糖心破解版

When you hear the word “ordination” or “renunciation,” what kind of image comes to mind? You might imagine someone leaving behind the roles of family or occupation to pursue a quiet life of spiritual discipline. This book focuses on the Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code that prescribes the conduct of monks, and explores how this code shapes monastic life in contemporary Myanmar while also showing how it functions as a social and political institution. In other words, this ethnography traces the ways in which the Vinaya is lived, interpreted, and institutionalized in relation to society and the state.
 
In reality, monks are never completely cut off from the world. Monasteries depend on laypeople’s donations and are deeply entangled with state policies. Therefore, the relationship among monks, lay supporters, and the state fundamentally determines the character of the monastic institution. I call this relational framework “monasticism,” and through long-term fieldwork in Myanmar, I investigate how it operates in practice.
 
This book analyzes monasticism in Myanmar from three perspectives. Part I (macro level) reviews the historical background from the 11th century to the present, demonstrating how the Vinaya and Buddhist chronicles codified the relationship between monastic communities and royal authority. Part II (meso level) focuses on urban monasteries in contemporary Yangon, illustrating how the rules of the Vinaya shape the management of property, the life courses of monks, the formation of sects, and the connections between monasteries and urban society. Part III (micro-level) focuses on two “forest monasteries” located on the outskirts of Yangon.  Here, drawing on my own experience of temporary ordination, I analyze attempts by monks to live in strict accordance with the Vinaya, both by radically distancing themselves from society and by entrusting the administration of their monasteries to lay committees. In the conclusion, I propose a new research framework —the “anthropology of scriptures”— which focuses on the ways in which canonical texts and social practices mutually constitute each other.
 
The originality of this study lies in four main contributions. First, long-term ethnographies of contemporary Burmese monasteries are extremely rare, making this work one of the first major contributions since those of Spiro (1970) and Mendelson (1975). Second, while Buddhist studies have often been text-centered, and anthropology has focused primarily on lay practices, this book highlights the lived realities of monks, thereby bridging a disciplinary gap. Third, it demonstrates that the governance of monasteries is inseparable from the governance of society and the state, and thus redefines religion as a mechanism that organizes social life. Fourth, it brings insights from Japanese scholarship into dialogue with international academic debates, thereby expanding the scope of global Buddhist and anthropological studies.
 
I hope that this book will help readers understand that religion. It is also a powerful institution that shapes how people live and how societies are ordered. By closely studiying monasteries, we can observe how religion and society interact to generate new forms of order. I would be delighted if this book encourages readers to discover the excitement of thinking about society through the lens of “scripture” and “institution.”
 

(Written by KURAMOTO Ryosuke, Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia / 2025)