1. Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom. By Amy Langenberg. Routledge, 2017. 210 pages. $150.00 (cloth), $54.95 (e-book).
2. Reviewer Affiliation: Williams College, USA
摘要
Amy Langenberg places the Garbhavakranti-sutra (GS), an early first millennium Indian text, at the center rather than margins of Buddhist discourse on suffering and gendered embodiment. Her analysis of the GS, or “Descent of the Embryo Scripture,” links the material and messy processes of birth and gestation to more abstract Buddhist concepts of suffering, dependent origination, and gendered rebirth. Langenberg convincingly shows that birth is a root metaphor for the theory of suffering, and fetal development serves as a narrative device to illustrate the inevitable unsatisfactoriness of human existence and embodiment. Langenberg’s first chapter unpacks the notion that metaphors help us conceptualize abstract concepts via the physical processes of embodiment that are always already structured by language and culture. Chapter 2 elaborate a complex Buddhist episteme linking suffering, rebirth, and gendered asceticism. This chapter builds on previous work by Susanne Mrozik, John Powers, and Reiko Ohnuma to further develop what Langenberg terms a “foundational Buddhist logic of gender,” in which the male fetus is pitted against the female maternal body (71). Building on prior scholarship that has identified ways the Jataka and Avadana literature has used the birth process to theorize social and moral identity, Langenberg explores how birth can offer an opportunity to perfect spiritual knowledge. We learn how the GS links the familial or social environment into which a fetus is born to prior merit and physical attributes developed in the womb.
