In recent years, there has been considerable interest among the scholars, human right activists, strategic thinkers and the wider public about Tibet. The present volume focuses on different aspects of the Tibetan problem. The articles cover a wide range of issues providing comprehensive perspectives as also an analysis of contemporary developments.

The book opens with a full account of the baffling personality of the great Bengali Pandit Atisa or Dipamkara Srijnana, the greatest of the teacher reformers of Tibetan Buddhism. The author proceeds to portray the Tibetan background of early Buddhism and gives an account of the early history of Tibet and Indo -Tibetan connections, together with a study of Buddhism in Tibet from the seventh century onwards right down to the time of Atisa in the eleventh centuryA.D. The (...) book is provided with an extremely valuable and illuminating set of Appendices sufficiently important to be worth describing in some detail. Appendix A contains Tibetan source-materials relating to the life and teaching of Atisa in English translation. Appendix B lists the works (219 in all) in Kanjur and Tanjur of which Dipamkara is either author, translator, reviser or otherwise. Appendix C gives the literal and annotated translation of the following works of dipamkara preserved in Tibetan translation in the Tanjur: Garyagiti, Caryagiti-Vrtti, Vimala-ratna-lekha, Bodhi-patha-pradipa. Appendix D gives the Tibetan sexagenary cycle with tables of conversion of the Christian calendar to the Tibetan calendar and vice versa. (shrink)

This book contains forty-three plates, eleven in color, of deities, lamas, etc. associated with Tibetan Buddhism. Depending on many secondary sources, the author presents a short history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism in order to prove his theory that the already aggressive Tibetans became more aggressive when the peaceful religion of Buddhism was introduced into their country. The audience of the book is limited because of the author's lack of first-hand material; the book is more a compendium of tales of (...) aggression gleaned from many secondary sources of one side of a culture than it is an exposition of Tibetan Tantra. Because it does not treat the still intact practice of Tibetan Tantrism in its authorized form, it is of little interest to those devoted to religious study or to Buddhist or eastern scholarship.--P. J. H. (shrink)

Conceiving the Mother of Tibet is the first book about the literary tradition surrounding Yeshe Tsogyel, the foremost matron saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It traces the emergence of a body of narrative literature surrounding her in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist tradition to construct an emic Tibetan Buddhist theory of gender and female religious eminence. In these literary accounts, Yeshe Tsogyel’s identities as a disciple, a tantric consort, a sky-goer, and a mother all embody (...) a dialectic that shifts back and forth between Tibetan women’s social and cultural inferiority and a Buddhist discourse of soteriological inclusivity. Conceiving the Mother of Tibet queries these texts for their social and religious functions, especially where ambivalence and contradictions abound. However, these ambivalences do not necessarily disadvantage women in Tibetan Buddhism. Operating with ambivalent, sometimes competing, discourses on womanhood, Nyingma Buddhist theorists in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries created a space for a flexible treatment of gender, where they traverse between theological terms and embodied reality. This finding also provides a methodological framework that highlights localized, emic theories of gender as alternative ways of being in and interacting with the world as embodied agents, applicable to the larger field of Buddhist Studies and Religious Studies. (shrink)

This paper considers Chinese Communist Party policies in Tibet from Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist perspectives. I first explain how these three traditions are unified in the sanjiao heyi, but I contend that this practice has been neglected in favor of state repression. I then elucidate Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism with respect to their general principles and application in Tibet. I conclude that a fuller embrace of the sanjiao heyi where Confucian tenets are balanced by insights from Daoism and (...) Buddhism would cultivate an anti-oppressive response to governmental control. (shrink)

The German scholar Dieter Schuh is one of the contemporary giants of Tibetan studies. His seminal and ground-breaking work Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der tibetischen Kalenderrechnung, published in 1973, has made a lasting contribution to the field of Tibetan astronomical and historical research, clarifying the essence and calculation bases of Indo-Tibetan astronomy in Tibet (skar rtsis). Further, he has pioneered such new fields in Tibetology as sino-tibetan astrology (nag rtsis), manuscripts and xylographs, historical documents, the diplomatic history between Tibet (...) and Mongolia, law, demography, research into Western Tibet, etc. In this work, I attempt to show the integral components of his scholarship on Indo-Tibetan astronomy by means of presenting the structure and outline of his works. Because I focus on showing the main ideas and contents according to his line of thinking in each work, readers may benefit from easily spotting parts they are interested in. Thereby, this work may serve as a guideline for further research into the details of each work. The amount I assign to each work may vary in accordance with the gravity and importance I subjectively assume. Lastly, the aim of this work is simple: numerous quality non-English writings are not easily used simply because they were not written in English. The depth and breadth of the time-honored German tibetology based on high-level philology has been a great source of inspiration to Tibetan scholars in the world. As a part of bridging the gap between English and non-English scholarship, this work, which introduces Dieter Schuh’s research into Indo-Tibetan astronomy, may be helpful to enrich and foster future research, being another source of inspiration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women in TibetRae Erin DachilleWomen in Tibet. Edited by Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 436 pp.Empowerment, transcendence, and the performance of identity are common themes in the study of gender and religion across cultures. As these themes are elucidated across cultures and in different historical moments, they are troubled by a persistent refusal of gender as a category of enduring symbolic (...) and real meaning by both historical and contemporary cultural actors. In the cases of Tibetan and Buddhist studies, the approach to womanhood as a category is repeatedly subsumed by concerns with religious or ethnic and political identity. This trend has forced many scholars to appeal to the symbolic realm of the iconic female or the construction of womanhood from sparse individual accounts as representative of an artificial subcultural entity. In response to the impasse created by these methods, the editors of Women in Tibet have chosen an approach that seeks to level the field. In doing so, they have produced a work that combines textual and anthropological projects aimed at recovering the specificities of lived womanhood across a range of historical moments. Allying themselves with a historical versus a feminist agenda, they succeed in laying the groundwork for a new approach to the study of womanhood.This approach surveys the vast artillery of historically embedded social dynamics available for Tibetan women to emulate, embody, or resist. In the diversity of their selections, Gyatso and Havnevik intentionally leave room for the possibility that women continue to perform as historical actors in spite of as well as because of their association with womanhood and the disempowering social and religious stereotypes attached to it. In leaving this issue open-ended, the editors sustain the tension between approaches that locate "specifically female" elements within traditions and those that posit the category of womanhood to be subservient to other cultural categories and phenomena. Exploring the participation of women in lineages as diverse as the oracular described by Hildegard Diemberger, the medical addressed by Tashi Tsering, and the imperial aristocratic presented by Helga Uebach, the essays in this volume represent an oscillation in the perceived relevance of femaleness. Inconsistency in the priority of the category of womanhood in historical interpretation reflects fluctuating attitudes on the part of Tibetans themselves as well as of European and American scholars as interpreters of the region's religious, social, and political realities.Asceticism in particular has been a highly charged site for the exploration of these themes in both Buddhist and Christian studies, along with determining the specific nature of female monasticism. As an instance of the deliberate embrace of a social category thriving upon the confluence of the ideal and the marginal, asceticism provides a lens for considering the ways in which women exploited opportunities to survive and excel spiritually and socially, often in spite [End Page 172] of female embodiment. Several of the authors in this volume address the tension between the socially sanctioned spaces for female asceticism within the nunnery or hermitage and the identities that individuals and communities of female ascetics strive to inhabit. Kurtis Schaeffer, for example, presents the tensions operating within acts of ascetic self-clarification in the autobiography of the medieval Tibetan hermitess Orgyan Chokyi. This account provides a rare glimpse of a historical woman defining her marginality and femaleness in relationship to Buddhist notions of suffering. Schaeffer reminds the reader that even from the hermetically sealed space of the cave, social, geographic, and historical elements play a fundamental role in constructing an individual's narrative identity and conditioning the terms of her self-realization.Charlene Makley's astute observations on the identity of nuns in contemporary Amdo taps into the various power dynamics at play in the social construction of nuns as parasitic, marginal, and dispensable members of the Labrang community. These acts of identification occur in the enduring and influential discursive field of gossip centered upon the "inappropriate otherness" of female monastics and their rumored failure to perfectly embody what Makley, following Charles Keyes, terms the "third gender" of celibate monasticism. Makley uncovers the powerful signifiers of the body of the nun in this geographical and historical context as... (shrink)

This volume is the product of an important recent conference, convened by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, focusing on the intellectual legacy of the Tibetan philosopher, yogi, and saint Tsongkhapa (1357-1419). Entitled "Jé Tsongkhapa: Life, Thought, and Legacy," the conference commemorated the sixth hundredth anniversary of Tsongkhapa's passing and was held on December 21-23, 2019, at Ganden Monastery in Mundgod, India. Part 1 concerns Madhyamaka, a natural reflection of the very important and well-known contributions Tsongkhapa made to the study of (...) Indian philosophical thought. The first essay, Guy Newland's "Start Making Sense: Finding Tsongkhapa's Middle Way," provides a straightforward and clear introduction to Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Madhyamaka philosophy, showing how Tsongkhapa played an essential role in clarifying Candrakīrti's contributions to Madhyamaka thought. The second essay, "Celebrating Jé Tsongkhapa: The Twofold Object of the Identity View" by Dr. Dechen Rochard explores Tsongkhapa's understanding of Candrakīrti's negation of individual identity. The essay neatly demonstrates the centrality of the practitioner's view of self to the path to spiritual awakening. In the third chapter, "Thinking Beyond Thought: Tsongkhapa and Mipham on the Conceptualized Ultimate," Jay L. Garfield explores Tsongkhapa's views on the nature of ultimate reality, specifically Tsongkhapa's argument that this entails a movement from inferential to direct awareness of emptiness. The essay explores the need for accurate philosophical analysis in the context of meditation practice so as to directly realize the truths about the nature of self and reality that are the objects of the practice. It thus nicely points to the integration of Buddhist theory and practice. The second section of this volume is dedicated to Tsongkhapa's writings on the tantras. In the first chapter in this section, "Tsongkhapa's Masterful Exegesis of Cakrasaṃvara Tantra," I elucidate Tsongkhapa's approach to the study of tantric literature with a focus on his commentary on the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra. Chapter 6 is Gavin Kilty's contribution, "A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages: Tsongkhapa's Reformatory Work on Guhyasamāja Tantra." Kilty first surveys the Guhyasamāja tradition and its transmission to Tibet and the two main Indian exegetical traditions, the Ārya and J.ānapāda schools. Outlining Tsongkhapa's approach to the Guhyasamāja Tantra, he then focuses on how the tradition conceptualizes the generation-stage and completion-stage practices. Chapter 7, "The Shadow of Heshang: Tsongkhapa on Chan, Dzokchen, and Mahāmudrā" by Roger R. Jackson. Jackson explores the claim that Tsongkhapa received and secretly transmitted esoteric instructions on advanced meditation practices to realize the nature of mind and awakening. The volume concludes with a section entitled "Moving Minds," which explores Tsongkhapa's legacy and impact both in Tibet and beyond. It opens with "Jé Tsongkhapa's Contribution to Buddhist Hermeneutics" by Geshé Ngawang Samten. Buddhist hermeneutics, as understood here, is a response to the challenge posed by scriptures that appear to contradict one another. Chapter 9, "Tsongkhapa's Hermeneutics and the Perfection of Wisdom," contributed by Gareth Sparham, takes a more focused look at the interpretation of the Perfection of Wisdom literature in both India and Tibet. The tenth chapter is "Jé Tsongkhapa's Teachings and Translations in Mongolian" by Bataa Mishig-Ish, who surveys the dissemination of Tsongkhapa's oeuvre to Mongolia. The final chapter is BhikṣuṇīThubten Chodron's "Learning, Living, and Teaching Bodhicitta: Jé Tsongkhapa's Contribution to Spreading Compassion in the World." Venerable Chodron argues that Tsongkhapa's approach to teaching compassion is particularly suited for the modern, Western context. While this volume does not come close to exhausting the limits of what might be said concerning the impact of Tsongkhapa's work in Tibet and beyond, it does reunite contributions to this study that briefly converged in Preface xi Mundgod, India, just before the global pandemic ushered in a new awareness of our profound human interdependence. Hopefully these essays will advance the appreciation of Tsongkhapa's intellectual legacy in the wider English-speaking world, where he remains a little understood figure of Asian religious history, unlike in the Tibetan-speaking world, where his impact is justly celebrated. (shrink)

While Tibetan literary production generally evokes images of clothbound loose-leaf longbooks filling the shelves of monasteries, the culture also has a well-developed, though less widely known, archival tradition. The documents that make up these archives differ from books with respect to terminology, form, script, content and storage. Archival literature has received relatively little scholarly attention, but it nevertheless constitutes a vitally important source for our understanding of domains such as law, taxation and social history. Archives from Central Tibet tell (...) us about the relations between authorities―mainly the government, the church and the aristocracy―and the peasantry; but it is mainly thanks to archival collections from culturally Tibetan areas in countries adjacentto China (notably India and Nepal) that we can obtain a privileged insight into the lives of local communities in past centuries. (shrink)

This is the paperback edition of the first full study, translation, and critical annotation of the Essence of True Eloquence by Jey Tsong Khapa (1357-1419), universally acknowledged as the greatest Tibetan philosopher. Robert Thurman's translation and introduction present a strain of Indian Buddhist thought emphasizing the need for both critical reason and contemplative realization in the attainment of enlightenment. This book was originally published under the title Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the "Essence of True Eloquence.""I am very happy (...) that Tsong Khapa's masterpiece of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy has been translated into English, and can now be studied by Western philosophers and practitioners of Buddhism. It has long been one of my favorite works, and I hope that others will appreciate its deep thought and lucid insights as we have for centuries in Tibet."--From the foreword by the Dalai Lama. (shrink)

This paper outlines a shift in the role of self-awareness from Yogācāra to tantra and connects some of the dots between Yogācāra, Pratyabhijñā, and Buddhist tantric traditions in Tibet. As is the case with Yogācāra, the Pratyabhijñā tradition of Utpaladeva maintains that awareness is self-illuminating and constitutive of objects. Utpaladeva’s commentator and influential successor, Abhinavagupta, in fact quotes Dharmakīrti’s argument from the Pramāṇaviniścaya that objects are necessarily perceived objects. That is, everything known is known in consciousness; there is nothing (...) that can be known outside or separate from consciousness. This aspect of Pratyabhijñā thought is shared with Yogācāra. While Utpaladeva drew upon Yogācāra epistemology to formulate a differential construction of objects, he departed from this theory to develop a distinctive monistic framework for the interpretation of subjectivity. By appealing to the ultimate reality of a singularly nonconceptual, transcendental subject rather than a plurality of conceptual particulars, Utpaladeva appropriated Dharmakīrti’s epistemological model while turning it on its head. That is, Utpaladeva critiqued Dharmakīrti in one context while he is indebted to him in another to establish the framework for his own absolute idealism, where everything happens in and through the absolute self that is Śiva. Utpaladeva extended the place of self-awareness in Yogācāra to formulate an absolute idealism that is the theoretic foundation for philosophical tantra. In this paper, I will chart a trajectory of this development, from Yogācāra to Pratyabhijñā, and show how a parallel development took place in tantric assimilations of Yogācāra in Tibet. (shrink)

This article is based on the author's extensive research on the missionaries to Tibet from the Disciples of Christ USA, and discusses various missionary efforts to transmit scientific and practical knowledge such as medicine, building, and agriculture in Eastern Tibet from 1904–1919. It shows that American missionaries played a prominent and distinctive role in the dissemination of scientific and practical knowledge as a result of their hard work and wisdom. In this sense, they made an important contribution to (...) the development of Tibetan society and the modernization movement in early twentieth-century Eastern Tibet. (shrink)

The Jewel in the Lotus A Guide to the Buddhist Traditions of Tibet. Edited by Stephen Batchelor. Wisdom Publications, London 1987. 280 pp. £9.95.

Investigation of the Percept is a short work that focuses on issues of perception and epistemology. Its author, Dignaga, was one of the most influential figures in the Indian Buddhist epistemological tradition, and his ideas had a profound and wide-ranging impact in India, Tibet, and China. The work inspired more than twenty commentaries throughout East Asia and three in Tibet, the most recent in 2014.This book is the first of its kind in Buddhist studies: a comprehensive history of (...) a text and its commentarial tradition. The volume editors translate the root text and commentary, along with Indian and Tibetan commentaries, providing detailed analyses of the commentarial innovations of each author, as well as critically edited versions of all texts and extant Sanskrit fragments of passages. The team-based approach made it possible to study and translate a corpus of treatises in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese and to employ the methods of critical philology and cross-cultural philosophy to provide readers with a rich collection of studies and translations, along with detailed philosophical analyses that open up the intriguing implications of Dignaga's thought and demonstrate the diversity of commentarial approaches to his text.This rich text has inspired some of the greatest minds in India and Tibet. It explores some of the key issues of Buddhist epistemology: the relationship between minds and their percepts, the problems of idealism and realism, and error and misperception. (shrink)

Originally published under the title: Tsong Khapa's Speech of gold in the Essence of true eloquence.

Across Tibet during the 1940s, young Han Chinese weather observers became stranded at their weather stations, where they faced illness, poverty and isolation as they pleaded with their superiors for relief. Building on the premise that China exercised ‘imperial nationalism’ in Tibet, and in light of scholarship that emphasizes the desirous ‘gaze’ of imperial observers toward the frontier, this essay considers how the meteorological archive might disrupt our understanding of the relationship between observation and empire. Meteorology presented a (...) new way of viewing the landscape that deliberately disregarded the embodied experience of the observer in favour of instrument-mediated readings. The process produced a bifurcated archive, in which stations disseminated quantitative weather charts as a matter of public interest while privately recording the embodied and often miserable experiences of observational staff on the frontier. Unpublished letters between observers and supervisors offer a rare glimpse into the frontier as experienced by reluctant or unwilling agents of the state. (shrink)

Known as the “Mother of Tibetan Buddhism” and the “Mother of Knowledge,” Yeshe Tsogyal built upon indigenous Bön philosophy and Mahāyāna Buddhism to bring about a Buddhism that is identifiably Tibetan. I report on her life, her works and teaching. Then summarize her significance as a philosopher of Tibetan Buddhist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Lastly, I append portions of several writings attributed to her.

In a recent speech Amartya Sen argued that democracy had become a universal value. He argued that at this time the burden is on those who would deny democracy to justify their position. He argued that this was a historic change from not long ago when the advocates for democracy in Aisa or Africa had to argue for democracy with their backs to the wall. In Asia, China has historically championed the fight against imperialism and has celebrated the fact the (...) the Chinese people have stood up to take their much-deserved place in the world. For China, which as worked so assertively to bring its nation into the modern world, it is a sign of failure if Tibetans, and even Chinese, have to continue to argue for genuine democracy and self-government with their backs against the wall. The Tibetans really face no dilemma since they are offered no choice except to defend their basic interest.But at present the Chinese leaders face a profound dilemma whether to embrace the modern values that are consistent with their own development and reform process or to continue to defy, especially in respect of Tibet, the very values they have championed in their relationships with the rest of the world. It is with regard to these universal values, against imperialism and in favor of democracy and self-rule, that solutions to the Tibetan problem should be found. To subjugate the Tibetan people is not only inconsistent with contemporary values but is also in contradiction of the pressures for change being spawned by China’s own emerging order in its reform era. It is within China’s power at present to set about solving the issues it confronts with Tibet. It can do so in ways that are consistent with its long-term developmetn interests or, alternatively, insist on old style imperial domination at the long-term costs of fostering a territorial and political structure for development that is inadequate both for itself and Tibet. (shrink)