The Buddhist Basketball Association: sport practice and the cultivation of the body among Tai Lue monastics

Abstract Traditional academic accounts of the body in Buddhism have paid little attention to the relationship between actual religious specialists and their bodies. This article explores this issue looking at sport practice among monks and novices belonging to a minority group in Southwest China, the Tai Lue of Sipsong Panna. In the last few years, basketball in particular has become popular among members of this monastic community. It has also come to be seen by both outsiders and insiders as proof of the defectiveness of monasticism in this region. Looking at this phenomenon from an anthropological perspective, and emphasizing the temporary character of monastic ordination in Sipsong Panna, the paper argues that, far from being something alien to their practice or an external imposition of modernity, sport practice connects with a centuries-old tradition of bodily cultivation among local monastics, and is today a fundamental part of their holistic development as men and as members of a minority group in contemporary China.