“clericalization” of retreat practice
IV.4. A “cultural diversity”
The post-Mao revival in Khams has arisen against the backdrop of major political restructuring in greater China. The “Economic Reforms and Openness” (Gaige kaifang) liberalization, the original factor that opened the prospects for a religious and cultural revival, also created the necessary conditions on the economic plane. Since 1978, agriculture is no longer organized into state-bound collectives and independent economic initiative is now permitted. Therefore, many pastoralists have seized the new commercial opportunities that lie in the exploitation of natural resources, such as increased amassing of curative plants and fungi. Originally a survival strategy of adaptation to the transforming reality and to China’s mainland markets, the demand for those natural commodities has had a great deal of impact
304 Compare Makley 2008: 113-133.
305 Kolås & Thowsen 2005: 54-5.
306 Compare Kolås & Thowsen 2005.
on the life in both nomadic and sedentary communities.307 The economic surplus created in rural areas of Eastern Tibet through the collection of Cordyceps sinensis (dbyar rtswa dgun
’bu) has become an important financial factor supporting the present religious revival.
Within this politico-economic dynamic that enables the Tibetan invigoration lies the multitude of religious and cultural phenomena revived and renegotiated today. As Appadurai asserts, in a post-traumatic situation, when the processes of renewed cultural production take place within and among societies, cultural diversity is born:
Cultural diversity enriches the pool of visions which mediate the relationships between meaningful pasts and desirable futures.308
It may be that this quote best illustrates revival in a politically independent region. In fact, Khams pa Tibetans are putting effort into reestablishing their pasts as a meaningful answer to the official version preached by the state and more importantly, into reasserting their cultural identity while being compelled to limit their visions of the future within the rigid frames of state discourse and its minority policies. However, both traditional and new forms of diversity within Eastern Tibet seem to affect the current revival in different ways. The constructive and counter-productive play of these factors will be discussed as follows.
IV.4.1. Diversity as enrichment and a source of conflict
The culture of Khams had been heterogeneous already prior to the arrival of the People’s Liberation Army. The area was composed of smaller kingdoms of a differing level of autonomy or independence from Central Tibet and China. Moreover, their decentralized political context encouraged the development of diverse religious schools and lineages, local customs, social attitudes as well as miscellaneous crafts. Today, as these differences are being brought back to life again, the non-monolithic reality of pre-modern Khams has become even more pronounced in the multiplicity of visions which may coexist or compete. Here, conservative voices are mixed with those of the modernists or reformers, and different agents of the revival might have various expectations, as well as diverse interests.309 The local, supra-local and global influences are also blended into a new concoction. All of those factors
307 Manderscheid 2002, compare also: Kunga Tsering 2007.
308 Vettori 2006: 143 and Appadurai 2002: 9-15.
309 For the traditionalist-versus-modernists debate among intellectuals in contemporary A mdo see Hartley (2002) who brings up the problem of defining the “Tibetan tradition”; while modernists are trying to cope with the internal and external pressures, many A mdo ba intellectuals have also raised critical voices in this debate.
There are also monastic voices from Eastern Tibet that promote modernity: among others that of mKhan po ’Jigs med phun tshogs, an important revivalist and hermit, who proposes more education plus maintenance of traditional customs, including dress and language.
condition one another, contributing to the changing reality of Khams, whose culture has not simply reappeared, but as Goldstein asserts, is subject to ongoing transformation.310
How does the diversity mentioned above “enrich the pool of visions” as appealed by Appadurai? Prior to 1978, Beijing’s nationalities policy did not allow for cultural divergences in favor of a unity upheld by communalism and a standardized state ideology. Since the ground-breaking congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1978, multiple visions for the future are allowed to be present, even if their scope is curbed by the Party-state.
In Khams, these visions coexist in various manners. They may cooperate, generating the cultural productivity mentioned by Appadurai – or they may compete. On the one hand this pluralism reinforces the importance of local discourse, which could be set against centralized state control and the standardization of culture under the leadership of the Han.311 On the other, cooperation is able to reconstruct old realities in a new way. Thus, reforms of traditional systems can be carried out or niches can be opened to incorporate the previously excluded voices.
Multiplicity of styles is summoned in order to help maintain the habitual structure of the Tibetan world, as Kapstein has it.312 Even if in the past, these differences would have been sources of conflicts, reviving local, sectarian and other differences in a new framework recreates the larger context of “a broader Tibetan identity.”313 From the perspective of cultural diversity, the combined variety of religious trends reinstalled today constitute a factor in the revival of traditional identities, which can be resumed to contest the bodiless, but omnipresent power of the state.
The cooperation of these particular identities furthermore contributes to the revival of a universal uniqueness of Buddhist theory and practice, which not only resembles the non-sectarian movement of 19th-century Khams but is also a conscious allusion to its legacy.
Through its persistence and popularity until the Chinese communist occupation, the network of ritual and social meanings that I referred to as Ris med has come to represent Eastern Tibetan religious tradition. Ris med is also especially emphasized today within the context of the new non-sectarian cooperation.314
310 Goldstein 1998: 11 and Kapstein 1998: 118-119.
311 Compare Smith 1994: 54 and Epstein & Wenbin 1998: 138.
312 Kapstein 1998: 145.
313 Kapstein 1998: 145.
314 Compare Germano 1998: 75. I have also witnessed an area where the idea of “Ris med” descends to the level of reconstructing local history; thus in today’s Khams, the non-sectarian legacy can come to represent very different phenomena.
Other revivalist trends observable today also reflect Wallace’s concept of regeneration as an endeavor “to construct a more satisfying culture.”315 It seems that reviving Buddhism since the destruction of the Cultural Revolution involves a certain degree of reformist activities, as today’s minorities within the Tibetan minority – such as women practitioners or lineages previously absorbed by larger schools – began to speak with their own, transformed voices.316 These “reforms” are not always completely conscious acts, as Wallace’s definition suggests.
In her analysis of the role of Tibetan nuns, Hanna Havnevik has identified the Tibetan revivalist efforts as rather involuntary or subliminal, as has Mona Schrempf in her study of the ethno-religious revival in A mdo.317 Whether these changes are in fact expressions of the deep transformations that Tibetan societies have undergone over the last decades or to what degree deliberate actions are involved, is not the point of this discussion.
The Tibetan revival also involves factors that had not been a part of the pre-modern society.
Among the many supra-local influences, the most significant agents are members of the Han intellectual elite, exiled Tibetans and representatives of the global network of Buddhist centers. This renders the Tibetan revival far less encapsulated in the inner politics in the PRC as one might suppose.