Mongolia is Relevant: What Might Have Been

Okay, okay, I have a confession. Technically, my “Mongolia is Relevant” posts are a bit self-defeating, because if it were really relevant, you wouldn’t need me to tell you that. A blog on the USA doesn’t need to detail why it’s powerful, and a blog on China won’t bother to list the ways Chinese products impact your life. We’re aware that the US and China (and countless other countries) are relevant, because they are just so relevant. Mongolia impacts history and culture in a lot of ways, but it hasn’t impacted our world in a substantial enough way that the average Joe knows it.

But I’m here to tell you how close Mongolia was to being unquestionably, unignorably relevant. One of the books I read in my research is the story of Rabban Sauma, a Nestorian monk sent as an envoy from the Ilkhan to Europe at the end of the 13th Century. Rabban Sauma visited the Pope, the King of France, and the King of England, asking them to unite with the Mongols in an assault against the Mamluks. If European forces initiated another Crusade against the Muslim Mamluks in Egypt at the same time that the Mongols attacked from the East, the Mamluks would have been overwhelmed and defeated. Thus Mamluk assaults both on Christian Outremer communities and on the Mongol Ilkhanate would have been drastically reduced, and the Ilkhan promised to present Jerusalem to the Christians.

But this was not to be; while the Ilkhanate was desperately defending itself against the Mamluks, Europe was plagued by internal conflict, both between and within individual countries. Furthermore, parts of Europe (*coughcough GENOA coughcough*) were enjoying lucrative trade with the Muslims, and weren’t  eager to give up that income. So the alliance never happened, the present Ilkhan died, and his successors mostly converted to Islam. The historian Sir Steven Runciman expressed the potential significance of the alliance thusly:

“Had the Mongol alliance been achieved and honestly implemented by the West, the existence of Outremer would almost certainly have been prolonged. The Mamluks would have been crippled if not destroyed; and the Ilkhanate of Persia would have survived as a power friendly to the Christians and the West.”

So that whole Middle East tension thing? It might have been reduced (though probably never eliminated) years ago. Or, it could have been exacerbated, and maybe there might not have been a Dome of the Rock to fight over. But it would certainly have been different. And if the Mongols had exerted more control over the Middle East, they might still be in the Middle East, instead of confined mostly to Northern China, Outer Mongolia, and enclaves in New Jersey. I don’t know much about history, but this alliance would have been a big deal.

It may not have ended there… It would have been nice if the “Ilkhanate of Persia would have survived as a power friendly to Christians and the West,” but that wasn’t inevitable. Early European reluctance to an alliance with the Mongol Empire was based on the fear that the Mongol Empire, having conquered the lands to the east of Europe, would have seeped further into Europe itself. Though by the end of the 13th Century, the Mongols no longer retained their former power, this could have been a possibility. Once the Mamluks were defeated, the Mongol Horde’s total war may have been unleashed on the lands of their former allies, and, as the cliché goes, we might all be speaking Mongolian. (Though the US certainly wouldn’t have been founded under the circumstances it was, so you and I probably just wouldn’t be here, period.) Now, the Europe-Mongol alliance wasn’t exactly close to happening; a lot of factors prevented it, and there would have been more obstacles to a Mongol occupation of Europe… But it was possible.

So sure, Mongolia’s pretty remote now, but you should know that it could have ended up right in your backyard.

Mongolian Connections: Money Talks, and People Listen

This connection isn’t exclusively Mongolian, because it’s just related to Buddhism in general, but if it weren’t for Mongolia, I wouldn’t have learned about the life of Buddha, and thus wouldn’t be able to make this connection…

For those of you who haven’t been to Mongolia and thus haven’t read the Shakyamuni Buddha’s biography, Buddha was the prince whose father did his best to keep him isolated from the world in order to keep him from becoming a holy man instead of a king. (This is related to a prediction made on the day of Buddha’s birth.) Buddha was raised in incredible luxury, with several palaces, no work to do, and eventually, with a royal wife and child. Despite his father’s efforts, Buddha decided that material wealth was not enough and wanted to meet some of his subjects. When he left the palace confines, he encountered an old man and was so horrified, he decided to become an ascetic to avoid becoming old himself. (And I thought modern America had a problem with aging!) I’m simplifying a lot here, as other subjects came into play, but the gist of the story is that Buddha decided to renounce his royal power, his wealth, and his family in order to live as a beggar. After escaping the palace, Buddha became a mendicant, then a hermit, and finally, after adopting a lifestyle of moderation and meditation, he achieved Nirvana under the Bodhi tree.

Nothing about this story struck me as too remarkable, but as I continued to read about Buddha’s life, a pattern emerged. Another character in the story had a similar tale: Yasa, “the son of a millionaire,” was brought up in the most luxurious of lifestyles, but one day became so repulsed by the excess of his world that he ran away from his home and came upon Buddha teaching. When Buddha preached to him, Yasa became his disciple and eventually achieved enlightenment.

This story—the renunciation of wealth in pursuit of higher ideals—is a pretty common one, not only in Buddhism, but also in other ideologies. Probably the most famous Christian example is St. Francis, the son of a wealthy merchant who decided that charity and poverty were more fulfilling than his friends’ and family’s lives of luxury. He left behind his father (and his father’s wealth), first living as a mendicant, and then founding his own mendicant order. On the political scene, Engels was the son of a textile manufacturer, and if I remember the movies correctly, Che and Castro were both pretty upper-middle class. Though I’m not sure if these guys renounced their wealth exactly, they at least had to put down that sort of lifestyle a bit in order to lead their revolutions, I think. (I am not a historian, so the communism part could be grossly inaccurate, and Wikipedia is being less than helpful. Corrections welcome.) A google search on “renounced his wealth” doesn’t quite know which religion it wants to choose, so common is that theme. (Interestingly, “renounced her wealth” reveals mostly Christian saints, and I’m sure someone who knows better than I could analyze that.)

Buddha and St. Francis were both charismatic leaders who led by example when it came to worldly renunciation. They each gained a cult following and founded pretty influential and enduring movements… So what about this theme is so convincing? Is it just that seeing an example of renunciation leading to spiritual fulfillment makes others more likely to make the leap? (Clare of Assisi, one of Francis’s first and most devoted followers, was a common result for “renounced her wealth.”) Did Buddha and Francis serve as before/after pictures for adopting poverty as a lifestyle? Is this made more convincing because renunciation of property is seen as such a drastic action that it makes people take notice and makes people think, “If he gives up wealth for this cause, it must be a big deal”? I’m not sure, but rich people who choose to become poor seem to have quite a presence, and this theme endures across cultures and centuries.

At first, it may seem like a great thing that these religions glorify figures who give up the material joys that our society so values. They’re sticking it to the capitalist system, right? Except, as your own foray into hagiography may have shown you, (everyone makes a foray into hagiography at some point, right?), this has a major flaw: Only the wealthy have wealth to renounce. The poor that Buddha encountered in his journey? They don’t make much of a statement when they give up their BC equivalent of a cardboard box. In the medieval Christian world, the Church made a big deal about the wealthy devoting so much time and money to charity; this actually gave the upper class a spiritual leg up over the poor, because they had time and money to give. It may be harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but with enough money, all things are possible, and this was especially true if one aspired to sainthood. A boy who was born a beggar would probably be too busy trying not to starve to strive for spiritual enlightenment, and if he started preaching about the beauty of his lifestyle, I don’t think anyone would have cared. This is a complicated issue, and one that’s worth a bit of examination. (Keep in mind that not all grand religious figures follow this pattern; it’s significant that Jesus was born in the humblest of circumstances, and if I recall correctly, neither Mohammed nor Joseph Smith, both also from humble beginnings, took vows of poverty.)

That idea carries over into modern times; we value philanthropy on a grand scale, but you can’t be a philanthropist without being pretty rich first. Warren Buffet gives so much money to charity that his net worth dwindles into single-digit-billions, and he’s a hero. Brangelina adopt more foreign babies for their nannies to raise, and they start a trend. But the everyday families who can’t afford vacations, much less yachts, and still scrape enough out of their pockets to pay their taxes and give to their local shelter? They don’t usually get news stories. In fact, some of them sort of get a lot of flak, on a cultural level, because they aren’t necessarily educated, and they probably aren’t ambitious. And couples that give up their time and freedom to give foster kids an extra chance? Sure, our country values them in theory, but it doesn’t necessarily offer them too much support or encouragement. 

Imagine if People Magazine did a celebrity-free issue, where instead of covering the latest cheating husbands or movie-star elopements, they covered the guy who walks two miles in the rain to help his daughter change her flat tire, or a low-budget wedding only made possible by the help of friends and family. (Though good fathers and happy families are probably harder to come by than gross celebrity antics.) But of course, that’s not what people want to read about. And that is part of the problem; probably it’s not so much that the system values the rich better, it’s that the people in the system (and that means you and me) value the rich better. Once we start paying to hear good news about good people, the media would start covering it… But I guess if we want to read about that, we’re just going to have to wait until Madonna gives up her career and starts working at a homeless shelter.

Mongolia is Awesome: Medieval Freedom of Religion (Wait, What?)

The Mongol Empire doesn't exactly have a great reputation for mercy or compassion or pretty much anything that’s not, you know, conquering the known world and then conquering the unknown bits and then finding another known world to conquer. I can’t say they didn’t have a great PR department, though, because actually their reputation for brutality and total war was deliberately cultivated; as a result of it, some cities would raise a white flag just because they heard the word “Mongol” in order to avoid suffering the same fate as Baghdad. But centuries later, in an era with different values, people tend to remember the cruelty of the Mongols and the destruction they wreaked. One word that probably doesn’t spring to mind when we hear “Mongols”: Tolerance.

Yet the Mongol Empire was a member of a rare  breed of medieval society, the religiously tolerant one. The khans, because they conquered such vast expanses of land, governed peoples of many different religions, and they pretty much had no preference as to what religion their subjects practiced. All major religions were allowed to practice freely in lands the Mongols governed, with the result that many towns had populations and of several different religions, mostly sects of Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Nestorian Christianity, and (in certain areas) Judaism. There were no forced conversions, no purges, and the khans, to ensure stability in their realms, even had to ensure that they did not offend any particular religious community. Some khans did practice their own religion--Chinggis Khaan relied heavily on shamans, and many khans  (including the originally Nestorian Teguder turned Ahmad) converted to Islam. But most khans were decidedly unreligious, and they catered to multiple religions to gain favor with different religious communities. Kublai Khan, for example, sent messengers to Jerusalem with instructions to worship there on his behalf, and many wives and mothers of Khans were Nestorians, as I’ve pointed out. According to the European diplomat William of Rubrick, who visited Karakorum in the 1250s, the Great Khan actually asked him to participate in a religious debate at the court with a Nestorian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. The Ilkhan Arghun is a near picture-perfect example of Mongol religious diversity, and the necessary flexibility of the Khans: He was a devout Buddhist married to a Byzantine Christian, and he had his son (who later converted to Islam) baptized into Nestorianism.

Of course, reading about the Mongol Empire of tolerance, my mind can’t help but draw comparisons between it and another tolerant realm—medieval Spain. There are plenty of differences between the nature of tolerance in the two kingdoms. The Mongol khans, as I pointed out, generally had no strong religious affiliations, and even if one did, a new khan would eventually replace him, and probably one of a different religion. In Spain, however, minority religions were usually ruled by the majority, with Christian kings allowing Muslims (and Jews) in their domains, or vice versa. This meant that although religions were tolerated, one was preferred. Furthermore, certain rulers or certain political climates would often have tragic results for minority religious communities, as eventually the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel did for tolerance itself in Spain. In the Mongol Empire, however, religiously motivated violence was not tolerated, keeping people mostly in line. Yet in both realms, the atmosphere could be tense, and outbreaks of religious violence did occur, though more frequently in Spain than in Mongol-ruled lands. Yet it was in the khans’ best interest to keep all religious communities happy, so the communities were, in a sense, forced to get along (or at least accept the existence of the others).

This is another similarity with Spanish tolerance—it was very much practically motivated. Simply put, the khans could not have held onto so much land if they insisted on a single religion. Their policy of tolerance was one meant to keep them in power, and their attempts to appease all religious groups (to gain their favor) demonstrates this. Khans who overstepped this boundary could be quickly ousted and replaced, while khans like Kublai who were careful not to step on any toes were more likely to last. The sparsely populated nature of both the Mongol realm and the Spanish meseta also necessitated this policy; there weren’t enough people to make any sort of religious demands, as everyone who could be spared was needed to work and protect the land. Furthermore, when people of certain minority religions had valuable skills or resources, it was in rulers’ best interest to accept these religions and keep these people around. This was the case with Jews in Medieval Spain; since they spoke Hebrew and often Arabic, and because of their vital position as money lenders (and their even more vital tax revenue), they were key figures in both Christian and Muslim Spanish courts. Similarly, educated Nestorian monks were valuable to Mongol khans, when neither literacy nor governance were strong suits of the Mongols. (This was likely behind Kublai’s request that Marco Polo send 100 Nestorian monks back to his capital so that they could “help convert people.”) And in both these cases, favoring minority religions could lead to unrest with the majority religions. In both Christian and Muslim-ruled Spain, courtiers often resented the presence and influence of Jews; this sometimes erupted in violence, as in the 1066 pogrom in Granada and the multiple pogroms of the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth-century Ilkhanate (the Mongol khanate governing Persia and sometimes, its surrounding lands), Islam was the majority religion, and Muslims often felt that the Mongols favored foreign religions, partially because courts were filled with educated members of the Nestorian clergy, and partially because most Ilkhans at that time were not Muslims.

So although the Mongol version of tolerance and the Spanish version of tolerance were different in significant ways, religiously diverse communities in the Middle Ages fell victim to the same sorts of woes: tension, outbreaks of violence, and a tolerance that was practical rather than ideological. I wonder if/how we have managed, in a modern world, to leave all of these woes behind.

But this isn’t a meditation; I just wanted to let everyone know that, though the Mongols may not have won Miss Congeniality at the pageant, while people (myself included) are looking to the “community of tolerance” in Spain for lessons, they may be missing out on something even more Awesome: an Empire of Tolerance.

Mongolian Connections: Christian Connections

I came to Mongolia (in part) to discover similarities across totally different cultures. My theory was that when similar themes appeared in cultures separated by distance, language, religion, and lifestyle, would reveal something about the nature of humanity as a whole. This tactic can be applied to more than humanity as a whole; looking at similarities between Christianity in the Mediterranean/Europe and Nestorian Christianity in the far East of the Mongol Empire, similar trends appear in different eras that might reveal some features of Christianity that are not immediately obvious.

Though Mongol rulers accepted all religions in their realms (and more on that later), Christians in the Mongol realms were sometimes given special treatment. Kublai Khan funded a spiritual journey of two Nestorian Christian monks to the Holy Land around 1275, and he also asked Marco Polo to send 100 Nestorian monks back to his capital when his party returned to the West. Nestorians were given appointments in the courts of various khanates, and when the aforementioned two Nestorian monks traveled through the Mongol realm, many lesser officials tried to convince them to stay at their court, often offering them wealth and material comfort.

Why did Mongol rulers like to keep Nestorian Christians around? Because they were useful. Mongols were not a very literate population (something that didn’t change even until the twentieth century), and, even up to Kublai’s day, they had little experience actually ruling an Empire. Nestorian monks spent years studying, and though they focused on Scripture and theological matters, their literacy and intellectual skill were prized by khans, so rulers courted favor with the Nestorian community in order to recruit members of the clergy to work in their administration. Of course, in Europe, too, literacy and learning was mostly encouraged by the Church. Monks recorded and preserved not only theological treatises, but also works of pagan philosophy and mythology. The university system began as a way for clerics to study theology, and, as I recently discovered, even Celtic myths about a magical island filled with beautiful women for young heroes to live on forever have only come down to us because they were recorded, at one point, by Christian monks. (If you want to know more about the Church’s role in European intellectual development, I have about 8 essays for you to read. And maybe I’ll write a few more for you, too.)

So Christians in different sects of Christianity and completely different cultures had a tendency to educate their clergy; what does this reveal about anything? For one, it shows the importance of learning and literacy in the Christian tradition. This isn’t necessarily ideological at all—it’s just because engagement with the Scriptures is an important aspect of the religion. Unlike other religions that focused on ritual, meditation, or submission to an authority (not that Christianity cut those out), Christianity had a tradition of placing a great deal of significance on interpreting the Scripture they had. (And perhaps this is just because it can be so vague and/or confusing?) But this isn’t to say that other religions haven’t nurtured educational systems. Universities here are often linked to Buddhist monasteries, and considering my recent unsuccessful forays into understanding Buddhism, I’m going to assume a lot of study needs to go into attempting Enlightenment. As for other traditions: The “madrasa” is an important aspect of many mosques, and the rabbinic course of study is one of the most intellectual and study-intensive ones I know (think pre-Madonna Kabbalah). Buddhist monks seem to have been recruited by khans as well, but not quite as vigorously as Nestorians. (Though this could just be the nature of my reading material.) So why did Nestorian Christians get more special treatment than Buddhist monks in Kublai’s realm or Muslims and Jews in the Ilkhanate? I don’t know. I’m thinking because it designated people whose sole function was to study, unlike Islam and Judaism whose scholars were also encouraged/mandated to participate in the world. And Buddhist training tended to have less of a practical aspect than Nestorian studies. (i.e. Buddhist monks doesn’t study law or medicine as much as Christians—but I don’t know about this.)

But a love of literacy is not the only similarity between Nestorian Christianity in Asia and European/Mediterranean Christianity. Throughout the history of the Mongol Empire, one story repeats itself a lot: the influence of khans’ wives and mothers on their decisions. And threaded through these stories comes, specifically, the influence of Christian wives and mothers on their decisions. One reason Kublai was supposed to have favored Nestorians (in addition to the practical reasons) was because his mother was Nestorian. The Catholicus (the Nestorian equivalent of Patriarch/Pope/Prophet) was once almost executed by the Ilkhan Ahmad, but Ahmad’s pious Nestorian wife convinced him not to go through with the execution. The Ilkhan Abakha was the son of a Christian and married to a Byzantine princess. Although there were not many prominent Nestorian men, many wives (and thus often mothers, as well) of khans were Christians. Part of this may have been simply the ratio—there were more khans’ wives than there were khans, so it was more likely that a wife would be Nestorian. (Nestorian Christianity never actively forbade polygamy.) But part of the reason was simply that women were more likely to convert. Although some khans participated in Nestorian rituals—the Ilkhan Arghun, though a Buddhist himself, had his son baptized—they tended not to be as fervent supporters of Nestorianism as many women of the Mongol elite.

Similarly, when Christianity was still a new religion, many of its converts were elite women. In fact, the growth of Christianity was in part attributable to these women; when one converted, she often convinced her husband to convert, and thus the entire household (the paterfamilias thing again). Just as women would be attracted to Nestorian Christianity later, in the first couple centuries of Christianity, many upper-class women in the Mediterranean world found something worth devoting themselves to (and in this case, dying for) in the Christian message.

What this reveals about Christianity is a little less clear. Some scholars speculate that Christianity initially attracted both women and the poor because of its emphasis on equality and its downplay of traditional markers of status. In a Christian service, women were just Christians like their husbands, which was appealing to them. This could apply to Mongol women, as well, and though (as noted), their husbands did not always convert with them. In a world where men held the power, women likely found something encouraging about finding a religion that didn’t isolate them as starkly as Islam and Buddhism may have. And, considering what I’ve found about women influencing just about everything from behind the scenes, the message of the last being first might have had a ring of truth to it.  

Mongolian Connections: For the Birds (Deer?)

Above the doors to many Buddhist temples, Buddhist centers, even stores selling religious items, golden sculptures of two deer sit looking at a wheel. Usually one deer is a female, and the other has a horn (or two?). When we first saw this, Prof. O pointed out that the reason was because Buddha, when he first began to teach, preached to two deer. Thus, when one enters a temple, one passes below the deer, Buddha’s first disciples.

Of course, this story reminded me of the story of St. Francis preaching to the birds. I don’t know much about the Buddhist background, but in Francis’s case, his preaching demonstrated not only his humility, because he desired at that moment to preach to lowly animals, but also his power, because the animals fell silent for him and cocked their heads as if they understood.

It certainly seems plausible that the Buddhist story has a similar lesson. So I wonder, why does this story strike chords across cultures? What is it exactly that makes a learned man preaching to those who presumably can’t understand him (until they do) so appealing as a leader? Is it the humility? Is it the power? Is it, paradoxically (or not), both? And is there a fundamental difference between this story set in the context of a religion that forbids the killing of animals (Buddhism) and this story set in the context of a religion that does not believe animals have souls, or at least, not souls as worthy as men's?

EDIT: Oops. Mistranslation. Having now done more research on Buddhism, I've discovered that Buddha was preaching to human disciples in a deer park--not quite the same thing as Francis's situation. So I guess that's not a connection, after all, but I'm keeping it as a Meditation, because, why not?

Meditations: Syncretism

All over Mongolia, at the tops of almost every hill or mountain, you might be able to discern an irregularity in the silhouette. If you’re close enough, you can make out clearly a big pile of rocks, sometimes with something sticking out of the top of the pile. These are ovoos, sacred cairns. Usually they are covered in blue scarves, with maybe some yellow ones as well. If you’re enterprising enough to walk up to one, you’ll find more thrown onto the pile. Single cigarettes, cakes, apples, small bills, and once I even saw a steering wheel cover (although I’m not sure that was an offering, exactly.) They are not always at the tops of mountains; often they are just sitting by the side of the road. They range from huge and imposing to piles so small that I’m not even sure they are meant to be ovoos, and not just where someone dumped out some gravel for whatever reason.

At the shaman ritual a couple weeks ago, I noticed a bunch of scarves tied to some rocks, and though I’d read that ovoos existed, I wanted to get more insight, so I asked Prof. C about it. “Oh, that is a place sacred to the shamans.” The blue of the scarves represents the blue of the sky, because the sky gods are the most important gods in Mongolian shamanism. While we were there, a few women did go up to this boulder-ovoo and pray. 

While we were driving back after the ceremony, I noticed an ovoo on the way and tried to take a picture of it. Prof. C stopped the car, and we got out to see it. He collected three stones from the road, instructed me to do the same, and we walked up to the ovoo. “Go always in this direction, like the sun,” he explained, motioning with his finger. (Oh, I realized, that’s why the clock goes in that direction… I guess?) As we walked around, we threw each of our three stones onto the cairn. “You walk around three times,” he explained. We walked around three (more) times, and then headed back to the car. “They are near passes on the road, so you get good luck. Sometimes, if I do not want to stop the car, I just honk three times. One, two three!” He laughed, and I did, too. Once we were back on the road, I asked him what was the significance of three. “It is for the Buddha. One is for the Buddha, one is for his teachings, and one is for his monks.” …Wait. I thought it was a space sacred to shamans? I asked, “So it is shamanistic, but also Buddhist?” Prof. C didn’t seem too concerned by the question. “Yes. It is for both."

The next day, when I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum with R and Prof. O, we saw a lot of Mongolian Buddhist art, much of it by Zanabazar, the founder of an important style of Monoglian Buddhist art, and the leader of the Mongolian Renaissance. Zanabazar had studied in Tibet, so his sculptures were very heavily influenced by Tibetan art. The paintings of the Zanabazar schools, likewise, strongly resembled Tibetan/Indian art. While looking at all the sculptures, I noticed one of Ganesha, and one of another Hindu god. I stopped and asked Prof. O about it: “Aren’t those Hindu gods?” Her nonchalance was similar to Prof. C’s when I asked about Buddhism and shamanism. “Yes, they are from Hinduism.” So what were they doing being sculpted by Buddhists? “Oh, Buddhism uses many things from Hinduism; some of the art, some of the gods, lots of things.” Apparently, as R continued to explain, there was no way, really, to separate Buddhist philosophy from Hindu philosophy, or to separate their cultures or even philosophies. “It is all syncretism,” she said.

Ah, syncretism. In Christianity, syncretism is most obvious with pagan-Christian syncretism. The combination of Easter (a goddess) and pagan fertility rituals with the springtime resurrection of Christ, or images of Christ as Apollo, or the merging of the Christ-figure with Dionysus. But in these cases, there are clear lines to be drawn. Easter, the bunnies and the eggs = pagan, Apollo = pagan, Dionsus = pagan. Christ = Christian. Even in Christianity, however, things aren’t always so simple. Irish mythology is especially complex, because it was all recorded by Christian scribes, and set in a Christian framework. Thus, though it features gods with strange powers who seem to live forever, they may live in a world that is untouched by the Fall of Man, a Paradise near Ireland. Their powers are witchcraft, but it’s not evil witchcraft, exactly. There’s no way to explain the case clearly, because it’s just not clear. Somewhere along the way gods became remnants of an Unfallen world became fairies became something that wasn’t exactly Christian, but wasn’t exactly pagan either.

This is what it looks like in Mongolian Buddhism and shamanism, as well. There is no way to separate one from the other, because each intrudes on the other so that they become one entity, waters flowing from tributaries into a single river. You might be able to trace from where the water came originally, but there is no way to separate the two streams now that they’ve joined. Blue scarves, sacred to the sky gods, are tied around the doors to Buddhist monasteries and the lions guarding their stairs. Yet Buddhist ideas of reincarnation (and Hindu ideas of reincarnation?) are also, in some ways, shamanist ideas of reincarnation. To be honest, I’m not sure which came from where first, and that’s sort of the point.

I wonder, why did the two fuse so completely here? Only 5% of the population identifies as shamanist, but many shamanist traditions live on. There are no longer any true pagans, (neopagans, sure, but that’s as different from paganism as “neo-shamanism” is from the old kind), but do any other pagan rituals live on in Western religions today? Do any significant pagan rituals live on, or any significant pagan philosophies? (Bunnies and sweets don’t quite make the cut.) Buddhism and shamanism did come into conflict in the past, but now there doesn’t seem to be much tension between them, perhaps because they share so much in common. So if things had gone differently in Europe and the Middle East, would it have been possible for religions that sprung out of each other (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to syncretize in a significant way? Have they? Are Islam and Christianity reconcilable in the way that shamanism and Buddhism are? Why or why not? And if they had become one flowing river, how might that have looked, not only for the religions, but for the world?

Mongolian Connections: Prayer & Production

At Gandan Khiid last week, R explained to me the family/lama system that takes care of the practical needs of the monks. I knew that a lot of the Gandan monks lived in gers in the district around the monastery, but I expected that they lived in monastic communities, or that there would still be a lot of housing for them in the temple complex (it is a monastery, after all). But that’s not how these monasteries (the urban ones, at least) work. Basically, a family “sponsors” a monk, and provides his material needs. They feed him, house him,  and though I don’t know if they clothe him, they even do his laundry. In return, the monk is expected to keep them in his prayers, and to intervene with the divine powers for them in times of crisis. Taking care of a lama gives one very good karma, and the way the deal works is essentially: Material support in exchange for spiritual support.

Though the Christian system never worked quite the same way, the material/spiritual support exchange was crucial in medieval Europe. Wealthy merchants, nobles, and even royalty often donated a lot of money to particular monasteries, and in exchange, the monks were expected to pray for the donor and Gregorian-chant for him/her every so often. Oxford is a great place to see this in action—New College was founded by a bishop/chancellor (not a layperson, but it proves the point) so that, after his death, the choir there would sing masses for his soul. Even peasants without a lot to give utilized this system; because there were so many religious communities (and so much bureaucracy) in Oxford, there are still records that show the donations peasants made to this or that parish or monastery in their will. In return, the donor expected a grave near the church and maybe a psalm every Sunday or something.

The exchange was not always so specific. When we stopped by a convent in Greece, one student on my trip asked a nun what service the convent provided for the outside community. (I can’t remember the context of the question, but it did fit.) The nun, a little indignantly, explained, “We pray for them.” Being modern, enlightened high school students, this hardly seemed like a worthwhile endeavor.

But it is interesting that this exchange is crucial in these different religious traditions. There is a divide, in both cases, between the people who pray and the people who work. The lay/clergy or lay/monk distinction was generally clear in medieval Europe, as it is generally clear in Mongolian Buddhism.  There was/is not supposed to be too much crossover in the roles. Yet in the Christian case, the group of people specializing in prayer has become less significant. Christians are expected to pray mostly for themselves, and they don’t hear much about donating to people to pray for them. (The personal connection to God carries more weight now than it did in the hierarchical church system of 700 years ago.) That being said, most laypeople still don’t devote the bulk of their daily lives to prayer. So they are still, decidedly, laypeople, unlike the somewhat blurrier Beguines of the 13th/14th centuries, who worked for their subsistence but spent as much time as possible praying. Now prayer happens, but it usually comes after material needs (and usually also after material wants).

The Buddhist system in UB, on the other hand, still actively maintains (at least from what I heard) the idea of having a group of people dedicated to prayer, while others are dedicated to keeping them alive and praying.

So this Connection comes with a Meditation: What is it that, in different religions at different times, makes the need for separate groups so important? Why should some people pray and some people work? Is it like a spiritual mass production system, where more gets done if each person fits in one part? Are there political or economic reasons that people maintain it? And why did it change in Christianity? (A historian would be able to help with this question.) At what point did the system in which laypeople provided food/housing/clothing and a separate community was devoted to prayer become a system where most people did some of both? From a spiritual standpoint, does this mean people are losing out on prayer (or material goods, I guess, though that seems unlikely)? And lastly, do we still have any kind of system like this, in which some people are dedicated to ideology and some people are dedicated to material production?

A couple spring to mind. First I thought of academics; higher humanities education doesn’t produce a lot (except papers), but professors/ researchers are supported because, by teaching and researching, they are advancing knowledge (as opposed to prayer). To an extent, I think this makes sense—we value education in a similar way to how people used to value religion. My second idea was, of course, the world of “finance” or “consulting” or “banking.” (I will never understand what sort of a Venn diagram those three belong to.) No matter how many people try to explain it, it seems that this is just turning money (aka paper) into more money, and usually for the people who had money to begin with. In some ways it makes sense (providing mining equipment and railroads to mine Mongolia’s gold, for example), but a lot of it just looks like a whole lot of nothing. (And, as evidenced by certain financial situations, it becomes a whole lot of nothing sometimes, too.) These people who do not produce are supported because the world values money. (Did finance/banking as we know it originate in the US, where money was valued in a way, if not to an extent, that it hadn’t been before?) I’m not sure finance fits in as well, because people do not actively support financiers the way people actively support academics; it’s more that financiers know how to manipulate a system dependent on capitalism (and the fact that people do value capitalism) for their benefit. These examples bring up another possibility: Are the four systems (Christian monks, Buddhist monks, academics, and finance) just a way to perpetuate the rich being able to avoid manual work or physical production, the way academics and finance often seem to be to me? (Yes, a lot of people advance themselves from poverty through academics or finance, but this often seems to be the exception.)

If anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear.

Mongolian Connections: Religion is Religion

At the end of my first week here, I finally got a taste of Ulaanbaatar’s religious life. Though they are never particularly conspicuous and don’t seem to impact everyday life much (if at all), there are a few temples scattered around the city.

A quick updated rundown on Mongolia’s religious life: Under Stalin’s regime, the temples were (almost) all destroyed and the monks “purged.” The purges of priests in Russia were small compared to the purges of monks here. Although statistics in Mongolia generally seem pretty dubious, it is estimated that 30,000 lamas were executed during religious purges. All temples were razed, except for four (that I know of) that were preserved for cultural reasons. Two were converted into museums, and one (Gandan Khiid) was mostly destroyed, though Russian officials used some buildings to stable their horses and store things, until the prime minister of Mongolia had to whip up an active temple pretty quickly when a dignitary wanted to see one. Gandan Khiid was then kept in controlled “working condition” for diplomatic purposes. (Read: So that the government could pretend it hadn’t killed all the monks.) Unlike in the USSR, where religion was discouraged and at times persecuted, everything I’ve read describes it as pretty much forbidden in Mongolia.  

Since the fall of communism, however, it’s had a relatively tremendous resurgence. About 50% of Mongolians now identify as Buddhists, though 40% still consider themselves “not religious at all.” I’d be interested to see how that applies in Ulaanbaatar versus the countryside, and I’m not sure exactly how people were polled. (I tried looking up statistics for different areas of the US to compare, but the polls tend to be adherent-based, and I can’t really equate the two.) So although atheism/agnosticism is alive and well, religious devotion is on the rise. Christian denominations are apparently succeeding in various missionary efforts, and their influence has been significant as well, according to R and Prof. O. One result of this new rise in religion is the re-opening or founding of a few Buddhist temples. The largest of these is Gandan Khiid, the one that was allowed to operate under the communist government. It is one of the city’s main tourist attractions, so Friday R and I headed over to check it out and see a ritual. 

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I think there were two things influencing my preconceptions… First, my idealized vision of a population coming back to religion after years of oppression. In my imagination, I guess, though devotion still wasn’t the norm, (as evidenced by my post on the city’s lack of religious atmosphere), when people did embrace religion, they did it out of faith and enthusiasm for their beliefs. Second was a somewhat Orientalist idea of Eastern religion as more spiritual and even “pure.” Rightly or wrongly, Buddhism does tend to be considered more spiritual, closer to true belief and philosophy and separated from ritual, and a lot of people who identify as non-religious but “spiritual” identify more with Eastern religious doctrines. (If you disagree, let me know. I could be way off-base here, and trying to find people’s general opinions on forums, etc., yielded little of interest and made me lose a little faith in humanity.)

So I guess those things were swirling in my subconscious when I attended my first Buddhist ceremony. R and I arrived at Gandan too early, wandered around the monastery grounds and the streets outside, and then, when we heard a gong, (the first I heard in Ulaanbaatar, though I live across the street from a temple), we came back to try to watch the morning ceremony a bit. We walked past a huge incense burner on the way in, and the incense was thick in the air of the small main room of the temple, along with another smell I couldn't identify. There was a row of lamas on each side of the temple, and behind that a row of smaller lamas-in-training, young boys with shaved heads and dressed in the monastic red-and-yellow. The adult lamas were chanting (in Tibetan, we think), some from memory and some from books, and every once in a while the kids would join in for a line or two. (Though the kids’ participation was pretty sporadic and definitely seemed based on their whims rather than liturgical mandate.) 

A few laypeople did seem to be worshiping somewhat, walking to the back to revere the Buddhist statue there, and I vaguely recall someone touching one of the young lamas for a blessing. It was sometimes hard to tell the worshipers from tourists or onlookers, so I'm not sure exactly how many I saw. One older couple was especially interesting—very weatherworn, and the man was dressed in a traditional Mongolian herder’s outfit. R and I sat for a while to watch, and as I was observing all the lamas and their mini-lamas, something became obvious: They were bored. Not necessarily painfully fidgety-bored, but more bored than an average student would be in class, or a teenager in church. 

I noticed this first with the mini-lamas. They weren’t really paying attention (and the adult sitting next to them didn’t seem to care), and instead kept pinching each other or guffawing or chattering under the chants about whatever it is schoolboys chat about. (Having never been a schoolboy, I can only imagine what that is, and I suppose I will never know.) They looked exactly like boys their age (10-13?) might look like in the back row of a very boring assembly. Except this wasn’t the back row of a very boring assembly—it was the second row of a religious ritual. The kids were wedged right between the laypeople and the adult monks, and they seemed to care very little about the opinions of either, and even less about the ceremony.  

The adult monks weren’t chattering, but they were pretty clearly not putting in much effort to attain spiritual enlightenment, either. One kept yawning, occasionally through his recitations, but mostly in his pauses, and another chanted monotonously away, looking every bit like a kid who is made to apologize recites, “I’m sorry I called you a poo-head and broke your doll, and I promise not to do it again.” He looked about as much like like he was rolling his eyes as he could without actually doing it. It seemed to be just chant-chant-chant, another day at the monastery for these guys. I’m aware that I’m making a few assumptions, and reading into these guys’ expressions maybe more than I should. After all, these were a few monks at a morning ceremony at one temple. But I do want to say that these specific monks just did not seem that into it. They didn’t look spiritual, and they didn’t look like they cared one bit about what they were doing; they were just trying to get it done. I was confused as to why one would become a lama in a still relatively non-religious society unless one really felt called to it, but R explained that it is already very prestigious, and kids are sometimes put into training at a young age because of the honor of having a lama in the family. 
 

So that was my first impression of Buddhism in Mongolia. The next night, I found out more about it. While talking (or listening, more) to a group of expats, I heard that it is well-known that monks in Ulaanbaatar are corrupt. That was most of what I heard, confirmed later by R, and I wasn’t sure exactly what “corrupt” means, but one guy (X) did tell this story:  He had been talking with a monk the day before, and the monk said that he was worried about going back to the monastery because he was in trouble. When X asked why he was in trouble, the monk said that earlier that week, he had taken his wife’s car for a drive, gotten too drunk, and crashed it into a bus. (I can’t remember if it’s a bus, a car, or a truck, but I remember it being a relatively big vehicle, so I’m going with bus.)

Fun facts: Monks here are not supposed to marry, they are not supposed to drink to excess, and they are definitely not supposed to drink to such excess that they crash their wife’s car into another vehicle. Twenty years in, and already Lamaism in Ulaanbaatar is going the way of the medieval papacy. This is not a new phenomenon, however. The giant Buddhist sculpture at Gandan Khiid was originally commissioned in 1911 by the Bogd Khan, the spiritual leader of Mongolia, in the hopes that such devotion might restore his eyesight. His eyesight was due to a “severe illness” according to the plaque in the temple, and further research reveals the nature of the “severe illness”: Syphilis. Earlier, in the nineteenth century, the monk and poet Danzan Ravjaa spoke out against the corruption and hypocrisy of his contemporary lamas. (It should be noted, however, that Danzan Ravjaa was a member of a monastic tradition that allowed drinking and marriage, and his criticisms were more against the lack of compassion and devotion he saw in other monks.) His most famous poem “Shame, Shame” has a line that certainly might apply to the lamas I saw at Gandan Khiid:

“And the monks who call meditation a hindrance, shame!”

The whole thing reminded me of medieval monasticism and priesthood in Europe, and how, though there were devout monks, there was also a lot of corruption and a lot of simply not being true to the philosophy they were meant to be following. I can imagine monks at Cluny reciting their psalms with exactly the expression of the bored lama, and little nobles dropped off at Monte Cassino gossiping with the same subdued zeal as these mini-lamas. Across cultures, though monasticism has high ideals and attempts to root itself (initially) in its belief system, as it becomes popular or prestigious, it descends into just another way to be, at best, an ordinary human being, mistakes and all, (eg drunk-driving and crashing), and at worst, corrupt and sinful and power-hungry (*coughcough BORGIA coughcough*).  

I don’t have a conclusion in particular here; I just want to point out that religion is religion, and religious institutions don’t seem to be any better or any worse depending on the societies (or faiths) from which they spring.

Mongolian Connections: Mandalas and Labyrinths

Yesterday my teacher, another student, and I went to the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum, the main Mongolian art museum in Ulaanbaatar. There was a lot about it that was interesting, and I’ll probably write a few posts about things I saw/learned there.

But now, I want to talk about a Buddhist design called the Mandala. I can’t really describe a Mandala, but you can see it in the picture. It’s sort of like a maze, with four entrances (gates) and then a center as the destination of the maze. As R and Prof. O explained it, they are used in Buddhist meditation. The person meditating starts at one of the gates, and concentrates very hard on following the path to the center. (Technically, it is not a maze, because there is only one winding path to take, with no branches or dead ends.) While following the path, one is supposed to contemplate, and the journey is symbolic of the journey to enlightenment. Along the way, one must pass through bad things and good things, and things that are neither good nor bad but just are.

Of course, I thought, “It’s just like a labyrinth.” Although the original labyrinths were Greek and their exact function is ambiguous, labyrinths in Europe were traditionally used in forms of meditation and prayer. Some (like those in cathedrals) were big enough to walk on, and one could walk along the labyrinth’s course in prayer and contemplation until one reached the center. There is evidence that they were even meant to serve as a metaphor for the journey to the Holy City Jerusalem. Portable-sized labyrinths also existed, and one could trace the journey with one’s eyes or finger or whatever.

So the idea of some sort of labyrinth/mandala as an aid to and symbol of the journey to spiritual fulfillment is one that occurs across cultures and religions, and endures in a significant way in different societies. This makes sense to me, because it relates very much to what is true about human life in general: There is only one path of life, and the end is always the same (death). What is important is not where you end up, or even how you get there, but what you learn on the journey.

 (Another popular journey to spiritual enlightenment)

Mongolia is Relevant: Our Lady of the Mongols

I found out I’d be spending the summer in Mongolia just before I went to Istanbul. I was initially interested in two (very broad) aspects of Mongolian society—nomadic culture and traditional literature, and modern Mongolia’s development—and didn’t know much about the Mongol Empire. It was something that pushed on the fringes of what I studied, but rarely explicitly intersected with it, at least in what I read (mostly European/American texts). So it was a bit of a joy to encounter in Istanbul the character “Mary of the Mongols.” Mary was so nicknamed because she married a Mongol khan, after his father (her original betrothed) died. When that husband was assassinated by his brother, the brother also wanted to marry Mary, so she fled back to her father (an Emperor), who then planned to marry her off to a different Mongol khan (the fourth in this story). Instead, Mary joined a convent and gave enough money to rebuild the nunnery and attach a church. In honor of her, the church is referred to as the Church of St. Mary of the Mongols, and she is affectionately termed “Our Lady of the Mongols.” She also donated money to help build/decorate Christ Chora, (or I think she did—she was certainly featured in the mosaics there along with other benefactors).

So I heard about this woman and her churches and discovered, for the first time, Mongolia making an impact in a tangible and permanent way, only days after discovering that Mongolia would be making an impact on me in a tangible and permanent way. We (myself included) tend to reduce the image of Mongolia to some remote steppe and desert, whose empire was as brief as it was massive. But that’s just not true, as a little bit of Mongolian-history sleuthing will show you. For a while, Mongolia was there, not only pressing at the edges of the world, but slipping into and out of it and leaving their mark all over the continent. They may not have constructed many extant buildings, and Genghis Khaan may not have left much documentation, but as Our Lady of the Mongols demonstrates: Mongolia is relevant.