Metacognitive variety, from Inner Mongolian Buddhism to Post-Truth

In this chapter I present a case study based on ethnographic research carried out in Inner Mongolia, northern China. A Buddhist teacher and his students have subtly different metacognitive relationships to Buddhism and their practice and knowledge are dramatically different as a result. I offer this case study as an example of metacognitive variety, and argue that a similar approach is required to understand other cases in which people reflect, and attempt to act, on their own cognition and cognitive experience, including the transformations that have been described as 'post-truth'. In conclusion I make some methodological remarks about the study of metacognition through ethnography.