Search

Vajrayana Buddhism, like all of the world's major religions, places high importance on the ancient practice of pilgrimage for spiritual development and maintenance of spiritual health. The negative mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the need for exploring efficacious methods of religious coping, especially those closely associated with culture and tradition. This qualitative hermeneutical study was aimed at examining the impact of prior pilgrimage participation upon individuals experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. Nine interviews were conducted with participants who had completed pilgrimage in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition and were enduring the COVID-19 pandemic while embedded in western culture. Results elucidated the mechanisms and impacts of pilgrimage components upon multidimensional aspects of participants. Beneficial effects of pilgrimage on mental well-being were found including resilience building enacted through enhanced religious and spiritual coping and promotion of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the Tangut translation of the famous Entry into Two Truths. This composition by Atiśa (982-1054) was important in the formation of the doctrinal system of the Tangut Buddhism. The paper examines the possible variations of the source text of the Tangut translation, its relationship with the texts on valid cognition. The paper discusses the possible division of the text and provides the translation of the Tangut version and compares it with the Tibetan original. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemplative practice underlies the spiritual development of major religious traditions. In addition, this practice has spread over a wide variety of areas in Western society, ranging from personal development to leadership and medical care (Milton, 2011a). One clear case is the introduction of mindfulness and meditation in clinical psychology. An analysis of the discourse used in mindfulness meditation courses, Silvestre-López (2016a) suggests that conceptual metaphors (Lakoff, 1987; Kovecses, 2015) not only guide the discourse of participants, but may also provide the grounding for the conceptualisation of meditative experience. We approach the linguistic dimension of meditative practice in the Buddhist Tibetan tradition by focussing on texts by Sogyal Rinpoche (1993) and the 14th Dalai Lama (2004). Inspired by procedures proposed by Kimmel (2012), with the help of qualitative data analysis software ATLAS.ti, this paper aims at unravelling the conceptual metaphors that underlie the discourse of the sample texts. First, source and target domains are identified and classified as well as relevant mappings correlating them. Secondly, linguistic evidence is provided of conceptual metaphors that help construe the conceptual representation of meditation. The findings may allow for a comparison between traditional Buddhist models and those already identified within the context of Western mindfulness meditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A speech on the role of Buddhist master Guru Rinpoche in promoting Buddhism in Tibet delivered by Geshe Ngawang Samten, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Tibetan Studies, India, presented.

Little thought has been given to the possibility that China's repressive Tibet policy could be driven largely by its fear of external forces, as opposed to the government's authoritarian nature. This article tries to explain why it was only in 1994 that Chinese authorities seriously and systematically strengthened religious control in Tibet. This had been put in place during the 1987-89 protests but never effectively enforced. The key is the Chinese leaders' perception of external threats in the post-Tiananmen era, which prompted Chinese authorities to believe that instead of being mostly an ethnic nuisance, Tibetan separatism-utilizing Tibetan Buddhism as a "weapon"-had become a "tool" wielded by "hostile Western forces" seeking ultimately to break up China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tibetan Buddhism, in the eyes of Orthodox Christian polemicists, was always seen as a harmful paganism, and fighting against this 'superstition' was a high priority. Based on analysis of nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox missionary articles, this paper examines the stereotyped portrayal of Tibetan Buddhism as a civilisational opponent to Christianity, and the ways Russian scholars, ethnographers, philosophers, and officials either supported or challenged this view. In this paper, I argue that, in Russia, the Orientalist paradigm is common to a greater degree among Christian clergy than in academic circles due to the status of a dominating religion the Orthodoxy enjoyed in Russia. The Russian missionaries' support of imperial power was the essential factor. The clerics viewed themselves as carriers not only of Christian values, but also of the idea of Russian statehood and European civilisation in general. Russian Christian intellectuals repeatedly attempted to comprehend Buddhism rationally, but these attempts were highly formalistic. For them, academic study was never an end in itself, but, I argue, a convenient tool to achieve ideological domination and establish moral authority. However, their intellectual and psychological inability to view other religions as different, rather than false, was, and still is, an obstacle to mutual understanding and respect between Christianity and Buddhism in today's Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles published in the issue on topics including Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism, translations of Jesuit mathematical and calendrical works in the 18th century, and knowledge system in the Qing period.

This paper examines the case of a Shiite practitioner of Tibetan medicine in Ladakh, North-western India. It recounts the story of a Buddhist family converted to Islam, for which the abandonment of religion has not led to the discontinuation of a lineal medical practice known to have Buddhist overtones. This situation provides an invitation to explore the social consequences of maintaining the practice in a region characterized by religious conflict, as well as the criteria of sameness and difference, technique and genealogy that make a marked ‘other’ a practitioner of Tibetan medicine. These religious overlaps are, however, not only apparent at the social level; they are also present in the preparation of medicines, in etiological narratives or in the physical regimes of bodily care. The composite nature of medical practice helps us to observe from a new angle the role of religion in the practice of Tibetan medicine. The way medicine is enacted and performed in this context provides empirical materials to study the paradigms that both structure and confer motion to Tibetan learned medicine. The ethnography of a remote region in the Himalayas opens up research paths for the anthropology of Asian medicine amongst new categories of healers and renewed contexts of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to find a place for the intellectual voices of an indigenous movement of ‘Buddhist modernism’ that recently took shape in eastern Tibet. It presents how a prominent leader of this movement, Tsültrim Lodrö (tshul khrims blo gros, b. 1962), articulates Buddhism in response to modern discourses of rationality and science. In particular, since the ‘dialogue’ between Buddhism and science in recent years has largely been a series of monologues, this paper seeks to open up the conversation in order to shed light on the nature of this dialogue and what is at stake in this conversation. I will discuss Tsültrim Lodrö’s most recent work on philosophy and science with the aim to shed light on the nature of the current Buddhism and science discourses through considering the contributions of this influential contemporary Tibetan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tibetan Buddhism has gained ground in France since it arrived there in the 1970s. As the most publicized form and the one most practised by Westerners, Tibetan Buddhism is embodied in France in many places of worship-some of which are of monumental proportions-run by Tibetan and Western masters (lamas). In France, ' dharma centres', as places of worship, cannot be subsidized by the State like other faiths (with some exceptions): their main source of income comes from the donations (in various forms) from disciples and other sympathizers. The Buddhist meritorious gift takes very different forms here, depending on French cultural, institutional and legal constraints. Moreover, donation practices have adapted to the masters' new public: a Western audience from a Christian background, which is unfamiliar with Buddhism and the meritorious gift, and which on the whole has to pay for Buddhist teachings. Dharma centres also offer a wide variety of religious services in exchange for payments-in effect, market exchanges that are dissimulated behind a euphemized discourse of the 'gift'. Bourdieu's analysis therefore proves relevant to our understanding of the giving practices recorded during our fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese imperial patronage of Tibetan Buddhism has a long history. However, in recent years, increasing numbers of private Chinese individuals have been making gifts to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and monks. There is a growing body of scholarship examining reasons for the increasing interest in Tibetan Buddhism. However, there has been little discussion of how Chinese patronage is perceived 'back home' in the monasteries receiving gifts and their local supporting communities. Scholars have argued that Sino-Tibetan patronage relationships are based on a common understanding of religious sponsorship and operate relatively smoothly. However, as this paper shows, this is not how many local people see them. The insertion of Chinese patronage into the complex local field of religious giving can be delicate and even dangerous for monastics. Examination of local moral discourses to see when and how Sino-Tibetan patronage breaks the 'rules of the game' suggests that there are values that underpin the ethics of both Buddhist gifts and remunerations for religious services, despite their conceptual distinction in emic understandings. In particular, the category of faith ( dad pa) and its relationship to generosity and knowledge are central to the ethics and efficacy of religious giving to monastics, while the virtue of unsolicited giving is of particular importance for monastic recipients of wealth and goods from the laity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A look at the environmental, cultural, economic, and political influences that have shaped the landscape of the Upper Mustang region of Nepal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I chart a trajectory from deconstruction to embodiment in the intellectual history of Buddhist traditions in Tibet. I focus on embodiment as a participatory approach to radically deconstructed and unthematized meaning, in contrast to an interpretation of truth as purely an analytic category or an approach to meaning that deals with values, such as emptiness, as simply truth claims or representations. I show how certain Buddhists in Tibet have represented the meaning of emptiness as a uniquely participatory encounter in such a way that its meaning is necessarily embodied. To speak of it otherwise, I argue, is to misrepresent its meaning fundamentally. An important way that the embodiment of emptiness is formulated is through the discourses of buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha). I show how Tibetan interpretations of Buddha-nature reflect postmodern concerns about metaphysics and onto-theology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By exploring how the literal and metaphorical aspects of the teaching/translating activities of Chögyam Trungpa overlap and feed into each other this paper analyses a highly original process of re-inventing tradition against various forms of criticism and censorship, both in the target and the source cultures. This analysis will be articulated along three axes, which correspond to the three Buddhist roles Trungpa was meant to have played: guru (teacher), siddha (accomplished practitioner) and tertön (treasure revealer). The three roles are all concerned with different processes of mediation and, thus, can be thought of as metaphorical translations. Looking at linguistic and cultural translation in terms of those three traditional categories can provide us with a meaningful framework for understanding how Vajrayana Buddhism, and particularly the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, imagines and conceptualises translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of Buddhism in Tibet through an analysis of the appearance and social perception of the Jowo Śākyamuni Buddha statue in Lhasa, Tibet. The author reflects on the assimilation of Buddhism into Tibetan society, proper ritual action towards the Buddha, and how the decline of the theocratic state can be related to improper ritual action. Emphasis is given to the role of iconography and the statue's crown in historical debates over the assimilation of Buddhism during the Tibetan Empire, the rise of the Gelukpa hegemony, and the destruction of theocracy.

The article discusses the social and cultural flows of Buddhism in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It states the historical summary of the multinational connections between Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhism. It says that Buddhism was first restored by Khubilai Khaan, emperor of the Yuan Dynasty in Tibet. It mentions the political aspects of Buddhism during the communist and post socialist era in the 20th century. Also presented is the Mongolian tradition and personality which was preserved for generations.

Emptiness (śūnyatā) is one of the most important topics in Buddhist thought and also is one of the most perplexing. Buddhists in Tibet have developed a sophisticated tradition of philosophical discourse on emptiness and ineffability. This paper discusses the meaning(s) of emptiness within three prominent traditions in Tibet: the Geluk (dge lugs), Jonang (jo nang), and Nyingma (rnying ma). I give a concise presentation of each tradition's interpretation of emptiness and show how each interpretation represents a distinctive aspect of its meaning. Given that Buddhist traditions (1) accept an extra-linguistic reality and (2) maintain a strong tradition of suspicion of language with the belief that language both constructs and distorts reality, this paper responds to an issue that is not so much whether or not an inexpressible reality can be expressed, but rather how it is best articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns itself with the Buddhist doctrine of upāya (“skilful means”). Rather than provide a historical analysis of the concept, this paper first of all outlines some of the presuppositions that affect both its working in a traditional Buddhist context and its interpretation in modern academic enquiry. It is argued that these contexts differ significantly and that they lead to quite different understandings of the role and function of the concept itself. Then, through reference to the Tibetan dGe lugs pa tradition and the background of Tibetan doxography, it is suggested that there are certain dangers in over-emphasizing the concept of upāya in isolation. Most notably, if the doctrine of upāya is simplistically posited as some sort of aphilosophical praxis against rational enquiry, then there is a danger of not taking the tradition's own scholastic endeavours seriously enough and downplaying the status of rational enquiry in the tradition itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contrasting approaches to the study of Buddhism of two great early twentieth-century Buddhologists, Louis de La Vallée Poussin and Theodore Stcherbatsky. La Vallée Poussin understood Buddhism primarily as ‘religion’ and saw philosophic methods as subsumed in the religious experience of salvation; Stcherbatsky, coming from the Russian school, which had direct contact with Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism, saw Buddhism primarily as ‘philosophy’ and emphasised critical enquiry and logical consistency. The paper explores how this influenced their understanding of the place of the absolute in Buddhism generally and in Yogācāra Buddhism in particular. It compares their disagreement to differences at the heart of Tibetan scholasticism evident in the writings of Dolpopa (1292–1361) and Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) over the proper interpretation of Yogācāra. The paper also explores implications of the legacy of these two scholars for recent Western scholarship and for the understanding of Yogācāra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the comparative philological study of historical Buddhist literature from China and Tibet, and its importance both for the reconstruction of Indian Mahayana Buddhist traditions, and for greater cultural understanding between Han Chinese and Tibetans. In particular, the comparison of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist sutras is discussed as a way of enhancing understanding of the distinctive literary style of the Chinese sutras. Finally, Sino-Tibetan Buddhist studies are seen as improving the academic standing of Buddhist studies in China.

The article focuses on the social and economic influences which affect Tibetan Buddhism in China. It states that social and economic changes in China have resulted in the need for Buddhist monasteries to promulgate administrative arrangements. It also says that the administration of the Democratic Committee of Monastic Administration gave monks and nuns a sense of citizenship. Moreover, it tells that the monastic reform gave monasteries a social force equal with the government.

This article challenges two connected notions in the study of Tibetan Buddhism: that Buddhist monasticism is characterized by a pronounced move towards individualism, systematically detaching monks from relational social life; and that Tibetan Buddhist doctrines of karma represent an alternative mode of identity to those constructed within household life. By comparing the ritual practices and inheritance patterns associated with household groups in Ladakh with tantric ritual forms in local Buddhist: (Gelukpa) monasteries, it is argued that they demonstrate pronounced structural similarities, centred on the shared symbolic construct of the household/temple as the source of socialized agency. An analysis of the meditative disciplines of Gelukpa monasticism is used to show how such training serves not to renounce kinship and household values, but to transform them into modes of religious authority, essential to the social position of monks (trapa) and incarnate lamas (tulku) in Tibetan Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the religious practices, known as liberation through the senses, which are being practiced by Tibetan Buddhists. Religious practices and sacred things related to the beliefs; Classifications and descriptions of the practice; Advocates of the practice.

Looks at the surface of a long-simmering feud between the followers of the Dorje Shugden and the Dalai Lama in Tibet, China. Fundamental Buddhist principle; Highlights of the events in seventeenth-century Tibet; Information on the Shugden sect; Insights into the Nyingma teachings; Reason Dorje Shugden is so important.

This article is a contribution to the cross-cultural study of grief. The Bardo thodol (sometimes translated the Tibetan Book of the Dead ) and the ritual associated with it provides a way to understand how Buddhism in Tibetan culture manages the issues associated with what is called grief in Western psychology. The resolution of grief in the survivors is intertwined with the journey to rebirth of the deceased. The present article describes (a) the progression of the deceased, (b) the rituals by which survivors separate from the physical incarnation of the deceased, (c) how, by channeling the feelings of grief to support the progress of the deceased, grief is brought to a positive resolution, and (d) the continuing bond survivors maintain with the dead even though the dead has moved on to the next life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the Western invention of Tibetan Lamaism, weaving great erudition and subtle writing into aan account that uncovers tradition of intellectual myth making. Syntactical proximity of the term Lamaism to the term Roman Catholicism; Use of `genealogy' to explain the coincidence of a phenomenon or trait by an appeal to historical influence.

Focuses on the culture of the monks in Ganden Monastery, Tibet, China. Origin of the Tibetan Buddhism; Issues on health problems; Production of mangoes by the monks.

Excavations of a temple and monastic remains at Piyang, Tibet showing that Tibetan Buddhism may have undergone a renaissance in this part of the country in the 10th and 11th centuries AD are discussed. The ruins are of a temple complex which became one of the primary centers of Buddhist teaching in the country for the next 500 years.

The Sherpas—in Tibetan śar-pa or "men of the east"—live mainly in Northern Nepal, in the Darjeeling district, in India and Northern Sikkim, in the regions bordering on Tibet, and on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The Sherpas are of Tibetan stock. Among the Tibetan racial groups two religions can be broadly distinguished. One is a form of Buddhism, usually called Lamaism. The other religion is called in the Lhasa pronunciation Bon. Among the Sherpas both the religion and its priests are called "bombo", spelt: bongo.