Table of Contents

1. Introduction; Part I. The arahant and the Path of Meditation: 2. The Buddhist conception of the arahant; 3. The Path of Purification: the ascetic practices; 4. The stages and rewards of Buddhist meditation; 5. The forest-monk tradition in Southeast Asia: a historical backdrop; Part II. The hagiography of a Buddhist saint: text and context; the politics of sectarianism: 6. The biography of a modern saint; 7. The Buddha's life as paradigm; 8. The ordering principles behind Buddhist saintly biography; 9. The disciples of the Master; 10. The biographer as exemplary forest-monk, meditator, and teacher; 11. Sectarianism and the sponsorship of meditation; 12. The Mandnikdi sect's propagation of lay meditation; 13. The center–periphery dialectic: the Mahathat and Bovonniwet sponsorship of meditation compared; Part III. The cult of amulets: the objectification and transmission of charisma: 14. The cult of images and amulets; 15. An enumeration of historic and popular amulets; 16. The 'likeness' of the image to the original Buddha: the case of the Shillala Buddha; 17. The process of sacralizing images and amulets: the transfer of power by monks; 18. Amulets blessed by contemporary forest saints; 19. Saints on cosmic mountains; Part IV. Conceptual and theoretical clarifications: 20. A commentary on millennial Buddhism in Thailand and Burma; 21. The sources of charismatic leadership: Max Weber revisited; 22. The objectification of charisma and the fetishism of objects

Promotional Information

The central actors in this book are some reclusive forest-dwelling ascetic meditation masters who have been acclaimed as 'saints' in contemporary Thailand.