- Acknowledgmentsxi
- Introduction1
- 1. Text as Father25
- 2. Who’s Your Daddy Now? Reissued Paternity in the Lotus Sūtra48
- 3. The Domino Effect: Everyone and His Brother Convert to the Lotus Sūtra99
- 4. "Be All You Can’t Be" and Other Gainful Losses in the Diamond Sūtra160
- 5. Sameness with a Difference in the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra197
- 6. Vimalakīrti, or Why Bad Boys Finish First236
- Conclusion: A Cavalier Attitude
- Toward Truth-Fathers327
- Bibliography347
- Index351
Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature
Book
Book
This beautifully written work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism with close readings of four well-known texts—the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirtinirdesa. Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, Alan Cole argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism’s older oral and institutional forms. His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic. (Source: University of California Press)
| Citation | Cole, Alan. Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. |
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