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Virtuous Bodies: The Physical Dimensions of Morality in Buddhist Ethics. By Suzanne Mrozik.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 200. $45.
Virtuous Bodies is based on Mroziks 1998 Harvard dissertation, The Relationship between Body
and Morality According to the iksasamuccaya and several articles published over the last few years.
The iksasamuccaya, translated by Mrozik as Compendium of Training, is a collection of passages
from Mainstream and Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, divided into nineteen chapters and interspersed
with commentary. The compiler and commentator, antidevamost likely a monk living in the eighth
century at the great monastery of Nalandawas a strong proponent of the Mahayana and intended
the Compendium to be a manual for the bodhisattva. Because the Compendium contains citations of
numerous Buddhist sutras, scholars over the last century have utilized the collection to shed light on
the textual histories of the sources quoted at length within.
At the outset Mrozik presents the two dening approaches to her interpretation of the Compendium.
The rst is to emphasize the role of the body in the passages assembled in the Compendium. Mroziks
theoretical orientation is meant to be a corrective to the emphasis on cetana (translated heart-mind)
in scholarly discourse on Buddhist ethics. While recognizing the signicance of cetana witin the ethical
tradition, Mrozik intends to demonstrate . . . that Buddhist attention to heart-mind does not preclude
an equal attention to the body (p. 4). Armed with an interpretive strategy that focuses on the role of
the body in the ethical development of the bodhisattva as presented in the Compendium, the author
attempts to prove that the presence of ascetic discourse does not bespeak a lack of interest in bodies
(p. 6). The author understands ascetic discourse to be the representation of bodies as impermanent,
foul and without intrinsic and eternal essence . . . (ibid.).
Mroziks second approach is to read the Compendium as a text with literary integrity, not merely
as a collection of sutra fragments. Although the material gathered by antideva came from texts that
have different doctrinal orientations and subject matter, Mrozik quite reasonably assumes that the selection and editing of texts represents an authorial orientation that should be considered in its own right.
The Western scholarly tradition has largely ignored questions about how the Compendium is organized.
Mrozik notes the recent publication of several studies on the text, including Clayton (2006), Hedinger
(1984), and Mahoney (2002), but refers only briey to their ndings. It is clear from this dearth of
secondary literature that Mrozik is moving into uncharted waters. The fact that there has been no complete translation of the Compendium since the publication of Bendall and Rouse in the early twentieth
century is an indicator of the scholarly neglect of the text and of the status of Mroziks book as a pioneering work that will set the bar for future studies.
Virtuous Bodies is broken into six chapters. The introduction lays out the goals of the study and
the methodological choices that inform Mroziks analysis. Chapter two is a discussion of possible
translations of the term atmabhava based on usages in the Compendium and its relationship to other
terms that illuminate conceptions of the body in the sutra material. Mrozik argues that atmabhava is the
central organizing term for body in the Compendium not only because of how frequently it appears
in the sutra passages antideva has collected but because it appears in a verse summary he has written
himself. This verse summary articulates a set of vital points (marma-sthana) which, according to
Mrozik, provide the conceptual framework for the Compendium.
Chapter three draws upon the concept of ripening (Skt. paripac) to frame passages from the Compendium in which contact with the bodhisattvas body puries beings. Mroziks point here is to emphasize that the ethical implications of the behavior of the bodhisattva have a tangible form. It is the
body, or at least elements of the bodhisattva personality connected to the body, that awakens the desire
for buddhahood in living beings on the level of the sensory, and not merely on the mental (or heartmind), plane.
Chapters four and ve provide examples of the two types of bodies, virtuous and foul, respectively. The author cites examples in which the two are utilized in conjunction with one another to
demonstrate that these discourses, though arguably distinct from a philosophical perspective, complement one another on the rhetorical level. They are both informed by the overarching soteriological
goal of freeing oneself and other beings from the impurities of bad karma. The nal chapter is a critique

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of the masculine perspective of the Compendium, based on the notion that a dialogic relationship with
ancient material is an indication that one is taking the text seriously.
One major contribution of this volume is that it shows how material from the Compendium ts
into theoretical categories of contemporary academic discourse that have become important hermeneutic tools. In her discussions of the various androcentric modes of the Compendium, Mrozik has
paved the way for comparative work with parallel trends in traditions as varied as Christianity and
Islam. Mrozik illustrates such instances by using passages from the Compendium in which women
are taken by ascetic monks as objects of disgust and by pointing out that the number of references to
female bodhisattvas is extremely limited (p. 91). She also demonstrates that the rhetoric of isolation
(expressed most radically in the gure of the forest-dwelling monk) frequently advocated in Mahayana
sutras is belied by the implicit understanding that the bodhisattva lives in a community in which he both
ripens other beings and is simultaneously the recipient of their grace (p. 123). The necessity for sensory
contact with the bodhisattvas body testies to the existence of an ethical community that thrives precisely because of mutual bodily exposure of one monk to another. Third, Mrozik demonstrates that the
seeming contradiction of presenting the body both as a crippling hindrance to awakening and as an
idealized form resulting from moral rigor is not inconsistent, in the sense that both negative and positive
expressions foster a soteriological urgency in the reader. Fourth, Mrozik makes it clear that antideva
sees the body as instantiating both the cause for awakening and the effects of proper practice. The prime
example here, of course, is the golden skin of the Buddha as an effect of ethical practice.
In both the organization of the book and the presentation of source material, it is clear that these
four critical insights are derivative of a larger theoretical interest in the body. And each of these
approaches to interpreting the Compendium functions to buttress Mroziks overall thesis that the
category of body cannot be ignored in the study of medieval Indian Buddhist texts. There is no doubt
that Mroziks categories of physiomoral and ascetic discourse provide balance to studies of Buddhist
ethics that have until recently emphasized cetana. Mrozik cites a number of instances where body and
the related category of monastic deportment are viewed as indicators of the level of moral achievement attained by the bodhisattva-monk. Complexion, posture, and even perfect body parts are given
pride of place along with the internal (what Mrozik labels moral) accomplishments of generosity
and humility among others. Mrozik places these internal and external virtues on the same continuum,
labeling this discourse physiomoral in that it links body to morality and links physical transformation to moral transformation (p. 7). So far so good.
A problem arises though in considering the physiomoral a positive discourse, a move that places
the term in opposition to what Mrozik calls the negative discourse of the ascetic. Mrozik denes
the physiomoral discourse as a positive discourse on bodies, since it ascribes to bodies important
roles in the ethical development of self and other (p. 63). The author then suggests that ethical development entails the cultivation of virtuous bodies as well as virtuous heart-minds (p. 20). This last
point is well taken, but provides an incomplete picture. According to Mroziks denition on p. 7 (see
above), the medieval Indian Buddhist theories of spiritual progress operate on the assumption that
ones physical appearance is evidence of internal moral transformation and vice versa. In that sense,
the physiomoral is a value-neutral relation that explains as much about the cultivation of virtue as it
does the regressive behavior leading to impurity and moral failure. Because of its value-neutral status
I would caution against terming the physiomoral as either specically positive or as a discourse that
relates solely to ethical development leading to the virtuous body.
By dening the ascetic discourse as a negative discourse that represents bodies as impermanent, foul and without intrinsic and eternal essence (p. 6), Mrozik fails to take into account the many
treatments of asceticism as a soteriological process, in which preoccupation with the foul body is just
one element. Her denition of asceticism as a discourse on the foul body does not take into account
other scholarly denitions, which understand the ascetic as including the foul body in a much broader
soteriological vision integrating the starting point, the path, and the goal.
Shifting from broader theoretical questions to issues of exegesis and philology, I would like to focus
on the analysis of terms that are typically translated as body. Mrozik clearly states in the introduction that her analysis is literary and not philological. By doing so, she emphasizes the literary integrity of the Sanskrit manuscript she is working with and does not attend to diachronic shifts in the

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meanings of various Sanskrit terms or comparison of the Sanskrit with Tibetan or Chinese. A literary
analysis may fairly exclude philological methods that require diachronic and cross-linguistic study, but
given the fact that numerous words in the Sanskrit manuscript might be translated as body, a thorough
comparison of these terms seems imperative. However, Mrozik chooses to focus on the single term
atmabhava, as opposed to other signicant words such as kaya or arira, because the rst is used exclusively for body in the verse summary composed by antideva.
Mrozik, following others (see particularly Hedinger), seizes upon the verse summary as a guidepost
for the Compendium. This summary of vital points is one of a number of verses likely attributable to
antideva that are scattered throughout the Compendium. It reads as follows: atmabhavasya bhoganam
tryadhvavrtteh ubhasya ca. / utsargah sarvasatvebhyas tadraksauddhivardhanam. Based on the
fact that antieva has selected the Sanskrit term atmabhava in his verse summary and that it appears
again and again throughout the sutras cited, Mrozik states that in the Compendium, atmabhava is the
term of choice for body (p. 22). While making a strong case for the centrality of this term, Mrozik
also acknowledges that since the Compendium quotes so extensively from so many different sources,
often its choice of vocabulary is dictated by its sources (ibid.).
This claim about the centrality of atmabhava to the Compendium as a whole is problematic in
light of the fact that Mrozik wishes to view the work as a text in its own right (p. 16). A cursory
glance at terms that are typically related to the conceptual eld of the body shows that atmabhava is
just one of several possibilities appearing throughout the Compendium. While antideva, in the Mulakarikas he contributes to the Compendium, seems committed to atmabhava, there is no such terminological uniformity in discussions of the body in the work as a whole. The scriptures antideva cites
are far more likely to employ the term kaya than atmabhava. Even more dramatic, however, is the recent discovery of a number of versespreviously assumed to be sutra material, but now condently
attributed to antideva himself (see Harrison 2007)in which kaya again appears more frequently
than atmabhava. The fact that not only the scriptural material (which constitutes the bulk of the Compendium), but even a large segment of verses written by antideva himself, evince a preference for
and makes it difcult to disentangle its conceptual range from that of kaya. Mroziks analysis leaves
the reader without a precise denition for atmabhava, and by extension renders unclear the distinctions among the conceptual spheres of other terms for body in the Compendium.
The nal task Mrozik sets for herself in Virtuous Bodies is the development of an ethical critique
that is mindful of the interpretive chasm that lies between medieval India and the post-modern West.
To this end, she employs Ricoeurs hermeneutical approach to texts, which she characterizes as an
effort to recover truth and an effort to uncover truth (p. 118). Mrozik intends to bring medieval Indian
and post-modern perspectives into dialogue. However, it is difcult to know what that dialogue
consists of. Mrozik suggests that antideva is in conversation with his tradition inasmuch as he has
selected fragments from Mahayana scriptures to create an original model for the bodhisattva (p. 114).
Is his method of negotiating tradition a model for Mrozik? The Compendium certainly emphasizes
the physical qualities that are both indicators of holiness and spurs to observers to exert themselves
in practice. In that sense, the Compendium highlights corporeal specicity. Mrozik agrees that there
is merit in recognizing bodily differences (p. 116) but then adds that the physical standards for the
bodhisattva emphasize attributes of the male body, indicating that the Compendium is just another text
in the Mahayana tradition pervaded by sexist views. It is difcult to see how there is any concession to
the tradition by Mrozik on this front. antideva presents one vision of optimal sexualitythe celibate
maleand Mrozik presents a vision of sexuality that does not privilege anyone gender characteristic
over another. In pointing out the non-egalitarian nature of medieval Indian sexuality, Mrozik joins a
chorus of scholars from Rita Gross to Jan Nattier, who have illustrated this point utilizing other texts
in the Mahayana tradition, but it is unclear how unmasking the gendered nature of Buddhist ethical
ideals create[s] the possibility of more diversely bodied ethical ideals (p. 126). Here it is apparent
that the dialogue breaks down and there is only description of difference and the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the pre- and post-modern. While Mrozik successfully represents antidevas take
on his tradition, her demonstration of pre-modern illiberalism of the sexist variety has been rehearsed

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 129.3 (2009)

on a number of occasions. In this sense, her relation to the Compendium is not much of a dialogue,
in that there is no give and take. Her ideological position eliminates this as a possibility.
Nicholas Witkowski
Stanford University

works cited
Clayton, Barbara R. Moral Theory in antidevas iksasamuccaya: Cultivating the Fruits of Virtue.
London: Routledge, 2006.
Hedinger, Jurg. Aspekte der Schulung in der Laufbahn eines Bodhisattva: Dargestellt nach dem iksasamuccaya des antideva. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984.
Harrison, Paul. The Case of the Vanishing Poet: New Light on antideva and the iksasamuccaya.
In Festschrift fr Michael Hahn Zum 65. Geburtstag von Freuden und Schlern berrecht, ed.
K. Klaus and J-U. Hartmann. Pp. 21548. Vienna: Arbeitskreis fr tibetische und buddhistische
Studien Universitt Wien, 2007.
Mahoney, Richard. Of the Progress of the Bodhisattva: The Bodhisattvamarga in the iksasamuccaya.
Masters thesis, University of Canterbury, 2002.
Mrozik, Susanne. The Relationship between Morality and the Body in Monastic Training According
to the iksasamucaya. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998.
. The Value of Human Differences: South Asian Buddhist Contributions toward an Embodied Value Theory. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 9 (2002): 133.
. Cooking Living Beings: The Transformative Effects of Encounters with Bodhisattva
Bodies. Journal of Religious Ethics 32:1 (2004): 17594.
. Materializations of Virtue: Buddhist Discourses on Bodies. In Bodily Citations: Religion
and Judith Butler, ed. Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville. Pp. 1547. New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 2006.