For the Love of Dogs: Finding Compassion in a Time of Famine in Pali Buddhist Stories
This paper focuses on stories from the 13th century Rasavāhinī in which feeding a starving dog is described as an act of great merit, equal even to the care of a monk or the Buddha. It begins with a reevaluation of passages from Buddhist texts that have been taken by scholars as evidence of pan- Bud...
| Autor principal: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de documento: | Recurso Electrónico Artigo |
| Idioma: | Inglês |
| Verificar disponibilidade: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Carregar...
|
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Publicado em: |
[2019]
|
| Em: |
Religions
Ano: 2019, Volume: 10, Número: 3, Páginas: 1-21 |
| Outras palavras-chave: | B
Buddhism
B Famine B Dogs B Merit |
| Acesso em linha: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Resumo: | This paper focuses on stories from the 13th century Rasavāhinī in which feeding a starving dog is described as an act of great merit, equal even to the care of a monk or the Buddha. It begins with a reevaluation of passages from Buddhist texts that have been taken by scholars as evidence of pan- Buddhist concern for taking care of animals. It argues that they have been over-read and that the Rasavāhinī stories are distinctive. The setting in which these acts occur, a catastrophic famine, helps us to understand the transformation of the despised dog into an object of compassion. In such dire circumstances, when humans themselves behave like animals, compassion for a starving dog is both a new recognition of a fundamental shared kinship between human and animal and a gesture of recovering lost humanity. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Obras secundárias: | Enthalten in: Religions
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel10030183 |
