For the Love of Dogs: Finding Compassion in a Time of Famine in Pali Buddhist Stories
This paper focuses on stories from the 13th century Rasavāhinī in which feeding a starving dog is described as an act of great merit, equal even to the care of a monk or the Buddha. It begins with a reevaluation of passages from Buddhist texts that have been taken by scholars as evidence of pan- Bud...
1. VerfasserIn: | |
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Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Veröffentlicht: |
MDPI
[2019]
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In: |
Religions
Jahr: 2019, Band: 10, Heft: 3, Seiten: 1-21 |
weitere Schlagwörter: | B
Buddhism
B Famine B Dogs B Merit |
Online Zugang: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Zusammenfassung: | This paper focuses on stories from the 13th century Rasavāhinī in which feeding a starving dog is described as an act of great merit, equal even to the care of a monk or the Buddha. It begins with a reevaluation of passages from Buddhist texts that have been taken by scholars as evidence of pan- Buddhist concern for taking care of animals. It argues that they have been over-read and that the Rasavāhinī stories are distinctive. The setting in which these acts occur, a catastrophic famine, helps us to understand the transformation of the despised dog into an object of compassion. In such dire circumstances, when humans themselves behave like animals, compassion for a starving dog is both a new recognition of a fundamental shared kinship between human and animal and a gesture of recovering lost humanity. |
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ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
Enthält: | Enthalten in: Religions
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel10030183 |