"This Fathom-Long Body": Bodily Materiality and Ascetic Ideology in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scriptures.

This article discusses representative examples of Chinese Buddhist scriptures from the medieval period that forward an ascetic ideology, with special attention to how the corporeal body is spoken about in such texts. It shows that the very Buddhist writings that were most concerned with teaching ascetics how to transcend the material world in fact focused a great deal of meticulous attention on the corporeal body and drew heavily on Indian medical concepts in forwarding that agenda.
PMID: 29961714 [PubMed - in process]

Source: Medical History - July 4, 2018 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Salguero CP Tags: Bull Hist Med Source Type: research