[Buddha-l] A really good & provocative book

[Piya Tan]

Dear Joanna,

Yes, I have already booked the title with the local Buddhist bookshop. I
should
have at least browsed it when i first saw the book. Thanks for recommending
it:
just what I would enjoy reading.

It's amazing how many new Buddhist books get published every year (month?)
compared to some 2 decades ago.

Best wishes,

Piya



On 10/16/07, jkirk <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:
>
> Speaking of the cooky Mahayana sutras, y'all have GOT to get this book--I
> got it via ILL--it's a fantastically good critique of 4 Mahayana sutras as
> literature, of their rhetorical hankypanky--I am so impressed:
>
> Alan Cole. _Text As Father : Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana
> Buddhist
> Literature_. UCPress, 2005.  He takes on the Lotus, the Tathagata, the
> Diamond, and Vimalakirti's Nirdesa. [how they got rid of the old Buddha
> and
> made a new one: the texts! + their tricks of the trade]
>
> My only quibble is the same as with some other scholarly books--he
> overdoes
> the writing, it's often prolix and a repetitive, he could have eliminated
> at
> least 25% of it. Still a brilliant contribution to undoing the smug
> Mahayana
> mainstays.
>
> Joanna
>
>
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