Introduction: The Slaughter Renunciation Movement

This statement by Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe (T. Mkhan po tshul khrims blo gros, hereafter Khenpo Tsullo), a prominent Buddhist leader in contemporary China and one of the major forces behind the slaughter renunciation movement (T. Bshas tshong mi byed pa, or rgya bshas la mi phab pa)Footnote ² explored in this article, reflects an era in which the imagination of development has dictated the shape of Chinese culture, China's landscape, the state, and its citizens for the last several decades. This imagination was accelerated by Deng Xiaoping's famous declaration in the early 1980s that “development is the first principle.” Since then, development has become a hegemonic goal for all government departments and their officials. While the meaning of development from the Chinese state perspective is not a stable one, several key elements have remained unchanged. In China, development is mostly understood as economic progress that improves the living standards of ordinary people and that serves to realize the Chinese national dream—the making of China as a major global economic, political, military, and cultural power. The discourse of development is also related to the Chinese people's collective memory of past suffering, including the invasions by Western countries in the nineteenth century and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), a connection reflected in Chairman Mao's famous saying, “Backwardness leaves you vulnerable to attack.” At the same time, highly industrialized Western countries serve as a reference in Chinese development discourse, as the frontrunners in the development race with whom China must catch up.

There are also disparities in the degree to which different regions and ethnic groups in China are considered “developed” and “underdeveloped.” Regionally speaking, western China is considered to be less developed than eastern and southern China. Ethnic minorities are seen as less developed than Han Chinese. In this context, Tibetan cultural and economic backwardness is seen as requiring state development interventions (Yeh Reference Yeh2013). These categories have been internalized by Tibetans and have become an imaginative force that generates in Tibetans a sense that they need to catch up with other nationalities within China and internationally. In short, in contemporary China, the discourse of development has become so powerful that virtually everything is translated into its terms in some way. This translation turns human beings into market actors and productive forces, resources into commercial production, religion into tourism products, government agents into growth promoters and market protectors, the environment into sustainable development, and the unrest in Tibet and other minority areas into proof of the need for more development.

Like all local governments under the decentralized fiscal system put in place with China's economic reforms (Huang Reference Huang1996), governments in high-elevation pastoral areas along the eastern Tibetan Plateau, where most of the population is Tibetan and where animal husbandry is the primary form of livelihood, are under tremendous pressure to promote development and generate income (Luorong Reference Luorong2008). Many have sought to develop the livestock industry by setting up economic parks for yak products; inviting outside investors; cultivating local entrepreneurs; promoting the sale of yak meat by branding it as “green,” environmentally friendly, and healthy; and, most significantly here, encouraging herders to increase their off-take rate. With the intensification of the market economy in those areas, Tibetan herders have, over the past two decades, been selling ever-larger numbers of their livestock (Tibetan sheep and yaks) to Chinese and Hui (Chinese Muslim) middlemen, who transport hundreds of thousands of yaks to urban markets each year.

Economic reforms thus appear to have successfully turned Tibetans into materially driven market subjects (Yeh and Gaerrang Reference Yeh and Gaerrang2011). However, “opening up and reform” also included political reforms that allowed the return of a measure of religious freedom, reviving khenpos' (T. mkhan po) and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders' moral authority and spiritual leading roles in Tibetan society (Gayley Reference Gayley2011a, Reference Gayley and Tuttle2011b; Yu Reference Yu2012).Footnote ³ These processes have produced contradictory effects. Among the many social transformations in pastoral areas that followed economic reforms, one of particular concern to a number of Tibetan lamas and khenpos, particularly of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, has been the increased rate at which livestock are sold to slaughterhouses. Their concerns are not only about killing—one of the most serious evil deeds that can be committed according to Buddhist principles and one that must be avoided if possible—but also about the suffering of livestock as they are transported to slaughter. Using their tremendous social influence and moral authority, a few especially charismatic teachers in the Nyingma tradition initiated a slaughter renunciation movement in eastern Tibet in the early 2000s, and through their religious teachings urged local people to stop selling their yaks for slaughter—exactly the opposite of what the state officials say herders must do to achieve development. Yet, at the same time, Tibetan khenpos assert that Tibetan people need a real form of development that is consistent with Tibetan Buddhist norms. They argue that the slaughtering of livestock is not the right way for Tibetans to become developed; rather, it will only bring disaster or misfortune. In this way, they situate the movement in their own understandings of development and the Tibetans' pervasive sense of lagging behind.

For the Tibetan herders who are the recipients of these teachings, livestock sales to slaughterhouses comprise about 30 to 50 percent of their annual income, with the other half derived from selling dairy products, and other sources.Footnote ⁴ Despite the fact that the slaughter renunciation movement would reduce their income, many herders have responded to the appeals of these Buddhist leaders by taking oaths to stop selling their yaks for periods of time ranging from three years to the rest of their lives. Other Tibetan herders, however, have refused to take vows to not sell livestock for the meat market due to financial pressures and a shortage of pastures. At the same time, the movement has been the subject of critiques from educated Tibetans, particularly radical secularists, most of whom work for state work units.

Though at odds on their views of the slaughter renunciation movement, these groups share a desire for development. By examining the case of the slaughter renunciation movement in Wakhor Village in the eastern Tibetan Plateau, this article explores this confluence of religious revival with globally hegemonic discourses of and desires for development. By bringing the complex relationships around this religious movement into discussions of development, it intervenes in the field of critical development studies, which often conceptualizes development as a diametric relationship between the state/trustees and the “local.” Instead, I show how multiple agents with different interests and cultural agendas vigorously debated their visions of development in contemporary Tibet through the question of slaughter renunciation. More specifically, this article discusses in detail how the movement started in Wakhor through multiple competing forces and ended in a debate among the same groups over whether or not the villagers would adopt the oath for a second term.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wakhor Village over a period of eleven months in 2010. As a former resident of a village in a neighboring township, I conducted interviews in the local Tibetan dialect with four groups of people: herders from the village, khenpos and monks both local and from outside the village, local livestock traders, and government employees. In addition, data include books written by Khenpo Tsullo, tape recordings of his religious teaching in Wakhor Village in 2006, videos of his religious teachings in other places, and my observations of herders' daily activities and their interactions with khenpos, state projects, and Han and Hui livestock traders.

Development as an Entangled Knot of Cultural Contestation

The slaughter renunciation movement is both a religiously inspired movement and an expression of concerns about development. The mainstream tendency to see development as a purely economic issue, separate from a sphere of religion, obscures the nuances and implications of the movement. At the same time, the common concept of Tibetans versus the Chinese state in the context of development cannot adequately explain the complicated relationships among the various groups involved. Recent advances in critical development studies provide useful tools to understand the movement. At the same time, this analysis of the slaughter renunciation movement also contributes to critical development studies by complicating the commonly used binary relationship between state/trustee and the target group.

As a departure from both mainstream economic and Marxian political economic approaches to development studies, post-development critiques that drew on Michel Foucault's work to study development as discourse emerged in the 1990s. Examining why mainstream development, after numerous failures to deliver what it promised to provide for target groups, maintains its position, Arturo Escobar (Reference Escobar1995) argues that Foucault's analysis of the power of representation and its ultimate creation of social reality can explain how development discourse becomes hegemonic and makes alternative ways unthinkable. In a more ethnographic vein, James Ferguson (Reference Ferguson1990) argued that the World Bank's construction of Lesotho as a static, isolated, traditional peasant subsistence society was completely at odds with the long history of its farmers' engagement in commercial trade and the country's long-standing export of wage laborers to the capitalist economy of South Africa. While these representations contribute to the repeated failure of development projects, those failures also facilitate the penetration of bureaucratic power deeper into everyday lives.

Though discursive approaches to development have been successful in deconstructing development and illustrating the inequality of power between the “First World” and “Third World,” they do not pay adequate attention to meaningful local resistance that reworks the process of development; this is where Moore (Reference Moore2000), Pigg (Reference Pigg1992), Li (Reference Li1999), and others have made significant contributions through their study of development as contested cultural practice. Instead of development being an anti-politics machine (Ferguson Reference Ferguson1990), Moore (Reference Moore2000) proposes the metaphor of development as a “crucible of cultural politics,” to indicate the ways in which development is debated, contested, and reworked. Textual analysis of planners' and technocrats' documents alone ignores other equally important questions of how development confronts situated cultural practices and sedimented histories of people and place. Similarly Tania Li (Reference Li1999, Reference Li2007) argues that the transformation of development failure into more development involves more complex cultural work at the interface between development projects and those they targeted than is often suggested. By bringing development as a government control project into the dialogue with development as accomplishment, she points out that development becomes an arena where both compromise and achievement are interwoven.

These debates have framed development as a relationship between the state/trustees and the local, and the “First World” and the “Third World,” emphasizing the confrontation of localized forces with Western-oriented development discourse and the programs of trustees. Despite the strengths of the ethnographic cultural politics approach, which I adopt, I argue that most authors tend to present only two diametrically opposed positions: those who know how others should live versus the local, the target of development (Li Reference Li2007); “the West” that holds discursive power versus non-Western peoples, the victims of the discourse (Escobar Reference Escobar1995); the World Bank versus Lesotho (Ferguson Reference Ferguson1990); and the Zimbabwean state resettlement program versus the Kaerezian residents to be dislocated through the resettlement program (Moore Reference Moore2000). This warlike, binary conceptualization elides other forces that often intersect and complicate the encounter of the local and the state/trustees. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate, the positions of those encountering forces in development are dynamic and constantly changing.

In pastoral areas of Tibet, development is not only a matter of the state and Tibetan herders, the target group. Other actors also play an important role in the negotiation of development. Tibetan Buddhist leaders have reemerged in the space of religious freedom provided by state policies since economic reform, giving religious leaders a reinvigorated prominence. Village leaders, the lowest level of the government apparatus in charge of putting state projects into practice, are simultaneously heads of traditional tribal communities in many places. Other Tibetans, most but not all employed as government officials, have adopted radically secular stances, but they may have interests and agendas that do not conform to state ideology even while they share state concerns about Tibetan people lagging behind. Local khenpos and monks presumably are part of the village, but their agendas and ways of thinking are different from those of the herders.

The boundaries of these groups are always overlapping and ambiguous, as are the relationships among them. Many state projects are embraced by both Tibetan religious leaders and pastoralists, but the former also contest other state projects in their efforts at fashioning Tibetan herders into particular kinds of subjects. Moreover, Tibetan herders' decisions about their livestock and pastures and the debate regarding pastoral development are all informed by multiple and dynamic forces, including state projects, the market economy, and khenpos' religious teachings. While Tibetan herders embrace many state projects and have strong desires for securing government jobs for their children, the slaughter renunciation movement has placed them in a dilemma, requiring them to choose between giving up selling livestock to slaughterhouses and fulfilling their increasing desires for material development by selling livestock to the slaughterhouses.

To capture these dynamic and multiple but mutually constitutive power relations, I propose the conceptualization of development as a cultural knot, which is constituted by entangled multiple power relations in the powerful imagination of development. The metaphor is useful for several reasons. First, this knot suggests the always interwoven relationships of different agents. Second, multiple agents' relations are not always those of exploitation and resistance, but rather also include invisible tensions, cooperation, overlapping practices, and mutually benefiting agendas. Third, the positions of different agents, or parts of the knot, are not fixed. Some of them may contest each other at one time while embracing each other at other times. Li (Reference Li2007) argues that a condition for any intervention of development is the differentiation between those who know how others should live and those who become the target of the inventions. It might be easy to maintain these boundaries discursively in texts. In practice, however, these boundaries are fragile and fluid. Finally, the image of a knot is not meant to erase domination, manipulation, displacement, and resistance, or assume that multiple stakeholders hold equal power, but rather to explore the complexity and entanglements of struggles over the articulation of development in material and symbolic terms.

In short, my aim is to show that development is not a consistent knowledge system or discourse that merely represents dominant Westerners' interests (Escobar Reference Escobar1995), but rather is a complicated relationship among multiple groups. Indeed, it is the complex process of contestation over dominance, competition over resources, and cooperation in overlapping interests that generates more power for and deeper belief in development as an imaginative force that absorbs everything around it. With struggle and contradiction, the knot becomes tighter and more solid, more difficult than ever to extricate oneself from. The harder one pulls away, the stronger the knot becomes. In this way, the knot is a better metaphor than alternatives such as complex, matrix, or nexus insofar as it suggests more than just that the situation is simply complex.

Studying a religious movement as simultaneously a new articulation of development, this article contributes to recent scholarship about the intersection between religion and development (Clarke Reference Clarke and Clarke2013; Rudnyckyj Reference Rudnyckyj2010; Smith Reference Smith2008; Tomalin and Starkey Reference Tomalin, Starkey and Clarke2013). This literature has suggested that religious beliefs and practices must be seen as important elements in development interventions for better and more effective outcomes (Clarke Reference Clarke and Clarke2013). Calls to consider religion for the sake of the effectiveness of development interventions take place in the context of a recent trend in which contemporary Buddhist elites in both Asia and the West have actively been presenting Buddhism as a religion that can be well adapted to mainstream development discourse (Tomalin and Starkey Reference Tomalin, Starkey and Clarke2013). However, these arguments have mostly been made through a fundamentalist approach to the Buddha's teachings that situate the new concept of development in relation to an old social context where Buddha lived and gave teachings. My attempt to link Buddhism with development is not based on textual analysis of Buddhist doctrines but rather on the lived experiences of these leading khenpos and Tibetan herders in development practices and religious revival that have taken place since the 1980s in China.

Similar to my ethnographic approach to development and religion is James Howard Smith's (Reference Smith2008) ethnographic account of how people in the Taita Hills of Kenya have appropriated and made sense of development thought and practice by relating them to changing understandings of witchcraft. Focusing on the imaginative dimension of witchcraft, he points out that witchcraft not only is about the secretive and “destructive power of selfish desire” (16), but also generates “positive, future-oriented actions” (244), and that these ways of imagining and working to bring about better futures are sometimes termed “development.” In the intersection of development with witchcraft, Smith argues that it is the “notions of sustainable local development, moral modernity, and rational statehood” (239) that come with development discourse that finally were mobilized against the witch-hunter. In the slaughter renunciation movement, the Tibetan Buddhist leaders associated with Larung Gar have become a force in the articulation of development by rejecting the massive slaughter for the meat market while at the same time welcoming other state development programs. In contrast to the opposition between witchcraft and development in Kenya, Tibetan Buddhists in contemporary China have welcomed development and tried to make it more consistent with Buddhist teachings; thus Tibetan Buddhism itself has become a force in the contestation of pure secular development practices and thought.

The Revival of Tibetan Buddhism

A religious teaching by Khenpo Jikme Phuntsok (T. mKhan po ‘Jigs med phun tshogs or ‘Jigs phun, 1933–2004, hereafter Khenpo Jikphun) in Larung Gar, in Sertar County, Sichuan, marked the start of the slaughter renunciation movement (Khenpo Jikme Phuntsok Reference Phuntsok2000). Khenpo Jikphun was one of the most influential Nyingma teachers in contemporary Tibet (Germano Reference Germano, Goldstein and Kapstein1998; Phuntsho Reference Phuntsho2004). In 1980, he established Larung Gar (T. Lnga ring slob gleng), an institute for ecumenical training in Tibetan Buddhism (Germano Reference Germano, Goldstein and Kapstein1998). At one point populated by over 10,000 nuns, monks, and lay vow-takers from all over the Tibetan Plateau as well as Han Chinese monks and nuns, the institute has also produced many khenpos with outstanding achievement in Buddhist study, making it a center for the promotion of Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism (Germano Reference Germano, Goldstein and Kapstein1998). Many of these khenpos have also been giving religious teachings not only across many parts of the Tibetan Plateau, but also in southeastern Chinese cities.

Larung Gar has also been important as a center for a number of new movements, including slaughter renunciation, vegetarianism (Barstow Reference Barstow2013; Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe Reference Lodroe2003a), and Tibetan language purification. Since Khenpo Jikphun passed away, many religious leaders, including his top students as well as other local lamas and khenpos who have been associated with Larung Gar, have continued his teachings and spread the movement to pastoral regions in Kham, as well as some communities in the Amdo and Tsang regions.

Along with the force of the market economy that intensified the integration of nomadic regions into Chinese urban markets, two trends in the Tibetan Buddhist revival since the 1980s have been critical in the promotion of this movement: a trend toward Buddhist modernism (Bond Reference Bond, Queen and King1996; McMahan Reference McMahan2008) and a shift towards orthodoxy. New discourses, such as those about the relationship between Buddhism and environmental protection and science, among others, have allowed elites to adapt to new social contexts and make Buddhism more acceptable to modern society (Bond Reference Bond, Queen and King1996). The simultaneous shift toward orthodoxy has involved attempts to proscribe certain behavior and channel conduct according to the Buddhist basic teachings. As a result, long-standing customs, such as eating yak meat, slaughtering animals for meat, and wearing pelt trim on clothes (Yeh Reference Yeh2013), have become problematic for Nyingma lamas and khenpos associated with Larung Gar. The movements against these are carried out not only with the support of Buddhist teachings, but also through articulation with new discourses, for instance, environmental concerns with the anti–pelt wearing movement, development with the anti-slaughter movement, and national identity with the vegetarian movement (Gaerrang Reference Gaerrang2013). In these movements, the discourse of development and that of Tibetan Buddhism cannot be separated in practice.

Though Tibetan Buddhism has experienced a revival, religious policies in Tibetan populated regions differ significantly from what is found elsewhere in China. In the former, concerns are less with “superstition” or “evil cults,” as exemplified by Falun Gong (Makley Reference Makley, Yeh and Coggins2014; Penny Reference Penny and Yang2008). Instead, the sensitivity regarding religious issues is more about the conflation of religion with separatism (Barnett Reference Barnett2012; Yeh Reference Yeh2013). Thus, Tibetan Buddhist leaders' religious activities always run the risk of being treated as a political problem by state authorities. Lamas, khenpos, and monks must always be extremely careful in their religious and social activities to avoid potential or real political problems. State authorities consider it their responsibility to lead lamas, monks, and laypeople along the right track of loving their country and their religion, cultivating their loyalty to the Communist Party and the state, and leading them to a positive contribution to state development projects (Cabezón Reference Cabezón, Ignacio and Yang2008; Ji Reference Ji and Yang2008; Lopez Reference Lopez1998).

The Study Site

In 2006, Wakhor, a typical pastoral village on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, took part in the slaughter renunciation movement through the efforts of local khenpos who had studied in Larung Gar. Wakhor Village is located in Gakho County, Ngawa Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and as of 2010 it had a population of about 950 herders in 185 households.Footnote ⁵ As in other Tibetan populated areas, Wakhor Village has received many state development programs in recent years, including the State Housing Project for Herders, a Kashin-Beck disease alleviation program, the Tuimu Huancao (grassland restoration) Program, a collective healthcare system, the Minimum Living Standard Security System (guaranteed subsistence allowances), and the Support for Disabled People Program. Other general development projects include school improvement, clinic improvement, and road construction.

Wakhor has its own monastery, which belongs to the Nyingma school and has about forty monks. The head lama died in the late 2000s. Three monks from Wakhor Village have studied for and received khenpo degrees from Larung Gar. Since their head lama died, these khenpos have been managing the monastery. Monks gather in the monastery for most months of the year to chant Buddhist texts and perform religious rituals. Herders are still active in religious rituals and practices, including circumambulation, prostration, making donations to monks and lamas, constructing Buddhist facilities (chanting halls, statues, stupas, mani prayer wheels), putting up religious flags, practicing simple meditations, making offerings to Buddhist deities and mountain deities, and reciting Buddhist scriptures.

The Slaughter Renunciation Movement as Development

The first slaughter renunciation movement in Wakhor Village was initiated when Khenpo Tsullo visited Wakhor in 2006. One of the most accomplished disciples of Khenpo Jikphun, Khenpo Tsullo continued Khenpo Jikphun's meritorious deeds, particularly the slaughter renunciation movement, after his master passed away. During the two days of his 2006 teachings in Wakhor, Khenpo Tsullo offered basic Buddhist teachings and practices for laypeople, including teachings on the three refuges of Tibetan Buddhism, an empowerment initiation for laymen, and teachings about practices necessary for rebirth in the Sukhavati paradise of the Amitabha Buddha. What made this teaching distinctive was the overwhelming concern he expressed during the teaching about the increase in the slaughter rate; he urged herders to stop their evil deeds, including selling livestock to slaughterhouses, gambling, drinking alcohol, and smoking. More importantly, his message about slaughter renunciation was interconnected in the teachings with his great concern about the “lagging behind” of Tibetan people and the reputation of Tibetan people on the international stage (Dodin and Räther Reference Dodin and Räther2001; Huber Reference Huber and Korom1997, Reference Huber, Dodin and Räther2001; Yeh Reference Yeh2013), comparing Tibetan people with other minorities and Tibet with other places.

As it is considered to be one of the Ten-Virtue rules (T. dGe bju'i krims) recently initiated by Larung Gar (Gayley Reference Gayley2013), the slaughter renunciation movement is motivated first by religious reasons.Footnote ⁶ Many aspects of Khenpo Tsullo's teachings about slaughter renunciation are similar to those of his master Khenpo Jikphun and their predecessors in the Nyingma tradition (Barstow Reference Barstow2013). In a study of the history of vegetarianism in Tibet, Barstow (Reference Barstow2013) observes that the main rhetoric promoting vegetarianism includes religious masters' emotional response to the animal's suffering during slaughter and the notion of karmic consequence that the consumption of meat will eventually lead to rebirth in one of hell's realms. This pattern remains unchanged in Khenpo Tsullo's teachings about the anti-slaughter movement. Yet, this is not the whole story. These teachings also need to be situated in his wider discussion about economic development in the framework of Buddhism and his concern over the future path of Tibetans as a collective people. Though slaughter renunciation is not economic development as it is understood in narrow terms, it is a key way in which Khenpo Tsullo puts his broader understanding of development into practice. This model of development has not only a material aspect, but also spiritual connotations.

Three main themes run through Khenpo Tsullo's articulation of a development informed by Buddhist ethics. First, he maintains that achievement in material development should not be seen as the ultimate goal of people's lives or the core meaning of development, because materially based development does not bring sustainable happiness. Moreover, material development has never been the solution for the suffering of human beings. Instead, he suggests that Buddhism is fundamental in achieving meaningful development. In his essay “Thought on the Seeking Happiness in Global East and West” (Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe Reference Lodroe2003b), which presents a discussion of different understandings of happiness (T. bde ba) in Eastern and Western cultures, Khenpo Tsullo argues that Buddhism cultivates the knowledge and culture that brings real, sustainable happiness to people and peace to society. This argument is supported by his presentation of myriad social problems in developed societies, which for him are associated with extreme secularism and materialism. In the essay, he uses the phrase Ta nyi su ma lhong wa (T. mtha’ gnyis su ma lhung ba), which means that people should avoid the two extremes, being too poor or having too much wealth, both of which are harmful and not desirable. In a similar manner, Khenpo Tsullo suggests an idea of inner and outer development (190–91), emphasizing the importance of continuity of tradition along with adequate change in the material condition of Tibetan people. Inner development is to keep tradition and to follow and improve Buddhism as part of everyday life. Outer development is to improve living conditions by gaining new knowledge, technology, and skills. These articulations are in concert with his teachings in Wakhor Village, in which he stated that “real development in Tibet is constituted by both material and spiritual improvement that brings happiness to people in their current lives and in lives to come,” and that “the chances of achieving the material and spiritual development of Tibetan communities are very small if young Tibetans are not educated.”

Khenpo Tsullo argues that aside from Buddhism, adequate economic development through learning science and technology is also important. Thus he suggests to herders in Wakhor and other places that there is a space in which Tibetans can improve their living conditions and that this needs to be done according to Buddhist norms.Footnote ⁷ He argues that the future path for Tibetan herders lies not in herding livestock but in accessing state education (Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe Reference Lodroe2003a, Reference Lodroe2003b) and active engagement with the market economy without engaging in evil deeds.Footnote ⁸ He gives specific suggestions for Tibetan herders during these teachings, including the proper way to make and spend money, and encourages their proactive participation in the market economy, providing guidance for herders on the proper way to behave in order to catch up and achieve developed status. He also encourages herders to change their old attitudes toward these new income-earning opportunities. For instance, in 2006 he suggested to herders in Wakhor:

Here and elsewhere, Khenpo Tsullo gives suggestions to Tibetan herders on how to make a living or improve their living conditions, rather than totally rejecting the idea of progress. Yet, he suggests that the means of making progress need to be consistent with Buddhist norms. In his essay “A Brief Presentation of the Ancient and Modern Knowledge/Culture of Global East and West” (Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe Reference Lodroe2003b), he asserts that farming, herding, industrial work, and trade do not go against Tibetan Buddhist norms. “Manufacturing or handicrafts are not mentioned in traditional Buddhist teaching, but if a factory produces commercial products that benefit people, it should not be seen as evil deeds…. The trading business is fine unless it is deceptive” (331). With all of these suggestions, it is clear that he does not reject the idea of development, but rather suggests a real development in which Buddhism is fundamental. In this context, his specific religious teachings; Buddhist empowerments; and suggestions of taking specific vows of not slaughtering animals, eating meat, and wearing fur are ways to install Buddhist norms in Tibetan communities that are crucial to achieving meaningful development—enjoying peace and permanent happiness in comfortable living conditions, something that secular development fails to provide.

The second theme is his articulation of development in terms of karmic cause and effect rather than economic calculations. He argues that all of the experiences of comfort or suffering we see now are the results of two types of causes: remote (T. ring ba'i rgyu) and proximate (T. nye ba'i rgyu) (Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe Reference Lodroe2003b). Remote causes are merits or evil deeds that one collected in previous lives, and proximate causes are those in the present life. Ordinary people only see the proximate causes, and so assume that all of these comforts and sufferings result from the interaction of current material circumstances and events, believing that there are no other causes (380). Khenpo Tsullo has emphasized the importance of learning new knowledge and culture (T. rig gnas gsar ba) for the sake of material improvement, but the achievement of development is not totally determined by the new knowledge and culture itself or economic criteria if we consider his idea of remote causes and proximate causes. For instance, he stated during the teaching in Wakhor:

This statement is crucial in an alternative understanding of development. For Khenpo Tsullo, massive slaughter will result in disaster and misfortune rather than the real development that Tibetan people need, because Khenpo Tsullo sees the law of cause-and-effect as an invisible force that regulates people's gains and losses according to their accumulation of merits and evil deeds. With the articulation of the law of cause-and-effect, Khenpo Tsullo has extended the meaning of development beyond this-worldly material improvement to the betterment of many reincarnations of people's lives. In a religion in which death represents not the end but the beginning of another life, the idea of development must be related not only to things in this world but also to seeking improvement for the entire cycle of eternal life, possibly including other sentient beings. Khenpo Tsullo's interpretation of development, which is intended to bring these two conceptions together, has changed the meaning of secular, material development by placing development within the larger framework of samsara, which is constituted by eternal lives and regulated by the law of cause-and-effect. In that sense, development is for all forms of life in samsara, in which human beings are just one form. The modern narrative of nationalism is one of relationships between groups of people in this world that are marked by social and political meanings, including “lagging behind,” cultural preservation, marginalization, and globalization, all of which carry connotations of power relationships among the different groups. Samsara is a religious narrative that embraces all sentient beings, in which the life of each being transits from one to another category (gods, asuras, humans, animals, pretas, hell beings) in accordance with its collection of karma. In the slaughter renunciation movement, the selling of yaks is considered both from the perspective of Tibetans as a nationality and yaks as one kind of sentient being that have the same right to live as human beings.

Finally, Khenpo Tsullo maintains that Tibetans are lagging behind economically but he particularly emphasizes that Tibetans are in danger of lagging behind culturally if they do not inherit their traditions, particularly Tibetan Buddhism. He said during his teachings in Wakhor that “Buddhism is the only asset that Tibetan people have now. If they give up this tradition, then they will become ‘backward’ not only economically, but also culturally.” It is the discourse of “developed” and “undeveloped” that situates Tibetans into a global category of “one is ahead and the other is to follow” (Cowen and Shenton Reference Cowen, Shenton and Crush1995; Crush Reference Crush and Crush1995; Gupta Reference Gupta1998; Shrestha Reference Shrestha and Crush1995; Yeh Reference Yeh2007), and that has forced the movement to address questions around contemporary social issues and the fate of Tibetan herders in the future. Thus, in this particular issue, he articulates development by emphasizing Tibetans as one nationality rather than stressing them as sentient beings. Indeed, Gayley (Reference Gayley and Tuttle2011b) shows that there is a similar theme in Khenpo Jikphun's “Advice to Tibetans for the 21st Century,” in which Khenpo Jikphun also suggested a Buddhist vision of progress for the future path of Tibetans, in which secular progress should go hand in hand with the preservation of Tibetan culture and Buddhism (Khenpo Jikme Phuntsok Reference Phuntsok1995). Therefore, I argue that the slaughter renunciation movement is not just a pure religiously inspired movement, a potent effort of Nyingma khenpos to reinforce a neo-orthodoxy in Tibetan Buddhist communities, but also Khenpo Tsullo's specific efforts to achieve a particular form of progress. It is in this reconceptualized development discourse that multiple stakeholders debate, engage, overlap, and struggle with one another. I turn next to the detailed process through which the movement was first taken up and later ended in Wakhor.

The First Term of the Slaughter Renunciation Movement in Wakhor Village: The Overlapping Roles of Village Leaders and the Force of Religious Leaders from Larung Gar

Though issues in contemporary Tibet tend to be framed through analytical categories of “the local” versus “the state,” the slaughter renunciation movement in Wakhor Village took place through negotiations and interactions among different stakeholders from within as well as beyond Wakhor Village, including religious leaders from Larung Gar, community religious leaders, and village leaders. Prior to Khenpo Tsullo's visit to Wakhor Village in 2006, an agreement was made between Wakhor Village leaders, the local monastery, and Khenpo Tsullo to the effect that, if he visited the village, leaders and khenpos in Wakhor Monastery would be able to persuade herders to join the movement. Most villagers in Wakhor supported the agreement, because it was the chance of a lifetime to receive religious teaching from such a renowned khenpo, but some did not want to take the vow to stop selling livestock to the meat market, because it would lead to a reduction in their income.Footnote ⁹ But because the village leaders and the monastery made the decision, all of the herders from Wakhor Village swore oaths to refrain from selling livestock to the meat market for three years. In addition, and with somewhat less difficulty, they also took oaths to refrain from other practices, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, gambling, and cheating.

Khenpo Tsullo and other leading figures at Larung Gar are generally invited to give Buddhist teachings or perform religious rituals by local khenpos who have previously studied at Larung Gar. Before visiting, the khenpos of Larung Gar like to ensure that their visit can in fact lead to real changes in the slaughter rate, vegetarianism, and other issues. In that sense, the most immediate force behind the promotion of the slaughter renunciation movement in Wakhor was the khenpos of Wakhor Monastery who had studied in Larung Gar, where they were strongly influenced by Khenpo Jikphun, Khenpo Tsullo, and other well-known figures.

In addition to these monks and the Tibetan Buddhist leaders of Larung Gar, village leaders also played an important role in initiating the movement. One might wonder from where the power of these village leaders and khenpos in the local monastery derives such that they could make this kind of decision on the villagers' behalf. In the current political system, the team of village leaders is organized to carry out the state's agenda and to serve people as representatives of the government in the development of a village. But village leaders also play a critical role in the traditional social unit of the tribe, or dewa (T. sde pa) or yultso (T. yul tso) (Costello Reference Costello2008). This is because of the overlap between the government administrative system that was put in place by the PRC and traditional tribal groups in the east Tibetan Plateau. For instance, a village or township in the current system is sometimes also a tribe or a subtribe in the traditional social sense. In other places, villages or several townships, in some cases crossing the boundaries of counties, constitute a single tribe or traditional community (Ga Reference Ga2008; Yeh Reference Yeh2003).

The current village administration is led by the Party secretary and village leaders elected by the villagers. On the one hand, these leaders work as an instrument of the government to carry out the state agenda on the ground, but, on the other hand, also represent the traditional communities that share kyi duk (T. skyid sdug), meaning the same fortune and suffering, in a traditional social structure that persists from the past. Wakhor was one community that shared kyi duk before 1958, but it is also a single village in the current administrative system. Therefore, village leaders are the ones who protect and serve the traditional communities or tribes in the current system, by translating resources and power from state policies to the benefit of the community in its traditional sense.

Under the commune system, village leaders were still powerful in their villages, because they arranged for the distribution of all the resources in the planned economic system. After the end of the commune system, the power of village leaders diminished. However, with the implementation of the “Open up the West” campaign, the government has launched a large number of projects, and with those projects village leaders have regained their power as they have become the key implementers of those projects and thus are able to allocate their resources and benefits among herders. However, the village leaders' support for the slaughter renunciation movement is not a part of the state's agenda but rather derives from the role they play in the traditional social structure. They supported it because they saw it as good for the community as a whole. Using the powers they gained from the state in part to perform what they saw as their role to serve the moral and ethical needs of the traditional tribe, village leaders played a critical role in determining the first three-year term of the pledge in Wakhor Village.

Yet, their role in development is overlapping and unstable. From the government perspective, those village leaders are ordinary villagers who are neither part of the official government administrative system (which ends at the township) nor members of other government work units like schools and hospitals. Other than receiving a small amount of money from the state and whatever benefit they gain in the process of implementation of the state projects, they are not different from other herders in many respects. They maintain their pastures and livestock for their livelihoods. Yet, when they work on behalf of the state officials in organizing villagers, delivering the state message and distributing the projects and benefits to the villagers, they represent the power of the Party-state on the ground. At the same time, village leaders also represent their tribe when they negotiate with the state and with other nonlocal people, and they play a leading role in community affairs and activities, such as religious gatherings and organizing labtse rituals.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, the roles of village leaders in development are overlapping, as their performances represent different stakeholders at different times.

The power of village leaders is combined with that of khenpos and monks, whose religious authority has had a fragile relationship with the government in recent Chinese history (Ashiwa and Wank Reference Ashiwa, Wank, Ashiwa and Wank2009). Under current state law, religious figures are not to interfere with people's secular life, and Tibetan Buddhist leaders always need to be careful not to be associated with separatism, which has a delicate relationship with Tibetan Buddhism (Yeh Reference Yeh2012). It was in this context in 2006 that both village leaders and khenpos in Wakhor Monastery made the decision on behalf of all herders that every household should participate in the movement for at least three years.

From this, we can see that religious teachings about slaughter renunciation take place in spaces shaped by the interweaving of freedom, regulation, and sensitivity in religious policies. In these spaces, Tibetan khenpos and lamas assert their power over Tibetan herders with the support of village leaders, because only village leaders have the legal power to decide what the village should and should not do. Thus, the slaughter renunciation movement took place in relations of power with the state, khenpos from Larung Gar, and the interests of a tribe-based traditional community informed by cultural elements and practices, including their monastery, religious gatherings, labtse rituals, and shared kyi duk. And, because village leaders and a significant number of herders did not support a second term, the efforts of local khenpos resulted in failure three years later.

The Failure of the Second Term of the Movement: The State and Herders

The first term of the pledge for all Wakhor villagers ended in late 2009. In 2010, using the opportunity of a lama's visit to Wakhor Village, the local khenpos tried quite hard to lead herders into another vow of refraining from selling their yaks to meat markets, but in the end only about 10 percent of the households continued their vows for the second term. The khenpos were upset and disappointed about what they interpreted as the herders' disregard of their own evil deeds.

Showing his great frustration, one highly respected local khenpo told me, “Because the village does not have a powerful lama, herders don't listen to the local khenpos.” He said they could do nothing about the situation. But what he was really unhappy about were the rumors he had heard that some herders were complaining about local khenpos and monks, claiming that monks did not care about or understand the real lives of herders. What the herders really did not understand, he believed, was that what the khenpos had been trying to do was all for the benefit of herders and their future lives, and not for the khenpos themselves.

Despite the political sensitivity of the movement, given that it went against local state goals of developing the yak economic industry as well as ecological concerns about overgrazing of yaks, it did not actually face direct interference. Ironically, the failure to convince herders to adopt the oath against livestock sales for a second three-year period did not derive from state opposition but rather from resistance by herders and village leaders. Medium-wealth herders stated that Khenpo Tsullo's teaching had enhanced their understanding of the proper way to practice Buddhism and increased their awareness that selling their animals to the meat market is an evil deed. They expressed their great worry and regret for having sold so many livestock in the past. However, at the same time, they stated that because they were short on cash, they would not continue their vows for the second term.

The primary reason for the need for extra cash in this particular period and thus for not participating in the second term was the requirements of the Housing Project for Herders, a new state project designed to transform “backward herders” into modern, settled citizens by encouraging them to move to towns and live in more comfortable houses rather than tents (Xu Reference Xu2008; Zheng and Zhang Reference Zheng and Zemei2008). With the settlement project, herders needed to invest over 60,000 RMB, including loans of 30,000 RMB from the state bank and 20,000 RMB in cash, in addition to the state's contribution of about 16,000 RMB. The incentives for herders to participate in the project include the subsidy, a five-year interest-free loan from the state, and permission to build houses in their current locations. Between the start of the project in 2008 and the end of 2010, about 130 out of the 180 households in Wakhor Village built their new houses through the state housing project. The cost for their new house added to other monetary needs created by recent decades of marketization, including expenditures for education, medical care, funerals, transportation, and communication. In addition, many herders also wished to purchase cars and to decorate their new houses, which required a greater amount of cash than in the past.

The other reason that these herders were unwilling to participate in the second term was the shortage of pasture. An accumulation of livestock as a result of participating in the slaughter renunciation movement intensified the contradiction between herd size and the carrying capacity of pasture, which had become an issue since the adoption of a state policy of grassland allocation to individual households (Banks Reference Banks2003; Bauer Reference Bauer2005; Richard, Yan, and Du Reference Richard, Zhaoli and Guozhen2006; Yan Reference Yan2005). This was particularly true for wealthy households. One herder, who owned over 500 yaks and was the wealthiest in the village as well as a former village leader, stated that the three-year period of refraining from slaughter only extended the lives of those animals for a couple of years. He was sorry that he had to begin selling them again, and did so only because he did not have enough pasture to sustain so many male yaks, which become useless if they are not sold for meat. He said he had enough money in the bank to build a house, but he did not have enough pasture to sustain the increasing herd size.

More generally, the slaughter renunciation movement forced herders to keep more yaks, particularly male yaks, on pastures. Male yaks were traditionally used for transportation, but, with the improvement of roads and the availability of mechanized vehicles (motorcycles and cars), they are used increasingly less for this purpose. Thus, if they are not slaughtered, herders have no use for them. This has two negative effects. First, these unproductive yaks consume a significant amount of grass that otherwise can be grazed by female yaks, which will contribute to income generation. Second, the accumulation of male yaks has become a burden for the pasture that does not bring any benefit for the herders. The state and many Chinese ecological scientists propose that grassland degradation is severe and the overstocking is its main cause; if this is the case, then the slaughter renunciation movement exacerbates degradation (Harris Reference Harris2009; Wang et al. Reference Wang, Gengxu, Yongpin and Yanli2005; Yan et al. Reference Yan, Wu, Yeshi and Ru2005; Yonten Reference Yonten2012; Zhao and Zhou Reference Zhao and Huakun2005). Even if it does not, it reduces total forage availability without bringing any economic benefit.

In sum, despite the fact that the slaughter renunciation movement goes directly against the state development agenda of increasing the off-take rate for livestock and developing the economy based on the yak meat industry, it did not face any tangible opposition from state officials. Nevertheless, state development projects created new needs and desires that led to herders' rejection of the movement in its second term. In this way, state officials and herders were aligned in their thinking about material well-being and its importance over spiritual considerations, directly against the teachings of khenpos at Larung Gar. In this sense, state projects formed certain types of subjects who privileged economic well-being, successfully engaging in a project of governmentality, affecting the conduct of the herders apparently through their own free choices (Foucault Reference Foucault, Burchell, Gordon and Miller1991). Yet, this achievement of state governance is partial and works through a vigorously contested process. Despite the fact that most herders refused to continue their vow for a second three-year period, many of them still expressed their concerns about evil deeds that would accrue to them if they continued to sell their yaks in the market.

The Slaughter Renunciation Movement as a Controversial Topic

As slaughter renunciation has reached a significant number of Tibetan pastoral communities in the Kham, Amdo, and Tsang regions, it has also become a controversial topic among Tibetans, including government officials, urban intellectuals, entrepreneurs, schoolteachers, monks, and even pastoralists. The debates and discussion about the movement have taken place in face-to-face interactions as well as in cyberspace. Many argue that these khenpos simply do not understand or care about the real lives and livelihoods of herders. More damning, they also argue that if Tibetan khenpos continue to successfully spread the movement, Tibetan pastoralism—a significant part of Tibetan culture writ large—will disappear. For example, one government-employed teacher said:

Similarly, a Tibetan businessman said to me during an interview, “The slaughter renunciation movement is not the best way to address the problem that the movement is trying to solve. What the khenpos need to do is to promote an anti-meat movement. If no one eats meat, then no livestock will be slaughtered. As long as there is demand, livestock will be slaughtered anyway.”

An extreme view among the critics is reflected in a statement by a monk in his forties who said, “These days, there are two forces that are destroying Tibetan culture, and one of them is Khenpo Tsullo, who has been transforming herders' way of life through his various religious movements.” The monk said he had written to Khenpo Tsullo to pass on his concerns, but had not received any response. It is not common for monks to criticize khenpos or their religious work, but this shows the extent to which the Nyingma khenpos and their movement have become controversial among Tibetans in regard to the issues of economic development and the preservation of traditional culture. Another severe criticism was made by a Tibetan university teacher who was well educated in both Tibetan and Chinese. During an interview, he stated:

Similar comments are often made by secular-minded government officials. One such Tibetan government official stated:

While some khenpos consider the religious movement a way to reinforce Tibetan culture, understood mostly as Buddhist teachings and practices, other Tibetans see it as a way to destroy other important aspects of Tibetan culture—nomadism, traditional dress, diet, and so forth—and hinder the economic development of Tibetan pastoralists.

Other important sites for the discussions and debates about the Ten-Virtue rules are Tibetan-language forums, such as Khabdha, and the blogs of leading intellectuals who write in Tibetan, such as the Sangdor website. Khenpo Tsullo lies at the heart of these discussions and debates. Several pictures posted on the website Qinghai Lake Note (n.d.) have sparked particular controversy. These photos are of several Tibetans who have been publicly humiliated for their violation of the Ten-Virtue rules. In the pictures, men with signs that read “thief” or “gambler” hanging around their necks are standing in line in the middle of a crowd, a scene that reminds many of the Cultural Revolution. As one commentator says, “Regarding the act of humiliation in front of masses, there is no way to find another example other than the Cultural Revolution’’ (Mi tshogs kyi mdun du ‘di ldar byed pa ni rig gsar gyi byed thabs bkol ba las dpe gzhan len sa zhig rnyed mi srid do) (Qinghai Lake Note, n.d.). Well-known Tibetan singer, feminist, writer, and journalist Jamyang Kyi has also presented serious stories about the Ten-Virtue rules, one of which is about a father who had to throw the corpse of his child into a river because he was shut out from receiving Buddhist funeral ritual services from the monastery for his selling of livestock for slaughter, a violation of the Ten-Virtue rules (Kyi Reference Kyi2014). In these online debates, many have aimed their critique at the coercive way the movements have been carried out—public humiliation, shutting the door to the Dharma to those who have violated the rules—but also at the danger of losing nomadic culture and the impacts on herders' livelihood. Other topics of conversation include the questions of whether coercive forms of implementation of the movement were the intention of Khenpo Tsullo's original teachings, who should have the power to make decisions about participation in the movement, and whether the photos of public humiliation are genuine or not.

While some Tibetans question the movement itself, others have a totally different worldview from those of these Nyingma khenpos regarding both development and the role of Tibetan Buddhism in development. One frequent critique is of Tibetan khenpos’ intervention in secular affairs. For instance, one commentator stated, “If they [Buddhist clerics] really want to be Buddhist practitioners, they could just discipline their minds. There is no need for them to meddle with other affairs by teaching Buddhism in a place where the issue ought to be a secular political one, or [the] secularization of Buddhism, an approach that mixes two contradictory affairs” (Khabdha, Reference Khabdhan.d.)

These Tibetans' critiques remind one of the writing of ZhogsDung (Reference ZhogsDung2005, Reference ZhogsDung2008), one of the most radical and controversial writers in contemporary Tibet, and his position that Tibetan traditions, in particular Buddhism, have played a negative role in the modernization of Tibet. ZhogsDung, the aforementioned Tibetan university teacher, and other critics in online debates represent a group that is different from those who criticize the movement per se. While the ZhogsDung group, which I call radical secularists, totally rejects the notion that Buddhism is critical for the future path of Tibetans, the other group does not criticize Buddhism and the movement as a whole, but only the way it has been implemented. ZhogsDung and other radical secularists represent a new generation with a strong awareness of themselves as Tibetans, but who act and think differently from Khenpo Tsullo and most herders. In many cases, they promote the idea of the necessity of separating religious matters from the business of the state, economic development, and secular affairs. They advocate promoting modern education, science, and technology while seeing Buddhism as an obstacle to achieving development. In short, the ZhogsDung group are subjects of modernization and neoliberal economic reform, but they also have a strong Tibetan identity, which is embedded in secular, value-based modernization. They often believe that they are the ones who will carry out the historic modernization of Tibet, a belief that resonates with the position of young, educated Han Chinese. This position is completely different from that taken by Khenpo Jikphun and Khenpo Tsullo, who promote development that is a combination of adequate material improvement and spiritual development. While the ZhogsDung group emphasizes only worldly and material development, the Nyingma khenpos suggest a development model that connects this-worldly with other-worldly, and the material world with spiritual development.