Alan Cole
Alan Cole is the author of a number of books in the field of Religious/Buddhist Studies, including Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism (Stanford University Press 1998), Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature (University of California Press 2005), Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism (University of California Press 2009), Fetishizing Tradition: Desire and Reinvention in Buddhist and Christian Narratives (SUNY Press, 2015), and, most recently, Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature (University of California Press, 2016). He was Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College from 2006–2012 and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at National University of Singapore from 2013–2014. (Source Accessed Jul 21, 2020)
Library Items
Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature
This beautifully written work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism with close readings of four well-known texts—the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirtinirdesa. Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, Alan Cole argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism’s older oral and institutional forms. His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic. (Source: University of California Press)
Cole, Alan. Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Cole, Alan. Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.;Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature;Christian thought and Buddha-Nature;Alan Cole;Text as Father Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature
Affiliations & relations
- Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College (1996-2012) · workplace affiliation
- Faculty Website // Curriculum Vitae · websites
