The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality

Bernard Faure

Published by Princeton University Press 1999

The Red Thread

Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality

Bernard Faure

Volume 1 in the series Buddhisms: A Princeton University Press Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400822607

Overview
Contents

About this book

Is there a Buddhist discourse on sex? In this innovative study, Bernard Faure reveals Buddhism's paradoxical attitudes toward sexuality. His remarkably broad range covers the entire geography of this religion, and its long evolution from the time of its founder, Xvkyamuni, to the premodern age. The author's anthropological approach uncovers the inherent discrepancies between the normative teachings of Buddhism and what its followers practice.

Framing his discussion on some of the most prominent Western thinkers of sexuality--Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault--Faure draws from different reservoirs of writings, such as the orthodox and heterodox "doctrines" of Buddhism, and its monastic codes. Virtually untapped mythological as well as legal sources are also used. The dialectics inherent in Mahvyvna Buddhism, in particular in the Tantric and Chan/Zen traditions, seemed to allow for greater laxity and even encouraged breaking of taboos.

Faure also offers a history of Buddhist monastic life, which has been buffeted by anticlerical attitudes, and by attempts to regulate sexual behavior from both within and beyond the monastery. In two chapters devoted to Buddhist homosexuality, he examines the way in which this sexual behavior was simultaneously condemned and idealized in medieval Japan.

This book will appeal especially to those interested in the cultural history of Buddhism and in premodern Japanese culture. But the story of how one of the world's oldest religions has faced one of life's greatest problems makes fascinating reading for all.

Author / Editor information

Bernard Faure is Associate Professor of Religion at Stanford University. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Immediacy, Chan Insights and Oversights, and Visions of Power (all from Princeton University Press).

Reviews

Although many scholars strive to locate their research within the study of Chinese religions as a whole, and thus to incorporate perspectives, insights, and approaches derived from the fields of popular religious studies and poststructuralist anthropology, there is as yet only one scholar who has adopted this breadth of vision as the fundamental characteristic of his intellectual agenda. This is of course Bernard Faure.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. The Hermeneutics of Desire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Chapter 2. Disciplining Sex, Sexualizing Discipline Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
Chapter 3. The Ideology of Transgression Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
Chapter 4. Clerical Vices and Vicissitudes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
Chapter 5. Buddhist Homosexualities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Chapter 6. Boys to Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Afterthoughts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	333

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