39 Theravada Buddhism in South-East Asia

W.J. Johnson

The use of the Pah term ‘Theravada’ (‘Doctrine of the Elders’) to define their particular school reflects the fact that the Therava- dins present themselves as belonging to that branch of Buddhism which has continued to preserve the ‘orthodox’ or ‘original’ teaching of the Buddha.

The history of Theravada in India remains obscure, and perhaps impossible to extricate from the history of Buddhism in general, although it is known that it was the dominant tradition in a number of important centres in the South-east of the subcontinent, in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Thus at one time there were Tamils who were Theravada Buddhists. In Sri Lanka, however, where Theravada established itself firmly as the national religion, the historical situation is clearer. The major source for this history is the Pali verse chronicle, the Mahdvamsa, or ‘Great Chronicle’, written by a Sinhalese monk late in the fifth century ce. This was based on another chronicle, the Dipavatnsa, compiled a century earlier, possibly by nuns.

According to the Dtpavamsa, the Pah Canon was taken to Sri Lanka and South-east Asia by missionaries sent out by Asoka in the middle of the third century bce. Although scholars are extremely scepti­cal about the claim for South-east Asia, there seems no reason to doubt that Theravada made its first appearance in Sri Lanka at about this time. Whether the Canon itself arrived all at once in the heads of the first missionaries or more gradually, it is likely that the Pah commentaries (which Buddhaghosa, writing in the fifth century ce, claims Mahinda, the missionary son of Asoka, brought with him and then translated into Sinhala) arrived over a longer period of time. It is even possible they originated in Sri Lanka itself. Cer­tainly, additions continued to be made to the commentarial literature until about the middle of the first century ce, at which time the corpus was probably closed. It is this body of material that Buddhaghosa himself superseded in the process of translating it from Sinhala into Pah and editing it into what became its definitively orthodox form.

About half a century before the body of commentar­ial work had been closed, there had occurred what was probably the most significant and far-reaching event in early Theravada history. During a period of turmoil, late in the first century bce, when Sri Lanka was threatened by foreign invasions and famine, the decision was taken to commit the Theravada Canon to writing. This happened between 29 and 17 bce. Until then the Canon had been transmitted orally from generation to generation of monks. The monastic community, the Sangha, was the sole repository of the Buddha’s Doctrine (Dhamma; Sanskrit, Dharma), and it was through the Sangha alone that the laity had access to that Doctrine.

As important as the Canon for the Theravada tradi­tion is the Pali Visuddhimagga, or ‘Path of Purity’, an original work composed in Sri Lanka in the early fifth century ce by the same Indian monk, Buddha­ghosa, who edited the commentaries. This compendium of Buddhist doc­trine has been the touchstone of Theravadin orthodoxy ever since. Its intended ‘readership’ was the monastic community, an audience reflected in the work’s dual function as a summary of doctrine and a handbook for meditators. The dominant theme is the cultivation of that moral and mental purity which, allied to the necessary prerequisite of learning, together make up the practical path to enlightenment. After Buddhaghosa other monks soon wrote definitive Pah commentaries on those parts of the Canon he had left untouched, including a Pali version of the commentary on the Jdtaka stories about the 550 previous births of the Buddha. And presently Pali subcommentaries on these works also appeared. By reverting to a classical language (Pah), Buddhaghosa and his followers effectively internationalised the Theravadin tradition. That is to say, they prepared the way for Sinhala orthodoxy to become the standard form of Theravada Buddhism throughout South-east Asia. Such ‘internationalisation’, combined with the universalis- tic ethic expounded in Buddhist teaching, meant that Theravada had some invaluable instruments with which both to consolidate its expansion and to renew itself in times of decline.

In the terms of its self-definition the history of Theravada Buddhism is synonymous with the history of its monastic com­munity, the Sangha, in that it is only through the Sangha that the teaching is preserved and handed on.

From its origins in India the Sangha had been sup­ported by the rich and influential. This was a pattern that developed in Sri Lanka and South-east Asia into what is sometimes called a ‘symbiotic’ relationship, i.e. a mutually beneficial relationship between the Sangha and the ruling power or king (in essence, the chief layman). It is important to note that, once Buddhism becomes established as the religion of a nation-state such as Sri Lanka, the significance of the Discipline undergoes a substantial change. Thus if one takes the slogans ‘No Buddhism without the Sangha’ and ‘No Sangha without the Discipline’, and adds to those the further slogan, ‘No Sri Lanka/Burma/Thailand without Buddhism’, it becomes clear that the preservation of the Discipline, i.e. of the moral purity of the Sangha, is the essential component in the preservation and proper functioning of the nation. In this context, the monk, who is the embodiment or exemplar of moral purity, of Discipline, becomes a figure with public responsibility. It is no longer, if it ever was, simply a matter of cultivating his own enlightenment (although, of course, the two roles are not necessarily incompatible). Moreover, the king, as the embodiment of the state, feels that ultimately it is his duty to preserve the institutions of society, especially the Sangha. Much of later Theravada history is therefore patterned by the recurrent efforts of kings to preserve or re-establish the purity of the Sangha, since the prosperity of the nation is ultimately seen to depend upon its moral example. The precedent for such royal interference in the affairs of what, ideally, was the self-governing Sangha had been set by Asoka, who had undertaken a puri­fication of the Sangha—albeit in accordance with Vinaya rules—in India in the third century bce. And it was Asoka who remained the inspiration and model for later monarchs in their dealings with the monastic community. That is to say, they saw it as their duty to defend the Sangha by expelling its corrupt members and, in some cases, by introducing ordination traditions from countries which were believed to have a superior variety.

Corruption of the Sangha has two principal aspects: luxurious living, i.e. a laxness in Discipline and thus a diminution of moral purity, and a consequent disharmony that threatens to split the unity of the community. In other words, practice by some members of the Sangha which diverges from the norm laid down in the Vinaya leads to a situation where all members do not acknowledge the samepatimokkha rules, and a split occurs. Given this analysis of corruption, there can be little doubt that royal patron­age was itself a factor in bringing about that very decay of the Sangha which the kings’ periodic ‘purifications’ were intended to reverse. For state patron­age cast monks in new roles which were frequently quite at odds with the Discipline. Perhaps the most immediately obvious of these was that the monasteries became great landlords. From late in the first century bce land grants to monks and monasteries became a frequent occurrence in Sri Lanka, so much so that monastic land-holding became a major feature of the economy, until between the ninth and twelfth centuries ce monasteries were probably the greatest landlords in Sri Lanka. And while legal fictions could be devised to justify the Sangha’s communal involvement with property, it was more difficult to accommodate the economic business of individual monks to the Discipline, particularly the practice of inheriting personal monastic prop­erty. Inevitably the way of life of wealthy monks and monasteries came to differ substantially from the canonical ideal. Similarly, the central role of the Sangha in the welfare of the state led some monks into politics. Perhaps the most typical role for the monk in the Theravada countries, however, has been that of the ‘village-dwelling’ scholar and preacher who, from the laity’s point of view, acts as a ceremonial specialist and is often involved in astrology and medicine as well. In essence the ‘village-dweller’s’ function is to make merit for the laity. Classically, the complementary opposite to the ‘village­dwelling’ monk is the ‘forest-dwelling’ ascetic (Pah, drannika), who retires alone to pursue insight and enlightenment through meditation. But such groups of monks have always been in a small minority, following a special vocation within the Sangha, and have persistently been drawn back into the ‘village’ mode of life, which in practice constitutes the monastic norm. Their status, however, is very high since they are popularly regarded as holy or ‘ideal’ monks.

Sri Lanka was the first and, for the first millennium ce, the only Buddhist state. Whatever Theravada Buddhism there was else­where in this period has left little trace of itself, although there is some evidence for its presence in both Burma and Thailand by the seventh century ce. However, the Sinhala-derived orthodoxy that came to dominate much of South-east Asia established itself only gradually from the late eleventh cen­tury onwards, after the rise of the monarchical states and the corresponding possibility of royal patronage. The Burmese king Aniruddha is credited with the establishment of Theravada in upper Burma (c. 1057 ce) by having the ordination tradition and the Canon brought from Sri Lanka. At the end of the twelfth century a Burmese monk returned from Sri Lanka to Burma to set up a separate nikdya or ‘fraternity’, the ‘Sinhalese Sangha’, which became the main indigenous monastic tradition. And again in the fifteenth century, the reforming king, Dhammaceti, imported the ordination tradition afresh from Sri Lanka, at the same time unifying the Sangha and establishing a monastic hierarchy.

Theravada probably reached Thailand via the Burmese ‘Sinhalese Sangha’ in the thirteenth century, and with the help of further injections of purity from the Sinhalese tradition gradually overcame the Mahayana and Hindu forms of religion which had preceded it. By the mid-fourteenth century the Sinhala Theravadin orthodoxy was also established in Laos and Cambodia—probably, in the latter case, coming from Thailand and initiating the subsequent close connection between the Buddhism of the two countries.

In Sri Lanka itself the Sangha was in decay during the two centuries of Tamil invasions and civil wars at the beginning of the second millennium, and it was probably during this period that the order of nuns died out. This decline was only halted with the ‘purification’ and unification of the Sangha undertaken by Parakkama Bahu I in 1164/5. He set up a single authority structure for a national Sangha, headed by a monk known as the ‘king of the Sangha’ (Sahghardja), who was aided by two deputies. This kind of political organisation was imitated in Theravada countries in South-east Asia, and in Thailand in particular it was elaborated into the institutionalised hierarchy of offices which is so evident today. The effect of this reform movement was felt in Sri Lanka until the fifteenth century, but thereafter the Sangha suffered an even more serious erosion of standards, so much so that the indigenous ordination tradition was lost, and between the end of the six­teenth century and 1753 it is likely that there were no true monks in Sri Lanka but only those who had taken lower ordination. Again the original export of the Sinhalese ordination tradition came to the rescue, and in 1753 it was re­turned from Thailand, where centuries before it had found its way, via Burma, from Sri Lanka itself. Contemporary nikdyas in Sri Lanka, however, belong to ordination traditions introduced from Burma in the nineteenth century.

From the nineteenth century onwards Buddhism in the Theravada countries has had to face the pressures of colonial rule and the competition of Western ideologies. In Burma, for instance, royal patronage of the Sangha ceased abruptly when the country was incorporated into the British Empire in 1885. And while this did not mean the collapse of Buddhism as such, it did mean that the Sangha lost its organisational struc­ture. In general during the colonial and post-colonial periods individual monks as well as the Sangha became deeply involved in independence and nationalist movements. In this era there has also been the periodic appearance of millenarian sects, especially in Burma, often using the expected imminent arrival of the future Buddha, Maitreya, as their point of focus. Also Western ‘rationalist’ interpretations have been fed back into Theravada cultures, leading to ‘modernist’ movements which reject many traditional Buddhist beliefs and practices. Furthermore, the introduction of Western education and the spread of literacy have caused the Sangha to lose its monopoly of religious authority, and the idea has developed that each person is responsible for his own salvation, and thus for the welfare of the religion in general. Yet thanks to Buddhism’s strong scriptural foundation, there have continued to be ‘fundamentalist’ and reform movements, even among meditators, basing themselves on the revival of scriptural knowledge. On a tragic note, two great Theravada traditions, those in Laos and Cambodia, were brought to an abrupt halt in 1975 when the communists and the Khmer Rouge took over. In Laos the Sangha can now be said at the very least to have lost its traditional influence, while in Cambodia Buddhism was completely destroyed, with most of the monks being murdered. It is obviously too early to say whether these traditions will again be able to revive themselves, or to speculate as to what form such a revival might take.

What was Buddhism’s relation to the pre-Buddhist or ‘folk’ religions it encountered as it spread throughout what are now the Theravada nations of Sri Lanka and South-east Asia? In this respect, it should be remembered that Buddhism originated in the context of another culturally dominant religion, Brahminical Hinduism, and, more generally, in an Indian culture which, like others, held beliefs about demons and spirits as well as about ‘higher’ gods. Thus Hindu gods (devas) and demons have been part of the Buddhist world­view from its inception, and play their part in the Pah Canon. Typically, the merit acquired at Buddhist ceremonies is always subsequently offered to the gods so that they can respond with this-worldly protection. The Buddha never denied the existence of supernatural beings, he simply viewed them as irrelevant to his soteriological system for bringing about the end of suffering. Similarly, the Buddhist view of gods and spirits has continued to be that, while they may be harmful or beneficial with regard to worldly ends, they are ultimately insignificant precisely because they belong to samsara, the world of cause and effect. Thus they are as much subject to the law of karman as human beings. Buddhism, however, is not concerned with worldly ends, its purpose rather being to bring that cycle of samsara to an end. So in all Theravada countries followers of the Buddha have retained non-Buddhist beliefs in spirits and gods. In Burma, for instance, the cults of the Nats (animistic spirits) co-exist naturally with Buddhism, since the concerns of the former are to attain material well-being and to avert danger, while the latter’s interest is in moral purity, future Eves and, ultimately, final release from worldly existence. Such gods and spirits are easily accommodated within the Buddhist cosmic hierarchy, governed by the law of karman, with the Buddha at its apex. Thus while all deities are seen to embody Buddhist values, and remain connected to all other beings, including man, by the law of karman, they, and the practices associated with them (such as possession), are at the same time appropriated to Buddhism with very little change in meaning. In this way Buddhism was able to spread and become a popular religion throughout Sri Lanka and South-east Asia without coming into conflict with indigenous religions. This is not to say that Buddhism, because of its ethical purity, is not itself often used magically as a protection against dangers of the present existence—but that, paradoxically, is precisely because it is not itself concerned with such particular dangers. The real religious conflict, of course, arises between different soteriologies.

So far, I have looked at some of the main themes and events in the history of Theravada Buddhism, and little has been said about Buddhism as it is practised today. The rest of this chapter will therefore provide a sketch of some ‘modem’ practices. This has sometimes been called ‘popular’ Buddhism, but one should beware of what is often implied by such categorisations, namely, that there has been some gradual corruption or decay from a ‘pure’ Buddh­ism, or that Buddhism has become syncretistic. Modern studies have shown that from a very early period Theravada has been nothing if not ‘popular’. The religion practised in the villages of Sri Lanka and South-east Asia until very recently differs very little from what was happening 1,500 years ago, and probably very little from the practice of Buddhism soon after, or perhaps even during, the Buddha’s lifetime. For the overwhelming majority of both laity and monks this accommodation of normative, Theravada doctrine—of the Canonical ideal of renunciation leading to nibbdna (Sanskrit, nirvana)—to the needs of life in the world is what constitutes, and always has constituted, orthodox Theravada Buddhism.

For lay people to define themselves as ‘Buddhist’, it is sufficient for them to declare that they ‘go for refuge’ to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha (the ‘Three Refuges’), and that they will abide by the Five Precepts (not to kill, steal, be unchaste, lie, or take intoxicants). How­ever, in the Buddhist liturgical calendar there are days in the lunar month of intensified observance (uposatha days) when, ideally, a lay person takes the Eight Precepts. These are the basic five, with the modifications that all sexual activity is excluded, that one should not watch entertainments or use adorn­ments, and that one should not use luxurious beds. This is close to lower ordination or novitiate (pabbajjd), which entails taking the Ten Precepts. The latter are the same as the Eight, but abstention from entertainments and adornments are treated as separate precepts, and an injunction against using money is added. To take the Ten Precepts it is not necessary to be ordained; indeed, since the Theravada order of nuns is extinct, following these precepts is formally the closest that women can come to ordination. Nevertheless, there are some women who behave very much as nuns might, leading ascetic lives, either in religious communities or alone, but without the same recogni­tion that monks enjoy. A novice (sdmanera) can enter the order at about the age of seven, and can go on to take higher ordination and thus become a monk (bhikkhu) at twenty. Although monks are always free to leave the Order, ordination in Sri Lanka is assumed to be for life. In other Theravada countries, however, there is a far more flexible system of temporary ordina­tion. And perhaps the majority of the male population in these countries has spent at least some time, however short, as a novice.

In theory, the single aim of Buddhist practice is to attainnibbdna, the extinction of desire and so the end to re-birth and suffering. Classically, this goal is attained by progressing via moral purity, self-restraint and the practice of meditation, to the achievement of wisdom, a path which only the monk or nun can hope to tread successfully. In practice, however, nibbdna has proved to be too remote, too difficult either to understand or to achieve, and thereby simply too unattractive as an immediate religious goal for the vast majority. Beyond that, the Buddhist teaching that existence is ‘unsatisfactory’ or ‘suffering’ (dukkha) is evidently only partially or intellec­tually accepted by most people: they can see or imagine states of wealth and power where suffering is outweighed by happiness and pleasure, and those states, however impermanent, still seem desirable. So the ideal goal becomes not nibbdna but a better re-birth, if possible as a god in heaven, or at worst in an improved station on earth. Lip-service is still paid to nibbdna as the ultimate goal, but it has been indefinitely postponed. Some day one may be in a position both to merit and to understand it; until then it is better to proceed by stages. Interacting with this attitude, there is the widespread popular belief that Buddhism has declined so far that it is no longer possible for men to attain nibbdna.

How then is one to achieve the modified goal of a better re-birth? The answer is through the acquisition of merit (Pali, puhha), and virtually all Buddhist religious practice, whether by laity or monks, has merit as its aim. Moreover, such merit-making is perceived as being quite compatible with doctrine, since it all contributes towards nibbdna in the end. It also develops psychological states, such as feelings of peace, happiness and generosity, which are in themselves mentally purifying and thus steps along the road to nibbdna. What is merit and how does one go about attaining it? Simply, merit is the ‘karmic’ recompense for good deeds which produces a better re-birth: the more merit acquired the better the re-birth. Bad action, particularly action which violates the Buddhist moral precepts, produces demerit and thus karmic retribution in the form of a worse re-birth. As understood by the unsophisticated, merit is therefore a kind of intangible spiritual ‘currency’ which can be reckoned and ‘transferred’, and which increases in proportion to the amount ‘invested’. There is a well-known but uncanonical Pah verse list of ‘Ten Good Deeds’ which includes all the possible ways of earning merit: generosity, observing the precepts, medita­tion, transferring merit, empathising with merit, serving (one’s elders), showing respect, preaching, listening to preaching, and holding right beliefs. The inclusion of the moral precepts in this list is, of course, a nod towards the Canon, but following them is seen principally as a way of avoiding demerit; the only way to feel certain that one is actually acquiring and increasing merit itself is to take action. The most rewarding merit-making activity is generos­ity (dana). Principally, this means giving food and other goods to monks in exchange for religious services, chiefly preaching, presiding at funerals and the chanting ofparitta texts (see below). Because the Sangha follows and disseminates the Buddha’s doctrine (Dhamma), it is considered to be ‘the supreme field in which to sow merit’, the most worthy recipient of respect and donations. This, of course, runs counter to the usual reading of Buddhist ethics—that karmically it is the intention of the actor which counts in any particular deed. Here the amount of merit acquired is in direct proportion to the perceived spiritual worthiness of the recipient. There is a Burmese saying that feeding a hundred dogs is the equivalent in merit of feeding one human being, feeding a hundred laymen the equivalent of feeding one novice, feeding a hundred novices the equivalent of feeding an ordinary monk, and so on. In other words, merit-making requires the co-operation of both laity and monks, and from the layman’s point of view the most important function of the Sangha is to provide him with the opportunity to make merit by giving, not only through daily alms but also through the monastic feeding cere­monies that accompany every important public event. Thus the everyday relationship between the Sangha and the lay population is typified by the invitation to monks to take part in various rituals where they can, as it were, become both the ‘targets’ for extensive generosity and the generators of further merit. This is clearly a long way from the ideal of the monk as world-renouncer. Ideally, the monks’ major religious activities are limited to obeying the Discipline and studying the scriptures; in practice, however, most monks spend most of their time performing merit-making rituals for laymen. Yet since few monks consider nibbdna to be a realistic goal, such activity is in fact beneficial for them as well, for preaching and propagating the Dhamtna is one of the ways in which they acquire merit and thus the chance of a better re-birth. This is a spiritual economy in which both parties benefit and the store of merit goes on increasing.

Nearly all public Buddhist acts are seen as occasions for mutual merit-making: the laity feed the monks, and the monks recipro­cate by ‘preaching’. This may take the form of sermons, or readings from texts. Traditionally, the main content of sermons is derived from the Jataka collection and in particular from its preface, the Nidanakathd, which is the principal Theravadin source for the Buddha’s biography. Another popular source is the commentary on the Dhammapada. The most distinctive form of preaching, however, is the formalised and often lengthy recitation of Pah scriptures known asparitta, literally ‘protection’ texts. These are essentially a magical means of bringing good luck, of improving one’s health and wealth. Similarly, after every public Buddhist ceremony the merit acquired is offered to the gods so that they can reciprocate by helping in the worldly realm which is their proper sphere of influence. How merit can be ‘transferred’ or ‘shared’ in this way requires some explanation. The original context for transferring merit is probably the funerary ritual. This, quite remarkably when one considers other religions, is the only ‘life-crisis ritual’ at which Buddhist monks officiate (albeit simply as preachers), and thus it is the only such ritual officially sanctified by Buddhism. A week after the death the monks are formally fed, again three months later, and thereafter at annual commemora­tive rites. And it is on these occasions that the merit, which goes in the first place to the donor, is ritually ‘transferred’ to the dead person. According to the normative theory of karman this should be impossible: the responsibility for an individual’s fate lies in his own hands—strictly speaking, in his inten­tion or volition, which alone decides the karmic quality of his thoughts and actions, and thus settles his future. However, it is clear that people have a pressing emotional need to do something for their dead relatives, and if that contradicts the law ofkarman they are quite happy to ignore or leave unfor­mulated that contradition. In fact the more sophisticated, especially the monks, have developed a subtle and complex justification for the ‘transfer of merit’ based on the doctrine that the moral weight of an action lies in its intention. The donor can intend to transfer his merit to somebody else (a god or a dead relative) and so, without actually losing any, acquire more. Simi­larly, the intended ‘recipient’ is given the chance to applaud or empathise with the intention of the ‘donor’ to share his merit, and thus the ‘recipient’ too can perform an action (i.e. have an intention) which makes merit. Such a rationale is clearly strained, but the whole question of merit and its transfer draws attention to another area in which there has been a shift in the percep­tion of a classical Buddhist teaching, namely, the doctrine of ‘no-self’ (anattd). Clearly, if a man is concerned that he should have a good re-birth, and believes that his dead relatives can have merit transferred to them, then he can hardly feel in any deep sense that an individual has no lasting personality and that the only continuity between this existence and the next one is karmic. The abiding wish for the survival of some personal essence after death cancels out the counter-intuitive doctrine of ‘no-self’, even when lip-service is paid to it. (The question of whether many people really under­stand this difficult doctrine is a related but somewhat different one.) This, no doubt, is also one of the reasons why nibbdna, the state which requires that the ‘selflessness’ of the person should be fully realised, remains a deferred ideal.

In addition to those mentioned above, a number of other Buddhist practices, all connected with devotion, can be seen as oppor­tunities to produce material welfare through the transfer of merit. However, the best motive for acts of devotion is said to be that they are part of that complex of mental training which constitutes the Buddhist path: in so far as they calm the mind they produce spiritual welfare. From very early in Theravada history the related practices of building stupas, going on pilgrim­ages, and worshipping relics have been commonplace. Indeed, these three activities as well as the transfer of merit have canonical authorisation (in the Mahaparinibbdna Sutta). Stupas originated as burial mounds for the Buddha’s relics. They proliferated under the belief that all enlightened beings were entitled to such tombs, eventually even all Theravadin monks. However, only stupas said to contain the relics of a Buddha are worshipped. The relic may be something like a piece of bone, or it may be a part of the Buddha’s ‘Dharma-body’, i.e. a part of scripture. Stupas are thus, in one sense, ‘remin­ders’ of the Buddha; and by a relatively late classification relics were divided into body relics (such as bone, teeth or hair), objects used by the Buddha (such as begging bowls, but also the Bo tree under which he attained enlightenment) and places associated with his life, and ‘reminder relics’, which included statues. In one way, all sacred objects are reminders to devotees of the (dead) Buddha, bringing them psychologically that much closer to him. Pilgrimage, which is by no means an obligation for Buddhists, is mainly to stupas and sites associated either with the historical Buddha or with one of the many Buddhas who are supposed to have preceded him. Such sites, supported by various myths concerning miraculous visits from Gotama Buddha, exist in all Theravada countries. Thus it is chiefly by the doctrine of relics that Buddhist worship and the practices associated with it are justified. Yet worship remains an individual and simple affair, one in which flowers or incense are offered before a Buddha image, and some Pali verses recited, very much in accordance with its stated function as a way of purifying the mind. To put this in more general terms, while the Buddha himself is the principal object of religious emotion and the focus of devotion, it is the monks who, as ‘sons of the Buddha’ and living exemplars of Buddhist ideals, receive the greatest veneration. Thus the very reason for the existence of a village temple, for instance, is that it is the residence of at least one monk.

Throughout the history of Theravada the great majority of laity and monks have practised their religion in the ways outlined above—pursuing various devotional practices and making merit for them­selves and others. There have, however, certainly intermittently and perhaps always, been some monks who have concentrated entirely on the ideal practices of meditation and asceticism, and so followed the path to nibbana. The tradition is probably not an unbroken one. However remote the hermit­age, its monks are still dependent on the laity for food, and such is the veneration in which meditating monks are held, and so great is the potential merit to be gained from giving to them, that they are constantly in danger of being drawn back into ‘village’ activities, i.e. into the monastic norm of preaching and teaching. In one case in modem Sri Lanka it is necessary to ‘book’ a year in advance to give a group of forest-dwelling meditators a meal, so great is the demand. It is likely that a pattern was established from a relatively early date in Theravada history whereby monks setting themselves up as meditators had to revive the tradition from written sources rather than from any living master. The classical source is Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhi- tnagga. There, meditation (bhavana) is described in terms of moral and mental self-discipline, the total cultivation of the individual which results in wisdom (patina). That purification which leads to and is synonymous with nibbana is the objective, and it is renunciation which is seen as the height of moral purity. When it actually comes to ‘sitting in meditation’, two techniques are prescribed: meditations for ‘tranquillity’ (samatha), and ‘insight meditation’ (vipassand), the distinctively Theravadin form. One proceeds from the first to the second, the aim of the latter being to realise in one’s own experience the psychological reality of the Buddhist doctrine that all things are imperma­nent, unsatisfactory, and that there is no self. Realising this truth, desire is discarded and nibbana achieved. Hermitage revival movements in the twen­tieth century have also depended on Buddhagosa; however, there have been a number of new developments, some of them heterodox, notably the teach­ing of‘insight’ meditation to laymen and the setting up of meditation centres.

The meditating monks who live in the forests attempt to act by the Buddha’s moral code and embody the ideals expressed in his doctrine in their own ways of life. In a sense, by purifying themselves they purify the entire Sangha, turning it back towards its ideal past. And throughout the history of Theravada Buddhism, it is the Sangha that has in turn provided the rest of the population with an ideal of civilised behaviour, an ideal which is encapsulated in the Visuddhimagga’s prescription to meditators: that a man should first of all wish himself well, but then he should go on and do the same for others.

Further Reading

Bechert, H. and Gombrich, R.F. (eds.) The World of Buddhism (Thames & Hudson, London, 1984)

Carrithers, M. The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983)

Gombrich, R.F. Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971)

----- Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1988)

Spiro, M.E. Buddhism and Society, A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes (Uni­versity of California Press, Berkeley, 1982)