Meditation in Modern Buddhism

Joanna Cook is George Kingsley Roth Research Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies, Christ's College, University of Cambridge.

• 1. Meditation and monasticism: making the ascetic self in Thailand; 2. Sectarianism, centralization and the propagation of meditation; 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.

'This is an engaging, inspiring, and thought-provoking ethnography and phenomenology of Buddhist insight meditation in contemporary Thailand. Using her own experience as a 'nun' (mae chee) as well as her relationships with others in a monastic setting, Cook uncovers and analyzes the formation of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity and the embodiment of ethics in Buddhist practice. The book should be required reading for anyone concerned with Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, and will be of interest to many others: for example, to those concerned with religious ethics, with the practice of self-reflexive anthropology, and to Gender Studies as a discipline.' Steven Collins, University of Chicago