Author : Olivier Föllmi
Publisher :
Page : 423 pages
File Size : 17,30 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Buddhism
ISBN : 9780500511015
This book invites the reader on a journey to an exotic land and into one’s heart and soul. The pictures are accompanied throughout by contributions from nineteen eminent specialists on the region, who discuss the culture, customs, politics and faith of the Himalayan world; past and present. Reflecting not only the cycle of human existence but also the history of the Himalayas, this lavish volume offers an unparalleled insight into Himalayan Buddhism in the 21st century.
Author : Matthieu Ricard
Publisher :
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 40,11 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Nature
ISBN :
Newly available in paperback, this sumptuous volume presents a dazzling collection of photographs of the majestic landscape and Buddhist people of the Himalayas. The authors' profound intimacy with their subject is immediately apparent in their awe-inspiring images, which present a harmonious mosaic of the unmatched richness of the civilizations on the Roof of theWorld. The pictures are accompanied throughout by contributions from nineteen eminent specialists on the region, who discuss the faith, culture, politics and traditions of the Himalayan world. Reflecting not only the cycle of human existence but also the history of the Himalayas, this lavish volume offers an unparalleled insight into Himalayan Buddhism in the 21st century.
Author : Phunchok Stobdan
Publisher : Vintage Books
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 46,57 MB
Release : 2019-10-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780670091393
There is a new 'great game' being played in the Buddhist Himalayas between India, China and Tibet, which makes for a crucial third player. Together, they are leveraging their influence with the Buddhist communities to create strategic dominance, with varying degrees of success. China's 'Buddhist diplomacy' has focused on Nepal and Bhutan, and the Indian Himalayan regions of Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, which have sizeable Buddhist populations and are vulnerable to this influence. The crisis in Doklam brought into focus what will be one of the most difficult issues to unfold in the Himalayas in future: India's insufficient ability to deal with China only through the prism of military power. If Xi Jinping, who is known to be working towards a resolution of the Tibet question, succeeds, and the Dalai Lama does indeed return to Tibet, how will it impact Indian interests in the Buddhist Himalayas? If the Tibet issue remains unresolved, how will India and China deal with and leverage the sectarian strife that is likely to intensify in a post-Dalai Lama world? The Great Game in the Buddhist Himalayas includes several unknown insights into the India-China, India-Tibet and China-Tibet relationships. It reads like a geopolitical thriller, taking the reader through the intricacies of reincarnation politics, competing spheres of sacred influence, and monastic and sectarian allegiances that will keep the Himalayas on edge for years to come.
Author : John Crook
Publisher : Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Page : 510 pages
File Size : 24,38 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9788120814790
When John Crock of Bristol University began research in the Zangskar valley of Ladakh in 1977 his prime intention was to investigate the social anthropology of the area through studies of village life. In 1986 Crook returned to Ladakh with into the social organisation, history, meditational practices and philosophy of the yogins who still lived and practiced in the remote parts of the area. This book is a record of the author's adventurous journeys to meet some remarkable men. The yogins were often generous, providing accounts of their training, one of them allowing Crook to photograph a Mahamudra by the eminent Tipun Padma of this difficult work together with that of a biography of the great women yogin Machig Labdron provides the basis for extensive and original discussions of the meaning of Tibetan Buddhism and it's significance in our time.
Author : Barbara Crossette
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 45,20 MB
Release : 2011-08-03
Category : Religion
ISBN : 030780190X
A travelogue of Bhutan and its neighbors in the Himalayas that introduces readers to a world that has emerged from the middle ages only to find itself peering into the abyss of modernity. "For anyone with a serious interest in Buddhism, it's essential reading" (Washington Post Book World). For more than a thousand years Tibet, Sikkim, Ladakh, and Bhutan were the santuaries of Tantric Buddhism. But in the last half of this century, geopolitics has scoured the landscape of the Himalayas, and only the reclusive kingdom of Bhutan remains true to Tantric Buddhism.
Author : Kurtis R. Schaeffer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 10,12 MB
Release : 2004-07-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0198034911
Himalayan Hermitess is a vivid account of the life and times of a Buddhist nun living on the borderlands of Tibetan culture. Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration, defied tradition, and composed one of the most engaging autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition. The Life of Orgyan Chokyi is the oldest known autobiography authored by a Tibetan woman, and thus holds a critical place in both Tibetan and Buddhist literature. In it she tells of the sufferings of her youth, the struggle to escape menial labor and become a hermitess, her dreams and visionary experiences, her relationships with other nuns, the painstaking work of contemplative practice, and her hard-won social autonomy and high-mountain solitude. In process it develops a compelling vision of the relation between gender, the body, and suffering from a female Buddhist practitioner's perspective. Part One of Himalayan Hermitess presents a religious history of Orgyan Chokyi's Himalayan world, the Life of Orgyan Chokyi as a work of literature, its portrayal of sorrow and joy, its perspectives on suffering and gender, as well as the diverse religious practices found throughout the work. Part Two offers a full translation of the Life of Orgyan Chokyi. Based almost entirely upon Tibetan documents never before translated, Himalayan Hermitess is an accessible introduction to Buddhism in the premodern Himalayas.
Author : Diana Lange
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 25,13 MB
Release : 2020-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9004416889
Diana Lange has solved the mysteries of six panoramic maps of 19th c. Tibet and the Himalayas, known as the British Library's Wise Collection. The result is both a spectacular illustrated ethnographic atlas and a unique compendium of knowledge concerning the mid-19th century Tibetan world, as well as a remarkable account of an academic journey of discovery.This large format book is lavishly illustrated in colour and includes four separate large foldout maps.
Author : Kim Gutschow
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 25,35 MB
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0674038088
They may shave their heads, don simple robes, and renounce materialism and worldly desires. But the women seeking enlightenment in a Buddhist nunnery high in the folds of Himalayan Kashmir invariably find themselves subject to the tyrannies of subsistence, subordination, and sexuality. Ultimately, Buddhist monasticism reflects the very world it is supposed to renounce. Butter and barley prove to be as critical to monastic life as merit and meditation. Kim Gutschow lived for more than three years among these women, collecting their stories, observing their ways, studying their lives. Her book offers the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow depicts a gender hierarchy where nuns serve and monks direct, where monks bless the fields and kitchens while nuns toil in them. Monasteries may retain historical endowments and significant political and social power, yet global flows of capitalism, tourism, and feminism have begun to erode the balance of power between monks and nuns. Despite the obstacles of being considered impure and inferior, nuns engage in everyday forms of resistance to pursue their ascetic and personal goals. A richly textured picture of the little known culture of a Buddhist nunnery, the book offers moving narratives of nuns struggling with the Buddhist discipline of detachment. Its analysis of the way in which gender and sexuality construct ritual and social power provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.
Author : Annabella Pitkin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 36,39 MB
Release : 2022-05-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0226816923
"In the early twentieth century, Khunu Lama wandered like a beggar across Tibet and India, meeting Buddhist masters and living, so his students say, on cold porridge and water. Yet this ragged beggar-yogi became a revered teacher of the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At his death in 1977, he was mourned by Himalayan nuns, Tibetan lamas, and American meditators alike. The myriad surviving stories about Khunu Lama reveal unexpected forms of Tibetan Buddhism, shedding new light on questions of secularism, religion, and what it means to be modern. In Beggar Modern, Annabella Pitkin explores the emotionally charged Tibetan Buddhist imaginaries of renunciation, devotion, and the teacher-student lineage relationship as resources for Tibetan Buddhist approaches to modernity. By examining narrative accounts of the life of a remarkable twentieth-century Himalayan Buddhist and focusing on his remembered identity as a renunciant bodhisattva, Pitkin illuminates Tibetan and Himalayan practices of memory, reinvention, and mourning. Refuting longstanding caricatures of Tibetan Buddhist communities as unable to be modern because of their religious commitments, Pitkin shows instead how twentieth- and twenty-first-century Tibetan Buddhists have used precisely the cultural resources that connect them to their past as vital tools for creating new futures"--
Author : Peter Harrison
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 11,35 MB
Release : 2012-08-20
Category : History
ISBN : 1782001905
The spread of Buddism and Tibetan secular power throughout the Himalayas led to a distinctive style of fortifications not found anywhere else. This book looks at Himalayan fortifications, from their creation in the Middle Ages to their destruction and capture by the Chinese in the 20th century.
