Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual - Hardcover

Young, Serinity

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415914825 ISBN 13: 9780415914826

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

The wisest teachings of Buddhism say that, like all oppositions, one must move beyond gender. But as Serinity Young shows in this enlightening work, the rhetoric of Buddhist texts, the symbolism of its iconography, and the performative import of its rituals, tell different, and often contradictory, stories. In Courtesans and Tantric Consorts, Serinity Young takes the reader on a journey through more than 2000 years of biographical writings, iconographic depictions, and ritual practices revealing Buddhism's deep struggles with gender.
Juxtaposing empowering images of women with their textual repudiation, beginning with the Buddha himself who abandoned his wife; tantric courtesans who are considered necessary to male enlightenment with fertility rituals designed to ensure male offspring; tales of gender-bending gods and goddesses with all male heavens; Serinity Young draws on a vast range of sources to reveal the colourful, and often troubling, mosaic of beliefs that inform Buddhist views about gender and sexuality.

About this title

About the Author:

Serinity Young is Whitney Tibetan Scholar-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History, division of Anthropology. She is the author of Dreaming in the Lotus: Buddhist Dream Narrative, Imagery, and Practice, General Editor for the two volume Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion, and editor of An Anthology of Sacred Texts by and About Women. She currently resides in New York City.

Review:

By considering both the textual and the art historical data, this interdisciplinary study offers us many new insights concerning both women and women's relationships to men. An erudite book that, while taking into account all of the most recent scholarship in the field, goes beyond it to offer us fresh new insights....A major contribution to the literature on women in Buddhism.
–José Ignacio Cabezón, XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

This book is excellent...wonderfully detailed, full of substantial narrative and anecdote and liberal in its comparisons.
–Ellison Findly, Professor of Religion and International Studies, Trinity College

Clearly structured, lucidly written, judiciously illustrated with examples from the primary texts, and accessible to the nonspecialist...it will be an important resource for students and teachers alike.
–Eugene V. Gallager, Connecticut College

This book is a tour de force, marshalling a broad range of materials--textual, ritual, and iconographical--to tackle a complex issue in the forefront of Buddhist studies today, that of sexuality and gender. This book is not to be missed and is a significant contribution to our understanding of the Indo-Tibetan culture of Buddism.
–Ellison Findly, Trinity College, Hartford

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0415914825
• ISBN 13: 9780415914826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298