Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words by Justin Thomas McDaniel

Listening to popular Thai Buddhist ghost stories, visiting crowded shrines and temples, he finds concepts of attachment, love, wealth, beauty, entertainment, graciousness, security, and nationalism all spring from engagement with the ghost and the monk and are as vital to the making of Thai Buddhism as venerating the Buddha himself. His first book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand won the prestigious Harry Benda Prize for Best First Book in Southeast Asian Studies. Benda Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. McDaniel is especially interested in local conceptions of being 'Buddhist' and the formation and transmission of such identities across different venues and technologies.Įstablishing an individual's 'religious repertoire' as a valid category of study, McDaniel explores the performance of Buddhist thought and ritual through practices of magic, prognostication, image production, sacred protection, and deity and ghost worship, and clarifies the meaning of multiple cultural configurations. Sourcing nuns, monks, laypeople, and royalty, he shows how relations with these figures have been instrumental in crafting histories and modernities. He follows embodiments of the ghost and monk in a variety of genres and media, including biography, film, television, drama, ritual, art, liturgy, and the Internet. Metaphorically and rhetorically powerful, they invite constant reimagining across time.įocusing on representations of the ghost and monk from the late eighteenth century to the present, Justin Thomas McDaniel builds a case for interpreting modern Thai Buddhist practice through the movements of these transformative figures. Historically important and emotionally resonant, these characters appeal to every class of follower.

first book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words, won the. Stories centering on the lovelorn ghost (Mae Nak) and the magical monk (Somdet To) are central to Thai Buddhism. Justin Thomas McDaniel (PhD, Harvard University, 2003) is professor of Buddhist studies and.

Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words by Justin Thomas McDaniel