Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet / / Jane E. Caple; ed. by Mark Michael Rowe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Caple, Jane E.,
• HerausgeberIn: Rowe, Mark Michael,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Contemporary Buddhism
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.) :; 9 b&w illustrations

The speed and extent of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic revival make it one of the most extraordinary stories of religious resurgence in post-Mao China. At the end of the 1970s, there were no working monasteries; within a decade, thousands had been reconstructed and repopulated. Most studies have focused on the political challenges facing Tibetan monasteries, emphasizing their relationship to the Chinese state. Yet, in their efforts to revive and develop their institutions, monks have also had to negotiate a rapidly changing society, playing a delicate balancing act fraught with moral dilemma as well as political danger. Drawing on the recent "moral turn" in anthropology, this volume, the first full-length ethnographic study of the subject, explores the social and moral dimensions of monastic revival and reform across a range of Geluk monasteries in northeast Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai province) from the 1980s on. Author Jane Caple's analysis shows that ideas and debates about how best to maintain the mundane bases of monastic Buddhism-economy and population-are intermeshed with those concerning the proper role and conduct of monks and the ethics of monastic-lay relations. Facing a shrinking monastic population, monks are grappling with the impacts of secular education, demographic transition, rising living standards, urbanization, and marketization, all of which have driven debates within Buddhism elsewhere and fueled perceptions of monastic decline. Some Tibetans-including monks-are even questioning the "good" of the mass form of monasticism that has been a distinctive feature of Tibetan society for hundreds of years. Given monastic Buddhism's integral position in Tibetan community life and association with Tibetan identity, Caple argues that its precarity in relation to Tibetan society raises questions about its future that go well beyond the issue of religious freedom.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Romanization and Naming Practices -- Introduction. Negotiating Moral Boundaries -- 1. Monastic Revival. A Social and Moral Reordering -- 2. Monastic Reform. The Path to "Self-Sufficiency" -- 3. Monastic Tourism. Defining Value -- 4. Monastic Development in Morally Troubled Times -- 5. Monastic Recruitment and Retention -- 6. The Future of Mass Monasticism -- 7. Seeing beyond the State -- Coda -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author