Robert DeCaroli’s recent book, Buddhism and the Senses: A Guide to the Good and the Bad, has been published by Wisdom Publications and distributed by Simon and Schuster. Dr. DeCaroli co-edited the book with Donald Lopez, Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. The book stemmed from the art exhibition, Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia, which Dr. DeCaroli co-curated at the National Museum of Asian Art of the Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition was held at the National Museum of Asian Art from 2017 to 2022.
From the publisher’s website:
“Following the exhibition Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia at the National Museum of Asian Art, ten eminent scholars present their insights into Buddhism’s fascinating relation with the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch), which careens between delight and disgust, rarely finding a middle way. While much of Buddhist literature is devoted to overcoming the attachment that dooms us to rebirth in samsara, primarily by deprecating sense experience and showing that whatever brings us sensual pleasure leads only to all manner of physical and mental pain, in texts such as the Lotus Sutra, sensory powers do not offer sensory pleasure but rather knowledge, clear observation, and ability to preach the Dharma. Considering such religiously and historically contingent ambiguity, this volume presents each of the five senses in two instantiations, the good and the bad, opening up the discourse on the senses across Buddhist traditions.
Just as the museum departed from tradition to incorporate sensory experiences into the exhibition, this volume is a new direction in scholarship to humanize Buddhist studies by foregrounding sensory experience and practice, inviting the reader to think about the senses in a focused manner and shifting our understanding of Buddhism from the conceptual to the material or practical, from the idealized to the human, from the abstract to the grounded, from the mind to the body.”
November 21, 2024