BUDDHISM IN SRI LANKA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 163fied: This mix is the bark that may help keep the tree alive by ensuring popu-
lar support, but it is not the heartwood; at times it may even be a parasite that
strangles the tree and brings it down. A glance at the canon will reveal that the
life of a ritual specialist is not what the Buddha envisaged for his monks.
But if the popular practice of Buddhism is not the true Dharma, then
where-outside of the texts-is the Dharma to be found? The answer is, in
the forest. King Parakramabahu I's edict (Strong EB, sec. 6.4) shows that he
looked to a forest monk for guidance in his reforms, and the same was true of
King Parakramabahu II; the kings of fourteenth and fifteenth century Chieng
Mai and Sukhothai; and, in the postcolonial period, U Nu ofBurma and the
ruling elite of Thailand. Some rulers looked without finding anything. Rama
V, before embarking on his program to standardize the curriculum for Bud-
dhist monks, had his Dharma department conduct a survey of the known for-
est monasteries throughout his kingdom in hopes that a meditation tradition
worthy of royal patronage could be found, but the survey turned up nothing
but Tantric and occult practices. This convinced him that the Path to nirvaifa
was no longer being pursued, and that the only avenue open to him was to
support the study of the texts. Still, the important point in all of these cases is
that the forest was the first place to which these rulers turned.
Like in the American frontier, the forest has played an important, if am-
bivalent, role in the societies of south and Southeast Asia. On the one hand, it
is a place of danger: wild animals, disease, outlaws, malevolent spirits, and
treacherous temptations. On the other hand, it is where the Buddha attained
Awakening, a place where truths transcending social conventions may be
found and brought back to reform the social order.
Throughout the fheravadin tradition, the concept of forest Buddhism has
carried the same ambivalence. True, the forest is a place of heterodoxy, where
hermits and strange cults go to escape societal norms, and from which mes-
sianic movements arise to challenge the political order. One example of this
aspect of forest Buddhism can be found in the Ari sect (founded in the latter
years of Pagan), whose members claimed to be monks and nuns, but who re-
portedly engaged in a wide variety of practices in flagrant violation of the
Vinaya rules, such as slaughtering animals for meat, drinking alcohol, and de-
flowering virgins. Another example is the elusive Sacca Lokuttara (Transcen-
dent Truth) movement, a group of recluses who refuse to bind themselves by
the precepts and today maintain a very low-profile existence in the border re-
gions of northeast Thailand.
However, the forest has also been the home of movements that outdo the
social norm in terms of their adherence to the texts: groups of lay or ordained
practitioners who reject syncretic elements, leave the bustle of domesticated
Buddhism, and devote themselves fully to scholarship, meditation, or both,
pursuing a life in keeping with their beliefs about what the texts actually
taught.
The uncertainty as to whether one will find orthodoxy or heterodoxy
when going into the forest explains why the ruling elite tends not to look
there for its inspiration in times of relative social stability. But in times of