仏教において、「出家」とはあらゆる社会的な役割を拒絶し、社会の秩序の外に出ることを意味します。こうした出家生活のあり方を定めているのが「律(Vinaya)」と呼ばれるルールです。しかし遊行中心の生活を送っていた出家者が、次第に僧院に定住するようになると、国家や社会と継続的な関係をもつようになりました。その結果、出家者や僧院のあり方は、権力者や在家者(一般信徒)の関心事にもなりました。つまりどのように律を解釈・実践するかは、正統性や権力の問題となったのです。こうした出家者・権力者・在家者の相互作用の結果として常に再創造されていく制度のことを、本書では僧院制度(monasticism)と呼びます。本書の目的は、僧院制度の実態とそれが創造されていく過程について、現代ミャンマーを事例として明らかにすることにあります。こうした分析を通じて、僧院のガバナンスという問題は、仏教国家・社会のガバナンスという問題と不可分な関係にあることを示します。
Around the first century BCE, Buddhist monks formed monasteries and established relationships with kings and lay people. The rules monks live by, the Vinaya, are a pivotal source of meaning for them and their dealings with society and form the basis of multiple monasticisms across geographical regions and throughout history. The ways in which the Vinaya is understood and practiced, therefore, must take into account the kind of monasticism that emerges from it. In Living with the Vinaya, Ryosuke Kuramoto examines the process of creating monasticism in contemporary Myanmar by focusing on how monks acquire, possess, and consume material goods.
To live as a monk means to obtain resources from society and to own and use these according to monastic rules. Over the centuries, as monks interacted more with the world beyond the monastery, the question of what a monk “should be” became a concern for not only monks, but also government authorities and lay people. How monks interpreted and observed the Vinaya became a question of legitimacy and power. Kuramoto’s ethnographic analysis reveals the constant (re)creation of monasticism in Myanmar resulting from the interactions between monks and these groups in response to this question. He identifies some of the key mechanisms by which monasticism and broader Buddhist institutions are created and transformed and concludes that monastic governance is inseparable from the Buddhist state and the society that surrounds it.
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