EHE Book Reviews

Inscendence/Embodiment EEs/EHEs Record Type: Review ID: 165
Religion and the Body Coakley, Sarah. (Ed.).
The essays in this collection are an attempt to answer "Who or What is the Body?," "Why Is the ‘Body’ so Much on Our ‘Mind’? And, "How Do Corporeal [Religious] ‘Practices’ Mediate Social Meanings and Even Transform Them"? Part One consists of 3 chapters on "Contemporary Western Perspectives: Secularism and the Body." They form a backdrop for the following two parts. The Western Religious Inheritance: Judaism and Christianity on the Body" (4 chapters), and Beyond the West: Eastern Religious Traditions and the Body" (8 chapters, each covering one of the following religions: Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Theravãda Buddhism, Mahãyãña Buddhism; Taoism, Japanese religion, Sufism, and the Sikh tradition. There are great differences between secular and religious views of the body. This cultural and theoretical back drop is relevant to scholars interested in exceptional human experiences because they seem to be embodied experiences of transcending the body by hinting at a larger body of which we are all members.
Publisher Information:	New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xxx + 311. Chap. Bibl; 32 illus; Ind: 306-311; 10 photos

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Religion and the Body