University of Virginia Library

`Bun' and `baab' (ethical norms) and their implications for merit-making

Bun (merit) and baab (demerit) are verbal categories frequently used by
the villagers. These concepts—especially the former—constitute the major
ethical notions by which villagers conceptualize, evaluate, and explain
behaviour. They derive, of course, from philosophical Buddhism, but
village formulation deviates from the strict doctrinal one and must be
understood in its own terms.

The words tham bun (to make merit) and aw bun (to take merit)—used
as equivalents—refer to the giving of gifts to the Buddhist monks and the
Buddhist wat. The second expression highlights the Buddhist attitude
that merit is made not by giving per se but is `acquired' by the willingness
of the monks to receive. (The sociologist may phrase the transaction
thus: the gift-taker in this context is superior and is capable of transferring
some kind of spiritual grace to the giver.) The concepts `make merit' and
`take merit' express a double relationship in which the transaction is
given a particular ethical twist.

Performing acts of merit and avoiding acts of demerit are directed to
the achievement of certain results. The value of merit-making is discussed
by villagers under two aspects: first, it is said that one's fund of merit
accumulated in this life will ensure a rebirth blessed with happiness,
prosperity and wealth. (The achievement of salvation or final extinction
(nirvana) is not usually stated as a goal nor for that matter does it have
any personal relevance for them.) While merit-making is thus given
ideological direction in terms of somehow immunizing the consequences
of death and ensuring a prosperous rebirth, villagers also say that it has
certain consequences in this life: the giving of gifts to monks produces

a happy and virtuous state of mind. This is no doubt a `vague' formulation,
but we should not disregard it because of its vagueness. (Virtue and purity
are by their nature somewhat diffuse, easily contaminated and relatively
powerless. At the same time they are also considered the best ethical
preventive against misfortune.)

A characteristic of this morality is that one's actions are graded as
meritorious or sinful and one's fate after death is said to depend on the
final balance of pluses and minuses. Villagers say that, if a man has a large
balance of merit over demerit, his winjan (soul) will go to sawan (heaven)
and when his merit is exhausted he will be reborn on this earth (log); if
he has committed both bun and baab, he will first go to hell (narog) and
stay there until his demerit is expiated, then he will go to heaven to
enjoy his merit before being reborn; if his life was wholly sinful, he will
be committed to hell or will wander a long time on earth as a disembodied
spirit (phii) before he can be reborn.

From the doctrinal point of view the quest for salvation is a strictly
individualistic pursuit. In the village context, merit-making as the principal
religious activity is certainly seen as having consequences for individuals.
But the social unit engaging in merit-making need not be the individual—
it may be a family, a household or a kin grouping, or even the entire
village. Individuals then may act as representatives of other individuals
or groups, or may make merit on behalf of another person or other
persons, although part of the merit accrues to the actors themselves. Thus
transfer of merit is not only thought possible, but is also highly institutionalized.

The nature of merit-making acts, their occasions, scale, content and
grading, and the results sought, constitute a major problem for exploration
in this book. But enough has been said already about bun and baab as
ethical concepts for me to mark out some interpretative points which I
think deviate from the conventional analyses of Buddhism. Although
these points anticipate some of my conclusions, I need to state them
here in order that the reader may appreciate my later elaborations.

My first unorthodox point is to question the idea that Buddhism is
concerned with non-empirical ends and expresses only symbolic or ultimate
values. I do not question the fact that some aspects of Buddhistic behaviour
—or for that matter of any other system of `religious' behaviour—do
have this dimension. But the ethic of bun/baab as formulated by villagers
appears to me to have `empirical' objectives—that is, certain practical
results are sought. Seeking a prosperous rebirth is an empirical objective
of a deferred nature. The feeling that engagement in merit-making
results in a felicitous state of mind is more immediate and direct, and it

needs to be highly emphasized that this is a psychological state much
coveted by Thai villagers.

A related point to consider is the appropriateness of overstating the
dichotomy this world/other world, and associating Buddhism exclusively
with the second category. It is certainly true that doctrinally Buddhism
is concerned with the problem of death and its aftermath; that the Buddhist
monks signify withdrawal through their monastic life, and in their `parish'
role act as mediators between death and rebirth. But it needs also to be
emphasized that merit-making is, in part, expressly directed to hastening
rebirth and also to securing a better rebirth than the existing one. This
orientation may also be interpreted as asserting that human life is not
finite, it does not end with death, but belongs to a rebirth cycle. The
preoccupation is with death, but death that can be converted into life.
In this connection we should keep in mind that popular thought conceives
of human states in heaven or hell as transitional phases, leading to the
subsequent reality of human life in this world.[1]

It was sometime after I had formulated this view that I read a passage
in Max Weber (Gerth and Mills 1946) which puts the argument cogently
in respect of the followers of contemplative asceticism. Weber points out
that even the sacred values of a religion orientated to a `beyond' as the
locus of definite promises are preferably not to be interpreted on that
account as being `other worldly'. Or rather, other-worldly sacred values
are by no means values of the beyond. `Psychologically considered, man
in quest of salvation has been primarily occupied by attitudes of the here
and now; for the devout the sacred value, first and above all, has been
a psychological state in the here and now' (p. 278). The Buddhist monk
in search of nirvana seeks the sentiment of cosmic love just as the puritan
certitudo salutis is the feeling of a permanent state of grace.

To restate what seems to be an essential feature in religious behaviour:
in Buddhism, as in many other religions, there is, to use a Durkheimian
phrase, a double relation and the linking up of contraries. A series of
dichotomies, for example this world/other world, living humans/ancestral
spirits, body/soul, permeates religious thought. Religious action is oriented
to influence the relationship between these oppositions, so that living
human beings can experience prosperity and continuity of social life.
Thus ideas such as better rebirth, or union with the inaccessible pure

divine, or immunization of the potency of the supernatural impinging
on humans, are expressions of this desired mediation attempted through
ritual action. Whether we call this `empirical' is not the issue, but whether
its characterization as `non-empirical' is valid or meaningful.

Bun is not only predictive of future rebirth status—where its value is
highly uncertain. Its explanatory power lies in interpreting present status
and present circumstances. This is its convenience as a theory of causation.
But the paradoxical fact is that in a Thai village (as in Buddhist Ceylon)
there exist also other theories of causation of human circumstances, such
as planetary, demonological or even divine intervention. As Obeyesekere
(1958) has argued, these frames of explanation are not mutually inclusive,
with karma or bun/baab being an ultimate formula.

What is the behavioural relationship of this general but diffuse theory
of ethical causation to merit-making? We shall see later on that merit-making
acts are categorized and form an elaborate scheme; yet the results
of bun, to the acquisition of which they are said to be largely oriented, are
not readily evident in everyday life. Baab, on the other hand, while not
clearly categorized—and indeed certain moral precepts whose contravention
causes demerit are often broken with impunity—has clearly
evident results in everyday life in the form of illness, death, misfortune
and the pervasive existence of evil spirits.

The puzzle, then, concerning the concept of bun and the objective of
merit-making is something like this. Merit-making is a pronounced
religious activity, yet the results of bun are vaguely formulated as a desirable
state of mind or a better rebirth. In this life a human being is highly
susceptible to misfortunes caused by powerful and immediate external
agencies. Yet in the final hierarchy of judgment bun and Buddhist
preoccupations occupy the highest place and are given precedence even
as the source of ultimate (though not necessarily accessible) power.

This puzzle can of course be expressed in terms of a certain widespread
arrangement of ideas. Purity, whether personified or an impersonal
quality, is relatively inaccessible, is powerless, and is unstable because it
is easily contaminated; impurity is the direct opposite. The same can
be said of virtue/sin, happiness/misfortune, and similar conceptions. The
concept of bun/baab can be fitted into the same scheme of thought.

Bun, as defined in popular thought and action, is attained through
liberal gifts to the monks and the temple. To a sociologist, then, it is
one type or category of gift-giving and its essence can be inferred by
comparing it with other types of material transactions. The idiom in
which such transactions are dressed and the objects or values exchanged
tell us about the relative positions of giver and receiver and the nature

of the communication between them. The seemingly unilateral nature of
merit-making highlights the ethical value put on voluntary giving at
a cost to oneself. How does this ethical force released by the giver influence
his moral state? And why is this pattern of giving placed on a higher level
than other exchanges?

Another feature of merit-making is that although the actors make merit,
as individuals or families, either on their own behalf or in order to transfer
merit to some other person or persons, the merit-making occasions par
excellence are the collective calendrical rites held at the temple. That is to
say, merit-making, although particularistic in intent, is usually done in
a collective context. Such occasions are by far the most conspicuous
religious activity in the village. In this sense merit-making as a collective
ethic directed to a community institution—the wat and its monks—provides
occasions for residents of a village to assemble periodically. The village
as a territorial community is clearly manifest on these occasions.

These collective merit-making occasions are also characterized by a
festival spirit, fun and recreation. It is necessary to bear this robust aspect
of Buddhist worship in mind and to account for it, for a narrow treatment
of Buddhism as concerned with the other world and preoccupied with
death makes it seem to impose a rather grim and morbid concentration
on `existential anxieties'. How is it that sermons and chants on nirvana,
salvation through wisdom, or acts of superhuman charity and denial of
the world can be accompanied by gay processions, dancing and gambling?