The Buddha as Embodied in Gnosis: Revisioning the History of Buddha Body Conceptions

The Buddha as Embodied in Gnosis: Revisioning the History of Buddha Body Conceptions

Michael Radich (Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Monday, June 9 / 4:00 pm
2252 Humanities and Social Sciences Building

The lecture presented a significant revisioning of the history of Buddhist notions of the Buddha’s bodies. Through an examination of evidence from three disparate sources that date from the first centuries of the Common Era—reliquary inscriptions (ca. early first century CE), the earliest Prajñaparimita text (ca. second century CE), and the early cycles of the Sarvastivada Abhidharma literature—the lecture argued that the earliest terminology and representations associated with the Buddha’s embodiment portray him as embodied in gnosis.

Michael Radich is Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is currently completing a book on the somatics of liberation and the history of Buddha body conceptions.