Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border

Borchert, Thomas A. (著)

著者

Borchert, Thomas A. (著)

出版年月日

2017.05.31

ページ

230

出版者

University of Hawai'i Press

出版サイト

https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/

出版地

Honolulu, HI, US [檀香山, 夏威夷州, 美國]

シリーズ

Contemporary Buddhism

資料の種類

書籍=Book

言語

英文=English

キーワード

China; Sipsongpanna; minorities; education; transnational; religion; nationalism; Theravada; novices

抄録

Most studies of Buddhist communities tend to be limited to villages, individual temple communities, or a single national community. Buddhist monastics, however, cross a number of these different framings: They are part of local communities, are governed through national legal frameworks, and participate in both national and transnational Buddhist networks. Educating Monks makes visible the ways Buddhist communities are shaped by all of the above—collectively and often simultaneously.

Educating Monks examines a minority Buddhist community in Sipsongpannā, a region located on China’s southwest border with Myanmar and Laos. Its people, the Dai-lue, are “double minorities”: They are recognized by the Chinese state as part of a minority group, and they practice Theravāda Buddhism, a minority form within China, where Mahāyāna Buddhism is the norm. Theravāda has long been the primary training ground for Dai-lue men, and since the return of Buddhism to the area in the years following Mao Zedong’s death, the Dai-lue have put many of their resources into providing monastic education for their sons. However, the author’s analysis of institutional organization within Sipsongpannā, the governance of religion there, and the movements of monks (revealing the “ethnoscapes” that the monks of Sipsongpannā participate in) points to educational contexts that depend not just on local villagers, but also resources from the local (Communist) government and aid form Chinese Mahāyāna monks and Theravāda monks from Thailand and Myanmar. While the Dai-lue monks draw on these various resources for the development of the sangha, they do not share the same agenda and must continually engage in a careful political dance between villagers who want to revive traditional forms of Buddhism, a Chinese state that is at best indifferent to the continuation of Buddhism, and transnational monks that want to import their own modern forms of Buddhism into the region.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Dai-lue monks in China, Thailand, and Singapore, this ambitious and sophisticated study will find a ready audience among students and scholars of the anthropology of Buddhism, and religion, education, and transnationalism in Southeast and East Asia.

Front Matter
Copyright Page
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Languages, Pronunciation, and Names
Abbreviations

Introduction: Buddhism and Monastic Education, within and across Borders in the New Millennium

Part 1 Shaping Buddhist Lives in Sipsongpannā
Expand1 Local Monks in Sipsongpannā
Expand2 Fortune-Telling and False Monks: Defining and Governing Religion
Expand3 Monks on the Move: Dai-Lue Monastic Networks

Part 2 Educating the Monks of Sipsongpannā
Expand4 Learning to Read in Village Temples and Chinese Public Schools
Expand5 The Fragility of Autonomy: Curricular Education at Dhamma Schools
Expand6 Transnational Buddhist Education and the Limits of the Buddhist Ethnoscape
Afterword

End Matter
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
About the Author

ISBN

9780824866488 (hc); 9780824875657 (eb); 9780824866495 (pbk); 0824866495

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824866488.001.0001

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