Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of map and figures
- Notes on language
- Map 1 Map of Thailand
- 1 Meditation and monasticism: making the ascetic self in Thailand
- 2 Meditation and religious reform
- 3 The monastic community: duty and structure
- 4 Meditation as ethical imperative
- 5 Language and meditation
- 6 Monastic duty, mindfulness and cognitive space
- 7 Money, mae chee and reciprocity
- 8 Hierarchy, gender and mindfulness
- 9 Monasticization and the ascetic interiority of non-self
- Appendix: Ordination transcript for an eight-precept nun (mae chee)
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Meditation and religious reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of map and figures
- Notes on language
- Map 1 Map of Thailand
- 1 Meditation and monasticism: making the ascetic self in Thailand
- 2 Meditation and religious reform
- 3 The monastic community: duty and structure
- 4 Meditation as ethical imperative
- 5 Language and meditation
- 6 Monastic duty, mindfulness and cognitive space
- 7 Money, mae chee and reciprocity
- 8 Hierarchy, gender and mindfulness
- 9 Monasticization and the ascetic interiority of non-self
- Appendix: Ordination transcript for an eight-precept nun (mae chee)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In contemporary Thai Buddhism there is massive variation in the foci of Buddhist practice. While some monastic and lay organizations focus on ascetic discipline, others focus on ritual practices, social welfare projects or wealth creation. In Thailand modernist Buddhist movements have elaborated Buddhist responsibilities as both a social concern and a personal responsibility of purification. Furthermore, with the proliferation of practices and foci of monastics and laity it is possible for practitioners to incorporate diverse perspectives and motivations into their understanding of Thai Buddhism. This book is an analysis of the cultural elaborations of vipassanā meditation and an examination of the ways in which this specific practice has implicated monastic subjectivity and community at this historical juncture. The burgeoning popularity of vipassanā meditation as a practice available to all people, lay or monastic, is fast becoming a verifying technique by which people seek and often find the experiences of the religious tenets of impermanence, suffering and non-self. The focus of some monasteries on vipassanā propagation is a recent development in Thai Buddhism and has occurred in tandem with hybrid processes of reform, localism and commoditization. In this chapter, I locate the monastery on which this book is based in the history of the Thai vipassanā meditation movement and the broader reformist landscape that has characterized recent decades of religious change.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Meditation in Modern BuddhismRenunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life, pp. 26 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010