Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual [Paperback]

Serinity Young (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Feb 19 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0415914833
ISBN-13: 978-0415914833
Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.6 x 0.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 454 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #309,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Eastern > Buddhism > Buddha

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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

Product Description

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.

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking, July 26 2005

By Robert - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography, and Ritual (Paperback)

Clever, insightful, well-written and though provoking.

This is an account that is somewhat wider than its title implies. It examines various categories of women (including courtesans and consorts) through the use of Buddhist texts. Young provides a pleasingly nuanced analysis of how male monastic writers have suppressed and marginalised women in the Buddhist tradition in an attempt to control and co-opt their power.

Worth reading for anyone with an interest in gender and Buddhism.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review 5.0 out of 5 stars