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 Sipsongpanna, 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
Theravada Buddhism, a minority form within China, where Mahayana
Buddhism is the norm. Theravada 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 Sipsongpanna, the governance of religion there,
and the movements of monks (revealing the "ethnoscapes" that the
monks of Sipsongpanna 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 Mahayana monks and Theravada 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.
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