Keith Nelson Dr

Monks & Modernity Contemporary Buddhist Monasticism in the Tibetan Diaspora Keith Nelson Dr. Tara N. Doyle Emory Tibetan Studies in Dharamsala Independent Research Emory-IBD Tibetan Studies Program Dharamsala, India (Spring 2004) Table of Contents I.) Introduction ................................................................................................... 2 II.) Research Process & Methodology ..................................................................... 5 * * * III.) The Monastic Tradition: Monks & Tibetan Religiosity ................................... 7 IV.) The Monastic Institution in north Indian Diaspora: Three Communities ........ 12 V.) Education & Technology: Transcending the “Boundedness” of Tradition ....... 14 VI.) Modernity & the Monastic Self: Individuality, Difference, Nostalgia ............ 25 VII.) The Future of Monasticism in Diaspora: Three Issues .................................. 36 VIII.) Conclusion .................................................................................................... 42 * * * Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. 44 Sources Cited & Interviews .................................................................................... 45 Cover photo: The author with monks at Sherabling monastery, Himachal Pradesh, India. L. to R.: Karma Chime Dorje, Karma Damchod, & Karma Pema Wangchuk. Photo: Dakpa Kalden 1 Introduction Looking at the old monk seated in the white plastic lawn chair opposite myself, I am overwhelmed by a sense of awe and respect for the obvious tenacity and determination that have brought him to this place in his life, on this sunny and cloudless morning in north India, far from his home in eastern Tibet, and far from the monastery which became his home at the early age of twelve. Karma Gyurme is now eighty-two years old. The pauses in our interview, translated by a Tibetan friend who seems almost intimidated by Karma Gyurme’s age and rough Khampa accent and inflections, are filled with the monk’s labored but slow, even breathing and the occasional, low mumble of mantras. Staring at Karma Gyurme’s hands, I notice his calloused and gnarled fingers do not once cease their steady counting of the beads in his rosary during the length of our talk. Nor does he seem to be moved from his placid equanimity by the dozens of flies that swarm about the entrance to the monastery canteen where we sit, buzzing about his face, settling to rest on the jutting ridges of his cheek bones , the loose folds of his neck, and the deep creases at the corners of his eyes. Behind him, the Dhauladhar mountains, clothed in shaggy pines and spruces, reach up into vast, blue sky. Tattered prayer flags are just visible along a far-off ridge, dots of flapping color on the breeze. Our pregnant pauses are filled with more than this old monk’s breathing—a tinny sounding stereo inside the canteen is playing, to my initial shock, a popular dance-club tune from the U.S. by the pop group “The Venga Boys.” A sped-up techno beat thumps in tune to a high-pitched, girly voice: “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie wor-orrrld, when you’re plastic—it’s fantastic! You can brush my hair, undress me everywher-errre, Imagination! Life is your creation!” This moment shared with an old Tibetan monk to the tune of American dance club culture is, to say the least, bizarre. I remember the feeling that some dissociated fragment of twenty-first century America had materialized out of nowhere, amid dirt roads winding through 2 mountains, simple villages, and women tending cows and goats. It was as if a memory of life in the U.S. had leaked out, and funneled itself, jarringly, into surround-sound. The above incident is merely one example, however, of the dozens of ways monks and monastic institutions outside of Tibet have been influenced by the myriad forces that make up the collective Tibetan encounter with diaspora. This encounter—which, as I intend to show, in actuality encompasses a vast range of experiences and responses to an equally vast range of phenomena—has continually evolved over the last fifty years. It is also one that the Tibetan people have struggled through and adapted to, consciously and unconsciously, on an individual, communal, and ethnic basis. At the outset of my research, my intent was to discover and record the varying responses of Tibetan monks to life in the Indian diaspora community, focusing on a subject which is almost indistinguishable from “diaspora” itself: the modernity of twenty-first century India. Following this train of thought I quickly found myself engaged in a tight-rope act between essentializing modernity by attempting an abstract deconstruction of its elements and the ways they manifested themselves in the context of my study, and the real and human lives, thoughts, and responses I was encountering, that continually defied academic abstruseness as well systematic analysis. However, I believe modernity may be successfully and realistically seen as multiple and intersecting levels of access to both education and technology which jointly allow for communication with (and thus, influence by) the evolving “global community”. It is all of the phenomena that manifest, and how they manifest, on a cultural, social, and religious level in response to these aspects of modernity that most interested me in my study of Tibetan monasticism in India. There were a number of wider, embedded cultural contexts that became relevant as I struggled to comprehend the subtle interplay between monks and modernity. The cultural and religious lives of Tibetans, then specifically Tibetans living in India, then both those who were born in India and those who at some point in their lives had escaped from Tibet to live there, the 3 culture of Tibetan men, young and old, the culture (and deeper, the cultural construction) of the individual and the community, and finally, the culture of monks and the monastic institution were all layers I had to consider. Secondary considerations in this expanding series of ellipses became the culture of native north Indians, the culture of India as a whole, and an especially significant aspect of the former, the ever-increasing contact with the ideology and culture of the modern, industrialized West. As especially younger Indians and Tibetans living in India increasingly seek to emulate these ideals, they have also begun to exercise their own influence upon young Tibetan monks. I have chosen to discuss and analyze three primary topics in my presentation of this vast subject. I have looked at the expanding role of education in monastic contexts, an expanding definition of what that education should include, and increasing access to material technology. The issues that technology has opened up in the lives of monks garnered some of the most enthusiastic, and most widely differing responses in my interviewing process. I have also explored various ideological and behavioral influences in the lives of monks living in diaspora, and how these have shaped their goals, respective worldviews, and most significantly, their definition of monkhood and the monastic institution on a communal and social level, and their respective self-concepts as individual monks. Lastly, I raise and discuss responses to tradition— adaptation of aspects of monasticism to better suit diaspora life, preservation of the core values and traditions unique to the Tibetan understanding of monasticism, and changes in tradition when it is deemed necessary and beneficial. Through the course of my interviews, research, and interaction with these thirty-seven monks, I found that monasticism is still generally regarded with deep veneration by Tibetans living in diaspora and continues to represent an essential element of Tibetan religion. However, it has perhaps suffered from the same erosion over time as other traditional institutions and customs in Tibetan culture, and from the same effects that have eroded monastic culture in other Asian, Buddhist societies. One of these eroding effects is a decreasing emphasis on the value of a life devoted solely to religion, discipline, and celibacy, due 4 to evolving notions of modernity, and, therefore, a notion of what is “pre-modern.” In many cultures that have been directly or indirectly industrialized by the west, this imposed construction of pre-modernity includes religion. Significantly, Tibet has undergone massive industrialization not by the West but by China, with its accompanying ideology of Marxist socialism and its attempts to rid Tibet of the “evils of lamaism.” This has led to a fiercely rebellious and tenacious streak evident in the Buddhist practice of native Tibetans living in Tibet, but what of those in India, a country of extreme religious pluralism and tolerance? While Tibetans in the diaspora community in general continue to practice Buddhism faithfully and in large numbers, this question has been a central one in my investigation of monastic life—where this is not always the case. This effect is also perhaps exacerbated in the diaspora community because, despite the surprisingly strong degree of cultural unity and affinity felt among Tibetans living in India, their is an underlying and persistent feeling of fragmentation on a nationalistic level effected by an awareness of their guest status in a host country. This sense of Tibetan nationality is tied intimately to religion, or what Melvyn C. Goldstein describes as the “religionationalistic” ideology shared by Tibetans.1

Load more