Rebirth and Perfection in Ordinary Lives

Biographical Writing and Vernacular Religious Ethics in Twentieth‐Century Myanmar

Bibliographic Data

ID19233175
AuthorsM K Long (0009-0006-0876-8673, Dartmouth College Hanover New Hampshire USA, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume54
Issue2
Pages127-152
Publication date2026-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Religious Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0384-9694 • E-ISSN: 1467-9795
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jore.70020
OpenAlexW7161284260
LanguageEN
References cited26

This article investigates stories of rebirth and ascriptions of pāramī, ethical perfection, in a 1982 biography of the Buddhist nun Daw Gunawati (1890‐1991) of Khemethaka nunnery in Sagaing Hills, Myanmar. In this and other contemporary biographical narratives, the cosmic timescale of Buddhist ethical cultivation protects and authorizes girls and women who wish to circumvent social expectations of marriage in order to initiate as nuns. In conversation with Leela Prasad's concept of “ethical resonance,” I examine pāramī as an idiom of Buddhist authority through which women reconstruct family relationships and reimagine monastic belonging. I propose new interpretive strategies that center vernacular theorists and affective registers of personal encounter in the study of Buddhist ethics, with further implications for the inclusion of vernacular, non‐canonical textuality in studies of religious ethics

Biography · Buddhism · Conversation · Perfection · Textuality · Vernacular · Wish · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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