This essay offers a reflection on how the concept of merit (buyan) is understood and practiced within contemporary Mongolian Mahāyāna Buddhist life, particularly through kinship, lineage, and ethical reciprocity. Grounded in personal observation and ongoing dialogue with practitioners, it explores how moral and spiritual authority are cultivated and recognised within intergenerational family networks, rather than through public platforms or institutional hierarchy. The focus is on the quiet, embodied ways in which ethical action, memory, and ritual care are sustained across households and relationships—often transmitted orally, enacted seasonally, and reinforced through shared responsibilities. What follows is not a comprehensive analysis, but a preliminary sketch of a living tradition where merit emerges as a relational, deeply contextual form of moral transmission.

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Through a location within one of Mongolia’s many Mahāyāna Buddhist communities of practice, it has become clear to me, that the concept of meritocracy, or any sense of it, is better understood not through the secular, competitive lenses of modern governance or education, but through the karmic and ethical frameworks intrinsic to the Buddhist cosmology within which such a community of practice is situated.

In this context, merit (buyan in Mongolian) is accumulated through acts of generosity, ethical living, meditation, and support of the sangha (defined in broadest terms).  It is not a quantifiable measure of success, but a subtle, moral force that is deemed to shape one’s rebirth, capacities for wisdom, and, in some cases, spiritual authority. In this sense, this form of practice upholds what I would describe as a karmic meritocracy, in which individuals attain influence or reverence not by worldly achievement but through deep stores of ethical and spiritual cultivation (Fijn, 2020, pp. 145–147).

Karmic meritocracy is deeply entangled with Mongolian understandings of blood and bone lineage—a concept that values ancestral virtue, social service, and community recognition across generations. Individuals like Zava Damdin (b.1976), whose father and grandfather were both respected public figures and moral leaders, carry a visible continuity of community esteem that reinforces karmic legitimacy.

Maternal lineages, too, are honored for transmitting ethical sensibilities, ritual discipline, and social responsibility. Crucially, this transmission has not always been institutional or textual. In many families, oral lineage is cultivated quietly within the home, where teachings, devotional practices, and moral exemplars are shared in embodied, conversational forms rather than through formal publication or public dissemination.

In this way, lineage is not merely biological but ethical and cosmological: it represents the embodiment of multi-generational buyan, where the past lives on through the present via both inherited example and renewed commitment (Allard, 2021, pp. 12–14; Batchelor, 2015, p. 39).

During the socialist period in Mongolia (1924–1992), women were strongly encouraged—both ideologically and socially—to have large families, often eight or more children. This pronatalist stance was part of a broader demographic strategy aimed at building Mongolia as a strong and self-sufficient socialist nation. Supported by state policies offering maternal care, child allowances, and institutional praise for mothers of many children, Mongolian women, especially in herding and provincial communities, were framed as central to the reproduction of both population and ideology. As noted by scholars of Inner Asian socialism, high fertility was not merely biological but symbolic: women were honoured as “mothers of the revolution,” and large families were framed as acts of service to the nation (Fijn, 2020, pp. 128–132).

Today, and now in the context of globalisation, the children of these socialist-era families—many of whom grew up in tightly knit rural communities—now have children of their own, resulting in vast intergenerational extended family networks that remain deeply embedded in Mongolian social and cultural life. These familial constellations now often interlock with one another across aimags, regions and internationally, creating distributed, flexible systems of reciprocity, care, and shared ritual responsibility.

Through such networks, Buddhist practitioner households—including lay devotees, lineage holders, and monks and nuns who also maintain family responsibilities—coordinate religious observances, memorials, offerings, and seasonal rituals across kinship lines. As Rebecca Empson (2011) observes, kinship in Mongolia is not merely a structural arrangement but a lived process, enacted through everyday ritual and relational memory. It is this embodied practice that shapes both moral obligations and cosmological orientation within the household.

Similarly, Katherine Swancutt (2013) highlights how families function as the core unit of ritual continuity, with women often mediating ancestral and spiritual ties through subtle, embodied practices. Barfield’s earlier ethnographies also observed that Mongolian Buddhism, while institutionally disrupted during the socialist era, survived through domestic ritual, oral lineage, and kin-based reciprocity—what he termed vernacular religiosity carried in the rhythms of family life.

These forms of reciprocity have not typically depended on centralised religious institutions. Rather, they have been quietly sustained through familial trust, ancestral memory, and ritual exchange, carried across generations through oral transmission, mobile visits, and seasonal pilgrimages. What emerges is a distributed web of devotional life—one deeply rooted in kinship ties, karmic relationships, and the enduring legacy of women’s reproductive and ethical labour. Within this framework, karma is understood as a form of moral causality: intentional actions, expressed through thought, speech, and conduct, shape not only one’s future experiences within the community, but also the trajectory of lives across generations.

From my perspective, what makes this model especially nuanced is the way practitioners I know engage with merit as a deeply relational and collective practice. While merit is cultivated through personal discipline and ethical effort, it is often intentionally dedicated to others—an expression of the Mahāyāna ideal of universal compassion. Respected lamas and lay benefactors alike frequently extend the spiritual fruits of their practice through acts such as buyan zoriulakh (ritual dedication), reinforcing a commitment to shared well-being over individual attainment.

Rather than striving for personal distinction—as is often emphasised in Western models of meritocracy—practitioners tend to frame merit as a form of ethical responsibility, rooted in interdependence, service, and the intentional redistribution of spiritual capital for the benefit of the wider community (Diener & Hagen, 2013, p. 340).

Such a spiritual ethic stands in marked contrast to the highly individualised and achievement-oriented models of meritocracy prevalent in capitalist societies, where “merit” is often assessed through measurable outcomes—rankings, productivity, click-through rates, and other visible metrics. In the Mongolian Buddhist context, by contrast, merit is frequently unseen: expressed through humility, patience, and inner transformation. The tension—or, in some cases, quiet coexistence—between these two modalities reflects a lived reality for many in the twenty-first century, as different systems of value intersect and unfold in everyday life.

I feel that within this lineage of transmission, a Buddhist practitioner’s merit is not measured by visibility alone, but by the sincerity of their intention and the ethical integrity of their actions—qualities each of us must quietly discern for ourselves, in accordance with our own understanding of virtue and responsibility. Even in the case of highly visible figures, it is the sustained, quiet commitment to vows and the compassionate support of others—regardless of public recognition—that more closely reflect the Buddhist ideals of upāya (skillful means) and bodhicitta (compassionate intention) (Rosemont, 2017, p. 4; Schneider, 2022, p. 8).

In a time when societies are grappling with crises of meaning, fragmentation, and performance-driven exhaustion, this understanding of “meritocracy” offers a quiet ethical alternative—one rooted in care, karmic accountability, ancestral gratitude, and service to others. It is not merely a question of who deserves what, but a deeper reflection on how we recognise and value the often unseen, unacknowledged labours of virtue.

This is, of course, a complex topic. What I’ve offered here is simply a preliminary reflection—an attempt to sketch some of the key ideas, along with a few personal conclusions for your consideration, so that you may draw your own.

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Terminology Set

(in the order the terms appear in the above text)

The Mongolian spiritual authority I’m trying to describe is deeply relational: it is conferred through trust, recognition, and reciprocity within extended kin networks and lay communities, and often maintained through oral transmission, seasonal offerings, and moral example. Whether expressed by a highly trained lama or an elder woman maintaining ancestral rites at home, this authority flows from the continuity of buyan (merit), the presence of zam (path), and the sincerity of one’s intention (sanaani shudarga).

Karmic meritocracy refers to a moral system in which an individual’s future outcomes—across this life and others—are shaped by the ethical quality of their intentional actions, with merit accrued through virtuous behaviour, generosity, and spiritual practice, rather than status or competition.

In Mongolian cultural and kinship terms, blood and bone lineage (tsus yasnii udam) refers to one’s ancestral heritage traced through both maternal (mother’s blood) and paternal (father’s bone) lines. Traditionally, the father’s side (yas – “bone”) is seen as the structural or clan lineage, representing continuity of name, tribe, and social belonging, while the mother’s side (tsus – “blood”) signifies emotional, life-giving ties and moral inheritance. Together, they form a holistic sense of identity, responsibility, and genealogical depth.

Karmic legitimacy refers to the perceived spiritual or moral authority of a person—often a religious leader or practitioner—based on their accumulated merit (buyan), ethical conduct, and intentional actions across lifetimes, rather than on institutional appointment, birthright, or social status. In traditions like Mongolian Buddhism, karmic legitimacy validates one’s role or influence as being cosmologically justified through past and present virtuous deeds.

Ethical sensibilities in Mongolian society refer to the culturally embedded values, emotions, and moral intuitions that guide behavior, social relationships, and spiritual practice. Rooted in a blend of Buddhist ethics, shamanic cosmologies, and customary norms (yos zanshil), these sensibilities emphasize respect for elders and the land, reciprocity, humility, restraint, and the careful management of speech, intention, and karma. Ethical behavior is not just rule-based but relational and cosmologically attuned, shaped by awareness of one’s actions within a broader web of human, spiritual, and ancestral ties.

In Mongolian Buddhist vernacular practice, an oral lineage refers to the transmission of ritual knowledge, esoteric teachings, and ethical sensibilities through spoken word, memory, and lived example, rather than through written texts or formal monastic instruction. These lineages are often sustained within families, local communities, or among lay tantric practitioners, and emphasize the embodied, relational, and context-specific nature of religious authority. Oral transmission preserves not only the content of teachings but also the intonation, affect, and ritual timing, making it central to the continuity of Mongolian vernacular Buddhism.

Relational memory refers to the way memories are formed, maintained, and transmitted through social relationships, rather than being held solely as individual cognitive experiences. It encompasses how people remember through kinship ties, ritual participation, oral storytelling, shared spaces, and intergenerational exchange, emphasizing that memory is not just personal but co-constructed, affectively charged, and shaped by cultural norms of remembering together.

In Mongolian contexts, relational memory is embedded in practices such as ancestral veneration, ritual offerings, oral genealogies, and the transmission of karmic narratives, where remembering serves not only to preserve the past but to reaffirm ethical ties and spiritual obligations across generations.

Vernacular religiosity (a current practice, but an old-fashioned term) refers to the locally grounded, everyday expressions of religious belief and practice that often exist outside or alongside formal institutional frameworks. It includes personal rituals, oral traditions, local cosmologies, healing practices, and moral logics that are shaped by lived experience, social context, and cultural memory. Vernacular religiosity tends to be adaptive, pragmatic, and relational, often blending official doctrine with indigenous, ancestral, or place-based spiritual knowledge.

In Mongolian settings, vernacular religiosity can be seen in household altars, protective offerings, local deity veneration, lay tantric practices, and the oral transmission of Buddhist and shamanic teachings, where religious life is integrated into everyday acts of care, survival, and ethical engagement with both human and spirit worlds.

Reciprocity in the Mongolian cultural context refers to the deeply embedded social and moral principle of mutual exchange, obligation, and balance that governs interpersonal relationships, spiritual practice, and interactions with the natural and spirit world. Rooted in nomadic lifeways, kinship structures, and Buddhist and shamanic worldviews, reciprocity shapes how Mongolians understand generosity, indebtedness, respect, and ethical conduct—not as transactional, but as part of maintaining social harmony and cosmological balance. It is expressed through acts such as gift-giving, ritual offering (tahilga), hospitality, and karmic dedication, where giving is not only expected to return in kind, but to reaffirm bonds of trust, ancestry, and collective well-being.

Karmic accountability refers to the belief that individuals are ethically responsible for the intentions and consequences of their actions, which generate karmic effects that shape both current and future experiences across lifetimes. In this view, moral cause and effect is not externally enforced but internally accumulated, creating a system of cosmic justice rooted in intentionality, restraint, and compassion.

In Mongolian Buddhist contexts, karmic accountability is not only personal but often relational and communal—reflected in practices such as merit-making, ritual offerings, and karmic dedication to others. It underscores a moral universe in which actions toward kin, community, deities, spirits, and the land are weighed within a broader cosmological and ethical framework, linking everyday conduct to both spiritual and temporal consequence.

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Further Reading

Landscape 08: Women and Re-Place-ing Buddhism

Artscape 07: During the Socialist times

Allard, L. (2021). Poetry, Ritual, and Authority in Contemporary Mongolian Buddhism. ANU Centre for Asian and Pacific Studies, pp. 12–14.

Batchelor, S. (2015). Rebirth and the Karma of Leadership in Inner Asian Buddhism. Contemporary Buddhism, 16(1), 34–49.

Barfield, T. (1993). The Nomadic Alternative. Prentice Hall/ANU Press, pp. 184–190.

Diener, A.C., & Hagen, J. (2013). City of Felt and Concrete: Negotiating Cultural Hybridity in Mongolia’s Capital of Ulaanbaatar. Nationalities Papers, 41(2), 330–351.

Empson, R. (2011). Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia. Oxford University Press, pp. 115–123.

Fijn, N. (2020). Living with Herds: Human–Animal Coexistence in Mongolia. ANU Press, pp. 128–132, 145–147.

Rosemont, H. (2017). Translation as Cultural Reproduction in Inner Asia. ANU Mongolian Studies Working Paper Series, p. 4.

•Schneider, T. (2022). Hermeneutics and Esotericism in Buddhist Poetics. University of Freiburg Working Papers in Religious Translation Studies, pp. 7–9.

Swancutt, K. (2013). Review of Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia. Inner Asia, 15(2), 319–324.

 

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If there are any errors of judgement in this article, they are of my own making.

For these, I humbly apologise.

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Refer to the INDEX for other articles that may be of interest.

© 2013-2026. CP in Mongolia. “Letter from Mongolia 12: On Meritocracy” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ScholarGPT provided an additional channel for research. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. Posted: 9 January 2026. Last updated: 9 January 2026.