ABSTRACT
Introduction Western conceptions of the body have often prejudiced our understanding of the body in Buddhist thought . We are often inclined, as Tuck has noted, to engage in a kind of isogesis, a reading into texts values that reveal as much about ourselves, as interpreters, as it does about the text being examined (Tuck 1990: 9-10). These projections include ideas about monasticism, ideas on confession, the notion of authority of The Buddha as regard his disciples, and the conception of the Vinaya as ‘law’. Along with this list of topics, we may also include the ‘body’. These terms and issues I have listed reflect preoccupations of the modern age and are too often burdened with modernist meanings to be of much use (Reynolds 2005: 226). 1
Some dominant discourses in Western society have often emphasized the body as a physical and biological given fact, to be understood like other ‘natural’ phenomena, through empirical investigation. The body in certain readings has been constructed as a caricature of the true inner being, as a volatile animal with the soul as its prisoner (Bordo 2004: 3; Fields 2001: 11-12). For instance, Plato in the Phaedo saw the passions of the body as a distraction to the philosopher. 2 The body according to Plato was the source of obstacles as regards the attainment of pure, rational consciousness. The body, he considered, was a hindrance due to its maintenance demands, because of the issues such as sensual distractions, sickness and pain. Augustine emphasized the animal aspect of human nature and, by contrast, seventeenth-century thought saw the body as a programmed system that could be controlled (Bordo 2004: 4).
