A Buddhist Bouncer: Monastic Adaptation to the Ethos of Desire in Today's Cambodia

Abstract

Buddhist teachings have much to say about the disciplining of desire. In lived Buddhism, however, there may be considerable contestation over how canonical tenets should be understood and flexibility in the way precept is related to practice. This article uses ethnographic data recently gathered from a rural setting in Cambodia to discuss how religious legitimacy is shaped by the complex fabric of village culture and history and the contemporary ethos of the laity. Today's entrepreneurial Cambodian monks are a telling model of the times. The monk who is the key figure of this article maintains a finely balanced position at the interstices of the local and non-local; he must remain responsive to the interests of both those ‘above’ him, including the politicized ecclesiastical hierarchy, and those ‘below’ him in the village, with their desires for security and order.