On Ecological Degradation and the Practice of Purification in Urban Mongolia

Abstract

Abstract In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, Buddhist rituals often involve purifying spiritual contamination and bad karma as well as the revitalization of stagnant energies. This chapter engages Buddhist practices of purification and revitalization in the context of a polluted postsocialist city. As the city’s air quality has degenerated, urban smog has taken on negative associations, such as sluggishness and uncertainty. As smog inundates the city, it has become a metaphor for obscuration, confusion, and stagnation. This chapter focuses on the ways that Mongolian lay Buddhists negotiate religious practice in a polluted urban environment. It will highlight the importance of situating lived Buddhism within the built environments that people reside in (including architecture and infrastructure), relationships with other living beings (including animals and plants), impersonal forces (such as the weather and climate change), and pollution.