When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje by Hildegard Diemberger, Marilyn Strathern

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By Hildegard Diemberger, Marilyn Strathern

Within the 15th century, the princess Chokyi Dronma used to be informed by means of the best religious masters of her time that she used to be the embodiment of the traditional Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, recognized in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt woman Pig. After affliction an excellent own tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her royal prestige to turn into a nun, and, in flip, the tantric consort of 3 striking spiritual masters of her period. After her loss of life, Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples well-known a tender lady as her reincarnation, the 1st in an extended, strong, and influential girl lineage. this day, the 12th Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the Samding monastery and is a excessive executive cadre within the Tibet self reliant Region.

Hildegard Diemberger builds her ebook round the translation of the 1st biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded via her disciples within the wake of her loss of life. The account finds a rare phenomenon: even though it have been believed that girls in Tibet weren't allowed to acquire complete ordination such as priests, Chokyi Dronma not just persuaded one of many maximum religious academics of her period to provide her complete ordination but in addition proven orders for different girls practitioners and have become so respected that she used to be formally famous as one in all important religious heirs to her major master.

Diemberger bargains a couple of theoretical arguments concerning the value of reincarnation in Tibetan society and faith, the position of biographies in setting up a lineage, the need for spiritual lecturers to navigate complicated networks of political and fiscal patronage, the cultural and social innovation associated with the revival of historical Buddhist civilizations, and the function of ladies in Buddhism. 4 introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and 4 concluding chapters speak about the institution of the reincarnation lineage and the position of the present incarnation less than the especially contradictory communist process.

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Extra resources for When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet

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Her commitment to women stood in direct relationship to her more general religious views. In any case, she made a remarkable contribution to Tibetan culture irrespective of the fact that she was a woman. I have therefore tried to take into account both the gendered aspect of her life and her broader engagement with the world she experienced. Considering how these were intertwined, I think it 16 Introduction likely that there are specific relationships among the lack of a hegemonic polity, competing patronage, and cultural innovation that gave rise to the social and conceptual spaces that Chokyi Dronma was in the position to carve out for women in the name of Buddhism.

I shall argue in chapter 3 that the narrative itself was conceived in connection with the search for a reincarnation of the princess shortly after her death, as if the text and her human rebirth were together regenerating, in a form of codified and reenacted memory, the person she had been, in order to continue her mission. Ultimately, the biography bears witness to how the princess’s life had become narrative and the narrative in turn laid the foundation for the process of her “ritualization” (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994): the definition of a set of actions that disjoined this woman from day-to-day life experience and revealed her as the deity she represented.

The story of Chokyi Dronma, like that of the Buddha, aims at an audience that transcends cultural and historical boundaries. It is one example of a rich Tibetan literary genre that goes generally under the name of namthar, meaning literally “liberation from everything,” the account of the life of a highly achieved personality who is seen as an exemplar on the way toward spiritual liberation. This genre has similarities to Western hagiography but reflects a distinctive religious and philosophical tradition that placed a particular emphasis on the self.

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