Buddhism, Death, and the Feminine

This article is an attempt to elucidate how certain developmental issues and conflicts are constellated in non-Western theologies. Despite a prevailing view of Buddhism as a philosophy of detachment that enlightens us about our illusions and the psychological causes of our suffering, numerous Buddhist texts also evidence marked disgust for the body and physical decay, disparage the putrescing body as a real thing, and, finally, blame women for death and contamination.

It is the task of clinicians to trace the origins of ideas, feelings, and pathological character structures in their patients. Psychohistorians and psychologists of religion, on the other hand, attempt to shed light on constellations of emotional arrest and injury, the determinants of motive, fantasy, and imagination in historical individuals, groups, and cultures. While this task may seem epistemically complicated, and indeed any psychological methodology may be justly susceptible to a variety of criticisms, the discoveries of psychoanalysis may be invoked to identify certain specific patterns of behavior and fantasy that might not be discerned as clearly without a psychological lens.

When one examines the fecal obsessions of Martin Luther,