While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for opening a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. According to Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha's body boasts thirty-two physical features, including lionlike jaws, thighs like a royal stag, broad shoulders, and a deep, resonant voice, that distinguish him from ordinary men. As Buddhism spread throughout Asia and around the world, the Buddha remained an exemplary man, but Buddhists in other times and places developed their own understandings of what it meant to be masculine.This transdisciplinary book brings together essays that explore the variety and diversity of Buddhist masculinities, from early India to the contemporary United States and from bodhisattva-kings to martial monks. Buddhist Masculinities adopts the methods of religious studies, anthropology, art history, textual-historical studies, and cultural studies to explore texts, images, films, media, and embodiments of masculinity across the Buddhist world, past and present. It turns scholarly attention to normative forms of masculinity that usually go unmarked and unstudied precisely because they are "normal," illuminating the religious and cultural processes that construct Buddhist masculinities. Engaging with contemporary issues of gender identity, intersectionality, and sexual ethics, Buddhist Masculinities ushers in a new era for the study of Buddhism and gender.

AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Masculinities Beyond the Buddha, by Megan BrysonPart 1: Masculine Models1. Middle Way Masculinity: The Bodhisattva Siddhartha as a Renunciant in Early Buddhist Texts and Art, by Dessislava Vendova2. How Chan Masters Became "Great Men": Masculinity in Chinese Chan Buddhism, by Kevin Buckelew3. Men of Virtue: Reexamining the Bodhisattva King in Sri Lanka, by Stephen C. BerkwitzPart 2: Mighty Masters4. The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: Padmasambhava's Tantric Masculinity, by Joshua Brallier Shelton5. Building a Nation on the Dharma Battlefield: Lay Zen Masculinities in Modern Japan, by Rebecca Mendelson6. Macho Buddhism (Redux): Gender and Sexualities in the Diamond Way, by Bee SchererPart 3: Making Men7. Being a Man vs. Being a Monk: Alternative Versions of Burmese Buddhist Masculinity, by Ward Keeler8. Hanuman, Heroes, and Buddhist Masculinity in Contemporary Thailand, by Natawan Wongchalard9. Buddhism and Afro-Asian Masculinities in The Man with the Iron Fists, by Marcus EvansPart 4: Breaking Boundaries10. The Afterlife of the Tang Monk: Buddhist Masculinity and the Image of Xuanzang in East Asia, by Geng Song11. Real Monks Don't Have G¿hastha Sex: Revisiting Male Celibacy in Classical South Asian Buddhism, by Amy Paris LangenbergAppendix: Character GlossaryContributorsIndex