1st Edition

Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance

By Magdalena Maria Turek Copyright 2025
224 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

224 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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,... Read more

1. Introduction  2. The Living Saint  3. From Householder to Saint  4. Performing Sainthood  5. The Meditation School of Lapchi  6. Veneration and Emulation at Lapchi  7. The Empowerment of Renunciation  8. Community of Liberation

Biography

Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies, USA. Her research examines how contemporary reiterations of Tibetan Buddhist orthopraxy, local narratives, and religious historiography shape Buddhist identities among Tibetans in China and the diaspora. More broadly, her work engages with the intersections of tradition and contemporary belonging.