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Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature (Volume 9)
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.
372 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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Alan Cole
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 4, 2011
This is definitely a very useful book for scholars in Chinese Buddhism (Well, Mahayana in general). Interplays of text and religiosity is one of the crucial ways to study how a certain form of religiosity emerge under certain social circumstances. That being said, I lost interest as reading the first few chapters because I already agree with him and I can fill in the evidence myself. I know all the sutras myself. There's definitely room for improvement as far as writing is concerned. Not that I'm a better writer (i'm not), but compared with Eubanks's Miracles of Book and Body, this book is not as well written. Even though I know all the sutras (some of them by heart) in Eubanks book, I did not loose interest half way. I guess, it's because of her way of constructing arguments and presenting evidence.
November 9, 2010
Glugh. Ugh. A careful and often insightful reading of the Lotus, Tathagatagarbha, Diamond, and Vimalakirtinirdesa - some of the most important MY scriptures in Chinese Buddhism, and especially in the prehistory of the development of Chan. Against other Buddhologists whom he claims read these texts solely to extract fine philosophical points (e.g., former translators of these works like Thurman, Watson), AC reads these sutras 'as literature' - as stories with characters, plots, settings, and beginnings, middles, and ends, but also as textual objects with authors and readers - and illuminates what work they do and how they work. Key to the endeavor of creating what AC considers an unprecedented literary tradition is the authors' productions of 'paternity,' or a presumed unchanging essence that derives from and inheres through a lineage. What the new tradition attempts to perform is to smash old lineages and forms of truth out of traditional mainstream Buddhism devastatingly in order to create allegiances to texts and, in turn, new textualized traditions. I especially found the last chapter useful - AC re-reads emptiness, compassion, Buddhahood and skillful means not as doctrinal nuggets but as structural elements that move a narrative forward and implement a series of agendas.
But I found the following things very irritating:
sloppy hermeneutic - how does he know readers back then read in the same way as modern readers would (i.e., sequentially, silently, for content and story, and credulously)? why doesn't he open up passages to multiple interpretations? how can he throw away pages of commentarial tradition as completely unuseful? "I shall return to the text with my heart clean of presuppositions!" This is a strange Buddhist Protestantism in practice. AC explains that he has read these works with thinking about Chan texts in mind, but he should try to think more critically about how this affects his partial readings,
sloppy writing - some points are made over and over again with far too many words - at these times I felt like a dead horse. sometimes the language is confusing and imprecise - at these times I felt like I was a cow listening to someone play the qin. either way, hard to read.
sloppy thinking about writing - wished he'd thought and read more about orality/textuality as a troubled, difficult dichotomy rather than a straighforward and clear-cut one.
lack of serious engagement with Indo-Buddhologists and their work on the "early Mahayana" - Schopen, Silk, Nattier and the Japanese gang are named, but AC displays a striking disinterest in social or political conditions of ancient India and Central Asia, or the competing narratives that buddhologists are struggling to tell about the development of Mahayana Buddhism and its literature in these regions.
furthermore, lack of engagement with theorists of Buddhist narrativity. For instance, the stuff in Collins's NOBF about narrative in Pali suttas would've been really, really useful here.
Mahayana as rupture - against historians who try to connect elements of these special works to what may be considered earlier Buddhist traditions, AC seems confident that early MY represented a serious rupture from all that which came before (sometimes he's more careful than others in not letting these four texts stand in for early MY literature or tradition in its entirety as synecdoche). In this manner, AC has also been fooled by the texts' own claims to their radicalness!
lack of engagement with literary or sociological theory, aside from Peter Brooks - he throws in a Zizek or a Bourdieu in there from time to time, but it feels like dressing or dipping of toes into a pool. just go for it, man!
annoying analogies, cutesy subtitles - sometimes he invents historical counterfactuals or relies on convoluted metaphors to make a point, and they usually work. but they really make me feel like I'm being talked down to. also i wish the subsection headings matched the content of what's being discussed in the subsection rather than capping them with the coolest phrase in the subsection that one might use to keep bored undergraduates awake. is this a narrative strategy to wrest authority from me? or to annoy me into submission?
presumption of bad faith - "someone at some time wrote this to trick people." Maybe, maybe not. Why does it bother you so much? Sometimes it feels like AC is writing about an ex-girlfriend he had a really bad breakup with.
Don't get me wrong - I like this book. It's like having a brilliant contrarian in your reading group. And he's right that these works should be read for their structure, but he's wrong that they should be read - or even can be read - without their historical context.
But I found the following things very irritating:
sloppy hermeneutic - how does he know readers back then read in the same way as modern readers would (i.e., sequentially, silently, for content and story, and credulously)? why doesn't he open up passages to multiple interpretations? how can he throw away pages of commentarial tradition as completely unuseful? "I shall return to the text with my heart clean of presuppositions!" This is a strange Buddhist Protestantism in practice. AC explains that he has read these works with thinking about Chan texts in mind, but he should try to think more critically about how this affects his partial readings,
sloppy writing - some points are made over and over again with far too many words - at these times I felt like a dead horse. sometimes the language is confusing and imprecise - at these times I felt like I was a cow listening to someone play the qin. either way, hard to read.
sloppy thinking about writing - wished he'd thought and read more about orality/textuality as a troubled, difficult dichotomy rather than a straighforward and clear-cut one.
lack of serious engagement with Indo-Buddhologists and their work on the "early Mahayana" - Schopen, Silk, Nattier and the Japanese gang are named, but AC displays a striking disinterest in social or political conditions of ancient India and Central Asia, or the competing narratives that buddhologists are struggling to tell about the development of Mahayana Buddhism and its literature in these regions.
furthermore, lack of engagement with theorists of Buddhist narrativity. For instance, the stuff in Collins's NOBF about narrative in Pali suttas would've been really, really useful here.
Mahayana as rupture - against historians who try to connect elements of these special works to what may be considered earlier Buddhist traditions, AC seems confident that early MY represented a serious rupture from all that which came before (sometimes he's more careful than others in not letting these four texts stand in for early MY literature or tradition in its entirety as synecdoche). In this manner, AC has also been fooled by the texts' own claims to their radicalness!
lack of engagement with literary or sociological theory, aside from Peter Brooks - he throws in a Zizek or a Bourdieu in there from time to time, but it feels like dressing or dipping of toes into a pool. just go for it, man!
annoying analogies, cutesy subtitles - sometimes he invents historical counterfactuals or relies on convoluted metaphors to make a point, and they usually work. but they really make me feel like I'm being talked down to. also i wish the subsection headings matched the content of what's being discussed in the subsection rather than capping them with the coolest phrase in the subsection that one might use to keep bored undergraduates awake. is this a narrative strategy to wrest authority from me? or to annoy me into submission?
presumption of bad faith - "someone at some time wrote this to trick people." Maybe, maybe not. Why does it bother you so much? Sometimes it feels like AC is writing about an ex-girlfriend he had a really bad breakup with.
Don't get me wrong - I like this book. It's like having a brilliant contrarian in your reading group. And he's right that these works should be read for their structure, but he's wrong that they should be read - or even can be read - without their historical context.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews