Table Of Content

Sensory Biographies ethnographic studies in subjectivity Tanya Luhrmann and Steven Parish, Editors 1. Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar, by Jennifer Cole 2. Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists, by Robert Desjarlais 3. Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, by Kathryn Linn Geurts 4. Sins Between Cultures: Christianity, Cultural Change, and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society, by Joel Robbins Sensory Biographies Lives and Deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists Robert Desjarlais UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley / Los Angeles / London Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers for permission to reprint quotations from these works: Sheep Meadow Press, Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition, by Yehuda Amichai, copyright © 1988 by Yehuda Amichai; Bantam Dell Publishing Group, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, composed by Padma Sambhava and translated by Robert Thurman, copyright © 1994 by Robert A.F. Thurman; Snow Lion Publications, Living in the Face of Death: The Tibetan Tradition, by Glenn H. Mullin, copyright © 1986 by Glenn H. Mullin, and Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, by John Powers, copyright © 1995 by John Powers; Kensington Publishing Group, The One Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, by Garma Chen-Chi Chang, copyright © 1962 by the Oriental Studies Foundation, all rights reserved, reprinted by permission of Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing Corp.; Oxford University Press, The Buddha, by Michael Carrithers, copyright © 1996 by Michael Carrithers; Penguin Books U.S.A. and Far West Translations, The Life of Milarepa, by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, copyright © 1977 by Far West Translations, used by permission of Dutton, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2003 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Desjarlais, Robert R. Sensory biographies : lives and deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists / Robert Desjarlais. p. cm.—(Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-23587-8 (cloth : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-520-23588-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ghang Lama. 2. Kisang Omu. 3. Lamas—Nepal—Biography. 4. Buddhists—Nepal—Biography. 5. Death—Religious aspects— Buddhism. 6. Nepal—Religious life and customs. 7. Helambu Sherpa (Nepalese people)—Religion. I. Title. BQ962.H35 D47 2003 294.3⬘923⬘09225496—dc21 [B] 2002016553 Manufactured in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 0403 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).I Contents List of Illustrations vii Note on Transliteration ix Kurbgraphy 1 Hardship, Comfort 20 Twenty-Seven Ways of Looking at Vision 54 Startled into Alertness 102 A Theater of Voices 133 “I’ve Gotten Old” 152 Essays on Dying 161 “Dying Is This” 176 The Painful Between 182 Desperation 189 The Time of Dying 201 Death Envisioned 206 To Phungboche, by Force 219 Staying Still 230 Mirror of Deeds 236 Here and There 245 “So: Ragged Woman” 255 Echoes of a Life 275 A Son’s Death 309 The End of the Body 315 Last Words 328 Notes 353 Glossary of Terms 375 References 379 Acknowledgments 389 Index 393 Illustrations Figures 1. Ghang Lama (Mheme), 1997 21 2. Thodong as seen from the south, 1998 33 3. Surje Lama, 1998 49 4. A page of a Tibetan religious text, the Bardo Thedol 68 5. The chhorten in Boudhanath 77 6. The view from Thodong, 1998: Lhatul Lama, the author, and Surje Lama 88 7. Kisang Omu, 2001 103 8. A wedding in Malemchi, 1989 111 9. Women working in the fields below Thodong, 1989 162 10. Kisang Omu in her early fifties 220 11. Phur Gyalmu with her sister and grandson, 1998 268 12. Ghang Lama, 1998 276 13. The two sides of a “purification print” 300 14. Ritual cleansing of the deceased, Thodong, 1988 301 Maps 1. Location of Yolmo region in Nepal 9 2. Map of Yolmo region 10 Table 1. Yolmo people noted in this book 16 vii Note on Transliteration Most Yolmo wa, or “Yolmo people” (Yolmo wa is nowadays usually pro- nounced as “yhol-mo wa,” with an aspirated y leading into “ol-mo”), speak their national language, Nepali, as well as a distinct Tibetan- derived language known to them today as Yolmo. Linguists have identified this unwritten language as Kagate, a Tibetan dialect that ac- quired its name because it was first recorded as spoken among a group 1 of kbgate, or “paper-makers,” in eastern Nepal. It is now clear that ear- lier generations of this group of kbgate originated from the Yolmo region of Nepal. The grammar, syntax, and lexicons of the Yolmo language are quite similar to those of many Tibetan dialects, especially classical Tibetan. A majority of Yolmo wa rely on both Yolmo and Nepali in everyday conversations, and talk in one language is often in- terspersed with phrases from the other. Yolmo wa have no standard method of writing Yolmo. When people write out Yolmo words, they usually use Tibetan or Nepali (Devanagari) scripts, each of which poses obstacles to perfect transliteration. English letters are less accommodat- ing still. Yolmo words cited in this book are spelled phonetically, as they might sound to the English ear; I determined these spellings in consul- tation with Yolmo colleagues. Since many Yolmo words, especially religious terms, have direct correlates in the Tibetan language, the correlates are often noted, spelled as they are in written Tibetan. They are 2 transcribed according to Wylie’s system of Tibetan orthography. The 3 spelling of Nepali words follows the method of R. L. Turner. Foreign ix