SSBU

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Masculinities Beyond the Buddha / Megan Bryson -- Part I. Masculine Models: 1. Middle Way Masculinity: The Bodhisattva Siddhārtha as a Renunciant in Early Buddhist Texts and Art / Dessislava Vendova -- 2. How Chan Masters Became “Great Men”: Masculinity in Chinese Chan Buddhism / Kevin Buckelew -- 3. Men of Virtue: Reexamining the Bodhisattva King in Sri Lanka / Stephen C. Berkwitz -- Part II. Mighty Masters: 4. The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: Padmasambhava's Tantric Masculinity / Joshua Shelton -- 5. Building a Nation on the Dharma Battlefield: Lay Zen Masculinities in Modern Japan / Rebecca Mendelson -- 6. Macho Buddhism (Redux): Gender and Sexualities in the Diamond Way / Bee Scherer -- Part III. Making Men: 7. Being a Man vs. Being a Monk: Alternative Versions of Burmese Buddhist Masculinity / Ward Keeler -- 8. Hanuman, Heroes, and Buddhist Masculinity in Contemporary Thailand / Natawan Wongchalard -- 9. Buddhism and Afro-Asian Masculinities in The Man with the Iron Fists / Marcus Evans -- Part IV. Breaking Boundaries: 10. The Afterlife of the Tang Monk: Buddhist Masculinity and the Image of Xuanzang in East Asia / Geng Song -- 11. Real Monks Don't Have Gṛhastha Sex: Revisiting Male Celibacy in Classical South Asian Buddhism / Amy Paris Langenberg.

"While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for forging a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. According to Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha's body boasts thirty-two physical features, including lion-like jaws, thighs like a royal stag, broad shoulders, and a deep, resonant voice, that distinguish him from regular men. As Buddhism spread throughout Asia and around the world, the Buddha remained an exemplary man, but Buddhists in other times and places developed their own understandings of what it meant to be masculine. Buddhist Masculinities brings together essays that explore the variety and diversity of Buddhist masculinities, from early India to the contemporary United States, and from bodhisattva-kings to martial monks. The contributors deploy the methods of religious studies, anthropology, art history, textual-historical studies, and cultural studies to explore texts, images, films, media, and embodiments of masculinity across the Buddhist world, past and present. Buddhist Masculinities turns scholarly attention to normative forms of masculinity that usually go unmarked and unstudied because they are "normal," and illuminates the religious and cultural processes that construct normative conceptions of masculinities in Buddhism"-- Provided by publisher.