Khmer Nuns and Filial Debts
Buddhist Intersections in Contemporary Cambodia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4855095 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Trent Walker (0000-0002-2285-1979, Stanford University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 10 |
| Pages | 897 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel13100897 |
| OpenAlex | W4297225104 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
Cambodian Buddhist nuns, including the white-robed ṭūn jī, occupy a fraught confluence of competing cultural and religious narratives. Chief among these narratives is gratitude to mothers, among the most powerful structuring forces in Khmer Buddhist culture. By ordaining as nuns, Khmer women break no explicit moral rules, but violate implicit conventions to bear children for their husbands and care for their parents in old age. To explore how this tension plays out in the lives of individual nuns, I draw on public statements and social media posts of two of the most prominent nuns in Cambodia today, Chea Silieng and Heng Kosorl. The two nuns have taken a divergent approach to filial debts, with Silieng emphasizing freedom from her birth family, husband, and children and Kosorl frequently posting about acts of devotion to her parents and grandparents. Both approaches reveal the profoundly gendered dimensions of filial piety and the complex intersection of such narratives with the growing stature of nuns as Buddhist leaders and teachers in Cambodia
Art · Buddhism · Developmental psychology · Filial piety · Grandparent · Literature · Narrative · Piety · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |