'This is an engaging, inspiring, and thought-provoking ethnography and phenomenology of Buddhist insight meditation in contemporary Thailand. Using her own experience as a 'nun' (mae chee) as well as her relationships with others in a monastic setting, Cook uncovers and analyzes the formation of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity and the embodiment of ethics in Buddhist practice. The book should be required reading for anyone concerned with Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, and will be of interest to many others: for example, to those concerned with religious ethics, with the practice of self-reflexive anthropology, and to Gender Studies as a discipline.' Steven Collins, University of Chicago

'This is a most welcome development in the study of Thai Buddhism - scholars have tended to focus on the religious roles, experience, activities, achievements and institutions of male Buddhists. … The book excels in achieving an impressive analytical depth that allows insights into (female) monasticism and what Cook, drawing on Foucault, calls 'meditation as a practice in self-formation'. She is able to do this thanks to the cogent engagement of data gained from other practitioners and her own experience as a meditating mae chi and deploying an impressively wide range of literature from and beyond the field of Buddhist studies.' Martin Seeger, South East Asia Research