Buddhism and the Senses

Buddhism and the Senses A Guide to the Good and Bad

First

Hardback (24 Oct 2024)

  • $42.62
Pre-order

Includes delivery to the United States

Publisher's Synopsis

Following on the exhibition Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia at the National Museum of Asian Art, ten eminent scholars present their insights into Buddhism's fascinating relation with the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch), which careens between delight and disgust, rarely finding a middle way. While much of Buddhist literature is devoted to overcoming the attachment that dooms us to rebirth in samsara, primarily by deprecating sense experience and showing that whatever brings us sensual pleasure leads only to physical and mental pain, in texts such as the Lotus Sutra, sensory powers do not offer sensory pleasure but rather knowledge, clear observation, and ability to teach the Dharma. Considering such religiously and historically contingent ambiguity, this volume presents each of the five senses in two instantiations, the good and the bad, opening up the discourse on the senses across Buddhist traditions. Just as the museum departed from tradition to incorporate sensory experiences into the exhibition, this volume is a new direction in scholarship to humanize Buddhist studies by foregrounding sensory experience and practice, inviting the reader to think about the senses in a focused manner and shifting our understanding of Buddhism from the conceptual to the material or practical, from the idealized to the human, from the abstract to the grounded, from the mind to the body.

Book information

ISBN: 9781614298908
Publisher: National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution in association with Wisdom Publications Inc.
Imprint: Wisdom Publications
Pub date:
Edition: First
DEWEY: 294.344
DEWEY edition: 23/eng/20231026
Language: English
Number of pages: 264
Weight: 907g
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Spine width: 25mm