Serinity Young received her PhD from Columbia University and is an adjunct assistant professor at Queens College, where she administers the Himalayan Studies minor. She is also a research associate in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, where she works on Tibetan artifacts and iconography. She has been awarded two Fulbrights, two Asian Cultural Council grants, was a research scholar in the History of Science and in Archaeology at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and has been elected to the Hunter College Alumni Hall of Fame. Her research focuses on gender issues in Buddhist texts, material culture, and rituals; shamanism; sacred biography; pilgrimage; healing and medicine; dream theory; and archaeology. She has done fieldwork in India, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, and Russia. She is the author of Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Ritual, & Iconography (Routledge, 2004) and Dreaming in the Lotus: Buddhist Dream Narrative, Imagery, and Practice (Wisdom, 1999); editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion (Macmillan 1998); editor of An Anthology of Sacred Texts By and About Women (Crossroads & HarperCollins, 1993); most recently she has published Body & Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings, (AMNH Publications and University of Washington Press, 2009) and has several electronic publications on the AMNH website (www.amnh.org/our-research/anthropology/collections/highlights).
“A thought-provoking study. Young has made an important contribution to Buddhist Studies and to dream research. Excellent work.”—Journal of Buddhist Ethics
DREAMING IN THE LOTUS
Buddhist Dream Narrative, Imagery, and Practice
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Dreams play a powerful role in the sacred biographies of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: they foretell the births of religious figures, describe their accomplishments, and reveal esoteric teachings.
In this fascinating study of the Buddhist dream experience, Dr. Serinity Young explores the complex functions of dreams in the sacred biographies of the Buddha and other central Buddhist figures, and reveals the ever-changing nature of dreams in Buddhist thought and practice.
Young presents a fascinating, culturally varied picture of the Buddhist dream experience and its revelations about Buddhist ideas of consciousness, cognition, and salvation. Using biographies of the Buddha and other important Buddhist figures, Serinity Young explores the functions of dreams and maps their role at the intersection of biography, history, and religious belief.