Journal of East Asian Cultures

Vol. 13 No. 1 (2021): Community Building: Family and Nation, Tradition and Innovation
Articles

Renouncing the World and Taking Ordination: Family Ties of Mongolian Buddhist Novices

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  • Krisztina Teleki
Krisztina Teleki
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE)
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38144/TKT.2021.1.4

Published 2021-12-15

Keywords

  • Mongolian Buddhism,
  • monastic ordination,
  • monastic life,
  • monkhood and family,
  • different generations of monks

How to Cite

Teleki, K. (2021). Renouncing the World and Taking Ordination: Family Ties of Mongolian Buddhist Novices. Journal of East Asian Cultures, 13(1), 45–67. https://doi.org/10.38144/TKT.2021.1.4

Copyright (c) 2021 the author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The 20th century brought different periods in the history of Mongolia including theocracy, socialism and democracy. This article describes what renouncing the world (especially the home and the family), taking ordination, and taking monastic vows meant at the turn of the 20th century and a century later. Extracts from interviews reveal the life of pre-novices, illustrating their family backgrounds, connections with family members after ordination, and support from and towards the family. The master-disciple relationship which was of great significance in Vajrayāna tradition, is also described. As few written sources are available to study monks’ family ties, the research was based on interviews recorded with old monks who lived in monasteries in their childhood (prior to 1937), monks who were ordained in 1990, and pre-novices of the current Tantric monastic school of Gandantegčenlin Monastery. The interviews revealed similarities and differences in monastic life in given periods due to historical reasons. Though Buddhism could not attain its previous, absolutely dominant role in Mongolia after the democratic changes, nowadays tradition and innovation exist in parallel.

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