Two main interrelated arguments run through Cook's analysis of meditation in Thai Buddhism: tensions between the individual and the social in meditation practice; and the changing religious roles of women. Her work is based on significant ethnographic fieldwork at Wat Bonamron in Chiang Mai, a year of which she spent ordained as a mae chee (“nuns” who receive only partial ordination). She highlights the growing interest in vipassana meditation in Thailand, showing how the sangha not only practices meditation, but teaches it to the laity in a process she labels the “monasticization of the laity.” In particular, the mae chee become mediators between the laity and the fully ordained sangha. At Wat Bonamron, the mae chee take on religious monastic roles usually denied to women as meditation practitioners and teachers, while remaining hierarchically inferior to monks. Drawing critically from Mauss, Dumont, and Carrithers, Cook offers insight into the interplay between the personal and the social aspects of meditation practice, such as the relationships between mae chee, monks, and laity. Cook's theoretical analysis of the evolution of religious practice is richly supported through the depth and clarity of her presentation of how people learn and practice meditation, and how they negotiate a complex social world that enables renunciates to work towards enlightenment. She offers a new analysis of how religion—in both its interior and exterior experiences—changes in response to the modern world, an analysis well worth reading and pondering.
