Monastic life in medieval Daoism a cross-cultural perspective

Kohn's [book] offers a richly descriptive study of textually ideal Daoist monasticism. This work is primarily based on the author's researches on two important Sui and Tang dynasty texts from the Daoist Canon, the Fengdao Kejie and the Yinyuan jing. Kohn's method is to present her findings from these texts, supplemented by materials from various earlier and relevant texts from the Daoist tradition, and to compare the results to similar materials taken from the Christian and Buddhist traditions of monasticism. By the progression of her chapters, Kohn effectively sets forth a coherent and well-integrated understanding of several important aspects of monasticism in general, and she relies on this organization to present her findings pertaining to medieval Daoist monasticism. (501-1000 words)