monasticism

Sikhism

Sikhism, founded by the Punjabi reformer Nanak, was the least sympathetic of all indigenous Indian religions to monastic inspirations. The Sikh monastic Nirmal-akhada and the quasi-monastic Nihang Sahibs came to terms with the overall Indian tendency to establish monastic traditions that express full-time involvement in redemptive practice. Since the 19th century the monastic Udasi order (founded by Nanak’s elder son Siri Chand) has achieved a most successful rapprochement with Hindu elements. Its disciplinary, sartorial, and cenobitic settings are identical with those of the Hindu sannyasi. They refer to the Adi Granth, the sacred book of the Sikhs, as their basic text, in spite of the fact that their intramonastic and intermonastic discourse proceeds along lines similar to those of the orthodox Hindu orders. This accounts for the fact that the Udasi is now respected as equal to the most prestigious and ancient Hindu orders.

Daoism

Daoism, an ancient Chinese religion (with later Buddhist influences) that inspired some emulation in Japan and Korea, holds a middling position with respect to monastic ventures, lying somewhere between the powerfully antimonastic Confucian schools that always represented the official culture and mainstream of sophisticated Chinese opinion and the radically monastic Buddhists. Some scholars believe that Daoism may have come under Indian influences, because it originated in the southwestern parts of China. The chief object of Daoism, however, is not redemption or salvation, at least as those goals are interpreted in other scripturally based religions. Rather, the ultimate aim of the Daoist practitioner is longevity or ultimate physical immortality. The Daoist quest after the elixir of life, and its expression in cryptic and enigmatic poetry that is well known to, and generally misunderstood by, modern European and American readers, are in no way comparable to the supererogatory search of the monastics thus far discussed. The Daoist settlements of sages, in forests and mountain glades as well as in the cities, are, at best, analogous to the eremitic type of proto-monasticism. When Daoist settlements were cenobitic or celibate, these features were indeed incidental to Daoism, which defies and rejects rules of any corporate kind.

Other Asian varieties

Of the slightly less than 100 monastic and quasi-monastic orders in South Asia, well over half developed locally or regionally. They usually lack a body of rules and conventions that would be recognized or accepted by a wider Hindu-Buddhist-Jain consensus. About a dozen orders are repudiated as heretical and are accused of using religious pretexts to indulge in antisocial behaviour. The Hindu and Buddhist Tantric groups (practicing occult, sometimes sexual, meditative techniques) represent esoteric countermonasticism in India, though these practices have been accepted fully in certain Tibetan Buddhist hierarchies.

Of the not numerous but clearly monastic or quasi-monastic organizations of recent origin in other parts of Asia, the Vietnamese Cao Dai achieved some impact. Founded in 1926 in opposition to French colonial rule, they maintained a military organization and their own army “regulars” from 1943 to the mid-1950s. Cao Dai propounded an eclectic theology, with a pope and such heterogeneous patron saints as the 19th-century French novelist Victor Hugo, the World War II British prime minister Winston Churchill, and the Buddha. Members were bound by vows that did not include celibacy or poverty but stressed obedience to the hierarchy. Cao Dai survives at its monastery-fortress headquarters at Tray Ninh northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

The Abrahamic religions