Spirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture

CHAPTER 1. Powers of the Place: Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of Muang Lao

CHAPTER 1 Powers of the Place ◆ Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of Muang Lao Working at a great distance from the object of study, one sometimes risks confusing a library with a country.    —Paul Mus, India as Seen from the East If the spirit cults at the root of Southeast Asian religious cultures are not “timeless ” or “primordial” in nature, to use now controversial and frequently discredited terms, then surely, at least, they must be recognized as archaic and ruggedly persistent. While it is not uncommon for many Lao, or outside observers of Lao culture, to say “to be Lao is to be Buddhist,”1 it is also true that Lao understandings of Buddhism have been conditioned by unique historical experiences and interpreted through Lao cultural assumptions. Marcel Zago, the premier student of Lao religion, has observed that the Buddhism practiced by the Lao has through time evolved a distinctive character of its own with deep roots in the general culture and the native religious substratum. Most apparent at the ritual and administrative level, this Lao character of Theravada Buddhism has also led to the evolution of a view of life and reality [that] is often in conflict with that of the Buddhist canon. (1976: 121) Zago’s comments about how Lao apprehensions of Theravada have been conditioned by “the native religious substratum” are salient for the direction of this chapter,especially his subsequent comment (1976: 121) that the enduring notions of phi (spirit) and khwan (vital essence or soul) are at variance with Buddhist cosmological perceptions and doctrinal assertions. So are comments by Ian Harris, who shares a similar perspective of the religious and cultural context in neighboring Cambodia. He says that 15 16 Chapter 1 recent Cambodian religious traditions contain much that is archaic . . . [t]he cult of the neak ta [spirits] may be regarded as a foundational layer upon which later traditions have been overlaid. Some of these tutelary spirits probably predate the arrival of Indic [Hindu and Buddhist] influences. (2005: 79) Moreover, later in his account of the radical Khmer Rouge attempt to eradicate all forms of religious culture in Cambodia during the “Pol Pot period” of madness from 1975 to theVietnamese intervention in 1979, Harris writes: The terrible recent history of Cambodia demonstrates that Buddhism can survive even when its institutional forms have been destroyed. Its apotropaic rituals possess an enduring power for suffering humanity, while its symbolism and language have the protean ability to adapt in even the most extreme circumstances . (2005: 189) By apotropaic, Harris is referring to those dimensions of religious culture that are more magical and esoteric in character: primarily private ritual appeals to tap various unseen spiritual powers by means of aural incantations, the manipulation of visual symbolism of the supernatural, and the veneration of localized deities or spirits, all of which are quite similar in nature to the spiritual world of the Lao. It seems ironic from what Harris has observed in modern Cambodia that those aspects of religious culture that have been the least publicly institutionalized or supported, those that are the least modern and rational, are those that seem most capable of surviving radical social and political change. This has also been the case throughout the history of Lao religious culture. Indigenous roots of Lao religious culture are not only responsible for the manner in which many aspects of Buddhism have been understood conceptually and practically, but also for why Buddhism itself has been sustained (despite the fact that spirit cults are often seen to be in conflict with Theravada doctrinal tenets). In this chapter I will try to explain how and why this is the case by indicating how the ontology of the “native religious substratum” has continued to inform and condition what it has meant, and what it can still mean, to be religious within Lao Buddhist religious culture. In comparison with the cults of deities in Sri Lanka’s religious culture that I have previously studied in some depth (Holt 1991a, 2004), cults that are now very highly institutionalized in nature, what first impressed me most about the cults of the phi and khwan in Laos, in addition to their ubiquitous presence, was, paradoxically to me, their relatively and comparatively noninstitutionalized social presence. In Sri Lanka, elaborate shrines to devatas, from those on the one hand who are regarded as simply lower-level village deities (such as Huniyam or gam- Buddhism and...