This selection of essays, originally published between 1988 and 2010, demonstrates that in the study of Buddhism a concern with detailed accuracy in philological and textual specifics can be combined with a discussion of wider (and difficult) philosophical and sociological issues. The first part of the book, Pali Literature, deals with the historical formation of the Pali Canon and continuing oral aspects of Pali texts. Looking at the entire range of Pali texts, it proposes the question, "What is Literature in Pali?" The second part, The Theory and Practice of Not-Self, looks at the Buddhist denial of self as both a philosophical position and as a form of practice, one in which a process of self-transformative behavioral and psychological training is seen to culminate in the realization that there is no self underlying the ever-changing moments of experience. The third part, Buddhism and Society, has two essays reflecting on and extending Louis Dumont's comparative theorizing about the individual and society in East and West, and a final contemporary treatment of Buddhist "nuns" [mae chi) in Theravada Buddhism, both in a general sense and more specifically in higher education in Bangkok. The three essays attempt to build on, but go beyond, the work of Dumont and before him Max Weber in thinking about what they would call "world-renunciation" as a phenomenon of society and culture. Book jacket.