cilitated harmony within the monasteries. In fact, the
ritual for becoming a monk or nun seems to have been
conceived as a kind of rebirth back into one’s “origi-
nal” family, and one was thereafter called “a son of the
Buddha.” This motif of rebirth is clear, too, in the way
that one’s “age” and seniority within the monastery is
determined not by real age, but by the number of years
that have passed since one’s ORDINATION.
The third sphere of family discourse in Buddhism
appears in the way that Buddhist authorities, likely
from the earliest phases of the religion, prescribed
proper conduct for those who remained in the family.
These moral guidelines define the life to be maintained
at home: One is to be obedient to seniors and consid-
erate of others’ needs, while also adhering to the
generic set of Buddhist precepts—not killing, stealing,
lying, and so on. Given these statements, and particu-
larly those that urge filial submission to one’s parents
and seniors, one can see that Buddhist discourse was,
and still is, intent on stabilizing and even bolstering
the family. The reasons for Buddhism’s advocacy of
traditional family practice are complex, but one im-
portant reason is that Buddhist monasteries relied on
families to support them financially. In fact, to facili-
tate exchanges between the family and the monastery,
Buddhist discourse often emphasized that one is only
a good, filial son at home if one patronizes the Bud-
dhist monasteries. These injunctions could also be fo-
cused on ancestor care, where it was argued that living
descendents ought to patronize Buddhist monastics in
order to enlist their spiritual power, which could be
directed toward caring for the deceased family mem-
bers in the afterworld. In short, Buddhist monastics in-
serted themselves within the sphere of at-home family
values by arguing that the family’s life cycle needed to
involve patronage of Buddhist monasteries.
As for the last category of familial rhetoric, at dif-
ferent times in Buddhist history there appeared mys-
tical genealogies in which a higher Buddhist family was
established within the already domestic space of the
Buddhist establishment. Thus, in tantric Buddhism in
India and Tibet, as well as in the CHAN SCHOOLof Bud-
dhism in East Asia, it was claimed that certain monks
were more directly related to the Buddha than other
Buddhist monks or nuns. In both cases, the language
of fathers and sons was relied upon to explain why cer-
tain monks should be taken to be living representatives
of the tradition, with truth, authority, and legitimacy
flowing directly down the lineage from the Buddha to
the present master. In fact, intricate logics emerged
wherein these elite “sons of the Buddha” were put in
charge of guiding other less connected Buddhists back
to their true familial relationship to the Buddha.
In sum, though Buddhism sought to escape the
family, this very effort to leave domesticity was itself
domesticized and remade into a Buddhist family.
Moreover, this new Buddhist family established a
symbiotic relationship with the lay family, encourag-
ing its stability and productivity, along with a pro-
Buddhist orientation. Finally, even within the familial
space of the monasteries, other hyper-families ap-
peared, suggesting an ongoing need to re-create iden-
tity and authority according to patriarchal logics, along
with the sense that sameness and difference in social
space are best handled via familial rhetorics that are
both inclusive and hierarchizing.See also:Laity; Monasticism; Monks; Nuns; WomenBibliography
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Buddhism in India.Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1997.ALANCOLEFANWANG JING
(BRAHMA’S NET SUTRA)The Fanwang jing(Brahma’s Net Sutra) is a highly re-
garded apocryphal text in East Asian Buddhism that
provided a set of uniquely MAHAYANAprecepts. Ac-
cording to tradition, the sutra was spoken by the Bud-
dha, recorded in Sanskrit in India, and then translated
by KUMARAJIVA(350–409/413) into Chinese in 406.
In fact, however, it is now known that the Fanwang
jingwas composed in China by unknown author(s),FANWANG JING(BRAHMA’SNETSUTRA)