Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples [Hardcover]

Stephen F. Teiser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2007

The Wheel of Rebirth is one of the most basic and popular images in Buddhist visual culture. For nearly two thousand years, artists have painted it onto the porches of Buddhist temples; preachers have used it to explain karmic retribution; and philosophers have invoked it to illuminate the contrast between ignorance and nirvana. In "Reinventing the Wheel", noted scholar Stephen F. Teiser explores the history and varied interpretations of the Wheel of Rebirth, a circle divided into sections depicting the Buddhist cycle of transmigration. Combining visual evidence with textual sources, "Reinventing the Wheel" shows how the metaphor of the wheel has been interpreted in divergent local traditions, from India to Tibet, Central Asia, and China. Teiser deftly shows how written and painted renditions of the wheel have animated local architectural sites and religious rituals, informing concepts of time and reincarnation and acting as an organizing principle in the cosmology and daily life of practicing Buddhists. Engaging and accessible, this uniquely pan-Buddhist tour will appeal to anyone interested in Buddhist culture, as well as to scholars of religious studies, art history, architecture, philosophy, and textual studies.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A milestone in the scholarship on Buddhism. This book will remain a standard and definitive account of the subject for a long time to come. It is hard to imagine that any serious student of Buddhism can afford to neglect this book." - Eugene Wang, Harvard University

From the Publisher

"A milestone in the scholarship on Buddhism. This book will remain a standard and definitive account of the subject for a long time to come. It is hard to imagine that any serious student of Buddhism can afford to neglect this book." -- Eugene Wang, Harvard University

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 319 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr (March 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295986492
• ISBN-13: 978-0295986494
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #467,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars history, varieties, and meanings of the wheel symbol in Buddhism, June 19, 2007

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Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (Hardcover)

Teiser--D. T. Sukuki professor in Buddhist Studies at Princeton--puts the classical source of the wheel as the preferred and eventually conventional symbol for the Buddhist spiritual concept of a series of lifetimes for nearly every person with the Mulasarvastivada school of Indian Buddhism. Although this school is only one of many schools of Buddhism which have grown up throughout Asia over centuries, the location of the Mulasarvastivada school in north-central India where Buddhism originated and the time of its formation in the early though not the initial development of Indian Buddhism gave its teachings and practices an exceptional canonical authority. "[A]s the canonical story of the wheel of rebirth shows, the vinaya [the 'voluminous canon of monastic discipline'] provided the narrative authority for a collective enterprise that drew lay people to Buddhist temples and sent monks and nuns out into the lay community."

The circular shape of the wheel is the basic configuration uniting this central symbol of Buddhism as it spread throughout Asia in the following centuries. Like the cross of Christianity, the wheel of Buddhism has become identified with this world religion. But different features of the wheel symbolizing different concepts and tenets of Buddhism have been emphasized in different regions and different times. The wheel's hub, spokes, and rim are three "compositional elements" highlighted by Teiser; with the hub, for instance, signifying both a focus and "what drives the wheel, what makes it go around." The fourth "property of the wheel is that it marks off an inside from an outside." This most complex compositional element of a wheel represents the closed system involving endless cycles of death and rebirth, but also indicates transcendence beyond this since the Buddhist wheel is always in the context of a square frame putting the wheel into perspective and suggesting that there is a realm of spirituality outside of it. "The point of the wheel, so to speak, is to move outside of it."

With keen aesthetic discernment, extensive historical scholarship, and sensitivity to Buddhist spirituality, this work seamlessly studies all significant aspects of the Buddhist wheel found in old Buddhist temples while bringing in relevant dimensions of Buddhist spirituality. Art, symbology, history, culture, and spirituality are interwoven in an engrossing, enlightening manner.