The Begging Bowl

Buddhist monks, in practicing their call to holiness, rely upon the alms of the lay faithful to provide them with food, clothes, and other needs. Often, these alms come in exchange for spiritual services the monks perform for the laity such as weddings and funerals. The posture a monk observes when receiving alms is holding the empty bowl in hand so that the almsgiver may place the alms in the bowl. However, when a monk turns the begging bowl upside down, rendering the possibility of giving alms impossible, the monk is withdrawing consent from the the spiritual practice of the community.

In Burma, the upside down bowl became a powerful symbolic action in response to the military junta's repression of the pro-democracy movement. In a devoutly Buddhist country, the withdrawal of the monk's begging bowl represents the denunciation of the systemic violence and oppression of the country's military leaders.

14 December 2007

Nonviolence in Action

Nonviolence is all about, at least at some level, the body politics. I want to do justice to the ethos of understanding nonviolence through sacrifice, but first, I have a story a friend told me:

There was a conference on the individual response to the war in Iraq that got a bit out of hand. A number of different perspectives on how to deal with such responses clashed and chaos ensued. Names were called and violence was threatened. A man and woman were in each others' faces yelling, calling names, etc. My friend threw his body between the two to break the tension, create a space between the building violence, and tried to engage the two in discussion (no luck though). Nonetheless, the body politic essentially forced a space for nonviolence to disrupt a moment of potential violence between people. Well done, friend.
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