Tibetan ritual

317 Pages·2010·3.284 MB·English

by  Jose Ignacio Cabezon

Tibetan Ritual
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Tibetan Ritual
edited by josé ignacio cabezón

1
2010
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tibetan ritual / edited by José Ignacio Cabezón.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-539281-4; 978-0-19-539282-1 (pbk.)
1. Tibet (China)—Religious life and customs. 2. Rites
and ceremonies—China— Tibet.
I. Cabezón, José Ignacio, 1956–
BL1945.T5T54 2010
294.3'438—dc22 2009012773
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Contributors, vii
Introduction, 1
José Ignacio Cabezón
1. Written Texts at the Juncture of the Local and the Global: Some
Anthropological Considerations on a Local Corpus of Tantric
Ritual Manuals (Lower Mustang, Nepal), 35
Nicolas Sihlé

2. Tibetan Indigenous Myths and Rituals with Reference to the
Ancient Bön Text: The Nyenbum (Gnyan’bum), 53
Samten G. Karmay
3. Continuity and Change in Tibetan Mah–ayoga Ritual: Some
Evidence from the Tabzhag (Thabs zhags) Manuscript and Other
Dunhuang Texts, 69
Robert Mayer and Cathy Cantwell
4. The Convergence of Theoretical and Practical Concerns in a
Single Verse of the Guhyasama–ja Tantra, 89
Yael Bentor
5. Chilu (‘Chi bslu): Rituals for “Deceiving Death”, 103
Irmgard Mengele
vi contents
6. Representations of Effi cacy: The Ritual Expulsion of Mongol Armies in
the Consolidation and Expansion of the Tsang (Gtsang) Dynasty, 131
James Gentry
7. The “Calf ’s Nipple” (Be’u bum) of Ju Mipam (‘Ju Mi pham):
A Handbook of Tibetan Ritual Magic, 165
Bryan J. Cuevas
8. Rites of the Deity Tamdrin (Rta mgrin) in Contemporary Bön:
Transforming Poison and Eliminating Noxious Spirits
with Burning Stones, 187
Marc des Jardins
9. Texts as Deities: Mongols’ Rituals of Worshipping Su¯tras and Rituals
of Accomplishing Various Goals by Means of Su¯tras, 207
Vesna Wallace
10. The Ritual Veneration of Mongolia’s Mountains, 225
Jared Lindahl
11. Encounter with a Dream: Bhutanese Pilgrims in Tibet—Performing
a Ritual?, 249
Françoise Pommaret
Bibliography, 263
Index, 291
Contributors
Yael Bentor is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Indian Studies
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of a num-
ber of books and articles on the theory and practice of Tantra, most
recently “Do ‘The Tantras Embody What The Practitioners Actually
Do’?” (in Contributions to the Study of Tibetan Literature, 2008), and
“Can Women Attain Enlightenment Through Vajray–ana Practices” (in
Karmic Passages: Israeli Scholarship on India, 2009). Currently, she is
working on a book on the creation stage of the Guhyasama–ja.
Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer are Research Offi cers and Mem-
bers of the Budd hist Studies Unit of the Oriental Institute, University
of Oxford, and Senior Researchers at the University of Cardiff. They
have coauthored two books: The K¯ılaya Nirva–na Tantra and the Vajra
Wrath Tantra: Two Texts from the Ancient Tantra Collection (2007) and
Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from Dunhuang (2009). Their cur-
rent research focuses on the Tabzhag (Thabs zhags) or Noose of Methods
Tantra, on the early Bön and Buddhist traditions of the deity Purpa
(Dagger), and (together with Professor Geoffrey Samuel) on a twenti-
eth-century ritual cycle of the Dujom tradition.
Bryan J. Cuevas is Associate Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan
S tudies in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. He
is the author of The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
(2003) and Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives
viii contributors
of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet (2008), and is the editor, with Jacqueline I.
Stone, of The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (2007). He is
currently working on a study of Tibetan sorcery and the politics of war magic
from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
J. F. Marc des Jardins is Assistant Professor of the Religions of China and
Tibet in the Department of Religion of Concordia University in Montréal. He
specializes on the Tibetan Bön religion and the practice of religion along the
Sino-Tibetan frontiers. He has been engaged in fi eld-based research in Tibetan
territories within the PRC since 1991. He not only studies Bön textual material,
but also rituals and other religious practices in contemporary settings.
James Gentry is a doctoral candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion
at Harvard University. He is working on a dissertation on the life and times of
Sogdogpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan), focusing on
his memoir, the History of How the Mongols Were Turned Back (Sog bzlog bgyis
tshul gyi lo rgyus). He is the author of “Historical Skepticism in ‘Pre-modern’
Tibet: the Contested Historicity of Traditional Padmasambhava Narratives,” in
New Perspectives on Tibetan Traditionality, Columbia University Press (2009).
Jared Lindahl has completed his MA in Religious Studies from the University
of California Santa Barbara and is presently a doctoral candidate at that same
institution. He did fi eld research on sacred geography in Mongolia in 2004.
Lindahl is currently working on a doctoral dissertation focusing on the doctrine
of light and use of light imagery in Tibetan Buddhism and early Christianity.
Irmgard Mengele is a re search scholar in the Religious Studies Department
at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of dGe-‘dun-
chos-‘phel: A Biography of the 20th-Century Tibetan Scholar (1999) and The Life
and Art of the Tenth Karma-pa Chos-dbyings-rdo-rje (1604–1674): A Biography of
a Great Tibetan Lama and Artist of the Turbulent Seventeenth Century (forthcom-
ing). Currently she is working on a project on the theory and practice of heal-
ing, medicine, and longevity in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.
Françoise Pommaret is Directeur de recherche at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifi que, Paris, and advisor to the Institute of Language and
Cultural Studies, Royal University of Bhutan. She has authored Tibet, A
Wounded Civilization (2005) and has contributed to as well as edited Bhutan:
Mountain Fortress of the Gods (2005), Lhasa in the 17th century: The Capital of the
contributors ix
Dalai-Lamas (2005), and Bhutan: Tradition and Change (2007 with J. Ardussi).
She works on the sociopolitical signifi cance of rituals and their evolution.
Samten Karmay is Directeur de recherche emeriate at the Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifi que, Paris. He is the author of The Great Perfection, A
Meditative and Philosophical Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (1988, reprint 2007);
Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1988, reprint 1998); and the two-volume
The Arrow and the Spindle, Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet
(1998 and 2005). Currently he is working on the Dukula, the autobiography of
the Fifth Dalai Lama.
Nicolas Sihlé is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Virginia and Associated Member of the Laboratory “Milieux,
Sociétés et Cultures en Himalaya” of the CNRS (France). His work focuses,
from an anthropological perspective, on Tibet and the Himalayas, on Tibetan
religion in particular, and more generally on the comparative study of Bud-
dhist societies, as well as on theories of ritual and religion. He is completing
a book entitled Rituals of Power and Violence: Tantric Buddhism in the Tibetan
Himalayas.
Vesna Wallace is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara. She is author of The Inner Ka¯lacakratantra:
A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual, and has published several books of
translation from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian. She has also authored a
series of articles on esoteric Buddhism and produced four documentary fi lms
on Mongolia. Vesna Wallace has been conducting annual fi eld research in
Mongolia on the revival o f Mongolian Buddhism since 2000, research that will
result in her new volume on contemporary Buddhism in Mongolia.