Kate Crosby: "Buddhist Heresy and Malpractice Trials in Myanmar"

Abstract:

From the early 1980s until now – with a brief pause during the recent quasi-democratic period – Myanmar's seniormost committee of Buddhist monks has organised trials to try monks, nun(!) and lay people of non-vinaya and non-dharma. Initiated by accusations submitted to the committee and assessed by five of the most learned monks in the land, these trials have serious consequences, including lengthy prison terms. Most of the accusations relate to matters that would be considered perfectly fine within global Buddhism (a lack of adherence to traditional cosmology or teaching meditation without close compliance to Abhidhamma, for example), other matters might be considered too obscure (the exact definition of a village for tax purposes) or simply wrong (the law that to be a fully ordained nun is to commit the crime of impersonating a monk). This talk will examine how these trials came about and some of the most famous cases.

Bio:

Kate Crosby is the Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Oxford.  She has previously held posts at Edinburgh, Lancaster, Cardiff, SOAS, and King’s College, London. She works on Sanskrit, Pali and Pali-vernacular literature, on Theravada practice in the pre-modern and modern periods, and on Buddhist ethics, including through a collaboration on Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Her books include The Bodhicaryavatara; The Dead of Night & The Women; and Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, Identity, Traditional Thearvada Meditation and its Modern Era Suppression and Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten Meditation Tradition of Southeast Asia.