{"id":224,"date":"2014-10-05T16:26:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T20:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/?p=224"},"modified":"2014-10-06T14:40:40","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T18:40:40","slug":"bad-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/2014\/10\/05\/bad-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pindabaat.thailand<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every day, around Bangkok, among other places in the Therav\u0101da world, lay people give gifts to monks. During the spring semester, when taking my son to his school in western Bangkok, I would see groups of monks from the wat<\/em> just down the road. These monks walk barefoot (!) around the neighborhood, stopping to receive an offering when people proffered them. Monks would often stop by the bus stop, which was a de facto market where people would buy breakfast, and perhaps make merit. (One established market I biked by every day in Chiang Mai advertised itself in the following way: \u201cMake<\/a> Merit! Fill a monk\u2019s bowl! Buy things! Fresh and Safe!\u201d). Others seemed to have set rounds of houses. There was one monk who I would see standing outside of a house waiting. Normally, the lay people are supposed to wait for the monk, but the occupant of the house was an older woman who could not move quickly. So the monk waited for her, knowing that she liked to make merit most mornings. Normally, lay people give monks (and novices) food at these times, and indeed most of what is given to monks are among the \u201crequisites\u201d that they need for their well-being: food, daily use articles like shavers, pens and paper or books for education, medicine. Less frequently, monks are given new robes, or a begging bowl. Occasionally, though they are given less appropriate things; they are given \u201cbad gifts.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week, I am going to give a paper on \u201cbad gifts\u201d at a conference called \u201cThe Ethics of Religious Giving<\/a>: Historical and Ethnographic Explorations,\u201d at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. \u201cBad gifts\u201d are things given to monks that are seen as inappropriate. My research for this paper comes from watching and talking with monks and novices in Thailand and Sipsongpann\u0101<\/a>, a Therav\u0101da Buddhist minority region in southwest China over the last twenty years. While I can\u2019t discuss everything I say in the paper, there are a few points that I found interesting and worth highlighting here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is a bad gift?<\/strong> At first, I thought this would be a straightforward issue to address. A bad gift is something that Therav\u0101da monastics should not have. Obvious choices for this would be alcohol which the most basic precepts in Buddhism forbid or a gun, which as one monk I spoke with noted \u201ccan only be used to kill.\u201d However, there is a surprising amount of difference in what would count as a \u201cbad gift,\u201d depending on who you talk to, the area and how the question is framed. For example, in Thailand monks and novices are forbidden from driving cars and motorcycles and bicycles, but in Sipsongpanna in China, they do drive and ride and at least until recently, a bicycle would be offered by relatives or neighbors when a boy ordains as a novice. In other words, a bicycle is a bad gift in Thailand, but not in China. And of course bicycles are not in the vinaya<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What does inappropriate mean?<\/strong> Another question emerges from the way I framed the problem above. If bad gifts are things that are seen as \u201cinappropriate,\u201d what does this mean? Obviously, these would be things that someone says monks shouldn\u2019t have, and presumably this would be because the vinaya<\/em> says they shouldn\u2019t. Monks can\u2019t drink alcohol according to the vinaya <\/em>and so beer is not good (though it\u2019s worth noting, I have seen people give alcohol to temples, and monks accept them and have to figure out what to do with this gift). My phrasing comes not from the vinaya <\/em>but from what Thai monks in particular have said to me when I asked them about bad gifts. They tended to say one of two things: that a given gift or thing is \u201cnot appropriate\u201d (mai somkhuan<\/em>) or \u201cunattractive\u201d (mai suay<\/em>). The second is particularly striking, because it highlights how monks are often seen\/understood as figures who are models for the lay folk. If one were to give cigarettes to a monk, which is not quite forbidden in Thailand, but not encouraged, this would encourage monks to do something that is \u201cunattractive.\u201d Again, this is different in Sipsongpann\u0101, which has been shaped by the cultures of China (where smoking is more common) as well as the Therav\u0101da cultures spread through mainland Southeast Asia. In Sipsongpann\u0101 giving cigarettes is not seen as inappropriate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who decides?<\/strong> For me, this is perhaps the most interesting point. When talking about Buddhist morality, scholars of Buddhism, monks, and lay folk have collectively tended to emphasize the importance of the vinaya<\/em>, the disciplinary codes of Buddhism. The vinaya<\/em> is held up as the authority, even when people are not really paying attention to the vinaya<\/em>. In fact, part of what seems to be taking place is that at least at the margins, what counts as bad gifts are things that lay people decide are inappropriate or unattractive. As monks will tell you, often with a laugh, bicycles, smart phones and cigarettes are not in the vinaya <\/em>(though as they also say betel is). As a result, people need to think analogically about what works and what doesn\u2019t. I argue in the paper that despite being \u201cbelow\u201d monks in the religious hierarchy, it is lay people, in conversation with monks, and the vinaya<\/em> and government authorities, that decide what counts as a good or a bad gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every day, around Bangkok, among other places in the Therav\u0101da world, lay people give gifts to monks. During the spring semester, when taking my son to his school in western Bangkok, I would see groups of monks from the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[109863],"tags":[579,119368],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-blog","tag-research","tag-thailand"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4woDM-3C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/religion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}