Secular morality, village law, and Buddhism in Tibetan societies

Abstract

Contrary to assumptions frequently made about Buddhist societies and to models promoted by Tibetan elites, not all Tibetans understand their religion in an ethical way. This article demonstrates that, for a community of villagers in Ladakh, Buddhism is not a source of moral guidance nor is it regarded by them as providing authority for the exercise of political or judicial power. Comparing the findings of ethnographers elsewhere in the Tibetan region, it is apparent that many Tibetans regard the cosmos and its inhabitants as having little relevance for the moral order of their community or its political organization. It is suggested that such understandings have a profound effect on local understandings of the ambit and significance of Buddhism and on the course of its assimilation in the region.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.