ABSTRACT
Perhaps the body is the only factor in all spiritual development. (Nietzsche in Gilles Deleuze)2
In the last chapter we saw how cyberspace has been used to connect dispersed bodies, spiritually and interactively, in a mental landscape that has reframed much of contemporary Buddhist discourse, its meanings and sentiments. This virtual space and its religious cyber-body contest what it means to have a ‘real body’. At the least it challenges modernity’s assumptions of self and body, of individual and the wider social body. In this chapter3 I consider the body from another direction, this time symbolically and metaphorically as used in the popular discourse on nation and religion and in the nation-saving activities of the once-reclusive forest monk-saint (Arahant) Luang Taa 4 Maha Bua.5
