The Military Monastic Complex
Coming Soon…
“There has been a massive lay critique of leading Buddhist monks that have been seen as pro-military… but to conclude that monks are either silent or pro-military is too hasty! What we actually see is polarization and division within the Saṅgha,” says Iselin Frydenlund, a professor of religion in Norway who has spent decades studying Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. “We have to understand this very deep-seated fear in Buddhism of anarchy. For some conservative monks, supporting the military is not about greed or corruption, but about believing that some kind of order is better than total chaos.” Frydenlund gives voice to the deep sense of betrayal many lay Buddhists feel toward parts of Myanmar’s clergy after the 2021 coup. Yet she says that while that anger is real and must be acknowledged, it risks obscuring the fact that many monks and nuns are still serving their communities.
Frydenlund frames the conversation around two corrections to conventional wisdom, and credits her co-author Dr. Pyi Phyo Kyaw on much of the ideas that follow. First, she rejects the simplistic picture that “the monks” are either uniformly pro-military on the one hand, or staying silent on the other. Second, she argues that the treasured concept of a unified Saṅgha has never actually been a social or historical reality— Myanmar’s monastic communities have always been diverse, and often divided.
Frydenlund traces how the laity’s perceptions of the Saṅgha were punctured after the coup. Initially, the mirage of a unified Saṅgha appeared to be true, and in line with the public’s anti-military sentiments; several leading monks spoke against the coup; even the chair of the state Saṅgha committee offered a mild rebuke, calling it “against the will of the people”… and was then promptly placed under house arrest. Many other monks who oppose the junta have instead remained silent under threat of similar surveillance and punishment. As the confrontations turned violent in the succeeding months, Frydenlund describes how the monastic community as a whole retreated into a greater silence that was mistaken for uniform complicity, but the fact of the matter is that many factors contributed to this silence; it was not a monolithic response. Thus, the conventional misperception and superficial reality of a unified Saṅgha remained intact, only with the pendulum swinging from unified and with the people, to unified but supporting the military.
Related to those common misperceptions, she addresses the claim she often hears that “the Saṅgha” has been co-opted by the military. She explains that such language, again, oversimplifies the situation: the state certainly can pressure monks through registration, exams, and patronage in areas under its control. But this ignores that in liberated zones, many monastics have spoken out more openly or have overtly aligned themselves with the resistance. This complex reality undermines the idea of a unified Saṅgha under military domination.
Frydenlund also points out there had long been a strong, pro-military discourse within the Saṅgha, dating back to the aftermath of the 1988 uprising. In those years, the junta invested heavily in repairing relations with the clergy— building Buddhist universities and meditation centers, channeling funds to pagodas, and cultivating loyal networks among monks. She has termed this the “military-monastic complex.” These material and institutional bonds gave pro-junta voices in the Sangha a powerful platform and legitimacy they otherwise might not have had. Yet Frydenlund stresses that this did not encompass all monastics. Networks of monks who had allied themselves with the 1988 “Spring Revolution”— in Myanmar and even in neighboring Thailand— articulated a counter-vision that proclaimed democracy and human rights as consonant with the Dhamma.
Both monastic camps have drawn on the Canon and Buddhist history to defend their positions. Pro-military monks have often invoked a duty to protect the Sāsana (the Buddha’s dispensation) from threats, and sometimes pulled on texts or commentaries that stress order, obedience, or the legitimacy of rulers who defend Buddhism. In fact, Frydenlund notes that in his infamous 2017 sermon given to a gathering of soldiers, Sītagu Sayadaw invoked the Mahāvaṃsa— a Sri Lankan chronicle that some say extols a militaristic Buddhism— to justify killing in defense of the faith. In contrast, anti-military monastics have often cited the Aggañña Sutta (DN27) to validate the idea that political legitimacy originates with the people, and therefore argue that the Spring Revolution and other anti-military actions are not a betrayal of Buddhism at all, but a return to its ethical center.
But it is not an either-or, that if monks don’t speak out against the junta, they must be pro-military. Frydenlund sees a “kind of a silent majority, perhaps an obedient majority.” Like all Burmese people these days, monks face threats, surveillance and punishment. Many who remain quiet are not endorsing the junta— they’re just trying to stay alive. Some quietly provide shelter, food, and other humanitarian aid to revolutionaries, even as they avoid public anti-military sermons or social media statements. Others support the resistance within the constraints of the Vinaya (the monastic code of discipline), believing that its preservation is essential if Buddhism is to survive the vicissitudes of history. These quieter kinds of resistance are often overlooked.
She also cautions against the view that reduces monastic alignment with the military to either corruption, cowardice, or greed. Here she refers to a Buddhist “ideology of order,” noting that in Buddhist political thought, anarchy is a nightmare that imperils both society and the Sāsana. When the state fragments and regional militias proliferate, some conservative monks conclude—rightly or wrongly— that only central military rule can prevent total chaos. The temptation, then, to side with “law and order,” in other words, can be predicated on longstanding textual and ethical anxieties about disorder, and not just venality.
Regarding Sītagu Sayadaw’s 2017 sermon invoking the Mahāvaṃsa, Frydenlund says that as a Sri Lanka specialist, she was struck not by the reference itself— it is actually a familiar theme in Sinhala Buddhist nationalism— but by its starkness. She calls his sermon “a very, very blunt call for killing non-Buddhists.” She explains that in Sri Lanka, even very militant monks usually put forward that argument indirectly or through euphemism, but Sītagu’s directness, in Myanmar’s context and given the timing and the audience, was indeed shocking. She goes onto explain that the military-run media later repurposed its logic to target not only non-Buddhists but Buddhist “enemies within;” or those opposed to the 2021 coup.
Yet she distinguishes ideological blessings from a personal choice to engage in violence. The Vinaya’s prohibitions still hold sway. Militant clerics might preach, bless weapons, or perform ritual “yadaya” (ယဒယ), but it is understood that those who choose to participate in actual armed struggle should disrobe first (one can cite a particular exception which roves the role: an incident from 2013 captured on video in Meiktila of a Buddhist monk swinging a machete towards Muslim villagers). Frydenlund notes that the Buddhist concept of intention (cetanā) remains central to moral judgment in Buddhist ethics; this is why military “chaplaincy” across the Theravāda world has long endeavored to recast battlefield killing by Buddhist soldiers as karmically neutral when undertaken with a “clean heart” to protect the Sāsana.
Frydenlund also pushes back on Western romanticist mindsets about Buddhism, such as the view that it is apolitical and pacifist by definition. This kind of generic “Orientalist” perspective, popularized in European social thought, has made it hard for many outsiders to grasp the politicized, sometimes violent, face of Buddhist institutions. She emphasizes that scholars have been documenting Buddhism’s entanglements with power and military might for over a century. “That kind of Orientalist construction of Buddhism [as an inherently peace-loving religion] has also served modernist Buddhist projects in Asia itself,” she notes, contrasting it with “violent” Islam or secular modernity. Frydenlund notes the irony that while Buddhism has often been romanticized as a pacifist tradition, in Myanmar this image collides with the reality of some monks’ overt support for the military and its campaigns of violence against perceived enemies.
Turning towards the side of the resistance, Frydenlund describes that although this is often portrayed as a secular uprising, she sees Buddhist fingerprints everywhere: networks of mutual aid rooted in temple life; ethical vocabularies for justice; and, crucially, mindfulness practices that sustain mental health. Many young resisters center themselves with sermons on YouTube, chanting, or meditation. What seems new is the way these practices blend with therapy, sleep hygiene, exercise, even non-Buddhist self-help— in other words, there has evolved a hybrid, individualized, Buddhist modernism.
She also notes that many Burmese are now making more discriminating choices within the Saṅgha rather than the general respect and veneration born solely out of religious belief that was more the case in the past. For example, many are “silent-boycotting” military-aligned monks; for example they no longer donate to their monasteries nor do they listen further to their talks. For many in the Buddhist laity, the criteria for which monks to trust and follow now includes politics in addition to the typical spiritual gravitas of calm and ethical clarity.
In thinking about the future, Frydenlund offers possible scenarios as opposed to specific predictions. If liberated areas consolidate, for example, she believes alternative monastic governance could develop even if no formal schism is declared. She explains that while the fear of schism has been a longstanding, historical concern in Burma, new nikāyas (orders) typically only emerge around disciplinary disputes concerning technical issues of the Vinaya. Frydenlund speculates that perhaps a new possibility may arise, based on the suspicion that the Saṅgha has become unjust or morally corrupt due to the connection of some monks with the military. Whether the future yields a freer, more democratic Saṅgha or not may well depend less on theological debate than the war’s outcome.
Amid these possibilities, Frydenlund is concerned about revolutionary rhetoric that writes off institutional Buddhism altogether. For all the justified anger at complicity, she believes that tearing down monastic structures entirely would irreparably impoverish the Sāsana. This is why some pro-revolution monks work “within the lines,” safeguarding the Vinaya even as they feed, hide, and counsel the displaced. They are banking on a post-junta Myanmar will still need monasteries— albeit reformed, decentralized, and accountable— to anchor teaching, practice, and community.
Frydenlund summarizes her perspective on the Saṅgha and the positioning on monks along a political spectrum: On one end of the continuum are protectionist, nationalist monks, which range from ritual enablers to openly militant preachers, and amplified by the military-monastic complex. On the other end are pro-revolution monks, diverse in tone and tactics, some imagining a “Dhamma state… based on social justice and equality among religions and ethnic groups and minority protection,” not a privileging of Buddhism by custom and law. Occupying the much larger middle ground are the many monks just trying to navigate fear, duty, and survival.
It is very complex, and this is why she balks at characterizing the Saṅgha and its relationship to the resistance in any one way. It is not simply, as some claim, a secular break from the 1988 “Saffron Revolution” model of monks leading the people, nor is it the case that all monks support the military or that ordinary Buddhists have abandoned the religious resources that sustain them. Frydenlund stresses that the institutions, practices, ethics, and narratives of Buddhism remain intimately intertwined with Myanmar’s resistance: in war-zone clinics and refugee kitchens, in whispered sermons and nightly chants, in the private rituals that calm an anxious mind before another day’s struggle. In the end, she wonders how anyone can conceive of one the most religious countries in the world changing so drastically overnight. “Don’t buy into this narrative that we all lose faith in Buddhism now, because it’s a revolution,” she says. “Buddhism is still with us as this kind of personal practice, but it’s also the realization of the Dhamma and the need for social justice that informs this societal engagement.”