NIRVANA: CONCEPT, IMAGERY, NARRATIVE . By Steven Collins . New York : Cambridge University Press , 2010 . Pp. vi + 197 . Cloth, $70.00; paper, $24.99 .
摘要
This distillation of the first part of Collins's influential scholarly study Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities is intended for a general readership, and especially for classroom use. Investigating the place of nirvana in “the Pali imaginaire,” Collins distinguishes between systematic and narrative modes of thought, and argues that nirvana provides a sense of closure in both. In systematic thought, and in the metaphors that constitute and elaborate the concept, this closure is semantic, expressed not only through explicit content but also through significant silences. In narrative thought and literature, Collins argues, nirvana is instead the syntactic “full stop” that brings closure to the individual stories that take place within a beginningless and endless world. Collins analyzes this function of nirvana in narratives of past and future Buddhas, with attention to the productive intersection of repetitive and non‐repetitive aspects of time, as well as to the role of closure in the ritual performance of such narratives. These arguments are both accessible and provocative. Although instructors considering adoption of this study as a textbook should note that it does not aim to address representations of nirvana either in a social‐historical framework or in the imaginative worlds of other Buddhist traditions, the book remains an indispensable addition to courses on Buddhism.
