FOREST RECOLLECTIONS: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand By Kamala Tiyavanich

BOOK REVIEW - Wandering into history.
981 words
10 January 2004
Bangkok Post
3
English
(c) 2004

Forest monks go from reviled to revered

Chris Baker

FOREST RECOLLECTIONS: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand By Kamala Tiyavanich Silkworm Books, 495 baht

The story of the Northeastern forest monks is one of the most remarkable and illuminating themes in modern Thai history. The personal chronicles of this small handful of men wandering in the forests are fascinating in themselves. But more remarkable still is the way these monks wander through the great changes of modern Thai history - the creation of a centralised state, the growth of modern urban society, the political transition from absolute monarchy to competitive democracy, and the transformation of the landscape from wilderness for agricultural areas.

Most of these religious wanderers were farmers' sons who grew up around the turn of the century when the Northeast was still remote, thickly forested, and closer to Lao traditions than to the culture of Bangkok. Little by little, the Northeast was being drawn into the new centralised administration, and the monkhood was being standardised and centralised under the 1902 Sangha Act.

But these young monks decided to buck the religious establishment. They rejected the book-learning, exam-passing and hierarchy-climbing of the reformed Sangha in favour of learning through meditation and the self-awareness that comes from hardship. They chose to wander in the forests rather than sit in the library. The Sangha repaid their rejection in kind. It derided them as country bumpkins and said their path was not proper Buddhism.

It also made fun of their interest in meditation: "Buddhism would not survive if all monks sat and closed their eyes."

Half a century later, these same forest monks had become pillars of the country. They received the patronage of the royal family, high-ranking officials, and big businessmen. Some were lodged in monasteries specially built for them in the heart of the capital. Their cremation ceremonies were grand and public affairs, while their pictures and amulets became part of urban religious commerce. The unofficial leader of the group (Acharn Man Purithat) was heralded as an arahant, or Buddhist saint.

This transformation was complex.

First, the growth of democratic politics from the 1930s onwards undermined the dominance of the Thammayut order, because the elders now needed the forest monks as allies in the now competitive Sangha politics, and as agents to spread monastic Buddhism in the Northeast.

Second, the Cold War period gave their spirituality a political meaning. They were first evicted from the forests as suspected allies of the communists, then adopted as the focus of a spiritual resurgence to oppose communist values. Around this time, they first attracted the elite patronage that made them famous.

Third, the growth of urban areas brought about changes in Buddhism. In particular, the growing interest in religion among city-dwellers has made meditation popular, and has placed a premium on the special expertise developed by the forest monks. The media has also made prominent monks into celebrities.

Even as they made the slow move from the fringes to the frontlines of popular culture, the base from which they started was being destroyed. The forests in which they wandered were cut down. The tigers and elephants that tested their ability to conquer fear were decimated. The caves where they had meditated became tourist attractions. And the forest village communities where they spent the rainy season retreats were transformed by roads, migration, television and urban influence. In 1987, monks were officially banned from wandering in the forest. Thus they could no longer walk the path that brought them into the limelight to begin with.

The monks' tale is a very big study. Kamala Tiyavanich's book is the third major study in English, and somehow none is able to do justice to the complexity and resonance of the story. Stanley Tambiah (The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets) buried the Northeastern monks under his own grand theory of Buddhist cosmogony. Jim Taylor (Forest Monks and the Nation-State) lost them in a flood of social-science jargon.

Kamala's study has the advantage of being lucidly written, human and passionate. It starts very well. She shows that provincial Buddhism before the 1902 Act was very varied, very local, and very much an active part of these communities. Monks worked, played Songkran, rowed racing boats, acted as community leaders, and preached using folk tales in the local idiom.

Kamala also provides a graphic account of the experience of the forest monks, based on their published biographies. They confront tigers, elephants and snakes; survive jungle fevers; search for caves; test their concentration in charnel grounds; resist the temptations of women.

But when she begins to trace the complex history of the monks' relations with the outside world, her narrative meanders like the tracks of someone lost in the jungle.

In the final two chapters, Kamala argues strongly for the de-bureaucratisation and de-centralisation of the Sangha. She points out that the centralised, bureaucratic, doctrine-focused, hierarchical Buddhism stemming from the 1902 Act is too often seen as "real" or "traditional" Buddhism, while all other practices are portrayed as marginal or heretical. But, she contends, "today's hierarchical and bureaucratic national Sangha is, in terms of the cultural histories of ethnic groups in Siam, an aberration."

She advocates revival of the diversity of local Buddhist practice; more respect for the tradition of self-realisation through experience rather than book-learning; a return to the role of monks as community leaders; more emphasis on meditation; more drama and relevance in Buddhist teaching; and a greater role for women.

The Northeastern forest tradition may be dead, buried by middle-class patronage and destruction of the forests. But Kamala still manages to extract a message for the living from their story: Buddhism has to be removed from the state's clutches and returned to the community.