent on the

attainment of the religious good will not be content with normal

acts of merit-making and with adherence to the precepts, but will

remain a monk after ordination and devote himself to the strict

practice of the “discipline,” perhaps even becoming an ascetic

monk whose actions are in accord with the “austerities”

(thudanga; Thai thudong). Women do not have this choice because

they are barred from becoming members of the order and to become

a “nun” (Lao māē sī) not held in cultural esteem. Yet even men who

do have the choice to work for their ultimate salvation as monks

rarely do so even though they may express great admiration for

the man who has become a strict practitioner of the dhamma.

Having chosen to live as laypersons, northeastern villagers

find themselves confronting a tension that obtains between the

various types of good that are culturally valued. This tension

has been exacerbated by changes that have taken place in rural

northeastern Thai society in the past few decades. In former

times village life was structured around a fundamental

oscillation between work and ritual, the latter providing the

occasion not only for making merit but also for having fun. The

ritual cycle moreover served to mark changes in the work cycle.

53

This rhythm was broken periodically by the intrusion of

affliction, but even then such afflictions were confronted by yet

other rituals. Social cooperation flowed rather naturally from

both work and ritual and little conscious attention was given to

working out the implications of following the precepts. The

changes that have radically altered the social order in which

villagers live have made it difficult for them today to take for

granted the basis for their relations with others.

For our purposes here I am interested in the increased

tension that has emerged between religious and economic goals.

Even in premodern times it was possible for some villagers to

accentuate the pursuit of economic goals; those who did so

typically acquired wealth in the form of cattle and water

buffalos. The opportunities were, however, nothing like they have

been since the 1960s. While many have found these opportunities

in Bangkok where growth has been concentrated, others have also

found them in the Northeast itself where there has been some,

albeit more limited economic growth. During the same period,

villagers have also been strongly pressured by officials acting

as the agents of various government-sponsored programs to give

priority in their actions to the attainment of material ends,

that is, to work to “develop” (phatthanā) themselves and society.

Northeastern villagers have not responded to these changes and

pressures by attempting to shelter within closed moral

communities; on the contrary, they have demonstrated an

overwhelming willingness to take advantage of economic

54

opportunities. They have increased production of rice through the

adoption of new rice strains, they have expanded production of

such other crops as kenaf, cassava, animals, and crafts to take

advantage of new market demands, and they have, in some cases,

even taken on quite new occupations. In nearly every village

there is today at least one villager who has become an

entrepreneur, having built a mechanized rice mill, established a

shop or bought a truck. In massive numbers northeasterners

migrate to Bangkok (or other centers) to seek temporary, and in

some cases permanent, non-farm work. Indeed, the very

disproportionate representation of people from the Northeast in

the urban labor force in Bangkok strongly suggests that

northeasterners have been more willing than have villagers from

other parts of the country to take on non-traditional economic

roles. It would appear, thus, that the tension between religious

and economic values has not been resolved by villagers displaying

a marked reluctance to take advantage of new economic

opportunities. To the contrary, it is my argument that many

northeasterners have developed a work ethic that has a basis in

Buddhist values and has been shaped by a sense of being a

distinctive and economically subordinate ethnoregional minority.

By the time a northeastern Thai villager becomes an adult

member of the work force, he or she has become sensitive to the

possibility that productive acts may be immoral if they result in

the infringement of the precepts incumbent upon all good

Buddhists. Villagers are in basic agreement that traditional

55

paddy-rice farming and other work such as the manufacture of

cloth, utensils, bamboo matting, charcoal and so on rarely lead

to transgressions of the precepts. Since meat is a standard part

of the diet,23 it is necessary for villagers to take the lives of

animals. In this instance, there is a clear division between the

sexes; women typically collect small aquatic life (snails, fresh-

water shrimp) and insects that are eaten, but they do not fish

nor slaughter animals. Most men, by contrast, fish, and few

evince any concern about the potential immorality of their acts.

Moreover, few men even reflect that the killing of chickens for

food brings demerit. Being a rather systematic inquirer, I once

asked a village friend in Ban Nông Tün about whether he was

acquiring demerit from killing a chicken. He laughed and replied

that he was probably reaping a little bāp, but then, he said,

since he was a villager (implying that since it was his karma to

be a villager) it was inevitable that some actions that were

essential for him to sustain him and his family should result in

demerit. He would, however, refuse to kill such a large animal as

a pig, cow, or buffalo since that would generate much bāp. There

were several men (no women) in Ban Nông Tün who were willing to

23Vegetarianism is practically unheard of in rural northeastern Thailand; indeed, it is very rare in any Theravāda Buddhist society. Most monks eat meatthat is offered to them and learned monks point to the scriptural sanction forthe practice since the scriptures attest to the Buddha himself having eaten meat offered to him. In a village close to Ban Nông Tün there is a monk who practices vegetarianism. In 1980 he was invited by a man in Ban Nông Tün to participate in a house-blessing rite. After his departure I stood talking withseveral village men about the rather unusual behavior of this monk. Instead ofeliciting, as I had anticipated, admiration for the monk’s asceticism, the mencommented instead on the fact that the monk seemed sickly, a function, they suggested of his not eating enough protein.

56

slaughter large animals, but their behavior did lead other

villagers to comment that they would one day realize the

consequences of their bāp. Even members of the dhammic cult

movement did not refrain from killing chickens, although none of

them were involved in the slaughter of large animals. In short

the precept against taking of life has not had any significant

dampening effect upon the consumption of meat and the concomitant

slaughter of animals (at least small animals) to meet the demand

for meat. Women do appear to be much more concerned than are men

about the demerit generated from the taking of life of animals

and members of the dhammic cult are somewhat more concerned than

are nonmembers. Yet even among these people there is no

reluctance to eat meat (although members of the movement, unlike

many village men, do not eat raw meat) and there is considerable

tolerance for those who do take the life of animals to provide

meat. In this regard, northeastern Thai – and Thai in general –

differ from Burmese who do consume considerably less meat, in

part, it would appear, as a consequence of a campaign “to be kind

to animals by not eating them” that was first launched under

former Prime Minister U Nu.24

Prostitution unquestionably entails a violation of the

precept against engaging in improper sexual activities. Within

the context of northeastern Thai villages, prostitution is

essentially unheard of, although some village women (usually

24The degree to which lower consumption of meat was a consequence of this campaign as distinct from being a concomitant of the lower standard of living in Burma cannot be determined on the basis of evidence now available.

57

unmarried) have been enticed into having or have themselves

initiated affairs with men to whom they are not married. Some

northeastern girls do go off to become prostitutes (often thinly

disguised as masseuses, waitresses, and servants) in Bangkok and

elsewhere. The morality of their actions receives little comment

among members of the communities from which they have come

because these actions are not carried on within the village

context and it may not even be known that a girl has become a

prostitute.25 When an ex-prostitute returns to the village,

little stigma appears to attach to them although such a person,

as I found in one instance of a woman in Ban Nông Tün who was

reputed to have been a prostitute, may be the subject of some

gossip. Yet insofar as an ex-prostitute conforms to the

expectations of her fellow villagers while living in the same

community, she is treated little differently to any other village

woman.

Villagers in northeastern Thailand are aware that some types

of economic behavior can entail the bullying or taking advantage

of others, thereby being a violation of the moral proscription of

aggressiveness that conduces to anger or greediness. In Ban Nông

Tün in 1963-1964 one man was referred to as a nakleng, a term that

is often translated as “scoundrel” or “rogue” but which also

connotes an especially masculine quality (the term does not

25In research carried out among prostitutes in Bangkok Pasuk Phongpaichit found that only thirteen of fifty women interviewed told their families what they were doing in Bangkok although all but four maintained regular contact with their families (Pasuk 1981: 19).

58

appear ever to be used of women) of adventuresomeness.26 A nakleng

is a man who achieves his ends by inspiring fear (Lao njān) in

others. The successful flaunting of dominant moral values, while

said to incur demerit, also serves as a sign of intrinsic power

of an almost magical quality (cf. Thak Chaloemtiarana 1979: 340),

a quality that is presumptively a product of previous merit.27

Moreover, a nakleng, if he lives long enough, may make use of the

position he attains to be a conspicuous follower of the dhamma

(cf. Blofeld 1960: 147-160). The nakleng, or one who acts

aggressively in the pursuit of his own ends, is typically found

in most every rural community and some, like a former headman of

a commune bordering on the one in which Ban Nông Tün is located,

may acquire considerable influence within a local area.

Moral ambivalence, somewhat comparable to that which

surrounds the role of nakleng, is also to be found expressed among

northeastern villagers towards those who demonstrate a marked

ability to generate wealth through such entrepreneurial

activities as rice-milling, shop-keeping, trucking, and brokering

of the trade in agricultural and craft products. So long as

middlemen were ethnically distinct from northeasterners, then

26The Īsān-Thai dictionary (Phacananukrom phāk īsān-phāk klāng 1972: 355) defines as“doing as one wishes” and gives as an example a woman who becomes a prostitute. It would seem, thus, that the prostitute is the equivalent for women to the nakleng for men.27This conclusion has been suggested to me by Thak Chaloemtiarana’s similar argument with regard to Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, Prime Minister of Thailand from 1958 to 1963 (see Thak 1979: esp. pp. 339-340). I think that this argument harbors a possible explanation for the behavior of those Khmer (mainly teenagers) who served the Angka Loe, the ruling party of Democratic Kampuchea all too well through their killings.

59

their behavior was not (at least in villagers’ eyes) subject to

the values that guided their own lives. But when Thai-Lao

themselves became middlemen, as an increasing number have done

over the past decade or two, then this bracketing of the morality

of the behavior of those who gain their income in transactions

with primary producers could no longer be maintained.

The ambivalence toward such people can be illustrated by the

case of the main entrepreneur in Ban Nông Tün. Mr. Bunthon (a

pseudonym) was born into a rather average farm family in a nearby

village. He got his start into a new living not through the use

of capital provided by his family but by working in Bangkok for a

total of about six years. After a period working in unskilled

construction jobs, he eventually found himself a job in a Chinese

noodle factory. He made relatively good wages at this factory and

by resisting (ot) most of the temptations of the city, he saved

enough to buy a small rice mill and open a very modest shop in

Ban Nông Tün. From this beginning in 1961 he expanded his

enterprise so that by 1980 he had a much larger rice mill, a

well-stocked store, a truck that he used primarily for his

middleman endeavors in the rice, charcoal, and kenaf trade, a

large herd (70-100 at any one time) of pigs, and 3.5 hectares of

land (none of it inherited). By his own estimation, as well as by

the estimation of most everyone in the village, he had become by

the age of 45 the richest man in Ban Nông Tün.

In 1963-1964 most adult villagers had used the title of thit

with Mr. Bunthon, thereby indicating that he had been ordained as

60

a monk. By 1980 the most common title I heard used was that of

hôi, although he was also called thaokāē and phộkhā, all titles

indexing his achievements in trade. He was greatly admired by

many in the village for his diligence (man; khanjan from Thai

khayan) and shrewdness (keng; salāt). But others also saw him as

one obsessed by seeking after wealth (hā ngōēn), sometimes to the

detriment of others in the village. The antagonism I detected

among some villagers towards Mr. Bunthon in 1980 was a

consequence not only of his economic position, however, but also

of his alignment with a village faction on the outs with the

present headman and his faction.

Mr. Bunthon himself considered that he acted within the

framework of village morality. He pointed in this connection to

his support of the wat and the local sangha and to his relatively

generous gifts to those who invited him to the ordinations of

their sons or relatives. Yet even in his merit-making, he had

begun to set himself apart from other villagers. His was the one

family in the village that had donated the entire sum toward the

construction of a building in the wat – in this case, an

elaborate bell-tower. He probably sponsored more house-blessing

rites, rites held at his own home rather than at the wat, than

did anyone else. In other words, while he and his family did

continue to participate in communal merit-making rituals, he had

begun to accord greater emphasis to religious endeavors wherein

the primary participants as well as sponsors were his family. Mr.

Bunthon demonstrated in my presence his respect for the sangha,

61

but he also clearly distinguished between learned monks and those

who simply performed traditional rituals. He expressed

considerable admiration for those “ordained in the dhamma” who

had committed themselves to a stricter adherence than was

traditional to the Buddhist precepts, but he was also openly

skeptical of the significance of the charismatic rites performed

by adherents of the movement. In sum, while he did not ignore the

moral stances taken by his fellow villagers, he had come to see

himself as the better arbiter in most circumstances of his own

moral actions.

The case of Mr. Bunthon cannot necessarily be generalized,

but it does serve, I believe, to point up the tensions that have

emerged within northeastern villages in conjunction with the

assumption by some villagers of distinctive middleman roles.

These tensions are not limited to relations involving middlemen

alone, but are a consequence of a more general reorientation of

many villagers towards production for the market. These tensions

have generated something of a moral debate amongst northeastern

Thai villagers.

It is important to note that the moral debate that derives

from villagers understanding of the Buddhist precepts is carried

on in a social context in which there are few punitive sanctions

that can be brought against those who are deemed to be violators

of the moral code. Even in those cases where a presumed violation

of the code has also been a violation of Thai law, the offender

may still escape any consequences because they have the resources

62

to buy off the police or other officials who have been made aware

of the action. I myself know of one murder that went unpunished

because sufficient sums were handed over to the police. In theory

monks could refuse alms from one who is deemed unworthy of

offering them; in practice such refusals are so rare as to be

unrecorded in any literature about Thailand of which I am aware.

Short of taking the law into their own hands, something that is

done extremely rarely, villagers must rely on social esteem and

disparagement as the main methods to use in ensuring compliance

with the moral code.28 In northeastern Thai villages, moreover,

esteem and disapproval are rarely unanimous. Only the learned or

ascetic permanent monk gains the unequivocal respect of those who

live in the same community. There are cases where a person is

totally ostracized as with a monk whom I was told about by

villagers who had been carrying on affairs with a number of

women. But such cases are extremely rare. Judgment of those who

become nakleng or middlemen is usually equivocal. Disapproval of

their actions on moral grounds is often offset by a respect for

the control over power and wealth that they display as well as by

the necessity to interact with them.

The moral code that is based on the understanding that

certain types of actions generate demerit operates, insofar as it

does, to constrain economic aggressiveness, including economic 28I ignore here “supernatural” sanctions that are said to emanate on occasion from spirits who have been offended by the actions of those in their jurisdiction. However important such sanctions may have been in the past—and there is evidence that they were quite significant for maintaining compliance with prohibitions against improper sexual activities—they have a very peripheral role in village life today.

63

aggressiveness. If this were all there were to Buddhist morality

as practiced by northeastern Thai villagers (as well as by

adherents to Buddhism more generally), then one might be

justified in arguing that Buddhist values do inhibit, albeit

weakly, economic development in the capitalistic sense. But

Buddhist values do not consist solely of prohibitions against

certain types of behavior; they also include inducements to

undertake certain positive acts, those that will produce “merit.”

Productive acts (het ngān), even those connected with

agriculture, are not in and of themselves religiously significant

since they do not result directly in the generation of merit.

However, since the acts of merit-making that villagers engage in

requires the expenditure of wealth, productive acts are viewed as

a necessary prerequisite to merit-making. Thus, the way in which

religious goals are attained by most northeastern villagers

serves as a goad to them to be productive; the poor person

suffers not only in the here-and-now, but also lacks the means to

alter his or her place on the moral hierarchy in the future. Some

of the leaders of the dhammic cult movement have made explicit

the connection between work and merit by stressing that the more

“diligent” (man; khanjan) a person is and the less “lazy”

(khīkhan) he or she is, the more wealth one will gain to use in

making merit. A similar stance is taken by Mr. Bunton, the chief

entrepreneur in Ban Nông Tün, and, I suspect, by many

entrepreneurs elsewhere.

64

Villagers do not, of course, have to use the wealth they

acquire entirely for merit-making; indeed most of their wealth,

even for the relatively rich, is used to pay for the needs of the

family – for clothes, food, housing, health care, education, and

so on. They also spend wealth to enhance the “pleasure” quality

of life and the array and availability of such pleasures have

markedly increased as the economy has developed. For example, it

is today possible to enjoy alcoholic beverages every day since

liquor is sold in almost every village whereas in the past it was

possible to drink mainly on ritual occasions for which rice wine

and perhaps rice liquor was made. Despite the precept that

proscribes consuming substances that cause heedlessness, many

village men (but very rarely women) take their cue from officials

for whom alcohol has become a ubiquitous social lubricant. While

figures are not available, there seems little question but that

alcohol consumption has radically increased in rural northeastern

Thailand since World War II (and, it is my impression, that it

has increased mainly since the early 1960s) and with increased

consumption has come a growing incidence of alcoholism.

Gambling (again almost exclusively in northeastern Thailand

by men) has markedly increased as villagers have acquired more

cash income. While most forms of gambling, other than the

national lottery, are illegal, there is little enforcement of the

law in villages where a “numbers” game is especially popular.

Brothels, while not yet, insofar as I know, found in villages,

have proliferated in the towns of the Northeast as well as in

65

Bangkok. Again, the law against prostitution is not enforced.

Village men, particularly when they are working in Bangkok, are

often attracted by the ready availability and relative

inexpensiveness of sexual services offered by prostitutes. And

again the precept proscribing inappropriate sexual relations

seems to count for little.

While drinking, gambling, and sex are pleasures indulged in

primarily by men, there are also pleasures that attract village

women as well. Shops selling citified clothes, jewelry and other

adornments have appeared in increasing numbers in the towns and

cities of northeastern Thailand during the past two decades.

There are today many more entertainments to lure both men and

women. In addition to the rituals and temple fairs, there are now

movies and programs on radio, TV and cassettes.

With the opportunity to effect immediate improvements in the

standard of living or to indulge in a variety of immediate

pleasures, the question thus arises as to what motivates so many

villagers to put at least some of their wealth toward a remote

goal that will be achieved through the accumulation of merit. It

is noteworthy in this regard that most young people who go off to

work in Bangkok do blow most of their earnings on pleasurable

pursuits. In part they do this because they are freed from the

moral constraints of village life. Perhaps of equal importance is

that for the young salvation from suffering does not seem an

immediate concern because they are so little beset by suffering.

But most northeastern Thai villagers sooner or later become aware

66

of the significance of suffering not because of any abstract

sermonizing but because it impresses itself so forcibly upon

their lives.

Work in the fields in the hot sun brings with all sorts of

aches and pains that villagers seek to alleviate in the evening

with medicines bought at the village shop or on visits to town.

Afflictions are not hidden away as they might be in the city;

even a casual walk through Ban Nông Tün, for example, would lead

one to see a woman lying on her veranda, listless because of some

illness; a woman rocking her new baby with an ugly hair lip; a

teenage boy so badly retarded that he cannot control his own

movements; an elderly man dying of what is probably cancer

sitting quietly in front of his house. And then there is the

suffering that comes with uncertainty – uncertainty as to whether

the rains will come too early or too late this year; uncertainty

as to whether the price of rice or kenaf will rise or fall;

uncertainty whether or not one will be able to use government

land to grow crops again; uncertainty as to whether one will be

able to pay off bills that have come due; uncertainty as to

whether one’s buffalo will recover sufficiently from hoof-and-

mouth disease to be able to work to plow and harrow the fields.

For village women suffering is epitomized by childbearing,

although for some today the intensity of this experience has been

muted to some degree by hospital care.

Such suffering is, of course, typical of any poor agrarian

society. But northeastern Thai villagers have drawn upon Buddhist

67

thought and made the ability to endure suffering a virtue,

leading them to orient themselves toward a path of action that

will eventually lead to the transcendence of suffering. Immediate

gratification of one’s desires may provide a temporary surcease

of suffering, but it does not move one any closer to the ultimate

goal; indeed it may create more suffering as with the case of the

man who spends all the family’s wealth on drink or gambling.

Villagers thus take pride when they are able to refrain from

indulging (ot thon) themselves and to use their wealth in actions

that will bring, directly or indirectly, a higher place on the

moral hierarchy.

The value on foregoing pleasures is not learned abstractly,

but is imbued, insofar as it is, through experience. Within

village society, two types of culturally shaped experience, one

for women and the other for men, convey this value. For women,

the “lying by the fire” (yū fai) following childbirth – a custom

that entails several days of resting near a fire so hot that it

produces burns and consuming nothing but a medicinal soup that

cooks on the fire – involves an ascetic-like mortification of the

flesh. Not only does the woman accept the burns that are caused

by the fire, but she also learns, at least implicitly, how to

control her appetite by foregoing a normal diet for the period of

her sequestering. For men, the temporary stay that one spends in

the sangha also entails the practice of a form of asceticism. As

a member of the order, a man must foreswear all sexual interests,

must deny himself the ordinary pleasures of entertainments and

68

drinking with friends, and must reduce his intake of food to two

meals, both occurring before noon. While men will return to

ordinary ways once they have left the monkhood, they will have

developed some self-consciousness of their cravings that will

assist them in avoiding excesses as a layperson. Villagers think

of the man who has been a monk as one who has been morally

tempered; such a man is preferred over the man who has never been

ordained because it is thought that he will be more moderate in

the demands that he will make of his wife.

The ascetic experiences that most northeastern villagers

have had, even today, do not lead to the total rejection of

pleasure and the celebration of work, but they do stimulate some

reflection about the significance of both types of action. In

combination with a sense of being a disadvantaged minority,

something approximating a “work ethic” begins to emerge. Many

villagers from northeastern Thailand who go to Bangkok not only

take advantage of the delights of the city but also become aware

of being an Isan (or Lao) minority within a Thai-dominated

society. In this regard, their experience is not dissimilar to

that of Chinese from the countryside of mainly southeastern China

who took up jobs in Bangkok (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia) in

the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth

century. Of such subordinated minorities, Weber wrote: “National

or religious minorities which are in a position of subordination

to a group of rulers are likely, through their voluntary or

involuntary exclusion from positions of political influence, to

69

be driven with peculiar force into economic activity” (Weber

1958a: 39). While, as Weber goes on to show with regard to

Catholics in some states where they have been political

minorities this force does not always operate, it certainly did

in the case of overseas Chinese in Thailand and elsewhere in

Southeast Asia. It also has, I suggest, in the case of a

significant number of Thai-Lao from northeastern Thailand.

Bangkok in some ways makes the moral hierarchy that

northeastern Thai have learned about through rituals much more a

reality than it was in the village itself. In Bangkok the

extremely wealthy and powerful can actually be seen, seen

moreover by those who are all too aware of their own lowly

position. For many migrants the social differences that they

observe in Bangkok probably seem as fixed as the cosmic order and

so they enjoy what they can with the modest earnings they get for

being allowed to labor hard in this glittering realm and having

had their fling they return back to the less exciting but more

congenial world of the village. Some migrants, usually those who

stay long enough to obtain more than the casual laboring job,

make another discovery about the city. There are people, they

find, who themselves or whose parents started off as poor as

northeastern Thai villagers and yet have succeeded in radically

improving their lot. These other people – overwhelmingly of

Chinese descent – provide models for social mobility that some

Thai-Lao migrants find it possible to emulate.29 Indeed, many

29For a discussion of the “work ethic” of Chinese in Thailand and of the contrast between Chinese and Thai (by which is meant Central Thai) values

70

such migrants get their start up the ladder in Chinese firms

where conditions permit them to save for a “stake” that they will

eventually invest in some enterprise in the Northeast or to gain

training in a skill that they will be able to market for higher

wages, usually in Bangkok.

Whether or not northeasterners who have become entrepreneurs

consciously emulate the model of the immigrant Chinese, there is

an affinity between the two groups since both constitute

subordinate minorities within the Thai system and both have (the

Chinese more in the past than in the present) less access to

bureaucratic jobs than do Thai. This affinity is not only to be

found in Bangkok but also in the Northeast itself where Chinese

middlemen tend to interact with villagers more as equals than do

officials. Moreover, Thai-Lao village entrepreneurs often develop

close relationships with the owners or managers of certain

Chinese firms in nearby market towns. Within the village context

itself, affiliation with the dhammic cult movement also appears

to promote a “work ethic.” Those who join the movement impose an

ascetic quality upon their style of life. The term “ordained”

(būat) carries with it the connotation of subjecting oneself to a

discipline; in this case the discipline is as applicable to women

as to men. Those who join the movement strongly deemphasize the

actions that lead to immediate pleasures. I n Ban Nông Tün where

this movement was very strong, drinking was conspicuously less

noticeable than it was in other villages where the movement had

regarding work, see Deyo (1974, 1975) and Tobias (1973).

71

made little impact. Members of the movement also avoid gambling

and give up indulging in raw meat dishes (lāp dīp; kôi) that are

not only costly but are also unhealthy. Most importantly, the

virtues of industriousness and thriftiness are positively valued

by members.

In short, while there are certainly reprobates, bullies, and

villagers who are just getting along like they always have living

in communities in rural northeastern Thailand, there are also

some who have ordered their lives with reference to an ethic that

in many ways is similar to what Weber called “inner-worldly

asceticism.” This ethic has its roots in popular Buddhist notions

of foregoing that desired by the passions, but it has been given

its particular shape by experiences that are more typical of

northeastern Thai villagers than of others in Thailand. At the

base of this ethic is the awareness that most northeasterners

gain early in their lives of “suffering” in its existential (and

Buddhist) sense. In the critical years of late teenage and early

adulthood, many, perhaps most, northeastern villagers also learn,

primarily through temporary work in Bangkok, that they are a part

of a minority living within a Thai-dominated system. Moreover,

with rare exception, they also realize that it is nigh impossible

for them to move from being a villager (sāo bān) to being a

“masterly” (čao nāi) official. Some villagers discover that there

is another non-village status to which they can aspire – that of

merchant (phôkhā/māēkhā) – for which the model is provided

primarily by those of Chinese descent. To emulate this model

72

successfully requires foregoing immediate pleasures; some men

learn how to defer gratification while serving temporarily as

monks, some women do so during the post-partum rite of “lying-by-

the-fire,” and some men and women both do so by following the

“discipline” to which they commit themselves when being “ordained

in the dhamma.” While some of these factors are also found

amongst other populations in Thailand, they are most pronounced

among northeasterners.

Conclusion

While northeastern Thai villagers – at least some of them –

do act in terms of an ethic that appears to be similar in some

respects to the work ethic of the Puritans as discussed by Weber

in The Protestant Ethic, it would contribute little to label them

“Buddhist puritans.” To do so would force the data into an a priori

mold, something that would be quite at odds with the interpretive

methodology set forth at the outset of this paper. As Ruth McVey

has said in her critique of James Peacock’s study, Muslim Puritans

(Peacock 1978): “This is not to say there is no relationship

between religious institutions and values and economic activity;

there is, but how these will function and what they will achieve

depends on the context” (McVey 1981: 280). But it is also not the

case that all ethics are situational, being merely reflections of

the interests of those involved.

There is something that is distinctively Buddhist about the

ethical discourse of Thai-Lao villagers that we should anticipate

73

finding in the ethical discourse of other adherents to Buddhism

living in quite different situations. To be a Buddhist is to know

that one lives in a conditional-existence, in samsāra. Thai-Lao

villagers as most of the other Buddhists studied by others,

understand the underlying causality of this existence in terms of

the law of kamma rather than in terms of the more philosophical

notion of paticcasampuppāda, “dependent arising” (cf. Kalupahana

1975), but the difference is one of sophistication, not one of

essential doctrine. An actor, no matter whether a humble layman

or an ascetic monk always is constrained by previous kamma while

still retaining responsibility, within such constraints, for the

actions that he or she will embark upon.

While the law of kamma – causality – is central to practical

Buddhist thought, such thought is not simply “kammatic” in

Spiro’s sense. All action, even the meditations and observance of

the austerities by saintly monks, is situated within a kammic-

based samsāra. But no one can find salvation in any of the

elements of sentient existence; rather, it is only through

detachment from these elements, and the passions that lead one to

cling to them, that one comes to realize the inner stillness that

is true salvation. Ascetic monks may attain levels of detachment

not known by ordinary laypersons, but even the latter are

conscious of the ideal of detachment and of their ability to

realize it to some degree through adherence to the five precepts

and, perhaps, as they get older, by periodic observance of the

eight precepts and some practice of meditation. Villagers in

74

northeastern Thailand, like most of their fellow Buddhists in

towns and villages throughout Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, do

not talk about achieving Nibbāna; the word scarcely appears in

everyday discourse. Nonetheless, the Nibbanic element is present

in popular Buddhism in the ideal of detachment and it is this

ideal that provides all Buddhists with a basis for critical

reflection about their social action.

Some northeastern Thai have harnessed the ideal of

detachment (ot thon) to productive life and can be said to have a

distinctive Buddhist “work ethic.” This ethic may also be found,

once inquiry is made, among the small number of middle and upper

class Thai who have associated themselves with the recent

meditation movement. Yet, it is not characteristic of all, even

most, Buddhists in Thailand. The relative distinctiveness of the

northeastern ethic suggests that there are other contextual

factors that are relevant. In this case, the primary factor is, I

suggest, the ethnoregional minority status of northeastern Thai.

This factor has operated in somewhat similar ways for

northeastern Thais as it has not only for overseas Chinese but

also for Jews in European societies, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and so

on.

Even northeastern Thai peasants do not all act in accord

with the same economic ethic. Here a difference with Puritans

needs to be pointed out. There is no equivalent in Thai-Lao

communities or, so far as I know, in any Buddhist community

(although Anagārika Dharmapala in Sri Lanka may come close), to

75

John Cotton or Jonathan Edwards who mobilized large communities

to support their messages of the omnipotence of God and the

helplessness of humans. While ascetic monks do exemplify

detachment, they are not evangelists; and even the urban-based

lay disciples who have a little of the evangelical about them

have made little or no impression on villagers. The closest

approximation to evangelical Buddhists within the Thai-Lao

context are the leaders of the dhammic cult movement and they are

more like John Wesley and George Whitfield than the Puritan

leaders in that they emphasize the charismatic quality of

religious experience. And even here the analogy really is not

very apt since the ordained in-the-dhamma leaders still defer to

the higher religious authority of the sangha (who would have to

be equated with the established clergy in Christian societies). A

contrast can also be drawn with such Islamic societies as Iran

where mullahs (the functional equivalent of the sangha) hold

political power and where ethical norms have been given the force

of secular law (cf. Fischer 1980).30 Religious leaders in

Buddhist societies, whether they be members of the sangha or the

laity, can induce their followers to become more aware of the

ethical implications of the Buddhist dhamma, but the degree to

which these implications are made relevant to social life tends, 30Buddhist ethical ideas have influenced law in Buddhist societies (see Lee 1978), but a distinction is always maintained between the immutable law of kamma that operates on a cosmic scale and the law of society that is imperfectand is therefore subject, like all else in samsāra, to change. Moreover, it isdifficult to codify detachment and in Thailand at least ascetic monks have always been slightly suspect for being either law-breakers in disguise or as serving through the esteem in which their actions are held to undermine secular authority.

76

I would suggest to be more individually variable in any Buddhist

society than in either Puritan or Islamic societies.

What I hope to have shown in this paper is that the study of

ethics must needs attend to practical thought wherein ethical

notions are articulated with actual social life. While there is,

I would agree, a common set of premises that underlay Buddhist

ethics in communities widely separated in time and space

(although whether true for any particular community must be

shown, not assumed), the interpretation of these premises in the

orientation toward social action will be conditioned by the

context within which particular Buddhists live.

77

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