Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thailand.

Brown, Robert L.

Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thailand. By DONALD K. SWEARER. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. xvi + 332, figs. $35.

This book is about how Buddha images are made, how they are used, how they are considered, and how they are theorized. The title "Becoming the Buddha" refers to how the physical object that is a Buddha image becomes the Buddha in order to be worshiped. The focus is on the ritual that produces this transformation, a ritual called the buddhabhiseka that "hypostasizes the Buddha in an image." While the consecration rituals in Thailand are emphasized, Swearer demonstrates broad knowledge of Buddhist traditions throughout Asia, bringing them up throughout the discussions. Indeed, the author shows a masterful comprehension of the rich and ever increasing scholarly literature on how we are to understand Buddhism itself, an understanding that is in the process of sometimes radical reinterpretations. It is to Swearer's benefit that he negotiates the scholarly literature with grace, using it consistently to build his own arguments but without any sign of rancor toward alternate positions.

There is a central problem in Buddhism around which the book revolves, and of which the image consecration is a key part. The Buddha died. What do worshipers do about the absent Buddha? Where do Buddha images, relics, stupas, and other physical manifestations of the absent Buddha fit into Buddhist practice, literature, and theory? Swearer uses the ritual of the image consecration as a key to investigate these questions. The division of the absent Buddha into kaya or "bodies," as into the body of his teachings (dhammakaya) and a body of his person (rupakaya), one formless and one with form, is an essential if often debated aspect of Buddhist doctrine. Swearer traces the constant intertwining of these two dichotomies--reflected as aniconic vs. iconic, textual vs. visual, learned vs. popular, monastic vs. lay, and so on--polarities that encompass much of Buddhist practice.

Swearer demonstrates that the buddhabhiseka as performed in northern Thailand combines both the teachings and the personhood of the Buddha into a single image. The ritual takes place during the night and is divided into three periods, thus mimicking the Buddha's process of reaching enlightenment during the three watches of the night. The consecration ritual of the Buddha image has, in fact, the intent to instruct and to imbue the image with the history and sacred power of the Buddha. For the northern Thai ritual this intent is reflected in two distinct characteristic features, namely:

 the prominence of the Buddha story in sermon and chant, and the
 crucial role of holy monks whose meditation serves to implant Buddha
 parami [perfections] into the image (pluk sek). The first constitutes
 the narrative template that makes the image of the Buddha's
 succedaneum; the second empowers the image with vital, enlivening
 power. (p. 211)

A discussion of the ritual itself, and the texts used in the chants by the monks to effect it, takes up much of the book. Swearer appends at the end of these chapters translations of the Pali and Thai texts used for chants and sermons, a particularly helpful strategy to allow the reader to "hear" the stories told orally. Translations of key texts are placed at the end of other chapters in the book as well, such as texts relating to the making of Buddha images in the chapter on "Constructing a Buddha Image" and to the politics of specific images in the chapter entitled "The Body of the Buddha."

The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the nature of the image, its relationship to the relic, and its placement within the monastic context. Swearer attempts a brief excursus into the art-historical debate over the time and place of the first anthropomorphic Buddha image, and the recent discussion regarding the nature of the so-called aniconic period when, in India, no anthropomorphic Buddha images were initially produced following the Buddha's death. He uses Wat Haripunjaya in Lamphun in northern Thailand (about which he has published a book-length study) as a model for his discussion of the monastic organization of sacred space and the relationship between image and relic.

The second part of the book focuses on the consecration ritual itself. Here the various previous scholarly interpretations of the eye-opening ceremonies found throughout Buddhist Asia that characterize the ritual are discussed, and the ceremonies that Swearer observed in Thailand are described and analyzed. He presents his own hermeneutical interpretation of the way in which the ritual texts perform their transformative function between the monks and the objects. Swearer's argument is consistently that the ritual is designed to make the Buddha present.

The last section of the book raises a series of related issues. These include the nature of the past and future Buddhas; the two-body theory; the importance and significance of the eyes of the image and in worship; and the role of other deities and ancestral spirits in Buddhist ritual. Part three ends in an epilogue that returns to a fundamental debate regarding Buddha images, whether their worship was sanctioned by the Buddha and if the dhamma or textual body of the Buddha is the higher or truer approach to his teachings. The concern is that the worship of objects leads to practices of magic, miracles, and misunderstanding. In the epilogue, Swearer discusses three highly charismatic twentieth-century Thai monks (P. A. Payutto, Buddhdasa Bhikkhu, and Phra Bodhirak), all of whom were critical of image worship, but for different reasons. The point is that even in Thailand, perhaps the country with the most Buddha images per citizen in the world, the use, meaning, and legitimacy of images continues to be questioned.

This is an important book that should be read by scholars and students of Buddhism generally. It goes far beyond a focus on Thai Buddhist practices. Art historians, anthropologists, and historians of Asia will also benefit from reading the book, for Swearer has brought together in this book his thinking on Buddhism accumulated over a long and distinguished career.

ROBERT L. BROWN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES