Gender and overcoming it in the work of A. L. Ivanchenko

The article is devoted to analysing the perception of concepts related to the human sex in the novels and essays of A. Ivanchenko. The article specifies that this author's prescription is primarily due to Buddhist philosophy. The novel «SWEDENBORG. The Separate Life of the Genitals» demonstrates the external suppression of man's higher spiritual movements, and, as a result, the moral and mental decay due to the hero's absorption in the lust for existence, especial-ly the lust for sexuality. It is one of the basic darkening aspects of Buddhism that plunges one into suffering: sensual attachment, or raga, which Ivanchenko believes to be the main one. The artistic conception of the novel «SWEDENBORG. Separate life of the genitals» is also due to the symbolic (phallic) interpretation of the title image in N. Gogol’s novel «The Nose» and the mysticism of E. Swedenborg, who also discussed the posthumous consequences of adultery. The hero of the novel takes a dual position: on the one hand, he realizes and exposes to the reader the cor-rupting nature of modern reality, on the other, he accepts this situation and thus debunks it even more by the example of his own life. The novel «Monogram» and essays included in the cycle «Homo Mysticus». «The Sutras of the Sun-strokeSunstroke» offer various Buddhist ways to overcome gender and, more broadly, sensual affection to samsaric reality: comprehending the consequences of bad existence, discovering the illusory nature of a person, turning to meditation cultivating aversion to the sensual in the human mind.