Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature Volume 9

Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature Volume 9

Cole, Alan

Hardcover

Series: Buddhisms, Book 9

Literary CriticismBuddhism

ISBN10: 0520242769
ISBN13: 9780520242760
Publisher: Univ Of California Pr
Published: Aug 29 2005
Pages: 372
Weight: 1.43
Height: 1.11 Width: 6.34 Depth: 9.34
Language: English
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.

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