Age of Faith and the Age of Reason: Are we witnessing a new historical period among Himalayan Buddhists?
Recently I read Annabella Pitkin’s insightful article on “The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power” published in Himalaya.[1] While her article focused on three Tibetan Buddhist teacher’s perspectives on interpreting oral histories of yogic power revealed by one Tibetan master from the mid-20th century, their critical evaluation of the current era of Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas resounds with much of the research that I engaged in among Ladakhi Buddhist youth in India. While the monk’s perspectives were perhaps more invested in maintaining the importance of faith in the Buddhist tradition, they came with a lucid understanding of lay Buddhists’ access to and interest in knowledge about Buddhism and Buddhist practices. Within my conversations with lay Ladakhi Buddhist youth, especially those who migrated away from Ladakh to pursue a higher education, they frequently emphasized the importance of knowing Buddhism over believing in Buddhism. As one interlocutor commented, “The parents are practicing more, but students are knowing more.” For many Ladakhi Buddhist youth who have undergone training in a modern education system, the importance of correlating reason, logic and science with the practices and understandings of Buddhism was deemed highly important in order to adjust Buddhism to become more relevant to their 21st century lives (Williams-Oerberg 2014, 2017).
In interviewing Ladakhi Buddhist youth about their practices and understandings related to Buddhism, a picture quickly developed of a generational divide between parents and students in which students understand the ways in which their parents practice Buddhism as based on ‘blind faith’ and ‘superstition’, while students prefer to “know” more: to know why it is that certain ritual practices are performed; what are the benefits of engaging in these practices; and how these practices might help them in their daily lives. As these students are pursuing an English-medium modern education, their English skills are strong enough that they prefer to learn about Buddhism from English sources. And with the dispersion of knowledge about Buddhism being printed and disseminated through Internet sources, youth have gained access to Buddhist sources which their parents did not have access to even a couple decades ago. This point was also raised by Pitkin in her article, in which she writes how within a context of new educational institutions in the post-1959 world, there is a “greater lay participation in Buddhist life and new engagements with forms of Buddhist identity” (ibid. 108). This I also find to be relevant in relation to Ladakhi Buddhist youth- they were much more engaged in Buddhist life than typically assumed by the elder generations, especially in relation to pondering over the importance of identifying as a Buddhist as a religious and ethnic minority in India (see Williams-Oerberg 2014, 2015, 2017).
However, while it seemed at times to be a neat generational divide between parents who believe and practice more, and students who know more, this generational gap did not hold when, for example, I interviewed an 85-year-old Ladakhi Buddhist in Leh, Ladakh. This elderly man also stressed the importance of knowing Buddhism over practicing ritual and believing in these rituals based on ‘blind faith’ and ‘superstition’. He also related how he relies on reading books in English about Buddhism and his primary form of Buddhist practice is vipassana meditation rather than daily rituals.[2] His comments initially confounded me – here he was stating the same approach to Buddhism that young Ladakhi students related to me in the midst of pursuing a prestigious higher education. And he was not only a parent, but a grandparent. However, the distinction quickly became clear again- there is not so much a generational divide as an educational divide. He was one of the first Ladakhis to have been sent outside of Ladakh to pursue a modern education. His parents sent him to the Biscoe School in Srinagar in the 1930s. Biscoe School is a Christian missionary Boys school that was opened in the 1880s and taught in the English medium; it is also the oldest school in Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian state where Ladakh is situated. At this time a handful of Ladakhi parents were convinced by Christian missionaries that the best thing they can do for their sons is to send them to Srinagar to pursue a modern education. Many of these first modern-educated Ladakhis returned to Ladakh and paved the way for not only leading Ladakh along the path towards modernization, but also for leading towards the emphasis on the importance of modern education in Ladakh- the reason that an increasing number of Ladakhi youth are sent outside of Ladakh to pursue a prestigious higher education.
Where Pitkin does emphasize the access to educational institutions, she also emphasizes the particular context for Tibetans in the post-1959 scenario. In this scenario, Tibetan Buddhism is not only influenced by an increased lay involvement in Buddhist life mostly due to participation in educational institutions and access to written Buddhist sources, she also emphasizes the international demands that are placed on these Tibetan Buddhist teachers she interviewed who in some way or another have students who are positioned outside of the Himalayas- whether it be Tibetans who migrated to Europe and North America, or European and North American Tibetan Buddhists who are not ethnically Tibetan. From the perspective of these teachers, the pedagogical aspects related to teaching aspects of ‘knowing Buddhism’ and ‘believing Buddhism’ represent a fine balance between faith and knowledge. However, for lay Ladakhi youth, it is exactly this faith which is questioned and examined putting greater pressure on Himalayan Buddhist teachers to address their interests and needs as 21st century lives. This is a theme that I will address in a paper on “The centrality of ‘youth’ in promoting and reforming Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh” that I will present at the AAR meeting in Boston, November 16-20, 2017.
The “international pressure”, moreover, that lay Ladakhi youth experience is of a slightly different nature as well: through their interactions with tourists, they gain a particular perspective on Buddhism that differs significantly from the ways in which Buddhism has traditionally been practiced and understood in Ladakh. The Leh district of Ladakh which has a Buddhist majority[3] experiences a tremendous influx of tourists during the summer months. The tourism industry is now the largest industry in Ladakh and has facilitated the swift transition from a land-based economy to a cash-based economy. Modern-educated youth, especially young men, typically spend their summers working among tourists as trekking and tourist guides, guest house operators, travel agency owners and operators, etc. Often, they encounter questions about Buddhism from tourists, but also statements and understandings about Buddhism that differ significantly from the everyday, mostly non-reflective approach to Buddhism that they were brought up within where normally one does not question the practices or the teachers but engages in the ritual practices wholeheartedly, and with strong devotion to the Buddhist teachers and leaders. Some of the differing viewpoints that Ladakhis encounter in their interactions with tourists include: an emphasis on Buddhism as not a religion but a philosophy and a way of life; the absence of dogma and hierarchical relations; meditation as a primary form of Buddhist practice; and Buddhism as a method for self-development and improving one’s well-being. These perhaps ‘Western’ viewpoints are also those that are produced in written, English-medium literature in books and in online resources that further impact young, modern-educated understandings of Buddhism.
While Pitkin’s article addresses the particularities of the Tibetan post-1959 context, there are many facets of the changing approaches to Buddhism that resonate with the ways in which young Ladakhi Buddhists consider Buddhism as an integral part of their 21st century lives. I would concur with her interlocutors that there does seem to be a historical shift in the way that Buddhism is being propagated among Himalayan Buddhists: A new historical period in Himalayan Buddhism that emphasizes knowledge over faith, and in which Buddhist teachers need to come up with new pedagogical methods for instilling faith in their young modern-educated followers.
Pitkin, Annabella C. 2016. “The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power.” Himalaya 36 (1):96-115.
Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth. 2014. “Young Buddhism: Examining Ladakhi Buddhist Youth Engagments with Migration, Modernity and Morality in India.” PhD, Anthropology, Aarhus University.
Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth. 2015. “Internal Migration among Ladakhi Youth.” In Internal Migration in Contemporary India, edited by Deepak K. Mishra, 154-179. New Delhi: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd.
Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth. 2017. “Young Buddhism: Analyzing transnational currents of religion through ‘youth’.” In EASTSPIRIT: Transnational spirituality and religious circulation in East and West, edited by Jørn Borup, Marianne Q. Fibiger and Katarina Plank. Boston and Leiden: Brill Publications.
[1] http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2204&context=himalaya
[2] Vipassana meditation is not a common lay Buddhist practice in Ladakh, although there is a growing interest in vipassana, mostly among modern-educated lay Ladakhis.
[3] Ladakh is split into two autonomous districts in the Jammu and Kashmir state of India: Leh district which has a Buddhist majority and Kargil district that has a Muslim majority.
Elizabeth Williams Ørberg 