The second session of the “Collective Karma” Seminar Unit showcases four papers. Each one discloses a unique role that karma played in lived experiences at both the individual and the collective level. The first paper discloses how America's collective amnesia bypasses the labor needed to heal the wounds of racialized karma. The second paper takes us to contemporary Vietnam. It highlights how Buddhist health practices grounded in karmic moral reasoning promote intersubjective orientations and reveals the complex relationship between selfhood, consumption, and the body. The third paper investigates the diary of a Tibetan pilgrim Khatag Zamyak (1896–1961) and showcases that the unknowability of one's own karma played a key role in the formation of Zamyak as an ethical subject. The fourth paper studies karma and politics in modern Thailand. It examines how karma has been variously linked to one's ability to participate in political decision-making.
What does collective karma mean in the context of America? In his book, America’s Racial Karma, Larry Ward, who was a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, criticized American culture for “holding onto the belief that America’s inherent goodness will prevail, even when faced with live footage of state brutality” (94). Building upon Ward’s work, this paper seeks to confront the harmful histories of othering that have been and continue to be occluded by the myth of a progressive, forward-moving America. Juxtaposing Ward with other Buddhist and non-Buddhist writings, this paper argues that the dominant story of America perpetuates a collective amnesia, ultimately bypassing the labor needed to heal the wounds of America’s racialized karma. This presentation will end with creative pairings of Buddhist theories of interdependency with work by adrienne maree brown, and Judith Butler to consider how attending to the body may be a constructive first step towards healing.
Techniques for improving health have attracted global attention since the Covid-19 pandemic. In Vietnam, pandemic health concerns compounded endemic health concerns around rising cancer rates. Vietnam is a Buddhist-majority country where concepts of karma have long influenced understandings of health. Between anxieties around Covid and cancer, lay and monastic Buddhists have become increasingly focused on daily practices to improve health through positively transforming karma. These practices include attention to dietary choices, styles of eating, ethically sourcing food ingredients, and consumer choices that support the natural environment. In this paper, I analyze how such minute practices promote ethical orientations toward intersubjectivity, rather than individualistic autonomy. While scholars have argued that the management of consumer choices to control health suggests a turn toward neoliberalism in Vietnam's culture and economy, I propose that Buddhist health practices demand more complex conclusions about the relationship between selfhood, consumption, and the body.
How do abstract doctrinal ideas become visible and meaningful in the lives of religious practitioners? This talk approaches this question by examining the diary of the Tibetan pilgrim Khatag Zamyak (1896-1961) to explore how he engages with the idea of karma. Scholars of Buddhism often define karma as a law of cause and effect that is fundamental to Buddhist ethics, but this third-person approach to understanding karma can lead scholars to overlook what it feels like to live in a world structured by karma. This article explores how Khatag Zamyak confronts the fact that he does not know his own karma, and how he undertakes specific practices to be able to see and tell stories about his own karma. It further argues that Khatag Zamyak’s process of engaging with karma is integral to his formation as an ethical subject.
In Thailand, a majority-Buddhist kingdom, sovereignty and religion are intimately entangled. Since 1932, the year when the country embraced constitutionalism, coups d’état and violent repressions have hindered a normally functioning participatory politics. Positing a causal relationship between one’s karma and the ability to contribute to political decision making, conservatives have recently argued for replacing electoral democracy with “dharma-cracy”, a nebulous mode of sovereignty whereby only individuals with enough good karma, as proved by wealth and education, should be granted with the right vote. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand, this paper looks at how progressive Buddhists, par contre, circulate prophecies anticipating the day in which the collective karma of the people will make all sovereign.