Family in Buddhism

Liz Wilson is Professor of Comparative Religion at Miami University in Ohio. She is the editor of The Living and the Dead: Social Dimensions of Death in South Asian Religions, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature.

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Family and the Construction of Religious CommunitiesLiz WilsonPart I. Historical Families, Imagined Families 2. Serving the Emperor by Serving the Buddha: Imperial Buddhist Monks and Nuns and Abbots, Abbesses, and Adoptees in Early Modern JapanGina Cogan3. The Tantric Family Romance: Sex and the Construction of Social Identity in Tantric Buddhist RitualDavid Gray4. Bone and Heart Sons: Biological and Imagined Kin in the Creation of Family Lineage in Tibetan BuddhismAmy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa5. Families Matter: Ambiguous Attitudes toward Child Ordination in Contemporary Sri LankaJeffrey SamuelsPart II. Parents and Children 6. The Passion of Mulian’s Mother: Narrative Blood and Maternal Sacrifices in Chinese BuddhismAlan Cole7. Māyā’s Disappearing Act: Motherhood in Early Buddhist LiteratureVanessa R. Sasson8. Mother as Character Coach: Maternal Agency in the Birth of SīvaliLiz WilsonPart III. Wives and Husbands 9. Yasodharā in the Buddhist Imagination: Three Portraits Spanning the CenturiesRanjini Obeyesekere10. Evangelizing the Happily Married Man through Low Talk: On Sexual and Scatological Language in the Buddhist Tale of NandaAmy Paris Langenberg11. Runaway Brides: Tensions Surrounding Marital Expectations in the AvadānaśatakaPhillip Green12. The Priesthood as a Family Trade: Reconsidering Monastic Marriage in Premodern JapanLori MeeksContributorsIndex

"…for students and scholars of Buddhist Studies [Family in Buddhism is] groundbreaking and speak[s] to exciting ways of rethinking the male-dominated and eremitic characterizations of Buddhist monasticism that have become normative in the field." — Journal of the American Oriental Society"Wilson … frames the pieces with an introduction that effectively grounds their specialized and occasionally esoteric focuses. This work is best suited for advanced undergraduates and graduate students learning to think outside the box of traditional scholarship and methodologies." — CHOICE