Food Fights and Table Manners: Food, bodies and ideology in the dāna encounter of Pali Buddhism
https://www.academia.edu/40264143/Food_ ... view-paperAbstract
Previous scholarship has suggested that ritualized giving (dāna) by laity to monastics constituted a significant factor in the creation of Buddhism as a viable historical phenomenon. The giving of almsfood, in particular, provides a prime site of social interaction between monastics and laity, wherein sustained mutual relations may develop.
This study aims at discerning some of the cultural dynamics of this interaction by analyzing the ritualized giving of food from two interrelated perspectives.
Firstly, utilizing the concept of ‘food ideology’, this study investigates the ideological value attached to the substance (i.e. food) given in the transaction. Thereafter, the ritual performances of the mutual participants are examined. I argue that, while normative Buddhism ascribes a more positive value to food than its ascetic contemporaries, it implemented a thorough program of corporal discipline that functioned as a novel form of ‘civilizational’ asceticism congenial to the contemporaneous cosmopolitan landscape. This positive value ascription to food and emphasis on discipline converges with urban, lay sensibilities and serves to bring cohesion between the lay and monastic elements of the normative Pali tradition.
Key words:
alms, asceticism, corporal discipline, dāna, dakkhiṇā, domestication, food, forest renunciation, gift, health, liberality, merit, monasticism, meat, medicine, middle way, monastic discipline, pāṭimokkha, sacrifice, śaikṣa dharma, sampajañña, sekhiya dhamma, sikkhā, śikṣā, urbanism, vegetarianism, Vinaya