Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcription
- 1 Introduction and manifesto
- Part I The arahant and the Path of Meditation
- Part II The hagiography of a Buddhist saint: text and context; the politics of sectarianism
- 6 The biography of a modern saint
- 7 The Buddha's life as paradigm
- 8 The ordering principles behind Buddhist saintly biography
- 9 The disciples of the Master
- 10 The biographer as exemplary forest-monk, meditator, and teacher
- 11 Sectarianism and the sponsorship of meditation
- 12 The Mahānikāi sect's propagation of lay meditation
- 13 The center–periphery dialectic: the Mahāthāt and Bovonniwet sponsorship of meditation compared
- Part III The cult of amulets: the objectification and transmission of charisma
- Part IV Conceptual and theoretical clarifications
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
6 - The biography of a modern saint
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcription
- 1 Introduction and manifesto
- Part I The arahant and the Path of Meditation
- Part II The hagiography of a Buddhist saint: text and context; the politics of sectarianism
- 6 The biography of a modern saint
- 7 The Buddha's life as paradigm
- 8 The ordering principles behind Buddhist saintly biography
- 9 The disciples of the Master
- 10 The biographer as exemplary forest-monk, meditator, and teacher
- 11 Sectarianism and the sponsorship of meditation
- 12 The Mahānikāi sect's propagation of lay meditation
- 13 The center–periphery dialectic: the Mahāthāt and Bovonniwet sponsorship of meditation compared
- Part III The cult of amulets: the objectification and transmission of charisma
- Part IV Conceptual and theoretical clarifications
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Summary
Phra Acharn Mun was born in Northeast Thailand in 1870 and died in 1949, in his eightieth year by the Thai way of reckoning (see Figure 4). He is regarded in Thailand today as having been not only a great meditation master and exemplary monk, but also a great teacher (acharn) who trained a number of illustrious disciples, who were famous in the recent past or are famous today. Indeed, Mun is regarded by numerous pious Buddhists as an arahant (perfected saint) in the classical sense.
One of the saint's disciples, who is himself a meditation master and teacher at a Northeastern forest hermitage, Phra Acharn Maha Boowa, wrote a long biography of the saint. It was first written and published in Thai in serialized form in a religious journal called Sā Sapdā (Glorious Week) and was subsequently published as a book in 1971 under royal patronage. Because of the popularity and significance of the subject matter, the biography has been recently translated into English by Siri Buddhasukh, an ex-monk of the Thammayut sect, to which belongs the biographer and also belonged the saint. Buddhasukh now works for the World Federation of Buddhists, whose headquarters are in Bangkok, and also teaches at the Mahāmakut Monks' University, which too is a venture of the Thammayut sect.
Siri's translated biography was published in 1976. A thousand copies were printed and distributed free in the Thai tradition of “merit making”: Distribution of books containing religious material at cremations and commemorations is the Thai custom, especially among the affluent.
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- The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets , pp. 81 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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