Thomas Borchert's Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China's Southwestern Border provided me with an education in thinking about the political and social contexts in which Buddhist monastics live and travel throughout China and Southeast Asia. The introduction begins with the question, “What makes a Buddhist monk?” (p. 1). The answer Borchert develops is that it is a combination of the social, historical, and political processes at the local, national, and transnational levels that provide the context within which Buddhist monks are made. The rest of the volume is dedicated to showing how Dai-lue monks are made in Sipsongpanna, the Dai region in southwestern China. Borchert's primary focus is on Jiang Rung and the surrounding region, with some excursions into the broader Buddhist worlds of China, Thailand, and Singapore.
The book is divided into two main sections, “Shaping Buddhist Lives in Sipsongpanna” and “Educating the Monks of Sipsongpanna,” each with three...
