Late last year, The Buddha: A Storied Life, edited by Vanessa R. Sasson and Kristin Scheible, was published by Oxford University Press. The volume is a tribute to the legacy of Buddhist Studies scholar John Strong, who’s work has educated and influenced so many Buddhist Studies scholars, especially through his seminal work The Buddha: A Short Biography (2001).
Containing 12 chapters from leading scholars in the field of Buddhist Studies, the stories recounted in the book cover all the important elements of the Buddha’s biography and highlight the ongoing tension between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic in every instance of the Buddha’s story.
In the preface, Charles Hallisey talks about the ways that he learned to read the many stories of the Buddha from Professor Strong. This lesson in reading informs the structure of the book. Methodologically, there is a chronological flow of chapters that echos John Strong’s ability to work with scholars from across the field. In this way, the book is a multivocality that, even within each chapter, “preserves some of the heteroglossic richness of the biographical traditions, while likewise revealing [each author’s] intellectual diversity” p. 10.
The introduction, written by editors Sasson and Scheible, outlines how “the Buddha biography is perhaps the strongest throughline, the most palpable thread connecting communities and ideas, that runs right through about 2,500 years of Buddhist history: it is the story of Siddhārtha Gautama, his birth, his early life as a prince, his awakening to become the Buddha, and his teaching career and death” p. 1.
Bias toward an individualistic interpretation of the Buddha’s story is:
tempered when a reader understands the Buddhist biographical imperative to expand a single lifetime. The road to awakening may seem to be an inner, psychological process, as well as a singular experience for a singular hero, but the Buddha’s life narrative is in fact much broader in scope. Referring to Frank Reynold’s seminal work, Strong recognized that a reader’s “individualistic bias” can be mitigated by the appreciation of the karmic depth of a lifetime–the great expanse revealed in the “extended” Buddha biography. In other words, reading the Buddha as an individualized hero-type might seem logical and salient, but doing so obfuscates the work of many other beings in the story of his final lifetime, the fact OF his many previous lifetimes, and the pattern of the many previous (and future) buddhas as well (p. 4).
Here is a picture of the chapters and their authors:
My favourite chapter is by Buddhist Studies scholar, fiction writer, and volume co-editor Vanessa Sasson. The chapter is titled “A Timeless Love Story” (pp. 82-97). Herein, Sasson traces the infinite pairings of the Buddha and Yasodhara across time and Buddhist sacred texts to argue that:
Indeed, the Buddha would not have a story at all were it not for the many other characters in his life playing their parts. The Buddha’s story is built around relationships, each character participating in the great narrative that is the Buddha biography. As Strong so insightfully argues, the Buddha’s story is not just “a solo quest of a solitary seeker.” It is also a collective narrative, intertwined as it is with so many others (p. 93).
Since the Buddha’s biography is the seed of all Buddhist fiction, this volume is important for helping modern readers understand that sacred stories told and retold still help us to make meaning in this crazy, chaotic world. Moreover, the volume highlights the invaluable scholarship of John Strong that is grounded in reading as an act of cultural engagement to remind us that in reading and engaging with the Buddha’s story, we become a part of it.
Buddhist Fiction Blog 