Kevin Buckelew is assistant professor of religious studies at Northwestern University. He is coeditor of Buddhist Masculinities (Columbia, 2023).
摘要
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.
目次
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Signs of Authority and the “Marks of a Great Man” 2. Great Manhood and Martial Masculinity 3. Sovereign Authority and Violence 4. Sovereign Selfhood and Agency 5. Chan Hospitality Conclusion: A Discerning Age Conventions Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
