James A. Benn is Associate Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at McMaster University. His main area of research is Buddhism and Taoism in Medieval China.Lori Meeks is Assistant Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. She has published extensively on the roles of women as consumers and practitioners of Buddhism in Japan during the Heian and Kamakura periods.James Robson is Associate Professor of Chinese Buddhism at Harvard University. He studies Buddhism and Taoism in medieval China.

• Introduction: Neither Too Far, Nor Too Near: The Historical and Cultural Contexts of Buddhist Monasteries in Medieval China and Japan James Robson 1. Taking a Meal at a Lay Supporter’s Residence: The Evolution of the Practice in Chinese Vinaya Commentaries Koichi Shinohara 2. Monastic Spaces and Sacred Traces: Facets of Chinese Buddhist Monastic Records James Robson 3. Pictorial Program in the Making of Monastic Space: From Jing’aisi of Luoyang to Cave 217 at Dunhuang Eugene Wang 4. The Monastery Cat in Cross-cultural Perspective: Cat Poems of the Zen Masters T.H. Barrett 5. The Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan: The Insider’s View William Bodiford 6. Vows for the Masses: Eison and the Popular Expansion of Precept-Conferral Ceremonies in Premodern Japan Lori Meeks 7. Koen and the “Consecrated Ordination” Within Japanese Tendai Paul Groner

"This book is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of studies focusing on Buddhist practice. It offers a timely description of the manifold contributions made by the Buddhist monastery as an institution in medieval China and Japan, and benefits its readers by helping them to understand the nature and function of such monasteries... This book offers a wealth of new research and careful considerations presented by leading scholars in the field... Not only will this book serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students, it will hopefully encourage further investigations into places of religious practice across cultures." - Pei-Yin Lin, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Volume 18, 2011