This essay presents a general and critical historical survey of the Burmese Buddhist alms-boycott (pattanikujjana) between 1990 and 2007. It details the Pāli textual and ethical constitution of the boycott and its instantiation in modern Burmese history, particularly the Saffron Revolution of 2007. It also suggests a metaethical reading that considers Buddhist metaphysics as constitutive of that conflict. Non-violent resistance is contextualized as a soteriologically transcendent (“nibbanic”) project in the common life of believing Buddhists—even those who, military regime and martyred monastics alike, defend a fidelity to Theravāda Buddhism from dual divides of a political and humanistic fence. Presented to the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS) conference, Taiwan, June 20-25, 2011. First published in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, April, 2012: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/2012/04/16/the-burmese-alms-boycott/
Archive for April, 2012
The Burmese Alms-Boycott: Theory and Practice of the Pattanikujjana in Buddhist Non-Violent Resistance
Posted in Buddhist philosophical, Burma material, essay on April 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Before Dawn, Dharamsala
Posted in poetry on April 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Not to have found, or lost
Anything. The hours in burlap
improvised tents we sit in through darkness
games & joke & out-of-tune guitar to
draw the breath closer in the same
close skin we all crave. Sunil
never gives sign of seeing himself
from a distance all night serving big brown
Germans dhal, rice & tea, his third thumb
corkscrewing out of his wrist birth-wonder
we abort in the West.
Orion flexing above dogs fighting in mud
madness is real and I’m not sure
what’s worse getting drunk on Indian whiskey
or waiting for the earthquake already long due.
Only raving Irish Baba tries to make it for real
comes down to town to recruit fools like me
help him drag supplies up high for the winter
another five-thousand feet, at snowline
immured in a cave, sunset, stark mad in his
dead-ordinary stark sane mind. Milarepa
turned nettle-green Shiva was blue
and Baba is Hep. A yellow the rest
of us lonely & trying hooked on distances
on vertical time on all reasonable dharmas
though the opium is crude it’s cheaper than love
& his useless loose thumb is the most perfect
thing there is. In the morning we can expect
the eight cold hells and rituals of cobbled shame
giving out rupees lusts & forgetfulness
knowing there is no time that nothing
taken nothing gained is the only
slow sure road out of town.
Dharamsala, January, 2001
whispered lineage 