Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The Conclusion considers how the lessons of this book speak to practices and ideas concerning pretas in different times and places. South Asian preta narratives established an enduring set of repertoires that later Buddhists drew on, adapted, and combined with local repertoires in their own communities. This applies to not only the ritual sphere, but also the ways that the preta continues to be invoked to speak to human experience. While preta literature crafts a corporeally specific and hierarchical discourse, the somatic physio-moral discourse of preta tales cannot be reduced to the equation of embodiment with past virtue. Instead, it illustrates the crucial role of embodiment in ethical cultivation and liberation. The production of affective and emotional states through literary aesthetics plays an important role in this ethical formation. The narrative affective ethos of these texts at once reinforces the hierarchical somatic discourse and destabilizes it altogether..