Description
Book SynopsisIn the early fifteenth century, two Tibetan monks debated how to transform the body ritually into a celestial palace inhabited by buddhas.
Searching for the Body demonstrates the significance of this debate for understandings of Tibetan Buddhism as well as conversations on representation and embodiment occurring across the disciplines today.
Trade ReviewSearching for the Body uses a famous fifteenth-century Tibetan debate about a tantric ritual practice called body mandala to explore historical and literary questions that show the relevance of that debate to the broader field of the humanities. Dachille’s knowledge of the Tibetan texts is superb, and her analysis of the body mandala debate is a major contribution to the field. -- José Ignacio Cabezón, author of
Sexuality in Classical South Asian BuddhismRae Dachille makes exemplary use of exegetical practices drawn from trans, queer, Black, and disability studies to enable a posthumanist, and more-than-human, interpretative stance within Buddhism. She critically reframes the ways Buddhist authors can understand how reference, citation, and representation work in Buddhist texts and traditions, expanding our understanding of the ever-shifting boundaries between self, others, and world. This is a smart, beautiful, and timely work. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor,
TSQ: Transgender Studies QuarterlyThis insightful, well-researched, and original book will ideally appeal to readers who have at least a background in Tibetan Buddhism and care about contemporary social matters. * Religious Studies Review *
A clear and comprehensive contribution to the field. * Religion *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
A Technical Note
Introduction
1. Imagining the Body Mandala
2. Constructing the Body Mandala Debate
3. “Cutting the Ground”: Citations Revealing Mandala Iconography in the Making
4. Ngorchen’s Armor of Citations: Defending and Delineating the Hevajra Corpus
5. “Aligning the Dependently Arisen Connections”: The Exegete Rearticulates Body and Text
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendixes
Notes
Bibliography
Index
