Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek RebirthUniversity of California Press, 2002 M11 11 - 448 pages With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides. |
Contents
NonIndic Theories of Rebirth | 19 |
Rebirth Desire and the Return of the Dead | 50 |
The Imaginary Experiment and the Buddhist Implications | 72 |
Ethicization Karma and Everyday Life | 140 |
The Buddhist Ascesis | 150 |
Eschatology and Soteriology in Greek Rebirth | 190 |
Rebirth and Reason | 249 |
Notes | 361 |
| 413 | |
| 429 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Äjívika Amerindian ancestor animals aporia balian Balinese baloma become beliefs birth body born Brahmin Buddha Buddhist conception cultural daimon dead death discourse divine doctrine Druze earth eating Empedocles Ennead ethical ethnographic existence father gods Greek Guthrie hamatsa heaven hell human world Iamblichus Ibid idea ideal Igbo important incarnation Indian Inuit Jaina Janavasabha Jàtaka karma karma theory karmic karmic eschatology Kwakiutl later living logic Love Malinowski monks moral myth myth of Er nirvana Northwest Coast notion one’s Orphic otherworld person philosopher Plato Plotinus Plotinus’s possess Precepts Presocratic Press punishment Pythagoras Pythagorean reality realm rebirth cycle rebirth eschatology rebirth theories reborn refers reincarnation religions religious rewards ritual salvation says scholars sense sentience sexual shamanic small-scale societies social Socrates soteriology soul species sentience spirit structural Sutta texts thinkers thought Timaeus tion Tlingit tradition trans transformations Trobriand Tuma University Upaniãads Upanishadic varJa Vedic woman womb