Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

Before countless audiences across the globe, the Dalai Lama has tried to refashion Tibetan Buddhism into a modern religion compatible with empirical science and founded on principles of nonviolence and "universal compassion," but how exactly has this project affected monastic education in exile? This path-breaking study traces the career of the modern liberal subject in the Tibetan diaspora in India. Focusing on monastic debate and disciplinary practices such as corporeal punishment, Lempert shows how violence is used to make monks into educated, moral persons but in ways that trouble Tibetans who aspire to liberal ideals like individual autonomy and natural rights. He shows how efforts to act out liberal ideals - partially, fitfully and sometimes with acute ambivalence - are part of a broader drama of eliciting sympathy from spectators in the West and enlisting their aid in Tibets struggle with China.