“The Seeming Anomaly of Buddhist Negation”: American Encounters with Buddhist Distinctiveness, 1858–1877
In a lecture in Horticultural Hall in Boston on Sunday 3 March 1872 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the social reformer and religious radical, praised “The Character of the Buddha.” He ended his very sympathetic portrait by alluding to King Asoka's discovery of the tomb of the Buddha. Those who ope...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1990
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1990, Volume: 83, Issue: 1, Pages: 65-92 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In a lecture in Horticultural Hall in Boston on Sunday 3 March 1872 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the social reformer and religious radical, praised “The Character of the Buddha.” He ended his very sympathetic portrait by alluding to King Asoka's discovery of the tomb of the Buddha. Those who opened the tomb, so the story goes, found the lamps that had been lighted two hundred years earlier still burning and the flowers that had been offered in homage still fresh and fragrant. Higginson saw a parallel to his own age: “More than two thousand years have now passed, and we are opening this tomb again; the lights still burn, the flowers are still fresh, the perfume of that noble life, yet remains immortal.” In some ways, Higginson's comment seems appropriate: literate Americans of his generation were learning more and more about Buddhism and its founder; and, although most interpreters during the 1860s and 1870s struggled with its distinctiveness, some found Buddha's life and teachings praiseworthy. Yet Americans had begun to pry open “the tomb of the Buddha” decades earlier, and not everyone was as blinded by the sudden illumination or as overcome by the sweet fragrance as Higginson. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000005538 |