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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