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Paramemetic posted:A friend just asked me and I didn't know the answer so I'm punting down the line - what does Hindu clergy look like? Are there Hindu monks and nuns or is it purely yogis or priests or what? I'm sure this varies from tradition to tradition so answer in as much or as little detail as you'd like! I would like to attempt this. Clergy as we tend to think of it in western Judeo-christian religions or even as we'd think of it in monastic Buddhism really has no direct analogue within the larger Hindu traditions for a variety of reasons which I'd attempt to explain. What rough analogues we can think of as clergy within the Hindu religion I'll attempt to explain briefly. I don't claim my analysis as exhaustive so feel free to discuss/respond, whoever feels the inclination. Clergy as we might generally think of it serves a number of roles which tend to be consolidated into the same person, namely: *Officiant in rituals. *Final authority regarding grey areas of doctrine as well as hierarchical organization of the larger clerical body. *Keepers, maintainers and interpreters of the historical doctrinal cannon. *Administrators of temples, monasteries and holy sites. For a variety of reasons, mostly socio-historical idiosyncrasies, these roles are generally not consolidated in the same individuals or even the same organizational groups of individuals within larger Indian society when and where they exist at all. As such, the idea or concept of clergy as we generally think of it does not translate well into the Hindu religion. Why might this be? First and foremost Hinduism is not a monastic religion. Within the history of South Asia monastic modes of orthopraxy have largely been the purview of the heterodox Brahminical traditions such as Jainism and Buddhism. Competition among religious movements in South Asia has been intense throughout its history, and to the extent that you can have a sort of ecological niche for monastic traditions, in South Asia that niche was ultimately occupied by traditions other than Hinduism. While arguably analogies can be made between vedic brahmins as a monastic community of priests maintaining the vedas via oral transmission, its anachronistic in a sense to think of these individuals as Hindu clergy. Particularly with the shift from vedic to puranic Hinduism, even the role and need for brahmin priests as ritual officiants was de-emphasized as the ideal of a family patriarch being the household diety and officiant in household rituals became a primary mode of religious worship. Furthermore, with the shift to puranic hinduism you see a de-emphasizing of the Vedas in importance and an ascendance of popular religious Epics in importance to the laity. Indicating a shift to more popular forms of religiosity, there is less of a need for a centralized institutional clergy and less need for institutionalized vedic ritualists as opposed to itinerant, popular spiritual performers (see more on Sadhus below). As an anecdotal example, during some travel in Kolkata I became good friends with a sprawling multigenerational family that filled their own apartment building. For the whole household, their main ritual officiant was essentially the Family Baba, an uncle that happened to devote his life to spiritual pursuits and so in a sense was housed and cared for by the rest of the family so that he could conduct the official rituals and pujas. While Hinduism became the dominant metareligious narrative in India, it only did so through a weakening of the doctrinal center to allow for more diverse regional variations. This largely obviates the need for a centralized authority as opposed to local religious savants who are skilled in local varieties of worship. To make another point, another reason why clergy as we think of it does not exist in Hinduism is because the ideal of the Saint/Religious Savant/Doctrinal Exegete is not the rooted, scholarly educated monk but more often the itinerant spiritual teacher, mystic and also ritual officiant. These are commonly known as Sadhus or Sidhis. This sort of religious rolemodel has served as the exemplar in larger Indian society for thousands of years and even the monastic traditions from South Asia, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism, were generated by these sorts of individuals. An interesting account by an Indian anthropologist is Sadhus of India by B. D. Tripathi who embedded and ordinated with Hindu itinerant mystics in order to conduct field research and interviews. Religious devotees become sadhus for a variety of reasons and throughout history have supported themselves not necessarily by seeking alms but by seeking payment for religious teachings/lectures, conducting religious ceremonies/spells or performing ritual plays & songs. Tripathi even found a small percentage of "Sadhus" that were supporting families based on the incomes of their religious activities, so it is also important to keep in mind that the ideal of the Sadhu is a fuzzy one which encompasses a range of different socio-economic classes, levels of education and religious motivations. Typically religious innovations come from Sadhus which become the locus of communities of worship as Gurus. The primary mode of passing down religious doctrine and understanding is not through a scholastic clergy but rather an individual savant teacher giving direct instruction and guidance to a religious pupil. Given the widely idiosyncratic and personal nature of hindu devotional worship, there is less of a need for an official body of clergy maintaining, explaining and teaching doctrine than there is for a nuanced local instructor. Regarding the role of maintainer of religious sites and temples, this largely did not fall to institutional organizations as much as it did endogamous clans of temple priests that would maintain mandirs and take care of the idols. Largely their job is to remain ritually pure in order to maintain the temple as opposed to administering a religious institution. While increasingly we might see modern temple organizations beginning to resemble institutions with administrators and temple priests similar to western clergy, I think it is an interesting questions to what extent this is a more recent development in Hinduism. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Apr 28, 2016 |
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Apr 28, 2016 22:24
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Paramemetic! Been reading and enjoying The TIbetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory by Matthew T. Kapstein and Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations 2nd edition by Paul Williams. Cheers and happy walking!
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Apr 28, 2016 22:32
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From what I've experienced on my own both in person and through studies, I think it is generally correct to point out a difference in modes of religiosity in the west versus the east. Religions in the West are much more interested in personal statements of doctrinal faith and orthodoxy, whereas the east is much more interested in orthopraxy and the role religion plays in everyday life through religious action. There is a lot of interesting discussion to be had on that, particularly to what extent that is a result and reaction to Protestantism or has its roots earlier in the confessional nature of judeochristian faith, but I digress. First to the point of what being a Hindu in practice looks like and then I'll address the issue of religious professionals. What is fascinating to me about Hinduism in specific as well as South Asian/Asian religions generally is to some extent you see all of the transitional forms still coexisting into modern times. A useful lens for thinking about the development might be phylogenetics and taxonomy. We find ancient and transitional forms of South Asian and Hindu religiosity living today, more-or-less maintaining older forms of worship concurrently with the later developments. With that said, recognizing what Hinduism looks like when you see it can be a little easier once you understand some of the broader historical developments in Hinduism. The ancestral form of Hinduism was foreign to South Asia, and did not necessarily represent the values or religious concerns of South Asians when it entered onto the scene roughly 3,000 years ago. Elegantly explained by Robert Calasso in his book Ardor, what motivated the vedic Brahmins was their interest and involvement in keeping the cosmos in motion through ritual activity and sacrifice. He describes a situation whereby the priests establish a sort of grid of symbolism and ritual which maintains the world and keeps it from dissolution into chaos and disorder through carefully prescribed rituals and alters. In its earliest phase, Vedism is utterly dependent on the Brahminical caste as priestly officiant. However, when we examine the chronology and development of the Vedic texts we see a shift in emphasis over time, and this is thought to be largely a response on the part of Brahmanism to the new cultures and institutions it was encountering as it immigrated and assimilated to South Asia. Ancient Vedic Brahmanism reflected the concerns of a nomadic, pastoral people. Many of the rituals concern the proper handling and preparation of livestock and meat, and the anxieties of a culture feeling the transition from hunting and gathering to a life of agriculture and rearing livestock. The later Vedic texts are thought to be composed during a time when pastoral nomads extant on the Indo-Gangetic plain where coming into increasing contact with growing towns/cities (Gana-Sanghas). In the middle Vedas, before ultimately being resolved in the later texts, there is a conflict between the values of a pastoral people coming into contact with settled, householder ways of life. Eventually in the later Vedas we begin to see a shift in emphasis from sacrifice as performed by the Vedic ritual specialist to sacrifice and Dharmic activity being initiated and maintained by the individual Brahmin householder. The idea being that these forms of activity are one and the same and that all activity can be seen from the context of karmic ritual sacrifice. This tendency will eventually develop into the ideal of prescribed activity for good Hindus that we see articulated in the Bhagavad Gita, which coming from the popular religious epic the Mahabharata represents a popular distillation and crystallization of the ideals and values which come out of the later Vedic texts. In the Bhagavad Gita you see three main Yogas, or primary modes of religious action which will ultimately help a Hindu obtain realization: Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. These three Yogas represent (1) the final adjustment of Vedism to settled, urban householder ways of life; (2) the assimilation into Hinduism of the ideals and concepts issuing forth from broadly influential heterodox religious movements such as Buddhism and Jainism; (3) an accommodation to non-brahmin/non-male/Subaltern individuals, which comprise arguably the bulk of even Hindu society. With that setting the stage. What does Being a Hindu Look Like? What does that mean? Depending on which Yoga a particular Hindu emphasizes (and they are not mutually exclusive), this can appear differently. For most Hindu families with a householder, the predominant form of religious activity is Karma Yoga, or engaging yourself with proper dharmic activity as befits ones age and gender, as broadly determined by the Dharmashastra system. In a religious sense, performing your properly prescribed duty is your ritual sacrifice that keeps the cosmos going, which drives the order of the Universe. The later Vedic developments broadly connect this sort of mundane every day activity to the highly transactional, ritual activity of the Vedic Brahmins. If it seems like this is stretching one sort of religious ideal to accommodate different religious cultures and communities spanning different regions and millenia in time, and maybe showing a few holes in the process, you would be onto, at the very least, an interesting discussion. To add onto that, the classic model of karmic yoga as detachment from prescribed dharmic action doesn't necessarily encompass all elements of South Asian Society, neither in our time or at the time of the composition of the puranic epics and the Gita. While this dharmic system tells you what to do if you're a man or woman of sufficiently high birth, it speaks very little to elements of society that don't fit within these clearly delineated paths, particularly ascetics, shudras, tribals, certain demographics of men and women (infertile, non-heteronormative, etc.). Essentially for men of high birth that prescription is proper study and sanskritization, getting married, establishing a household, having children, growing old and only then becoming overtly religious. For women, the prescription is to be good child-bearing, housekeeping wives. For shudras and low born castes, to serve as the outlet for ritual impurity which society will gradually funnel down to the low castes shoulders. With all of this laid out, at the same time that this ideal was being crystallized and vedic brahminism was adjusting to the already extant societies on the Indo-Gangetic plain, you are seeing a reaction among opposing religious movements to urbanization, the growing mercantile economy, the householder way of life, and a sort of existential ennui due to the picture of eternity that samsara paints. A great deal of these movements were in reaction to both household brahminism and this mode of economic living that was beginning to flourish. Two of these movements eventually went on to become Buddhism and Jainism, but we know from the early sutras in the pali nikaya that there were several other extant movements at the time with varying motivations and emphases. The ascendancy of Buddhism and Sramana movements during the rise of the Mauryan empire prompts a reaction among the brahminical traditions of that time, and one of the ways they adjust to this new competition on the religious scene is by co-opting and incorporating some of their religious innovations. While previously an ascetic, renunciant form of religious life was relegated to elder citizens in old age after they fulfilled their debt to society, the innovations from the sramanic movements emphasized that it is imperative to not wait until old age to begin this sort ascetic activity. In the Gita we begin to see the practice of Jnana yoga legitimized for dharmic practice of caste hindus. It is contrasted with other Yogas as perilous, like walking a tightrope to the top of a mountain, and almost in a way discourages hindus from this path while at the same time admitting that in theory it can lead someone to direct realization. This mode of worship in practice is generally what we are seeing when we talk about Sadhus, wandering ascetics, itinerant spiritual professionals and teachers. Hinduism's ultimate response to this mode of religious life was, "If you can't beat em, join em." Finally in the Bhagavad gita we see a third Yoga which is representing what is at that time a new mode of religious worship breaking into the Brahminical tradition: namely Bhakti forms of devotional worship. The dharmashastra system is only a fulfilling mode of worship if you're a twice born male Brahmin. Jnana yoga is only accessible to the religious elite and is largely not relevant to the lives of many people, now or then. Bhakti Yoga becomes a sort of catch all for all other forms of faith and religious worship, folding them under the larger umbrella of the Brahminical Meta-Religion. This is a development that both allows the mainstream of society to make sense of the myriad elements at the periphery (be they neighboring cultures, foreign religious movements from different ends of the silk road, tribal societies with unique & idiosyncratic beliefs, etc.) while at the same time establishing the primacy of Brahminism and the place of other religious movements within it. Bhakti yoga becomes the backdoor for everything else, and over time, everything else has become to be the dominant face of Hinduism in many ways. Jnana yoga is a path open to many Hindus and you see many of them take it in some way, identifying with specific gurus and movements, maybe even ordaining as a Sadhu and adopting the ascetic life before their time. Generally most Hindus will forego this path. So nowadays what Being a Good Hindu will tend to mean is that if you are of high enough birth, you attend to the specific rituals relevant to your caste. Brahmins will have their rite of passage Upanayana ceremony, will get married, have children, make their children go through the same ceremonies, etc. Concurrently with this most Hindus will be engaged in some form of Bhakti practice. They will have a family idol, maybe they'll conduct family pujas and offerings to the idol. They'll go to temple and receive Darshan. In Bhakti yoga Darshan is very important, and really just means seeing and being seen by the divine. This ideal gets extended not just to deities and idols but to gurus, teachers, important family and spiritual figures. There is a lot of interesting literature about how this dynamic is active and responsible for the spread of early stupa worship with the spread of early Buddhism. For some Hindus, on a very mundane level this sort of devotional worship is entirely transactional, much like the economic relationships you were referring to. You light an incense for Lakshmi because you'd really like a better job, etc. Generally, I think you can look at these much in the sense that you look at prosperity gospel, its sort of auxiliary to the point, though still a fairly common way of looking at and interacting with spirituality for many. So the final question, in Hinduism what does a religious professional look like? In South Asian society religious professionals have always had to have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Wandering Sadhus will support themselves through a mix of teachings, sometimes textually based sometimes not, through reenacting scenes and folk songs from the epics (Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc.). They adapt what they teach and what they perform to their area if they have a large territory. In West Bengal you might be re-enacting stories from Kali's life, if you wander through a tribal area maybe you know their local stories and deities and so you perform to that. If you're in a city, maybe you're a kirtan singer. Indian classical music also has been a haven for many devotional singers and poets, who are more than able to support themselves by singing at festivals and religious events. Arguably gurus are religious professionals. You don't necessarily plan a career path based on becoming the center of a cult of personality, but for those Sadhus that get there it can definitely pay the bills. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 18:20
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Namarrgon posted:So essentially, the Hindu 'clergy' are kind of like the family's stereotypical computer guy? Self-thought, simply the person who knows the most about it in the given (sub)community and eventually built their living around it? That was a specific example from my travels but I'm hesitant to set one family, large though they were and devout, as the example for such a large community. And, again, the point of my post overall is that in Hindu society there are a number of different individuals playing different roles which hold a piece of the duties that we'd typically associate with clergy in the west. So for that family, yes Uncle Baba was the family ritual officiant. In that same city you had temple Brahmins that would maintain the mandirs. Local residents who would tend to local idols. In poorer neighborhoods sometimes it was just paper mache on the side of the road. Sometimes there were tiny idols in stone structures. I never saw who maintained those. In a sense though you're not far off in terms of the classic example of the wandering religious professional has a sort of spiritual computer guy quality. By that I mean to say often times helping the people procuring their services to obtain practical, everyday means and ways to fix their lives.
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May 3, 2016 04:57
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