Reviews of Books 17

Virtuous Bodies: The Physical Dimensions of Morality in Buddhist Ethics. By Suzanne Mrozik.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 200. $45.

Virtuous Bodies is based on Mrozik’s 1998 Harvard dissertation, “The Relationship between Bodyand Morality According to the ‡iksasamuccaya” and several articles published over the last few years.The ‡iksasamuccaya, translated by Mrozik as Compendium of Training, is a collection of passagesfrom Mainstream and Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, divided into nineteen chapters and interspersedwith commentary. The compiler and commentator, ‡antideva—most likely a monk living in the eighthcentury at the great monastery of Nalanda—was a strong proponent of the Mahayana and intendedthe Compendium to be a manual for the bodhisattva. Because the Compendium contains citations ofnumerous Buddhist sutras, scholars over the last century have utilized the collection to shed light onthe textual histories of the sources quoted at length within.

At the outset Mrozik presents the two defining approaches to her interpretation of the Compendium.The first is to emphasize the role of the “body” in the passages assembled in the Compendium. Mrozik’stheoretical orientation is meant to be a corrective to the emphasis on cetana (translated ‘heart-mind’)in scholarly discourse on Buddhist ethics. While recognizing the significance of cetana witin the ethicaltradition, Mrozik intends to “demonstrate . . . that Buddhist attention to heart-mind does not precludean equal attention to the body” (p. 4). Armed with an interpretive strategy that focuses on the role ofthe body in the ethical development of the bodhisattva as presented in the Compendium, the authorattempts to prove that the presence of ascetic discourse “does not bespeak a lack of interest in bodies”(p. 6). The author understands ascetic discourse to be the representation of bodies as “impermanent,foul and without intrinsic and eternal essence . . .” (ibid.).

Mrozik’s second approach is to read the Compendium as a text with literary integrity, not merelyas a collection of sutra fragments. Although the material gathered by ‡antideva came from texts thathave different doctrinal orientations and subject matter, Mrozik quite reasonably assumes that the selec-tion and editing of texts represents an authorial orientation that should be considered in its own right.The Western scholarly tradition has largely ignored questions about how the Compendium is organized.Mrozik notes the recent publication of several studies on the text, including Clayton (2006), Hedinger(1984), and Mahoney (2002), but refers only briefly to their findings. It is clear from this dearth ofsecondary literature that Mrozik is moving into uncharted waters. The fact that there has been no com-plete translation of the Compendium since the publication of Bendall and Rouse in the early twentiethcentury is an indicator of the scholarly neglect of the text and of the status of Mrozik’s book as a pio-neering work that will set the bar for future studies.

Virtuous Bodies is broken into six chapters. The introduction lays out the goals of the study andthe methodological choices that inform Mrozik’s analysis. Chapter two is a discussion of possibletranslations of the term atmabhava based on usages in the Compendium and its relationship to otherterms that illuminate conceptions of the body in the sutra material. Mrozik argues that atmabhava is thecentral organizing term for “body” in the Compendium not only because of how frequently it appearsin the sutra passages ‡antideva has collected but because it appears in a verse summary he has writtenhimself. This verse summary articulates a set of “vital points” (marma-sthana) which, according toMrozik, provide the conceptual framework for the Compendium.

Chapter three draws upon the concept of ripening (Skt. paripac) to frame passages from the Com-pendium in which contact with the bodhisattva’s body purifies beings. Mrozik’s point here is to em-phasize that the ethical implications of the behavior of the bodhisattva have a tangible form. It is thebody, or at least elements of the bodhisattva personality connected to the body, that awakens the desirefor buddhahood in living beings on the level of the sensory, and not merely on the mental (or heart-mind), plane.

Chapters four and five provide examples of the two types of bodies, virtuous and foul, respec-tively. The author cites examples in which the two are utilized in conjunction with one another todemonstrate that these discourses, though arguably distinct from a philosophical perspective, com-plement one another on the rhetorical level. They are both informed by the overarching soteriologicalgoal of freeing oneself and other beings from the impurities of bad karma. The final chapter is a critique

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of the masculine perspective of the Compendium, based on the notion that a dialogic relationship withancient material is an indication that one is taking the text seriously.

One major contribution of this volume is that it shows how material from the Compendium fitsinto theoretical categories of contemporary academic discourse that have become important herme-neutic tools. In her discussions of the various androcentric modes of the Compendium, Mrozik haspaved the way for comparative work with parallel trends in traditions as varied as Christianity andIslam. Mrozik illustrates such instances by using passages from the Compendium in which womenare taken by ascetic monks as objects of disgust and by pointing out that the number of references tofemale bodhisattvas is extremely limited (p. 91). She also demonstrates that the rhetoric of isolation(expressed most radically in the figure of the forest-dwelling monk) frequently advocated in Mahayanasutras is belied by the implicit understanding that the bodhisattva lives in a community in which he bothripens other beings and is simultaneously the recipient of their grace (p. 123). The necessity for sensorycontact with the bodhisattva’s body testifies to the existence of an ethical community that thrives pre-cisely because of mutual bodily exposure of one monk to another. Third, Mrozik demonstrates that theseeming contradiction of presenting the body both as a crippling hindrance to awakening and as anidealized form resulting from moral rigor is not inconsistent, in the sense that both negative and positiveexpressions foster a soteriological urgency in the reader. Fourth, Mrozik makes it clear that ‡antidevasees the body as instantiating both the cause for awakening and the effects of proper practice. The primeexample here, of course, is the golden skin of the Buddha as an effect of ethical practice.

In both the organization of the book and the presentation of source material, it is clear that thesefour critical insights are derivative of a larger theoretical interest in the body. And each of theseapproaches to interpreting the Compendium functions to buttress Mrozik’s overall thesis that thecategory of body cannot be ignored in the study of medieval Indian Buddhist texts. There is no doubtthat Mrozik’s categories of “physiomoral” and ascetic discourse provide balance to studies of Buddhistethics that have until recently emphasized cetana. Mrozik cites a number of instances where body andthe related category of monastic deportment are viewed as indicators of the level of moral achieve-ment attained by the bodhisattva-monk. Complexion, posture, and even perfect body parts are givenpride of place along with the internal (what Mrozik labels “moral) accomplishments of generosityand humility among others. Mrozik places these internal and external virtues on the same continuum,labeling this discourse “physiomoral” in that it “links body to morality and links physical transfor-mation to moral transformation” (p. 7). So far so good.

A problem arises though in considering the physiomoral a “positive” discourse, a move that placesthe term in opposition to what Mrozik calls the “negative” discourse of the “ascetic.” Mrozik defines“the physiomoral discourse” as a “ ‘positive’ discourse on bodies, since it ascribes to bodies importantroles in the ethical development of self and other” (p. 63). The author then suggests that “ethical de-velopment entails the cultivation of virtuous bodies as well as virtuous heart-minds” (p. 20). This lastpoint is well taken, but provides an incomplete picture. According to Mrozik’s definition on p. 7 (seeabove), the medieval Indian Buddhist theories of spiritual progress operate on the assumption thatone’s physical appearance is evidence of internal moral transformation and vice versa. In that sense,the physiomoral is a value-neutral relation that explains as much about the cultivation of virtue as itdoes the regressive behavior leading to impurity and moral failure. Because of its value-neutral statusI would caution against terming the physiomoral as either specifically “positive” or as a discourse thatrelates solely to ethical development leading to the virtuous body.

By defining the “ascetic” discourse as “a negative discourse that represents bodies as imperma-nent, foul and without intrinsic and eternal essence” (p. 6), Mrozik fails to take into account the manytreatments of asceticism as a soteriological process, in which preoccupation with the foul body is justone element. Her definition of asceticism as a discourse on the foul body does not take into accountother scholarly definitions, which understand the ascetic as including the foul body in a much broadersoteriological vision integrating the starting point, the path, and the goal.

Shifting from broader theoretical questions to issues of exegesis and philology, I would like to focuson the analysis of terms that are typically translated as ‘body’. Mrozik clearly states in the introduc-tion that her analysis is “literary” and not philological. By doing so, she emphasizes the literary in-tegrity of the Sanskrit manuscript she is working with and does not attend to diachronic shifts in the

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meanings of various Sanskrit terms or comparison of the Sanskrit with Tibetan or Chinese. A literaryanalysis may fairly exclude philological methods that require diachronic and cross-linguistic study, butgiven the fact that numerous words in the Sanskrit manuscript might be translated as body, a thoroughcomparison of these terms seems imperative. However, Mrozik chooses to focus on the single termatmabhava, as opposed to other significant words such as kaya or ¶arira, because the first is used ex-clusively for ‘body’ in the verse summary composed by ‡antideva.

Mrozik, following others (see particularly Hedinger), seizes upon the verse summary as a guidepostfor the Compendium. This summary of “vital points” is one of a number of verses likely attributable to‡antideva that are scattered throughout the Compendium. It reads as follows: atmabhavasya bhoganamtryadhvavrtteh ¶ubhasya ca. / utsargah sarvasatvebhyas tadraksa¶uddhivardhanam. Based on thefact that ‡antieva has selected the Sanskrit term atmabhava in his verse summary and that it appearsagain and again throughout the sutras cited, Mrozik states that in the Compendium, “atmabhava is theterm of choice for body” (p. 22). While making a strong case for the centrality of this term, Mrozikalso acknowledges that since the Compendium “quotes so extensively from so many different sources,often its choice of vocabulary is dictated by its sources” (ibid.).

This claim about the centrality of atmabhava to the Compendium as a whole is problematic inlight of the fact that Mrozik wishes to view the work as “a text in its own right” (p. 16). A cursoryglance at terms that are typically related to the conceptual field of the body shows that atmabhava isjust one of several possibilities appearing throughout the Compendium. While ‡antideva, in the Mula-karikas he contributes to the Compendium, seems committed to atmabhava, there is no such termi-nological uniformity in discussions of the body in the work as a whole. The scriptures ‡antideva citesare far more likely to employ the term kaya than atmabhava. Even more dramatic, however, is the re-cent discovery of a number of verses—previously assumed to be sutra material, but now confidentlyattributed to ‡antideva himself (see Harrison 2007)—in which kaya again appears more frequentlythan atmabhava. The fact that not only the scriptural material (which constitutes the bulk of the Com-pendium), but even a large segment of verses written by ‡antideva himself, evince a preference forand makes it difficult to disentangle its conceptual range from that of kaya. Mrozik’s analysis leavesthe reader without a precise definition for atmabhava, and by extension renders unclear the distinc-tions among the conceptual spheres of other terms for body in the Compendium.

The final task Mrozik sets for herself in Virtuous Bodies is the development of an ethical critiquethat is mindful of the interpretive chasm that lies between medieval India and the post-modern West.To this end, she employs Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach to texts, which she characterizes as “aneffort to recover truth and an effort to uncover truth” (p. 118). Mrozik intends to bring medieval Indianand post-modern perspectives into “dialogue.” However, it is difficult to know what that dialogueconsists of. Mrozik suggests that ‡antideva is “in conversation with his tradition” inasmuch as he hasselected fragments from Mahayana scriptures to create an “original” model for the bodhisattva (p. 114).Is his method of negotiating tradition a model for Mrozik? The Compendium certainly emphasizesthe physical qualities that are both indicators of holiness and spurs to observers to exert themselvesin practice. In that sense, the Compendium highlights corporeal specificity. Mrozik agrees that thereis merit in recognizing “bodily differences” (p. 116) but then adds that the physical standards for thebodhisattva emphasize attributes of the male body, indicating that the Compendium is just another textin the Mahayana tradition pervaded by sexist views. It is difficult to see how there is any concession tothe tradition by Mrozik on this front. ‡antideva presents one vision of optimal sexuality—the celibatemale—and Mrozik presents a vision of sexuality that does not privilege anyone gender characteristicover another. In pointing out the non-egalitarian nature of medieval Indian sexuality, Mrozik joins achorus of scholars from Rita Gross to Jan Nattier, who have illustrated this point utilizing other textsin the Mahayana tradition, but it is unclear how “unmasking the gendered nature of Buddhist ethicalideals” “create[s] the possibility of more diversely bodied ethical ideals” (p. 126). Here it is apparentthat the dialogue breaks down and there is only description of difference and the seemingly unbridge-able chasm between the pre- and post-modern. While Mrozik successfully represents ‡antideva’s takeon his tradition, her demonstration of pre-modern illiberalism of the sexist variety has been rehearsed

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on a number of occasions. In this sense, her relation to the Compendium is not much of a “dialogue,”in that there is no give and take. Her ideological position eliminates this as a possibility.

Nicholas Witkowski

Stanford University

works cited

Clayton, Barbara R. Moral Theory in ‡antideva’s ‡iksasamuccaya: Cultivating the Fruits of Virtue.London: Routledge, 2006.

Hedinger, Jurg. Aspekte der Schulung in der Laufbahn eines Bodhisattva: Dargestellt nach dem ‡iksa-samuccaya des ‡antideva. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984.

Harrison, Paul. “The Case of the Vanishing Poet: New Light on ‡antideva and the ‡iksasamuccaya.”In Festschrift für Michael Hahn Zum 65. Geburtstag von Freuden und Schülern überrecht, ed.K. Klaus and J-U. Hartmann. Pp. 215–48. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistischeStudien Universität Wien, 2007.

Mahoney, Richard. “Of the Progress of the Bodhisattva: The Bodhisattvamarga in the ‡iksasamuccaya.”Master’s thesis, University of Canterbury, 2002.

Mrozik, Susanne. “The Relationship between Morality and the Body in Monastic Training Accordingto the ‡iksasamucaya.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998.

. “The Value of Human Differences: South Asian Buddhist Contributions toward an Em-bodied Value Theory.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 9 (2002): 1–33.

. “Cooking Living Beings: The Transformative Effects of Encounters with BodhisattvaBodies.” Journal of Religious Ethics 32:1 (2004): 175–94.

. “Materializations of Virtue: Buddhist Discourses on Bodies.” In Bodily Citations: Religionand Judith Butler, ed. Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville. Pp. 15–47. New York: ColumbiaUniv. Press, 2006.