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Summary:

"Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms - corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations - extend a lama's trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth, aging and death. The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better understanding of how Tibetan culture navigates its own understanding of reincarnation, the veneration of relics, and different social roles of different types of practitioners. It analyses both the minutiae of everyday interrelations between lamas and their devotees, specifically noted in ritual performances and the enactment of lived tradition, as well as the sacred hagiographical conventions that underpin local knowledge. A phenomenology of Tibetan Buddhist life, the book provides an ethnography and insight of the embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism in everyday life. This unusual approach offers a valuable and a genuine new perspective on Tibetan Buddhist culture, and is of interest to researchers in the fields of social/cultural anthropology, religious, Buddhist and Tibetan studies"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction
• Biographical process
• Intersubjectivity
• Darjeeling
• narrative
• Notes
• 2. Relics and reincarnation of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin
• Discussing the lama's death
• Minds beyond death
• reincarnated lama
• Religious biography
• Bodies of devotional practice
• Extended biography
• Notes
• 3. spiritual mastery or (spirit possession) of Gupha Rinpoche
• Ethnographic scholarship: revisiting the polemic
• Tibetan scholarship: historical influences
• Introducing Gupha
• Textures and grammars of a monastic college
• Scholasticism and saintly madmen

• Rhythms of a saintly madman
• irregular tempo
• Divided opinions
• Dying
• Death and memorialization
• rising corpse
• Return from the dead
• Possession and reincarnation
• Maintaining plurality
• Notes
• 4. Embodying the past in the present: Gelongma Palmo
• Previous scholarship: locating Gelongma Palmo
• Setting the scene: karma, merit and rebirth
• Literacy
• sacred repetition of hagiography
• Nyungne: transforming body, speech and mind
• Prostrations
• Varieties of communication
• Acts of speech: vows, mantras and the ritual manual
• sounds of silence
• Imagining the deity
• Sensing the social
• Notes
• 5. Buddhism across cultures: Bokar Rinpoche
• Tibetan Buddhist embodiment
• Trikaya: the bodies of a Buddha
• Cultural adaptations
• Cultural innovations
• Notes
• 6. Conclusion.

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Author/Creator:

Zivkovic, Tanya

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Death and reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: in-between bodies [by Zivkovic, T.]

Related Series:

Routledge critical studies in Buddhism

Subjects:

Reincarnate lamas — Tibet Region — Biography

Reincarnation — Buddhism

Future life — Buddhism

Buddhism — Social aspects — India — Darjeeling

Tibetans — India — Darjeeling — Religion

Reincarnate lamas

Reincarnation

Future life

Buddhism — Social aspects

Buddhism

Tibetans — Religion

Tibetans

Tibet Region

India — Darjeeling

Genres:

Biographies

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 136-143) and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

BQ7920 .Z58 2014eb

ISBNs:

9781315886855 (electronic bk.)
1315886855 (electronic bk.)
9780415830676 (hardback) [Invalid]
0415830672 (hardback) [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

868967514

Other Control Numbers:

649912 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp11227271