Overturning the alms bowl
Last year, a Western monk in Burma who has become an apologist for the military regime wrote a scathing indictment of monks who overturned their alms bowls. This was being carried out by some members of the Sangha as a symbolic protest to indicate they would no longer accept support from those in the military carrying out atrocities against innocent people. In hoping to prove his point, the monk wrote, “Such proclamations should not be casually done for the purpose of gaining Facebook likes, support, political asylum, or pats on the back.” Because this monk had used a translation from the Saṁyutta Nikāya by Bhikkhu Bodhi in his essay to argue his point, I was quite curious to hear the Venerable’s own take on this point when we conducted our recent interview.
Bhikkhu Bodhi began by acknowledging that he was himself guilty of this act, as he had joined other monastics in taking photos of himself holding an overturned alms bowl. He seemed to find it somewhat amusing that he was being accused of doing this as a means of virtue signaling or to boost his social media profile. He went on to say, “I think he said that monks did this in order to receive pats on the back? Is that the expression that he used? Facebook likes and pats on the back? I mean, I hardly even look at Facebook! So I don't think I did that for the purpose of likes.”
In the following excerpt, Bhikkhu Bodhi goes on to provide further scriptural understanding for the purpose of overturning the alms bowl.
“By turning the bowl upside down, we are showing that we are denying them, at least symbolically, the opportunity to make offerings and to acquire merit through gifts to the Sangha.”
“The act of turning over the alms bowl should be decided by a consensus of monastics as a way of showing rejection of the behavior of a lay person who's creating harm for the monastic community, or who's disparaging the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.
And so when we did this, taking our photos and sending them to a central reception place that received them and posted them on Facebook, it was not done with the idea that we were performing an official act of the Sangha, rather just a symbolic way of showing that we were opposed to the behavior, the actions taken by these leaders of the Tatmadaw in Myanmar; a way of showing that we didn't agree with their the type of dictatorial regime that they were imposing on the country, that we didn't agree with the way that they were shooting people, killing people, arresting people arbitrarily, and sentencing them to long prison terms.
Since we would assume that even the leaders in Myanmar, at least as a rough assumption, have some regard for monastics and have some acceptance of the idea of gaining merit by making alms offerings to the Sangha, the idea was that by turning the bowl upside down, we are showing that we are denying them, at least symbolically, the opportunity to make offerings and to acquire merit through gifts to the Sangha. It was not intended as an official act of the Sangha, but as a symbolic way to send a message to the people at the head of the [Burmese junta] regime, that we are opposed to their types of policies and to their grip on power.”