The Dalai Lama has represented Buddhism as a religion of non-violence, compassion, and world peace, but this does not reflect how monks learn their vocation. This book shows how monasteries use harsh methods to make monks of men, and how this tradition is changing as modernist reformers like the Dalai Lama adopt liberal and democratic ideals, such as natural rights and individual autonomy. In the first in-depth account of disciplinary practices at a Tibetan monastery in India, Michael Lempert looks closely at everyday education rites from debate to reprimand and corporal punishment. His analysis explores how the idioms of violence inscribed in these socialization rites help produce educated, moral persons but in ways that trouble Tibetans who aspire to modernity. Bringing the study of language and social interaction to our understanding of Buddhism for the first time, Lempert shows and why liberal ideals are being acted out by monks in India, offering a provocative alternative view of liberalism as a globalizing discourse.

Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, Michael Lempert, University of California Press, Paperback, 216 pages, $34.95

Michael Lempert is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Technical Note on Transcription and Research Methods

Introduction: Liberal Sympathies

Part I. Debate
1. Dissensus by Design
2. Debate as a Rite of Institution
3. Debate as a Diasporic Pedagogy

Part II. Discipline
4. Public Reprimand Is Serious Theatre
5. Affected Signs, Sincere Subjects
Conclusion: The Liberal Subject, in Pieces

References
Notes
Index