SOAS Research Online

Abstract

If we are to integrate the study of Buddhism into higher education in the English language, not as an exotic extra but as a field of study on a par with any other area of humanistic inquiry, then there is much to be said for allowing due prominence to the study of Buddhist monasticism. For monastic institutions within Buddhism, just as within Christianity, have more than played their part in the preservation of learning. Were anyone interested to do so, it would be quite possible in this regard to compare, for example, the medieval monastery in Britain with Zen monasteries in Japan at the same time, though a full study would inevitably be somewhat lengthy.1 Western academics, at any rate, whilst generally not evincing much enthusiasm for the celibate life, still tend to feel some form of atavistic respect for monastic communities, at least if they are familiar with universities of the older sort, where, as Gibbon for example noted with his derogatory remark about the “monks of Oxford,” muffled echoes of the medieval past still reverberate through court and quadrangle.