Buddhist Masculinities / / / ed. by Kevin Buckelew, Megan Bryson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• MitwirkendeR: Berkwitz, Stephen C.,; Bryson, Megan,; Buckelew, Kevin,; Evans, Marcus,; Keeler, Ward,; Langenberg, Amy Paris,; Mendelson, Rebecca,; Scherer, Bee,; Shelton, Joshua Brallier,; Song, Geng,; Vendova, Dessislava,
• HerausgeberIn: Bryson, Megan,; Buckelew, Kevin,
• Author: Wongchalard, Natawan,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : : Columbia University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 25 b&w illustrations

While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for opening a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. According to Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha's body boasts thirty-two physical features, including lionlike jaws, thighs like a royal stag, broad shoulders, and a deep, resonant voice, that distinguish him from ordinary men. As Buddhism spread throughout Asia and around the world, the Buddha remained an exemplary man, but Buddhists in other times and places developed their own understandings of what it meant to be masculine.This transdisciplinary book brings together essays that explore the variety and diversity of Buddhist masculinities, from early India to the contemporary United States and from bodhisattva-kings to martial monks. Buddhist Masculinities adopts the methods of religious studies, anthropology, art history, textual-historical studies, and cultural studies to explore texts, images, films, media, and embodiments of masculinity across the Buddhist world, past and present. It turns scholarly attention to normative forms of masculinity that usually go unmarked and unstudied precisely because they are "normal," illuminating the religious and cultural processes that construct Buddhist masculinities. Engaging with contemporary issues of gender identity, intersectionality, and sexual ethics, Buddhist Masculinities ushers in a new era for the study of Buddhism and gender.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Masculinities Beyond the Buddha -- PART ONE: Masculine Models -- One Middle Way Masculinity: The Bodhisattva Siddhārtha as a Renunciant in Early Buddhist Texts and Art -- Two How Chan Masters Became "Great Men": Masculinity in Chinese Chan Buddhism -- Three Men of Virtue: Reexamining the Bodhisattva King in Sri Lanka -- PART TWO: Mighty Masters -- Four The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: Padmasambhava's Tantric Masculinity -- Five Building a Nation on the Dharma Battlefield: Lay Zen Masculinities in Modern Japan -- Six Macho Buddhism (Redux): Gender and Sexualities in the Diamond Way -- PART THREE: Making Men -- Seven Being a Man vs. Being a Monk: Alternative Versions of Burmese Buddhist Masculinity -- Eight Hanuman, Heroes, and Buddhist Masculinity in Contemporary Thailand -- Nine Buddhism and Afro-Asian Masculinities in The Man with the Iron Fists -- PART FOUR: Breaking Boundaries -- Ten The Afterlife of the Tang Monk: Buddhist Masculinity and the Image of Xuanzang in East Asia -- Eleven Real Monks Don't Have Gṛhastha Sex: Revisiting Male Celibacy in Classical South Asian Buddhism -- Appendix: Character Glossary -- Contributors -- Index