Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance

Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet explores the ritual and social empowerment of Buddhist monastics devoted to meditation under a charismatic master.

Based on ethnographic research at a remote hermitage in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai province in China, this book examines contemplative practices and ascetic regimes as performances of renunciation, self-formation, and devotion, arguing that the master performs the ideal of Buddhist asceticism via his body and in front of a par...