Power, Wealth, and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism: The Gandavyuha-sutra. By Douglas Osto. New ... more Power, Wealth, and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism: The Gandavyuha-sutra. By Douglas Osto. New York: Routledge, 2008, xvi + 177 pages, ISBN978-0-415-50008-1 (paperback), $49.95. Douglas Osto's study of the Gandavyuha-sutra provides a welcome introduction to this unusually dramatic and visually ornate Mahayana Buddhist text. The Gandavyuha-sutra tells the story of Sudhana, a merchant's son, who sets off in quest of enlightenment, serially visiting and revering fifty-two spiritual teachers or, as they are referred to in the text, "good friends" (kalyanamitra). The good friends represent many walks of life and include monks, grammarians, bankers, royal ladies, kings, and goddesses. Osto's systematic analysis makes use of narrative theory to reveal the underlying architecture of and make explicit the main concepts advanced in this bewilderingly complex piece of religious literature. Starting from the premise that texts must be read in relationship to social syste...
Brides of the Buddha: Nuns’ Stories from the Avadānaśataka. By Karen Muldoon-Hules. New York: L... more Brides of the Buddha: Nuns’ Stories from the Avadānaśataka. By Karen Muldoon-Hules. New York: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. xii + 227. $100.
Apology and distancing are two discursive strategies for openly acknowledging opposing interests ... more Apology and distancing are two discursive strategies for openly acknowledging opposing interests while subtly dictating the terms of their acknowledgment. Apology, for example, can be simultaneously an admission of wrongdoing and a means of reconciling all involved to the transgression. The child who apologizes for grabbing his sister’s toy does not necessarily mean that he will never do it again. He recognizes, however, and desires to make amends for the disturbance he has caused. Distancing through sarcastic asides or dismissive body language can be ameans of pushing someone awaywhile still keeping her within reach. A mall-going adolescent who employs distancing strategies to separate from her mother is saved from social ignominy but need not reject the maternal credit card. This article contends that middle period (ca. 100 BCE–600 CE) Indian Buddhist monastic storytellers engaged in distanc-
uddhism Beyond Gender was published posthumously after Rita Gross’s sudden and untimely death in ... more uddhism Beyond Gender was published posthumously after Rita Gross’s sudden and untimely death in 2015. Although her major publication, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (1992), is now over twenty-five years old, Gross’s work is still a touchpoint for discussions of gender and Buddhism, especially among those coming to the discussion from outside of that subfield. Gross’s major thesis in Buddhism Beyond Gender is that true Buddhist liberation necessarily includes liberation from the “prison of gender” (2015: 10). Inspired by the language of the thirteenth-century Japanese master, Dōgen, Gross argues that accomplishing such a liberation requires a “study of the [gendered] self” in order to “forget the [gendered] self” (3). These ideas repeat a central argument from Buddhism After Patriarchy, applying Buddhist philosophical deconstructions of the self to the notion of gender, thus revealing the fundamental ‘feminism’ of Buddhist tho...
Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical Sout... more Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (2017), this essay challenges a hermeneutic that capitulates to the androcentrism and misogyny of classical South Asian Buddhist views on female sexuality by suggesting avenues for ‘reading against the grain’ in search of alternative gynocentric views. In particular, it points to glimpses of a female sexuality that is relational, active, and creative in premodern South Asian Buddhist sources, especially vinaya. It also argues that a full and balanced treatment of sexual violence against women is an essential component of any comprehensive study of sexuality in classical South Asian Buddhism.
Today’s post is different from the majority of Shiloh Project posts. Its focus is sexual abuse in... more Today’s post is different from the majority of Shiloh Project posts. Its focus is sexual abuse in Buddhist settings. In popular culture, Buddhism is associated with peace, tranquillity, gentleness and self-discipline. But rape culture manifests many forms and, including, it turns out, in some Buddhist settings.
The authors of this post are Amy Langenberg and Ann Gleig. Both are Florida-based scholars, currently working together on a book about sexual violations and US convert Buddhism. The book is under advance contract with Yale University Press.
In the first part of the post, Amy and Ann introduce their project, research aims, and methodology. In the second part, they share some of the challenges and pitfalls they have encountered. There is some inspiration and some good advice here for all who research, or wish to research, topics at the intersection of sexual violence and religion.
Despite its ubiquity in the classical tradition, the premodern South Asian Buddhist tale of the s... more Despite its ubiquity in the classical tradition, the premodern South Asian Buddhist tale of the suffering fetus in the filthy female womb is often read as medical, a pseudobiological interpolation in the “religious” canon of classical Buddhism. Leaving aside theoretical questions about how well categories like “science” and “religion” serve us in understanding premodern South Asian Buddhist cultural worlds, this essay argues that Buddhist narratives about the suffering fetus and the foul female womb have important and broad implications for the contestation of gender in South Asian Buddhist contexts. An oft-repeated trope, Buddhist descriptions of birth have been a powerful means – in language suggested by the editors of this volume – of “perennializing” a certain classical Buddhist ideology of the female reproductive body. They have also operated, as I argue here and elsewhere, as a “vector of social change” (again, using the language of the editors), albeit in ways both indirect and paradoxical.1 In the context of the profound suffering of birth (the central message of this ubiquitous trope), women’s fertility and sexual desirability or readiness are not to be coveted and devoutly wished for. For this reason, men and women contemplating, reproducing, and circulating the Buddhist discourse of birth may have found it easier to conceive of women living another kind of life besides motherhood and wifehood.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 212 pages, ISBN 978-1-138-08746-0, hardcover, $155.00; ISBN 978-1-315-... more Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 212 pages, ISBN 978-1-138-08746-0, hardcover, $155.00; ISBN 978-1-315-11045-5, ebook, $57.95. Reviewed by Amy Paris Langenberg Eckerd College aroline Starkey's readable, extensively researched, and well-balanced book is an ethnographical study of ordained women from multiple traditions in British convert Buddhism. While other studies have examined women in single traditions or considered women glancingly as part of the history of British Buddhism, this monograph represents the first major comparative study of British Buddhist women (3). It makes visible the lived experiences and labors of the "rank and file" (10) of ordained women who have helped to found
Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns' ... more Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns' community. If we hope to encounter these ascetic women of long ago as full real people, however, we must apply an intentional , transparent, critically informed, and sometimes interstitial reading strategy, not a theoretically naïve historiography cloaked in philological rigor. Confronting head on the issue of what the vinaya actually can tell us about the early nuns' community, this essay offers a survey of hermeneutical approaches in vinaya studies. It articulates a revised approach based on accepted strategies within vinaya studies enhanced by innovations in the fields of religious studies, gender studies, historical linguistics, comparative law, and dharmaśāstra studies. It also analyzes several vinaya passages based on this revised approach, including a text legislating the nuns' use of what appears to be an ancient tampon when they are menstruating. Finally, it offers observations about the possible relationship between nuns' vinayas as texts and the realia of the early nuns' community. These observations include the possibility that the ancient Buddhist nunnery was a place where monastic women exercised certain types of agency as practitioners, interpreters, and even authors of monastic discipline, despite their oft-mentioned subordin-ation to the male community.
Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cau... more Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cause of suffering, Buddhism is widely assumed to be a sex-negative religion. In fact, as a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the sexual landscape of Buddhist traditions across time and place is varied, complex, and at times transgressive. The beginnings of Buddhism and sexuality as a research subfield can arguably be traced to the 1998 publication of Bernard Faure’s The Red Thread, a work that attempts to identity major themes and lines of tension in Buddhists’ imaginative encounters with, efforts to discipline, and philosophical understandings of human sexuality. Faure’s monograph was, however, preceded by L. P. N. Perera study of sexuality in ancient Buddhist India (Sexuality in Ancient India); see Perera 1993, cited under Seminal Monographs), Miranda Shaw’s monograph on women and Tantra (Passionate Enlightenment); see Shaw 1994, cited under Sexuality in Indo-Tibetan Tantra), and Liz Wilson’s book on disgust and the female body in early Buddhism (Charming Cadavers); see Wilson 1996, cited under Seminal Monographs). Since Faure, specialists in various Asian traditions have focused on sexuality with ever increasing levels of historical detail and theoretical sophistication. Examples include Sarah Jacoby’s work, Love and Liberation (Jacoby 2014, cited under Seminal Monographs), Richard Jaffe’s monograph, Neither Monk nor Layman (Jaffe 2001, cited under Non-celibate Monasticisms), John Power’s 2009 book A Bull of a Man (Powers 2009, cited under Seminal Monographs), and José Ignacio Cabezón’s Sexuality and Classical South Asian Buddhism (Cabezón 2017, cited under Seminal Monographs). In the meantime, scholars of tantra, yoga, and consort traditions such as Holly Gayley, David Gray, Janet Gyatso, and Christian Wedemeyer have moved past the orientalist judgements of early Indology and the phenomenology of Mircea Eliade in their treatments of Tantric sexuality; advances in Vinaya studies by Shayne Clarke, Alice Collett, Anālayo, and others have deepened understanding of early monastic negotiations with Indian sexual concepts and social mores; and queer and LGBT studies by Richard Corless and Hsiao-lan Hu have generated new research angles. The subfield of Buddhist ethics has also produced a small literature on Buddhist sexual ethics to complement its already substantial work on related topics like human rights and abortion. Additionally, specialists in Buddhist modernisms such as Ann Gleig and Stephanie Kaza have enriched the literature on Buddhism and sexuality by addressing issues such as sexual expression, sexual identity, and sexual abuse in contemporary Buddhist communities in the West.
Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical Sout... more Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (2017), this essay challenges a hermeneutic that capitulates to the androcentrism and misogyny of classical South Asian Buddhist views on female sexuality by suggesting avenues for ‘reading against the grain’ in search of alternative gynocentric views. In particular, it points to glimpses of a female sexuality that is relational, active, and creative in premodern South Asian Buddhist sources, especially vinaya. It also argues that a full and balanced treatment of sexual violence against women is an essential component of any comprehensive study of sexuality in classical South Asian Buddhism.
Power, Wealth, and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism: The Gandavyuha-sutra. By Douglas Osto. New ... more Power, Wealth, and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism: The Gandavyuha-sutra. By Douglas Osto. New York: Routledge, 2008, xvi + 177 pages, ISBN978-0-415-50008-1 (paperback), $49.95. Douglas Osto's study of the Gandavyuha-sutra provides a welcome introduction to this unusually dramatic and visually ornate Mahayana Buddhist text. The Gandavyuha-sutra tells the story of Sudhana, a merchant's son, who sets off in quest of enlightenment, serially visiting and revering fifty-two spiritual teachers or, as they are referred to in the text, "good friends" (kalyanamitra). The good friends represent many walks of life and include monks, grammarians, bankers, royal ladies, kings, and goddesses. Osto's systematic analysis makes use of narrative theory to reveal the underlying architecture of and make explicit the main concepts advanced in this bewilderingly complex piece of religious literature. Starting from the premise that texts must be read in relationship to social syste...
Brides of the Buddha: Nuns’ Stories from the Avadānaśataka. By Karen Muldoon-Hules. New York: L... more Brides of the Buddha: Nuns’ Stories from the Avadānaśataka. By Karen Muldoon-Hules. New York: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. xii + 227. $100.
Apology and distancing are two discursive strategies for openly acknowledging opposing interests ... more Apology and distancing are two discursive strategies for openly acknowledging opposing interests while subtly dictating the terms of their acknowledgment. Apology, for example, can be simultaneously an admission of wrongdoing and a means of reconciling all involved to the transgression. The child who apologizes for grabbing his sister’s toy does not necessarily mean that he will never do it again. He recognizes, however, and desires to make amends for the disturbance he has caused. Distancing through sarcastic asides or dismissive body language can be ameans of pushing someone awaywhile still keeping her within reach. A mall-going adolescent who employs distancing strategies to separate from her mother is saved from social ignominy but need not reject the maternal credit card. This article contends that middle period (ca. 100 BCE–600 CE) Indian Buddhist monastic storytellers engaged in distanc-
uddhism Beyond Gender was published posthumously after Rita Gross’s sudden and untimely death in ... more uddhism Beyond Gender was published posthumously after Rita Gross’s sudden and untimely death in 2015. Although her major publication, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (1992), is now over twenty-five years old, Gross’s work is still a touchpoint for discussions of gender and Buddhism, especially among those coming to the discussion from outside of that subfield. Gross’s major thesis in Buddhism Beyond Gender is that true Buddhist liberation necessarily includes liberation from the “prison of gender” (2015: 10). Inspired by the language of the thirteenth-century Japanese master, Dōgen, Gross argues that accomplishing such a liberation requires a “study of the [gendered] self” in order to “forget the [gendered] self” (3). These ideas repeat a central argument from Buddhism After Patriarchy, applying Buddhist philosophical deconstructions of the self to the notion of gender, thus revealing the fundamental ‘feminism’ of Buddhist tho...
Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical Sout... more Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (2017), this essay challenges a hermeneutic that capitulates to the androcentrism and misogyny of classical South Asian Buddhist views on female sexuality by suggesting avenues for ‘reading against the grain’ in search of alternative gynocentric views. In particular, it points to glimpses of a female sexuality that is relational, active, and creative in premodern South Asian Buddhist sources, especially vinaya. It also argues that a full and balanced treatment of sexual violence against women is an essential component of any comprehensive study of sexuality in classical South Asian Buddhism.
Today’s post is different from the majority of Shiloh Project posts. Its focus is sexual abuse in... more Today’s post is different from the majority of Shiloh Project posts. Its focus is sexual abuse in Buddhist settings. In popular culture, Buddhism is associated with peace, tranquillity, gentleness and self-discipline. But rape culture manifests many forms and, including, it turns out, in some Buddhist settings.
The authors of this post are Amy Langenberg and Ann Gleig. Both are Florida-based scholars, currently working together on a book about sexual violations and US convert Buddhism. The book is under advance contract with Yale University Press.
In the first part of the post, Amy and Ann introduce their project, research aims, and methodology. In the second part, they share some of the challenges and pitfalls they have encountered. There is some inspiration and some good advice here for all who research, or wish to research, topics at the intersection of sexual violence and religion.
Despite its ubiquity in the classical tradition, the premodern South Asian Buddhist tale of the s... more Despite its ubiquity in the classical tradition, the premodern South Asian Buddhist tale of the suffering fetus in the filthy female womb is often read as medical, a pseudobiological interpolation in the “religious” canon of classical Buddhism. Leaving aside theoretical questions about how well categories like “science” and “religion” serve us in understanding premodern South Asian Buddhist cultural worlds, this essay argues that Buddhist narratives about the suffering fetus and the foul female womb have important and broad implications for the contestation of gender in South Asian Buddhist contexts. An oft-repeated trope, Buddhist descriptions of birth have been a powerful means – in language suggested by the editors of this volume – of “perennializing” a certain classical Buddhist ideology of the female reproductive body. They have also operated, as I argue here and elsewhere, as a “vector of social change” (again, using the language of the editors), albeit in ways both indirect and paradoxical.1 In the context of the profound suffering of birth (the central message of this ubiquitous trope), women’s fertility and sexual desirability or readiness are not to be coveted and devoutly wished for. For this reason, men and women contemplating, reproducing, and circulating the Buddhist discourse of birth may have found it easier to conceive of women living another kind of life besides motherhood and wifehood.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 212 pages, ISBN 978-1-138-08746-0, hardcover, $155.00; ISBN 978-1-315-... more Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 212 pages, ISBN 978-1-138-08746-0, hardcover, $155.00; ISBN 978-1-315-11045-5, ebook, $57.95. Reviewed by Amy Paris Langenberg Eckerd College aroline Starkey's readable, extensively researched, and well-balanced book is an ethnographical study of ordained women from multiple traditions in British convert Buddhism. While other studies have examined women in single traditions or considered women glancingly as part of the history of British Buddhism, this monograph represents the first major comparative study of British Buddhist women (3). It makes visible the lived experiences and labors of the "rank and file" (10) of ordained women who have helped to found
Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns' ... more Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns' community. If we hope to encounter these ascetic women of long ago as full real people, however, we must apply an intentional , transparent, critically informed, and sometimes interstitial reading strategy, not a theoretically naïve historiography cloaked in philological rigor. Confronting head on the issue of what the vinaya actually can tell us about the early nuns' community, this essay offers a survey of hermeneutical approaches in vinaya studies. It articulates a revised approach based on accepted strategies within vinaya studies enhanced by innovations in the fields of religious studies, gender studies, historical linguistics, comparative law, and dharmaśāstra studies. It also analyzes several vinaya passages based on this revised approach, including a text legislating the nuns' use of what appears to be an ancient tampon when they are menstruating. Finally, it offers observations about the possible relationship between nuns' vinayas as texts and the realia of the early nuns' community. These observations include the possibility that the ancient Buddhist nunnery was a place where monastic women exercised certain types of agency as practitioners, interpreters, and even authors of monastic discipline, despite their oft-mentioned subordin-ation to the male community.
Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cau... more Because of its high regard for celibate monasticism and incisive critique of desire as a root cause of suffering, Buddhism is widely assumed to be a sex-negative religion. In fact, as a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the sexual landscape of Buddhist traditions across time and place is varied, complex, and at times transgressive. The beginnings of Buddhism and sexuality as a research subfield can arguably be traced to the 1998 publication of Bernard Faure’s The Red Thread, a work that attempts to identity major themes and lines of tension in Buddhists’ imaginative encounters with, efforts to discipline, and philosophical understandings of human sexuality. Faure’s monograph was, however, preceded by L. P. N. Perera study of sexuality in ancient Buddhist India (Sexuality in Ancient India); see Perera 1993, cited under Seminal Monographs), Miranda Shaw’s monograph on women and Tantra (Passionate Enlightenment); see Shaw 1994, cited under Sexuality in Indo-Tibetan Tantra), and Liz Wilson’s book on disgust and the female body in early Buddhism (Charming Cadavers); see Wilson 1996, cited under Seminal Monographs). Since Faure, specialists in various Asian traditions have focused on sexuality with ever increasing levels of historical detail and theoretical sophistication. Examples include Sarah Jacoby’s work, Love and Liberation (Jacoby 2014, cited under Seminal Monographs), Richard Jaffe’s monograph, Neither Monk nor Layman (Jaffe 2001, cited under Non-celibate Monasticisms), John Power’s 2009 book A Bull of a Man (Powers 2009, cited under Seminal Monographs), and José Ignacio Cabezón’s Sexuality and Classical South Asian Buddhism (Cabezón 2017, cited under Seminal Monographs). In the meantime, scholars of tantra, yoga, and consort traditions such as Holly Gayley, David Gray, Janet Gyatso, and Christian Wedemeyer have moved past the orientalist judgements of early Indology and the phenomenology of Mircea Eliade in their treatments of Tantric sexuality; advances in Vinaya studies by Shayne Clarke, Alice Collett, Anālayo, and others have deepened understanding of early monastic negotiations with Indian sexual concepts and social mores; and queer and LGBT studies by Richard Corless and Hsiao-lan Hu have generated new research angles. The subfield of Buddhist ethics has also produced a small literature on Buddhist sexual ethics to complement its already substantial work on related topics like human rights and abortion. Additionally, specialists in Buddhist modernisms such as Ann Gleig and Stephanie Kaza have enriched the literature on Buddhism and sexuality by addressing issues such as sexual expression, sexual identity, and sexual abuse in contemporary Buddhist communities in the West.
Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical Sout... more Responding to and building upon José Cabezón’s groundbreaking work, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (2017), this essay challenges a hermeneutic that capitulates to the androcentrism and misogyny of classical South Asian Buddhist views on female sexuality by suggesting avenues for ‘reading against the grain’ in search of alternative gynocentric views. In particular, it points to glimpses of a female sexuality that is relational, active, and creative in premodern South Asian Buddhist sources, especially vinaya. It also argues that a full and balanced treatment of sexual violence against women is an essential component of any comprehensive study of sexuality in classical South Asian Buddhism.
Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance: Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism, 2022
In most mainstream traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, women have for centuries largely been exc... more In most mainstream traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, women have for centuries largely been excluded from positions of religious and ritual leadership. However, as this volume shows, in an increasing number of late-20th-century and early-21st-century contexts, women can and do undergo monastic and priestly education; they can receive ordination/initiation as Buddhist nuns or Hindu priestesses; and they are accepted as religious and political leaders. Even though these processes still largely take place outside or at the margins of traditional religious institutions, it is clear that women are actually establishing new religious trends and currents. They are attracting followers, and they are occupying religious positions on par with men. At times women are filling a void left behind by male religious specialists who left the profession, at times they are perceived as their rivals. In some cases, this process takes place in collaboration with male religious specialists, in others against the will of the women's male counterparts. However, in most cases we see both, acceptance and resistance. Whether silently or with great fanfare, women grasp new opportunities to occupy positions of leadership. Ten in-depth case studies analyzing culturally, historically and geographically unique situations explore the historical background, contemporary trajectories, and impact of the emergence of new powerful female agencies in mostly conservative Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions.
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The authors of this post are Amy Langenberg and Ann Gleig. Both are Florida-based scholars, currently working together on a book about sexual violations and US convert Buddhism. The book is under advance contract with Yale University Press.
In the first part of the post, Amy and Ann introduce their project, research aims, and methodology. In the second part, they share some of the challenges and pitfalls they have encountered. There is some inspiration and some good advice here for all who research, or wish to research, topics at the intersection of sexual violence and religion.
another kind of life besides motherhood and wifehood.
The authors of this post are Amy Langenberg and Ann Gleig. Both are Florida-based scholars, currently working together on a book about sexual violations and US convert Buddhism. The book is under advance contract with Yale University Press.
In the first part of the post, Amy and Ann introduce their project, research aims, and methodology. In the second part, they share some of the challenges and pitfalls they have encountered. There is some inspiration and some good advice here for all who research, or wish to research, topics at the intersection of sexual violence and religion.
another kind of life besides motherhood and wifehood.