Table of Contents
- NEW BOOK> Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair: Body, Woman, and Desire in Medieval Japanese Narratives
- NEW ANTHOLGY OF BUDDHIST TEXTS: Common Buddhist Text: Guidance and Insight from the Buddha
- INTERVIEW> Tricycle Interview with Shayne Clarke
NEW BOOK> Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair: Body, Woman, and Desire in Medieval Japanese Narratives
by Charles DiSimone
Perfumed
Sleeves and Tangled Hair: Body, Woman, and Desire in Medieval Japanese
Narratives
Author: Pandey, Rajyashree;
Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair explores
the possibilities and limits of terms such as “body,” “woman,” “gender,” and
“agency”—categories that emerged within the context of western philosophical,
religious, and feminist debates—to analyze texts that come out of altogether
different temporal and cultural contexts. Through close textual readings of a
wide range of classical and medieval narratives, from well-known works such as
the Tale of Genji to
popular Buddhist tales, Rajyashree Pandey offers new ways of understanding such
terms within the context of medieval Buddhist knowledge.
Pandey
suggests that “woman” in medieval Japanese narratives does not constitute a
self-evident and distinct category, and that there is little in these works to
indicate that the sexed body was the single most important and overarching site
of difference between men and women. She argues that the body in classical and
medieval texts is not understood as something constituted through flesh, blood,
and bones, or as divorced from the mind, and that in the Tale of Genji it
becomes intelligible not as an anatomical entity but rather as something
apprehended through robes and hair. Pandey provocatively claims that “woman” is
a fluid and malleable category, one that often functions as a topos or figural
site for staging debates not about real life women, but rather about delusion,
attachment, and enlightenment, issues of the utmost importance to the Buddhist
medieval world.Pandey’s book challenges many of the assumptions that have become commonplace in academic writings on women and Buddhism in medieval Japan. She questions the validity of speaking of Buddhism’s misogyny, women’s oppression, passivity, or proto-feminism, and points to the anachronistic readings that result when fundamentally modern questions and concerns are transposed unreflexively onto medieval Japanese texts. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary approach, and engaging widely with literature, religious studies, and feminism, while paying close attention to medieval texts and genres, Pandey boldly throws down the gauntlet, challenging some of the sacred cows of contemporary scholarship on medieval Japanese women and Buddhism.
8 b&w illustrations
222pp. February 2016
Cloth - Price: $55.00ISBN:
978-0-8248-5354-9
More info here: http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9539-9780824853549.aspx
NEW ANTHOLGY OF BUDDHIST TEXTS: Common Buddhist Text: Guidance and Insight from the Buddha
by Peter Harvey
Common Buddhist Text: Guidance and Insight from the Buddha, a
project of the International Council of Vesak, based
at Mahachulalongkorn-rajavidyalaya University, ThailandThis is a text of 256,000 words and 423 pages with translations from Buddhist texts in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, representing the
‘Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna’ traditions. A pdf of the text can be downloaded at: http://www.undv.org/vesak2015/en/cbt.php The plan is for it
to be published as a book in English and then into the other official UN languages as well as other languages of Buddhist countries, with the aim
that it will be available for free and distributed to many hotels.The proposer and co-ordinator of the project is Egil Lothe, President of the
Buddhist Federation of Norway, and an international committee of scholars, headed by Ven. Khammai Dhammasami, Executive Secretary of the International
Association of Buddhist Universities, selected most of the passages to be included. The project began in 2012, and has had feedback from many
scholars and leading monastics.
The text is edited by Peter Harvey (University of Sunderland), with the overall guiding hand of Venerable Professor Brahmapundit (MCU Rector) as
Chief Editor. Translations are newly done: from Pali by P.D. Premasiri (University of Peradeniya), G.A Somaratne (University of Hong Kong) and
Peter Harvey; from Sanskrit by Dharmacārī Śraddhāpa (University of Oslo); from Chinese by Dharmacārī Śraddhāpa and Venerable Thich Tue Sy (Van Hanh
University); and from Tibetan by Tamás Agócs (Dharma Gate Buddhist College, Budapest).
The text is divided into: Part I, with 69 Pali passages (56 pages) on the life of the Buddha and 11, 13 and 6 passages from the three traditions on
'Different perspectives on the Buddha (18 pages ; Part II (265 pages), on the Dharma, with 231 Pali passages, 168 Sanskrit and Chinese ones, and 91
Tibetan ones spread across 11 chapters; and Part III (39 pages), on the Sangha, with 2 chapters. There are 29 pages of overall and tradition
introductions, and each passage has a short introduction contextualising it.
A report on this project will be part of the Translating Buddhism conference at York St John University, York, June 30th to July 2nd.
Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland
INTERVIEW> Tricycle Interview with Shayne Clarke
by James Benn
Some people on this list may be interested in an interview with Dr. Shayne
Clarke (McMaster University) that appears in the latest edition of Tricycle
Magazine. It is currently in front of Tricycle's paywall.http://tricycle.org/magazine/rules-for-pregnant-nuns-married-monks/
The title of the article is "Rules for Pregnant Nuns & Married Monks."
Please enjoy responsibly.
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