Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism by Buckelew, Kevin
Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism by Buckelew, Kevin

Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism

In Song-period China (960-1279 CE), masters in the Chan (Japanese Zen) school of Buddhism were presented as...
$118.01 SGD
$118.01 SGD
SKU: 9780231214254
Product Type: Books
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Author: Kevin Buckelew
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $118.01
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Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism by Buckelew, Kevin

Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism

$118.01
Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism by Buckelew, Kevin

Discerning Buddhas: Authority, Agency, and Masculinity in Chan Buddhism

$118.01
Author: Kevin Buckelew
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Description

In Song-period China (960-1279 CE), masters in the Chan (Japanese Zen) school of Buddhism were presented as sources of religious authority on par with the Buddha, an almost unthinkably lofty status before the rise of Chan. This claim carried great rhetorical power, facilitating Chan's appeal to Buddhist monastics and powerful patrons alike. But it also raised a challenging question for Chan Buddhists, who insisted that buddhahood properly transcends all worldly marks: By what signs could one recognize a Chan master as a buddha?

Discerning Buddhas argues that Chan Buddhists wove together tropes of sovereignty, hospitality, and martial heroism drawn from both Buddhist tradition and China's cultural heritage to develop a distinctive vision of what it meant for a Chan master to be a buddha in Song-period China. Kevin Buckelew analyzes the ways Chan Buddhists deployed such tropes in ritual, literature, and visual culture in order to stage the comparison of Chan mastery with buddhahood. He examines how they used the concept of buddhahood to work through questions about the ideal Chan master's authority, agency, and masculinity, in the process rendering buddhahood in terms highly legible to elite Chinese society.

Chan Buddhists, Buckelew shows, developed their own "signature" of buddhahood, according to which enlightened Chan masters who truly deserved comparison to the Buddha were supposed to be distinguished from everyone else. By exploring the resulting Chan culture of discernment, which raised fundamental questions about Buddhist authority at a pivotal inflection point in Chinese history, this book offers fresh insight into the place of Buddhism in Chinese society.

Author: Kevin Buckelew
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 11/19/2024
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.86d
ISBN: 9780231214254

About the Author
Kevin Buckelew is assistant professor of religious studies at Northwestern University. He is coeditor of Buddhist Masculinities (Columbia, 2023).
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