ENGLISH

Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature

By Alan Cole

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2005
ISBN
9780520931404
DOI
10.1525/9780520931404
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1237721 bytes)
Series
Buddhisms; 9
Pages
372\370
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-21 17:02:13

Description

This beautifully written work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism with close readings of four well-known texts—the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirtinirdesa. Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, Alan Cole argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism’s older oral and institutional forms. His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic.

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