Some interesting articles in this paper:
Panel Abstract: Magic and Buddhism in Southeast Asia: A Critical Reassessment of the Field
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8. Kate Crosby, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University
Title: Yogavacara and Magic in Theravada Buddhism
Abstract:
This paper examines the issues of labelling practices and knowledge systems as ‘magical’ vis-avis ‘scientific’ in relation to the tantric-like yogavacara practices of non-reform Theravada. In
many 20th-century studies of Theravada we find various binary oppositions that are beginning be challenged in recent scholarship. Contrasts are drawn between elite virtuosi of religion
(among monks) and the superstitious masses; between the learning of monks and the assumed
inferior understanding of lay people; and between rational/reformed Theravada and irrational/
superstitious/traditional Theravada. The contrast between literary erudition, based on the Pali
canonical and commentarial traditions, and ‘magic’, somatic practices forms part of the
formulation of these binaries. In recent work on Shan Theravada literary traditions, Crosby and
Khur-yearn (Contemporary Buddhism May 2010) observed that expertise in the highly
sophisticated, lik luong genre of Shan literature – which draws extensively on Pali canonical,
commentarial and abhidhamma texts across the centuries – is arrived at through a combinationhard study and somatic empowerments, involving physical internalisation of learning and its
protection through tattooing. Progress as a Shan scholar thus entails two aspects of Buddhism
described as opposites on the rational-irrational spectrum. In Shan Buddhism the most highly
regarded scholars are also often sought out as the most highly regarded ‘magicians’ or traditionhealers. They perform traditional empowerments, including tattooing, as well as astrology and
healing. Since, thanks to relative independence and isolation as well as active resistance, Shan
Buddhism did not fully succumb to the centralising reforms of the 18th-20th centuries that
influence our understanding of Sri Lankan, Thai and Burmese Buddhism, we speculated that thmarginalisation of traditional somatic practices in more centralised forms of Buddhism parallelthe general capitulation of local technologies in such areas as medical and military science in
favour of both the perceived and the actually more effective (we might say, ‘powerful’) Westerknow-how in these areas. The tantric-like practices of non-reform Theravada, which I have
elsewhere termed the ‘yogavacara’ tradition, is another form of Theravada that appears to treat
somatic, cognitive and soteriological knowledge as parts of an integrated process of wisdom anpower acquisition. The soteriologcial and apotropaic forms of Theravada that relate to
yogavacara entail the internalisation or physical incorporation of Buddha/Dhamma qualities thotherwise appear to be quite orthodox in abhidhamma terms. Yogavacara continued to receive
court sponsorship in the 18th-19th centuries, yet appears to have been marginalised during the 1century, partly – I speculate - through this same overarching trend for Western physical culture
to be hegemonic. Unattested in the Pali canon, yogavacara then became particularly vulnerable
during the reforms of Sri Lankan, Thai and, later, Cambodian Buddhism. In this paper I shall
explore the extent to which the non-canonical elements of yogavacara may be seen as reflectintechnologies of directed transformation observed in pre-19th century pan-Asian medical and
mathematical models. I shall look at possible parallels in ayurvedic obstetrics and combinatoricI then suggest that to regard somatic and intellectual/soteriological mastery of knowledge as
opposites on the ‘rational’-‘irrational’ axis reflects very specific colonial (or Orientalist) attitudof the 19th-20th centuries. Indeed for knowledge to be only intellectual and not somatic surely
undermines the possibility of a viable soteriology. To what extent have we, in a modern
knowledge system, identified pre-existing/competing knowledge-systems as ‘magic’ as part ofpower statement ? Does our picture of traditional/reform Theravada make better sense if we
rather see the technologies of transformation that constitute Buddhism as developing in tandem
with other technologies? Does yogavacara reflect scientific developments undreamt of in the
canonical period and unrecognised in the modern ? Does this explain its apparent similarities to
the types of tantra preserved in Himalayan Buddhism ? Is ‘magic’ a label applied to a science
that the observer cannot recognise or acknowledge ?