This book highlights the distinctive and unfamiliar ways in which diverse religious traditions understand the 'body', and raises to greater consciousness some of the assumptions and problems of contemporary attitudes. It is a rich source for comparative studies of the 'body', and of its relation to society and the divine. List of illustrations ix List of contributors xi Preface xv Introduction: religion and the body 1(14) Sarah Coakley PART I: CONTEMPORARY WESTERN PERSPECTIVES: SECULARISM AND THE BODY The body in Western society: social theory and its perspectives 15(27) Bryan S. Turner Remarks on the anthropology of the body 42(11) Talal Asad The soul's successors: philosophy and the `body' 53(18) Mary Midgley PART II: THE WESTERN RELIGIOUS INHERITANCE: JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY ON THE BODY The body in Jewish worship: three rituals examined 71(19) Louis Jacobs `My helper and my enemy': the body in Greek Christianity 90(21) Kallistos Ware The body in Western Catholic Christianity 111(20) Andrew Louth The image of the body in the formative phases of the Protestant Reformation 131(24) David Tripp PART III: BEYOND THE WEST: EASTERN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS AND THE BODY Zoroastrianism and the body 155(12) Alan Williams Medical and mythical constructions of the body in Hindu texts 167(18) Wendy Doniger The body in Theravada Buddhist monasticism 185(20) Steven Collins Some Mahayana Buddhist perspectives on the body 205(26) Paul Williams The Taoist body and cosmic prayer 231(17) Michael Saso Perceptions of the body in Japanese religion 248(14) Michael Pye `I take off the dress of the body': Eros in Sufi literature and life 262(27) Annemarie Schimmel The body in Sikh tradition 289(17) Eleanor Nesbitt Index 306