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Ascribed and Achieved Buddhist Identities

in Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America

Based on how practitioners at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) constructed their organizations, the Buddha's teachings, and their communities, this chapter explores how ... More

Based on how practitioners at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) constructed their organizations, the Buddha's teachings, and their communities, this chapter explores how practitioners construct personal identities in light of the Buddha's teachings and their involvement in Wat Phila or the CIMC. Practitioners at Wat Phila and the CIMC emphasize the Buddha's teaching to “come and see” in their conversations about their personal identities. Regardless of what they draw from the tradition, most of them do develop some kind of identity in relation to the Buddha's teachings, rather than to Wat Phila or the CIMC as organizations. At both Wat Phila and the CIMC, many practitioners describe themselves through achieved religious or spiritual identities that they have chosen in the United States. The fact that Wat Phila and the CIMC include practitioners with such a range of religious and spiritual identities shows that identity is not a central organizational concern at either center. Rather than a subcultural identity theory, Wat Phila and the CIMC point to the need for more of a cohesive particle theory of minority religious identityLess

Refuge in the Sangha: The Shape of Buddhist Communities

in Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America

This chapter investigates how practitioners at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) structure themselves inside each organization into communities or groups and relate to ... More

This chapter investigates how practitioners at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) structure themselves inside each organization into communities or groups and relate to those groups. People at both centers rely on the centers for religious or spiritual and social support, though the forms that support takes are quite different. Practitioners at Wat Phila and the CIMC define the word “sangha” and form communities within their organizations in different ways. While practitioners at Wat Phila view the monks as the sangha and tend to conceive of themselves as one large community of monastic and lay members held together by merit, practitioners at the CIMC tend to view everyone involved in the center as the sangha and to conceive of themselves as a community of small groups joined by support and interconnection between practitioners. Despite recent concerns in the broader sociological literature about the strength and vitality of associations and communities in the United States, Wat Phila and the CIMC further show that Buddhist and other religious groups continue to provide support through communities, though in different ways to different constituencies.Less

New Organizations: Wat Mongkoltepmunee and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center

in Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America

This chapter focuses on two specific Buddhist centers: Wat Mongkoltepmunee (or Wat Phila), a first-generation Thai immigrant temple; and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC), a ... More

This chapter focuses on two specific Buddhist centers: Wat Mongkoltepmunee (or Wat Phila), a first-generation Thai immigrant temple; and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC), a first-generation convert Theravada Buddhist organization. The chapter describes how Wat Phila and CIMC were formed as organizations in light of existing institutional, social, and cultural environments in the United States. While Theravada Buddhist teachings were central to the founding of both Wat Phila and CIMC, neither group was started within another religious organization or formal institutional structure, with the result that the teachers and practitioners at both centers had considerably flexibility in crafting these new organizations. Certain kinds of structural spaces are available for religious groups in the United States and this chapter explains how each group approached these spaces and fit within them from their beginnings in 1985 to the present. The chapter also introduces the teachers and practitioners at each center and outlines how and why people get involved with each center.Less

Lived Buddhism: The Construction of Teaching and Practice at Wat Phila and CIMC

in Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America

This chapter examines how Buddha's teachings at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) are presented ideologically and interpreted and lived by the practitioners. The chapter ... More

This chapter examines how Buddha's teachings at Wat Phila and the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) are presented ideologically and interpreted and lived by the practitioners. The chapter conceive of the organizations as containers and explains what is inside each container and how practitioners gather these ideas into their personal understanding, practices, and ways of seeing the world. By exploring the contents of the organizational containers and practitioners' individual understandings, the chapter concludes that the people at Wat Phila and the CIMC share some common understandings of the Buddha's teachings, amid their many differences.Less

The Ancient Tongan State

Robert J. Hommon

in The Ancient Hawaiian State: Origins of a Political Society

The Tongan kingdom of the early contact era was ruled by a triarchy consisting of a symbolic head of state, the Tu`i Tonga, and two active heads of government (hau), one of whom managed a central ... More

The Tongan kingdom of the early contact era was ruled by a triarchy consisting of a symbolic head of state, the Tu`i Tonga, and two active heads of government (hau), one of whom managed a central government including as many as six bureaucratic strata that implemented polity-wide tasks such as tax collection and the performance of state rituals. As summarized in this chapter, ancient Hawai`i and Tonga present an example of equifinality, as they attained statehood through divergent historical trajectories exemplified by Tonga’s monolithic state, fixed central capital at Mua, sustained contact with the Fiji and Samoa archipelagos through a complex prestige good system, dependence of chiefs on Fijian “foreign advisors” (matāpule), and prominence of inspirational religious practitioners (taula) rather than a priesthood, in contrast to Hawai`i’s competing peer polities, mobile royal court, four centuries of isolation from interarchipelago contact, limited development of long-distance trade, and professional priestly orders.Less