Becoming the Buddha

The first book-length study on a crucial ritual in Buddhist practice in Asia is Becoming the Buddha. It is the consecration or “new Buddha” ceremony that makes the Buddha present or alive. Donald Swearer provides a detailed and accessible look at this northern Thai ritual. This exploration is different from other text-based or ethnological approaches. He makes a significant contribution to our understanding the Buddha image, how it plays in Buddhist devotional life, and the relationship to veneration of Buddha Relics. He combines ethnography, analysis, and Buddhist texts to explain this mimetic reenactment. It is charged with the extraordinary power and status of Buddhahood. This book focuses on the process of transformation through meditation, sermon and chant. The image consecration traditions of Buddhist Asia, also known as “opening up the eyes to the Buddha”, share many similarities. Becoming the Buddha, a cultural history of northern Thailand, illuminates scriptural accounts about the making of the Buddha’s first image. It discusses the historical context, Buddhological insights gained, and the hermeneutics (absence and presence) and offers a comparison of various Buddhist traditions.