A Case Study At The Changes Of Interaction Relations Among The Tibetan Monastery, The Community And Th E Regime

The thesis is based on three-month ethnographic field research among the Tibetanvillages located at the urban and rural junction area of Rgyal-thang (Zhongdian), which lies inthe Northwest part of Yunnan Province and is the edge zone where the traditions interact withmodern life. Here the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery was firstly built in the Emperor KangxiPeriod of Qing Dynasty, and is the largest Gelug monastery in the Tibetan area of Yunnan.The Monastery has been interacting with the local regime all along the history, and in a way,its history is also the relations history between the religion and political power in this area.Therefore, the thesis studies the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery as the target object, to analyzethe interaction between the monks and laymen and between them and the local regime, so asto fully explain the historical changes of this interaction relation.Vertically, the thesis represents the historical development of Ganden SumtselingMonastery, and explains its interaction relationship with local regime in different historicalperiods; and horizontally, it investigates the symbiotic relationship between the monastery andits worshippers, and describes how the religious belief steadily held by the worshipers duringthe changes of political power. By observing the villagers’ religious rituals and theirattendance in the monastery’s religious activities, the thesis exposes the interaction relationsbetween the Tibetan monastery and the local community, and the role the monastery plays inlocal community’s religious belief and economic life, which is also the purport of the thesis.In the relationship above, we can see that the continuous interaction between themonastery and the regime highlights the monastery’s powerful vitality, and this interactioncan only suits the society when the monastery’s value orientation meets and matches thepolitical interest of the local regime; secondly, the belief system and social order founded inTibetan Buddhism plays a key role in the Tibetan villages, which binds together themonastery’s destiny and the mutual memory of the villagers; lastly, in the modern time whenthe modernization is constantly processed, the relation between the monastery’s own stabilityand development again tests its interaction with the community and the regime, and how thecomplex relations could be harmonious is the key to build the ideal social orders.