Attracting the Heart : : Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion in Sri Lankan Monastic Culture / / Jeffrey Samuels.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Samuels, Jeffrey,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Topics in Contemporary Buddhism ; 18
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (192 p.)

An idealized view of the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk might be described according to the doctrinal demand for emotional detachment and, ultimately, the cessation of all desire. Yet monks are also enjoined to practice compassion, a powerful emotion and equally lofty ideal, and live with every other human feeling-love, hate, jealousy, ambition-while relating to other monks and the lay community. In this important ethnography of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Jeffrey Samuels takes an unprecedented look at how emotion determines and influences the commitments that laypeople and monastics make to each other and to the Buddhist religion in general. By focusing on "multimoment" histories, Samuels highlights specific junctures in which ideas about recruitment, vocation, patronage, and institution-building are dynamically negotiated and refined. Positing a nexus between aesthetics and affect, he illustrates not only how aesthetic responses trigger certain emotions, but also how personal and shared emotions, at the local level, shape notions of beauty.Samuels uses the voices of informants to reveal the delicately negotiated character of lay-monastic relations and temple management. In the fields of religion and Buddhist studies there has been a growing recognition of the need to examine affective dimensions of religion. His work breaks new ground in that it answers questions about Buddhist emotions and the constitutive roles they play in social life and religious practice through a close, poignant look at small-scale temple and social networks. Throughout, Samuels makes the case for the need to account for emotions in making intelligible the behavior of religious participants and practitioners.Drawing on a decade of fieldwork that includes numerous interviews as well as an examination of written and visual sources, Attracting the Heart conveys the manner in which Buddhists describe their own histories, experiences, and encounters as they relate to the formation and continuation of Buddhist monastic culture in contemporary Sri Lanka. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of religion, Buddhist studies, anthropology, and South and Southeast Asian studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Romanization and Naming Practices -- Dramatis Personae -- Introduction: Buddhism and Social Relations in Contemporary Sri Lanka -- 1. Narada Thero: Affective Bonds and the Making of a Social Service Monk -- 2. Aesthetics of Emotions and Affective Bonds: Monastic Recruitment in Two Sri Lankan Villages -- 3. Aesthetic-Affective Social Networks and Monastic Recruitment -- 4. Learning to Be Novices: Monastic Education and the Construction of Vocation -- 5. Temple Building as Social Service: Family, Community, and Emotion -- Conclusion: Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion -- Notes -- References -- Index