原文：What Makes a Monk Mad
译者：小刀周远

当他们在缅甸的城市街道上游行，他们引领了过去二十年里最大的反政府示威。一些赤足僧侣把他们的钵碗举在身前。但和以往不同的是，他们并没有像过去那样化缘以取得日常所需，这一次他们将钵碗翻了过来，黑色的钵碗表面泛着光芒。

在一个信仰佛教的国度，这是一个让人震惊的景象。僧侣们拒绝军政府统治者们及其家人们的施予--在处于缅甸文化中心的宗教（佛）里将他们（军政府统治者及其家人）摒弃。

这样一个手势可以成为理解过去一周震撼缅甸的反抗活动力量的关键。

在过去的缅甸，僧侣和士兵的数量大抵相齐。军政府统治者拥有武器，而僧侣们保有最终极的道德权威。最底层的士兵受制于僧侣们的精神审判，甚至高层的将领们也感觉到需要受此荣誉的约束。（and even the highest generals have felt a need to honor the clerical establishment.）他们将对其进行宣判。（They claim to rule in its name. ）

化缘这一种仪式是僧侣和普通佛教徒们紧密联系在一起的纽带。"人们施予僧侣们粮食，而僧侣们则帮助人们修下业绩。（佛中有业绩之说）"Rutgers大学的缅甸专家Josef Silverstein说。"当你拒绝接受，你将打破数世纪以来紧密相连的纽带。（指上文说的纽带）"

另一方面，僧侣们用了另一种不同的但是最基本的方式作为纽带联系着缅甸的民众。在政府试图镇压一个月前人们对燃料加价的抗议之后，他们引领了巨大的游行示威。

上一周，这个国家的最大的两股力量：僧侣和军政府开始形成对立。其中包括400，000从底层来的贫困青壮年，成为了僧侣们的支持拥戴者。来自底层的精神力量上的压力以及民众的抵制，统治了缅甸19年的军政府除了动用武力之外无计可施。

军政府发动伞兵对穿着砖红色长袍的僧侣们进行射击、殴打，逮捕以及侮辱。


It unleashed its troops to shoot, beat, arrest and humiliate the men in brick-red robes, definitively alienating itself from the clergy whose support gives it legitimacy. Soldiers surrounded monasteries, preventing monks from leading further demonstrations - or from making their morning rounds to collect the alms that feed them.

In Myanmar and other Buddhist nations, many join the monkhood as a lifelong vocation, but many other young men become monks for shorter periods, ranging from a few months to a few years. These young monks remain closer to the lives and concerns of the people whose alms they receive.

Burmese monks have taken part in protests in the past, against British colonial rule and against a half-century of rule by military dictatorship. The most notable recent occasion was in 1990.

Their militant resistance to the British produced the most prominent political martyr of Burmese Buddhism, U Wisara, who died in prison in 1929 after a 166-day hunger strike.

His statue stands near the tall, golden Shwedagon Pagoda, the country's holiest shrine, which was a rallying point for the recent demonstrations and the scene of the first violence against the monks last week.

That attack came as a shock to people who said the military would not turn violently against the monks, and it had the predictable effect of arousing the fury of a devout population.

But monks have not always been in the political front lines. It was students, for example, who led the mass demonstrations of 1988 that brought the current junta to power in a military massacre.

The monks' power comes instead from their role in bestowing legitimacy on the rulers.

"Legitimacy in Burma is not about regime performance, it's not about human rights like the West," said Ingrid Jordt, a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and an expert on Burmese Buddhism. "It is something that comes from the potency and karma bestowed by the monks. That's why the sangha is so important to the government," she said, referring to the Buddhist hierarchy and the spiritual status that its monks can convey. "They are actually the source of power."

The junta has gone to great lengths to identify itself with Buddhism. Like their predecessors through the centuries, the generals have been busy building temples, supporting monasteries and carrying out religiously symbolic acts. In 1999, they regilded the spire of the Shwedagon Pagoda, which now glitters with 53 tons of gold and 4,341 diamonds on the crowning orb.

The gilding of the spire was a high-risk ploy for an unpopular regime, an act permitted only to kings and legitimate rulers. When the two-ton, seven-tier finial was added and the spire was complete, the nation held its breath, waiting for the earth to send a signal of disapproval through lightning or thunder or floods, Ms. Jordt said. But nature remained indifferent.

"Aung pyi!" the generals shouted. "We won!"

But their grip on power has never been secure. They have ruled through a security service that keeps order through intimidation. They have arrested thousands of political prisoners and have held the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years.

In that context, the huge street demonstrations were an act of courage and catharsis.

They started tentatively on Aug. 19 after a fuel price increase raised the costs of transportation and basic goods. Veterans of the student demonstrations of 1988 staged small protests, but most were quickly arrested or driven into hiding. The unrest was fading when security officers beat monks and fired shots into the air during a confrontation in the city of Pakokku on Sept. 5.

That became a spark that grew into a broad-based challenge to the government, culminating last week in the breach between those who hold moral authority and those who have the guns.

"This was not an accidental uprising," said Zin Linn, a former editor and political prisoner who is now information minister for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile opposition group based in Washington. The transition in leadership in the protests - from militant former students to activist monks - was well planned, he said, through secret meetings among young men sharing similar grievances and aspirations for their country. For the most part, it was not the elders who backed the protests. Over the years, the junta has worked to co-opt the Buddhist hierarchy, placing chosen men in key positions just as they have done in every other institution, angering and alienating the younger monks.

After the military clampdown on the monasteries last week, the streets of Yangon were mostly empty of monks. But their gesture of rejection of the junta, and the junta's violent response, had changed the dynamics of Burmese society in ways that had only begun to play out.

The junta's action "shows how desperate they are," Ms. Jordt said. "It shows that they are willing to do anything at this point in terms of violence. Once you've thrown your lot in against the monks, I think it will be impossible for the regime to go back to normal daily legitimacy."

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