Setting Out on the Great Way - Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism - Paul Harrison
Recruitment and Retention in Early Bodhisattva Sodalities
Setting Out on the Great Way - Essays on Early Mahāyāna Buddhism - Paul Harrison
Daniel Boucher [+]
Cornell University
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Daniel Boucher is Associate Professor of Sino-Indian Buddhism in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. His research focuses on the social history of the early Mahāyāna as well as problems related to the early translation of these texts into Chinese. His last book was Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā-sūtra (Honolulu, 2008).
Description
This chapter attempts to reorient the question of the origins of the Mahāyāna away from single-hypothesis explanations by turning toward a more nuanced appreciation of the way some authors of its earliest literature actively engaged in efforts to recruit new members to the bodhisattva fold and retain them once they were in. Drawing from the sociology of New Religious Movements, I show that two voices among the earliest texts assumed very different postures with regard to bodhisattva relations with their Mainstream brethren.