Living Karma examines the life, thought, and practice of Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655), one of the most influential Buddhist monks of late Ming-dynasty China. The Buddhist cultures of the Ming have only recently begun to receive the scholarly attention they deserve, but Beverley Foulks McGuire has done much more than fill in blanks on our map of the Chinese Buddhist landscape. She has given us engaging and consistently insightful discussions of practices—divination, repentance, ritual, asceticism, and vows—that will be of interest to scholars across the fields of religious and cultural studies.
As the title indicates, this book revolves around conceptions of karma—how one deciphers it, repents for it, evokes the powers of buddhas and bodhisattvas to erase it, and attempts to alter it through ritual practice. Is karma a natural law with exact correspondence between action and consequence, or is it possible to intervene in the karmic process and affect its...
