Of Offal, Corpses, and Others: An Examination of Self, Subjectivity, and Authenticity in Two Works by Alexandra David-Neel
by
Robert William Jones II
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2010
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee – Dr. Berlatsky, Dr.
Buckton, and Dr. Youngberg – for their wisdom and patience throughout the
development of this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to Symantha Jones
for her unparalleled patience and encouragement in all of my academic endeavors.
iii
ABSTRACT
Author: Robert William Jones II
Title: Of Offal, Corpses, and Others: An Examination of Self, Subjectivity, and Authenticity in Two Works by Alexandra David- Neel
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Eric L. Berlatsky
Degree: Master of Arts
Year: 2010
This thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in
Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an “authentic” picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism. This project argues that the advanced meditation techniques practiced by Alexandra David-Neel allow her to access a transcendent self that is able to overcome the self/other dichotomy. It also discusses the ways in which abjection and limit experiences enhance this breakdown.
Finally, this thesis examines the roles that gender and a near absence of female Tibetan
iv voice play in complicating the problems of self, subjectivity, and authenticity within these texts.
v
OF OFFAL, CORPSES, AND OTHERS: AN EXAMINATION OF SELF,
SUBJECTIVITY AND AUTHENTICITY IN TWO WORKS BY ALEXANDRA
DAVID-NEEL
I. CLARIFYING AUTHENTICITY: AN UNHOLY MARRIAGE OF EAST AND
WEST…………………………………………………………………………………...1
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….. 1
Jean-Paul Sartre………………………………………………………………………... 3
Maurice Merleau-Ponty………………………………………………………………... 9
Michel Foucault………………………………………………………………………. 12
Application…………………………………………………………………………….16
A Note on Mimicry…………………………………………………………………… 19
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 21
II. SKELETONS OF THE “OTHER”: POST-COLONIALISM AND
NARRATOLOGY……………………………………………………………………. 22
The Orientalist View………………………………………………………………….. 27
Narratology and the Breakdown of Subject/Object Distinctions……………………...37
Enter the Abject………………………………………………………………………. 40
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 48
III. AN EXPLORATION OF VOICE IN THE WORK OF ALEXANDRA DAVID-
vi
NEEL…………………………………………………………………………………. 49
The Feminine Discourse Community………………………………………………… 55
Male Dominated Discourse Community……………………………………………... 62
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 67
IV. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………69
Notes…………………………………………………………………………………...74
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………76
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I. CLARIFYING AUTHENTICITY: AN UNHOLY MARRIAGE OF EAST AND WEST Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth! Rudyard Kipling
Introduction In describing Alexandra David-Neel’s work His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama states, “ Its great merit is that it conveys the authentic flavor of Tibet as she found it” (Gyatso i). What then is meant by “authenticity”? As a western woman writing about
Tibet, could Alexandra David-Neel portray an accurate and authentic picture of the land
and it’s people? It is possible that the concept of authenticity can be defined and used in
two different ways. The first is a conventional approach to authenticity that is based on
how “true” the rendering of Tibet and Tibetans is in the text. The second is less
conventional and involves a person’s authenticity of self or an authenticity of their true nature. As this thesis will show, it maybe possible that an author who is in touch with this second form of authenticity can use this insight to more accurately portray “others.”
Being philosophically authentic allows Alexandra David-Neel to break down the self/ other dichotomy and produce an authentic picture of the Tibetan people even though on the surface they are still considered “others”. The idea of this type of philosophical authenticity is one that has occupied thinkers from both the East and the West. After several millennia and volumes of literature on the subject, it is not surprising that there are many points of agreement as to what, philosophically, authenticity is and how to
1 achieve it. If, for the purposes of this study, we define ‘authenticity’ as the construction
of a ‘transcendent’ self that is capable of overcoming self/other binaries, we can then see that in the places where David-Neel comes closest to realizing this notion of authenticity, she also comes closest to breaking down her Western biases, and creating an ‘authentic’
Tibet in a more conventional sense.
When Kipling wrote those now famous words in the epigraph he was giving voice
to the imperialist view that Western and Eastern cultures could not coexist on an equal
plane while simultaneously subverting the idea that there might be an essential difference between the two cultures. Kipling reinforces the binary of West and East in the first two lines by claiming, “ never the twain shall meet” and using Judeo-Christian imagery to not only point out the futility in bringing them together but to reinforce the dominance of
Christian cultures throughout the world. The biblical imagery also serves to ally the West
with the almighty. If this quatrain were a couplet then the imperialist message would
stand unchallenged. However, the final two lines indicate that through the pain and strife
of battle these lines are blurred, if not erased. Hence, although Kipling acknowledges the
idea that separation from the other is needed to ensure imperialist hegemony, yet he
seems to understand that on another level, symbolized by a battlefield, there is no
essential difference. The achievement of a transcendent or philosophically “authentic”
self that can then create an authentic picture of a foreign culture can prove so vexing as
to be thought impossible. However, by defining authenticity in two different ways
(conventional and transcendent) we can begin to reconcile this complex problem.
2 Authenticity cannot be viewed as a single quantifiable thing. Rather, it is
necessary to understand that authenticity is often defined in two ways. The first way is
more conventional and seeks to explain how true an author is to her experience or how
accurately they portray said experience. The other authenticity hinges on an authenticity
of self or in a Buddhist sense Bodhicitta. Further one of the main issues at work is how
an authenticity of self can lead an author to create an authentic portrait of an “other” or a
foreign culture. David-Neel undertook specific tantric practices designed to swiftly cut
through ingrained patterns of dualistic thinking. The fruits of her practice manifest in the
text through breakdowns in the subject/object, self/other dichotomies. These breakdowns
arise from places of tension in the text generally created by either a great deal of fear or
disgust.
Jean-Paul Sartre Western philosophy, especially over the last hundred years, has been keenly
interested in the ideas of selfhood, subjectivity, and authenticity. In an effort to clarify
one of the maxims of existentialist thought, Jean-Paul Sartre stated “What do we mean
here by ‘existence precedes essence’? We mean that man first exists: he materializes in
the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself” (Existentialism is
Humanism 22). In this statement Sartre encapsulates his philosophy and also (perhaps
unwittingly) sets it in a parallel with Tibetan Buddhist philosophical tenets surrounding
primordial (or authentic) nature and the role of ego clinging in the process of identifying
a “self.” The primordial nature of all sentient beings is the same—Buddha nature. In The
Wish-Granting Prayer1 of Kuntu Zangpo the narrative is two-fold, first the prayer
establishes Kuntu Zangpo as the primordial Buddha2 and second to illustrate the way in
3 which the rest of us ended up in samsara3 and show how the fallacies of dualistic thinking
and ego binds beings to samsaric existence (Dowman 111-118). The prayer lays out the
idea that first we all existed as perfectly enlightened Buddhas and that a “sudden fainting
away” led to “innate ignorance and conceptual ignorance (selecting, structuring, and
labeling) [which] implies dualistic cognition” (120-121). Our innate nature combined
with our karmic obscurations may be seen as analogous to the “essence” Sartre speaks of.
Essence, a term Sartre borrowed from Hegel, is loosely defined as man’s past and, since
there is no pre ordained human nature, Sartre claims that each person makes her own
essence as she lives (Being and Nothingness 802). This is paired with “existence,” the
“concrete, individual being here and now” (802).
In Buddhism, human beings (actually, all sentient beings) have two modes of existence—the relative and the absolute. There is not any essential quality that makes humans human; rather, all sentient beings have Bodhicitta (Buddha nature). Bodhicitta is inherent in all sentient beings and therefore should not be view as an essential quality of being human. In fact, since Bodhicitta is present in all sentient beings it cannot ever be described being an essential quality for being human any more that it is essential for a pig. The physical bodies we all posses would be likened to the “existence,” although for
Buddhists it is not concrete in the sense of being permanent, fixed, or solid. Rather, the nature of our bodies is the coming together of the aggregates and elements; in Buddhist philosophy it is taught that as these things came together they must naturally fall apart.
However, our body, our physical self, is here, now.
4 This is not to say that the highest ideals of existentialism are on par with the
deluded state as described by Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Rather, it seems that Sartre
furthers his philosophy by placing much (if not all) of the onus for personal development
on the individual. By stating that, “Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be” and “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself” Sartre acknowledges that for the individual to become fully realized he or she
must do the hard work (Existentialism is a Humanism 22). In Tibetan Buddhism the
responsibility for reaching enlightenment rests ultimately on the practitioner, not on the
Lama. The teacher serves as guide or “spiritual friend” that dispenses advice and insight
but in the end, all of the actual gains the practitioner makes are due solely to his or her own effort. This is in direct opposition to the post-reformation Christian idea of “grace” wherein a person need only accept Christ to be assured a place in Heaven.
In addition, Sartre also refers to man as “a project” that is conscious of projecting
itself into the future. Sartre states, “that man primarily exists… [and] has subjective
existence, rather unlike a patch of moss, a spreading fungus, or a cauliflower” (23). This
is a clear nod to man’s sentient qualities and a subtle nod again to the beginingless (or
primary) nature of the self. To read Existentialism is a Humanism in this way we must
understand the word “primarily” to mean “in the first place.” Hence, a reading of this text
could follow the logic that all that is a self primordially exists, and, through a series of
events this primordially existing self creates and develops an essence. This idea shows
that there is some difference in Buddhist and Existentialist ideas. For Buddhists, the
individual is not concrete in her existence, this is not to say that Buddhists (Tibetan
Buddhists) deny that we are here, but rather, that what makes us human (as opposed to 5 one of the other classes of beings) is not solid, fixed, or permanently linked to a human body.
In his earlier work Sartre seems to deny any chance for humans to achieve full
authenticity. In Being and Nothingness he famously describes the situation of a waiter in
a café who, because he does not have a true measure of authenticity, must perform the
role of café waiter rather than simply be a café waiter: “the waiter in the cafe can not be
immediately a cafe waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell, or the glass is a
glass” (Being and Nothingness 101-105). The distinction between authentic and
inauthentic arises from the two categories that Sartre places things, inanimate or simple
physical objects are thought of as part of the en-soi or “in itself” while human beings are both en-soi and pour-soi ( for itself). Further, it appears as though Sartre denies that animals have the same consciousness as human beings. These ideas are very different from the Tibetan Buddhist classification system which places all beings (Buddhas, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings, gods, etc.) in the category of sentient beings. For Vajrayana practitioners, sentience brings the ability to become enlightened because of the interdependent relationship of sentience and Bodhicitta. In addition,
Sartre’s theistic background creates a compelling category, that of God, who according to
Sartre is the cause of his own being. Mere humans, according to Sartre, can never achieve this level, hence, the drive for complete authenticity is both futile and a waste of time.
With a more definitive grounding and respect for eastern philosophies it is possible
(given his statements above) that Sartre might have come to a less pessimistic conclusion about the human condition. Clearly, he was looking at existence from some similar angles that Buddhist philosophers have and has used many examples that are analogous 6 to those in Vajrayana; the difference is within the religious matrix that each philosophy
was germinated. Sartre, unlike Buddha and his followers, was incapable of the blasphemy
of placing mankind on the same level as a creature that is the cause of its own being.
Much of the way that Sartre speaks about the Other can be read as analogous to
Buddhist theories of interdependence and the lack of a real self/ other dichotomy. In
Being and Nothingness Sartre states, “This is because the Other is not only the one whom
I see but the one who sees me” (310). In this way, we get a simultaneous merging and fracturing of the subject and object that is on par with ideas in Tibetan Buddhism. One of the most important mundane realizations that a practitioner can have is that she functions both subjectively and objectively in the relative world. In addition, as Richard Kamber points out, “Sartre also argues that consciousness maintains its own identity by using negation to differentiate itself from the objects of which it is conscious” (58). This reading by Kamber seems to place the consciousness in charge discriminating or categorizing, ergo, the consciousness would be analogous to the ego as it is viewed in
Tibetan Buddhism.
When one considers the concept of bad faith in Being and Nothingness it is best to
reflect on the simplest definition provided by Sartre as a starting point, “We shall
willingly grant that bad faith is a lie to oneself, on condition that we distinguish the lie to
oneself from lying in general” (87). One of the major provisions of bad faith is the person
who is lying to oneself must be aware (perhaps even fully aware) of the fact that she or he
is lying. Sartre goes to great lengths to distinguish willful lies to oneself from simple and
(at times) unavoidable ignorance. In Tibetan Buddhist lore, there are many instructive
7 tales about this very thing. In Vajrayana philosophy one of the greatest failings one can
have is acting according to socially accepted eccentricities and violating taboos as ways
of appearing to the public ( or to oneself) as more spiritually developed and enlightened
than one really is. One of the most famous tales along these lines is the story of
Kukkuripa, a mahasiddha who lived in India during the first millennia CE. In the same
area as Kukkuripa there was another yogi who practiced with equal fervor and exhibited
behaviors that while eccentric where fully sanctioned in the Tantras. One day this master
was preparing a sacred ganapuja4 feast yet after invoking and requesting the presence of a sacred retinue no beings manifested.5 The yogi was chagrined and demanded some form
of explanation; a lone Dakini showed up and explained that all dakinis were attending a
similar rite that was being performed by Kukkuripa. This angered the yogi who said disparaging things about his rival. The Dakini responded “You, naked yogi, do everything according to the book; even your eccentricities are regulated. Kukkuripa, however, is free from concepts. He sleeps in an outhouse, consorts with bitches, is without possessions; plays no instruments, and parrots no prayers or scriptures. Since he relies on no higher authority than innate wisdom-awareness, we sky-going dakinis are bound to sport and consort with him” (Surya Das 165-167). The inference being that the yogi who followed convention was nowhere near as enlightened as a person who truly sees no difference in sleeping in an outhouse and sleeping in a regally appointed chamber. The yogi who followed conventional eccentricities was living (in Sartrean terms) in bad faith. By lying to himself, when, ostensibly, he knew better (Tantric texts are reasonably clear on the importance of being true to one’s own inner Guru) and
8 following socially constructed practices, the yogi was never going to achieve authenticity
of action and by extension never achieve enlightenment.
Sartre describes the intense difficulty one has in truly lying to oneself. For Sartre the impossibility lies in the fact that “the duality of deceiver and deceived does not exist”
(89). In this way, Sartre is not in agreement with Buddhist philosophy; because in
Buddhism all sentient beings deal with karmic obscurations that do—in many ways— allow a person to convincingly fool him or herself. These obscurations set up a type of mental formation that, until we get closer to enlightenment, facilitates our fooling ourselves. Clearly, there is a subtle yet important distinction to be made in fooling oneself and lying to oneself. In the Buddhist sense we are not maliciously obfuscating ourselves
from our true nature; even though ego is a persistent problem. For Sartre, this act of lying
to oneself seems to be both on purpose and perhaps insidious in its nature.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Building on Sartre’s philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty took a different
approach to examining the self. The role of perception and its relation to identity are
central concerns for Merleau-Ponty. However, in many cases perception is linked to an
interdependence or reciprocity that links his views with those of classical Vajrayana
thought. Merleau-Ponty argues that people are contingent/ interdependent on others “I
live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine” (Primacy of
Perception 146). Merleau-Ponty further argues against an ontological basis for a self/
other dichotomy that is based on his examination of sympathy and sympathetic response
in children. He states, “Sympathy does not presuppose a distinction between self-
consciousness and the consciousness of the other but rather the absence of a distinction 9 between the self and the other” (146). Tibetan Buddhism takes this idea (the absence of a self/ other distinction) to a more extreme level. This basic principle is one of the central tenets of Mahayana/ Vajrayana Buddhism and as such this message is vital to understanding the Heart Sutra6 which is itself one of the most important core texts of this philosophy. There are ten mental distractions that are specifically countered by receiving a teaching on the Heart Sutra and putting the teaching into practice. Among these ten distractions are “the conception of a self” and “the conception of a self as one” (Sherab,
Ceaseless Echoes 97).
Further Merleau-Ponty seems to lean toward the idea of a self without a self,
which is a very Buddhist notion. In The Visible and the Invisible he makes the statement
“I am a self-presence that is an absence from self”; this phrase again tracks with the core
teaching and philosophy of the Heart Sutra (250). Noting from the ten distractions that
are alleviated by the Heart Sutra, concepts such as viewing the self as more than just a
name and thinking of the self as having characteristics; these two distractions seem to
cover the “absence from self” that Merleau-Ponty alludes to. A further reading of the ten
distractions reveals one of the many seeming contradictions in Vajrayana Buddhist
philosophy. Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche points out that among these distractions
that lead to the logical conclusion that the self does not exist in Tibetan Buddhism there is
the distraction of “the conception of a lack of self” ( Ceaseless Echoes 97). The best way
to understand these contradictions is to realize that in Tibetan Buddhism there are two
truths, relative and ultimate or absolute.
10 These two levels of truth are best explained by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche in his multivolume The Gateway to Knowledge which is a condensed version of the Tripitaka7
with the inclusion of lengthy commentary from Mipham Rinpoche. Relative truth
includes all types of “perceived phenomena: the ‘ground’ which refers to aggregates,
elements, and sense sources…In short… relative truth refers to the extensive aspects of
all existent phenomena. Ultimate truth refers to the profound aspect of the nature as it is
and to the fact that the nature [of phenomena] is emptiness which cannot be established
as anything whatsoever (Vol II. 174). So it would be proper to assume that on a relative
level we have a self that we identify with, this allows us to function in the relative world.
The ultimate truth is, simply, another way of explaining the enlightened state or our true
and authentic nature. Further, in a commentary on the Guyugharba Tantra 8 it is stated
that “relative truth is purity and absolute truth is equanimity, since everything is equal
within the absolute level of great emptiness. This absolute equanimity and relative purity
are actually inseparable: they are in union, in a single state without any divisions”
(Sherab and Dongyal 14).
Moving further into Merleau-Ponty’s views on perception he states, “Since the
seer is caught up in what he sees, it is still himself that he sees: there is a fundamental
narcissism of all vision. And thus, for the same reason, the vision he exercises, he also
undergoes from the things, such that, as many painters have said, “I feel myself looked at
by the things” (The Visible and the Invisible 139). The idea of the viewer and the thing
that is viewed has a parallel a strong parallel to the Buddhist idea of interdependence.
From a Buddhist perspective, you cannot have a viewer without having that which is
11 viewed and vice versa. The reciprocal nature of vision is evidence of the interrelated
nature of the subject/ object relationship.
Michel Foucault Perhaps no philosopher of the latter half of the twentieth century tackled the issue
of the self and the cause of self-perfection with more vigor than Michel Foucault. Most
of my focus will be on his later work, which can be briefly described as being concerned
with the perfection of the self rather than his earlier concern with the formation of the
subject via relationships of power. In Foucault’s earlier writing ( exemplified by
Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization) the subject has limited—if any— potential for autonomy, while in his later work ( primarily “ The Ethic of Care for the
Self as a practice of Freedom,” “Self-Writing,” and “Technologies of the Self”) he shifts
from speaking of the subject as subject to speaking of the subject as a self . This self , as
conceived by Foucault, has the ability to perfect, or at least the autonomy to conceive, a
practice of self perfection. Foucault further lays out the process by which he envisions
“Giving the word ‘ascetical’ a very a very general meaning, that is to say, not in the sense
of abnegation but that of an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to work out, to
transform one’s self and to attain a certain mode of being”(Focault. ‘The Ethic of
Care”113). This definition and description of ascesis is the primary mode that
practitioners of Dzogchen utilize, that is, there is nothing outside of them that will grant
or bestow liberation. Rather, the self must work upon the self, and the mind must watch
the mind in order for the practitioner to achieve freedom. Clearly, Foucault is speaking of
the myriad traditions from ancient Greece; however, in this case the path and the goal are
remarkably similar to that of Dzogchen.
12 Regarding self perfection and power, Foucault claims that “I don’t see where evil
is in the practice of someone who, in a given game of truth, knowing more than another,
tells him what he must do, teaches him, transmits knowledge to him, communicates skills
to him” (“The Ethic of Care” 129). Again, Foucault is most directly speaking of the
western concept of the student teacher relationship. However, this relationship is taken to
farthest ends in Vajrayana Buddhism. Two of the most famous examples of the extreme
nature that the relationship can take are the story of Naropa and the Life story of
Milarepa. Naropa had to undergo twelve years of intense purification at the hands of his
master Tilopa in order to be ready to receive the teachings. One example of the extreme
nature of this relationship is when Naropa begged Tilopa for teachings: Tilopa, who was seated by a large sandalwood, fire said, “If I had a disciple wanting instruction, he would have jumped into this fire” (Guenther 47). Naropa complied and naturally was severely burned. Tilopa then healed his student and gave him teachings. This pattern is repeated over and over with each whim or command of the Guru becoming more dangerous, disgusting, or against social convention.
Another example is the case of Milarepa, who was made to undergo severe
physical mortification to purify the karma of killing over thirty members of his own
family. His master, Marpa, was Naropa’s chief disciple and had Milarepa perform tasks
such as building large stone towers only to tear them down when the slightest
contravention of Marpa’s instructions were revealed. This type of physical mortification
can be paralleled to Foucault’s own experimentation with sadomasochism ( Power 165-
170). Foucault, however, was not content simply to study and write about the possible
uses of the intense sadomasochistic experience; rather, he put his own body on the line to 13 make discoveries about himself. Clearly, the parallel of sadomasochism to Buddhism has
some problems; however, if one were strip away all cultural assumptions and biases and
look only at the aim and body centered nature of the practices of the two principles
(Foucault and either Milarepa or Naropa) they are attempting to break free of discursively
created realities and identities in the hopes of achieving transcendence, enlightenment, or
a higher state of being. The sadomasochistic nature of these stories also highlights the
body as the vessel and vehicle of societal inscription and karmic purification. In this way,
the body’s significance in the enlightenment (or transcendent) process cannot be
understated. Even those Tibetans who do not possess a need to undergo such physical
ordeals as Milarepa and Naropa count among their benefits the fact that they were born
human. Further, they acknowledge (through aspiration prayers9) the need to possess a
human body with the fully functional sense faculties needed to both receive the teachings
and put them into practice. This is strong evidence of the lack of a Cartesian dualism in
Tibetan Buddhism. The philosophy does not explicitly privilege mind over body or vice
versa. If , for example, the mind absent a body was all that was required for
enlightenment, not only would the above cited aspiration prayers be constructed in a way to reinforce this privileging, but we would not have the enduring descriptions of the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of a Buddha described in bodily terms. Clearly, many of these marks are metaphorical or, at the very least, not to be taken literally; however, the fact that they are described using the body encapsulates the importance of the body to enlightenment.
Both Foucault and Tibetan thinkers advocate for the necessity for individuals to
do the needed work on themselves and both sides of this discussion readily acknowledge 14 that this work is difficult and goes against the grain of either discursively created
identities (Foucault) or intense ego clinging. We must, according to Foucault, concern
ourselves with “technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own
means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and
souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to
attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality”
(“Technologies of the Self” 225). With the exception of Foucault’s use of the word
soul—a use which may come primarily from Foucault’s French Catholic upbringing—
Foucault’s technologies are similar enough to the objects and aims of Vajrayana to bear
closer scrutiny. By this I mean that in the scope of Nyingma Buddhism one works with
the help and guidance of a guru, but ultimately the practitioner learns the methods and
practices and, over time, begins to listen to her own inner Guru10.
A further parallel between Foucault and Nyingma Buddhism occurs in his
insistence that “the soul cannot know itself except by looking at itself in a similar
element, a mirror. Thus, it must contemplate the divine element” (“Technologies of the
Self” 231). Again, it is important to note that I am reading his use of the word souls as
parallel to the Buddhist concept of mind or mind-stream. The idea that a mirror (of some
fashion) is an integral tool for spiritual development is evidenced by the prevalence of the
melong (or Tibetan ritual mirror). Additionally, the mirror as metaphor is not the
exclusive province of Foucault. One need only consider Lacan’s mirror-stage or Rorty’s
book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to see some positive and negative uses of this
metaphor in western philosophy. The mirror – as with many things in Tibetan
Buddhism—has many layers of meaning, the most important of which (for my purposes)
15 is the mirror as metaphor for the mind. This meaning developed during the earliest
flowering of Buddhism in India. Alex Wayman notes, “the early Buddhist use of the
mirror as metaphor a metaphor of the mind, which becomes dirtied as the mirror collects
dust” (252). For the practitioner of Buddhism the process of meditation and mental training is akin to removing the dust from the mirror. This metaphor extends into the traditions that were carried into Tibet starting in the eighth century and both the mirror as metaphor and physical melong are still used amongst the indigenous peoples of Tibet and in the exile community.
The mirror metaphor changed many times of the course of history yet still retains
many of the earlier meanings. From the idea that the mirror was a metaphor for the mind
and its defilements the mirror was next used to symbolize the voidness gate. That is to
say the mirror was directly linked to the concept of shunyata. In this particular metaphor
voidness and emptiness are regarded as the same idea. Primarily, the things that one is
void of, according to Asanga, are the klésas or defilements of the mind (Wayman 253).
Further, in Buddhist thought, the mirror is considered to be void of qualities. This means
that a mirror is unaffected by the things that are reflected in it. The reflections can be
good or bad, beautiful or ugly and the mirror remains unchanged. In addition the mirror
reflects positive and negative things (or beautiful and ugly things) impartially. That is to
say that the mirror does not discriminate or judge. Everything that is reflected in the
mirror is reflected equally. Hence, the mirror is like the enlightened mind—a mind
without discriminations, judgments, or partiality.
Application
Bringing these disparate philosophies together to show that they are actually quite 16 close at their core is one thing. It is quite another to show how these philosophies work
together when aimed at the work of Alexandra David-Neel. Toward the end of My
Journey to Lhasa David-Neel has a unique encounter with a tantric Lama. The exchange is as follows,
This mute stranger, who looked at me fixedly, proved embarrassing. I
should have liked to see him get up and go away, or do something that was
natural to travelers—eat or drink. But he had no baggage with him, not
even a bag of Tsampa…Suddenly, without departing from his immobility,
he addressed me: “ Jetsunma,” he said, “ What have you done with your
ten-treng, your zen and with your ‘ rings of the initiate’?” My heart
stopped beating. This man knew me! He had seen me dressed as a
gomchenma, either in Kham, in northern solitudes, in Amdo, or in
Tsang… I recovered my sang-froid. Deception was useless…“Do not try
to remember, Jetsunma,” said the ascetic to me when we were alone. “ I
have as many faces as I desire, and you have never seen this one.” The
conversation which followed was a long one on subjects pertaining to
Thibetan philosophy and mysticism. (243-244)
This exchange is the perfect proving ground for the deployment of the three primary
Western philosophers with relation to her work. Regarding Sartre, the ascetic wanderer cuts through David-Neel’s façade. He does not allow her the opportunity to try and deceive him about her identity. Her first response was to attempt to keep up her subterfuge, why else would she need to decide “deception was useless” unless deception
17 was one of the first things she was going to try. In this way she was forced during this interaction to not act in bad faith. This openness to her good faith was what allowed the conversation to range from Tibetan philosophy to mysticism.
The description that David-Neel gives us of this man would seem to track with a
practitioner of Dzogchen or Mahamudra. When the ascetic wanderer states that he has “as
many faces as I desire and you have never seen this one,” it can be read in several ways.
One of them would integrate Merleau-Ponty’s concept of empathy or interdependence.
The visage that he presents to her is dependent on who she is and what she may or may
not recognize from a past encounter. Further Merleau-Ponty speaks of the “seer being
caught up in what he sees,” David-Neel is clearly caught up in what she is seeing, that is
a man who knows precisely who she is (The Visible and the Invisible 139). Her whole
position in this dialogue is predicated on the fact that she is bound up in the identity that
is being created for her by this man.
As a teacher and catalyst for a limit-experience, this character is perfect. He is a
meditator of the highest order—based on his demeanor and the items he caries. Here
again the fear of the discovery of her identity shocks David-Neel into a place where she
can understand the teaching that he is going to bestow on her. The conversation lasted all
night long as David-Neel notes that, “ a rosy light spread in the sky and day broke. I had
been listening to the mysterious traveler the whole night” (244). This leads the reader to
the conclusion that she had been given dharma teachings over the course of several hours
and kept from sleeping. This is the longest portion of formal Buddhist training that she
writes about in the text. As such, the reader must conclude that David-Neel holds this
18 man in extremely high regard as a teacher. In addition, in order to keep a very weary
traveler from her sleep this man must hold great sway over her. This further aligns with
Foucault’s notion that there is nothing wrong with a person who has knowledge being in
a position of power with relation to his or her pupils. Finally, by writing about this
encounter David-Neel is writing her self further into the position of an expert on Tibet
and on Tibetan Buddhism. An encounter such as this with a true meditation master or
yogi is something that every serious practitioner of Buddhism would respect and honor.
A Note on Mimicry Alexandra David-Neel’s journey toward a transcendent self is complicated by the
racial performance she employs. This performance is necessary in order to gain access to
the inner world of pre-invasion Tibet. However, David-Neel’s performance of race and
custom also function as a form of cultural mimicry. In The Location of Culture Homi K.
Bhabha writes, “ The effect of mimicry on the authority of colonial discourse is profound
and disturbing” and that “ the ambivalence of mimicry ( almost the same, but not quite)
does not merely ‘rupture’ the discourse, but becomes transformed into an
uncertainty”(123). Much of the mimicry that Bhabha writes about is forced on the
colonized peoples as a means of subjugation. In the case of David-Neel, however, she is
not mimicking the Tibetan people in order to simply destabilize the inherent power
structure. Rather, by challenging the binary of self/ other, she is going beyond a mimicry
that is only a “resemblance and menace” to a position whereby she uses mimicry as a
vital component in her spiritual practice (125).
In this way, the mimicry of racial performance functions beyond Bhabha’s
conception. David-Neel mimics the Tibetans to the point that she is able to actually 19 eliminate the binary of self/other and thus portray an authentic Tibet within her texts.
This level of mimicry is of different degree than the “partial representation/ recognition”
that is Bhabha’s primary concern (126). However, David-Neel does not achieve this level
of mimicry quickly or all at once. Instead, what we see in these texts are numerous points
of tension that come in to play where her identity is concerned. It is these places where
her status as “ almost the same but not quite” becomes a central concern in the narrative
and the vehicle for limit-experiences that help her further her goal of exploring Tibet.
The idea that mimicry ruptures the discourse is central to Bhabha’s argument. It is
this rupture that propels David-Neel further along on her spiritual quest. By mimicking
and reproducing the actions and words of Tibetans David-Neel did not fracture a
prevailing discourse, rather, what she did accomplish was the erasure of the self/other binary in such a way that that when she was performing a Tibetan identity she was
actually assimilating the culture and values of the people she was mimicking. This
assimilation would not have been possible ( to the degree experienced by David-Neel)
without the performance of race and the mimicry she engaged in. For Bhabha this would
seem to be a fool’s gambit. He writes, “the desire to emerge as ‘authentic’ through
mimicry—through a process of writing and repetition—is the final irony of a partial
representation” (126). Here we see that Bhabha is very clear that mimicry will not lead to
“authenticity”; however, it is important to note that in the case of Alexandra David-Neel the mimicry was not prescribed by a ruling order. Rather, her mimicry came about both as a means to infiltrate a country and from a desire to learn as much as she could about
Tibetan Buddhism.
20 Conclusion
Authenticity and concepts of the self have some powerful parallels in texts from
the western traditions and Tibetan Buddhism. This is not to say that these two disparate
traditions are identical, but rather, that they are playing the same game under slightly different rules. The fact that western philosophy does not recognize or define emptiness in the same way that the Tibetans do is a fundamental difference that, at this point in time, there is no solution for. However, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault all approach the subjects of authenticity and the self with similar arguments to that of Tibetan masters of the past and present. Sartre’s essence/existence binary does read in a similar fashion to the concept of Buddha nature and ego. Merleau-Ponty’s view that the perceiver and the perceived are inseparable or intertwined is strikingly close to the Buddhist principle of interdependence. Foucault’s lucid description of self-perfection and it’s relation to power is a story told over and over in the Tibetan Canon and the need for relationships of power in the quest for liberation is something every practicing Vajrayana Buddhist has to come to terms with. The ideas of authenticity/ and the self from these two cultures can be reconciled in this way. You are what you have made yourself, you are not a strictly isolated being with no connection to other sentient beings, and in order to break free and achieve the pinnacle of human experience you must acknowledge the hold that individual and societal factors have on you and do the necessary work to over come them. Further, how would the achievement of a transcendent self complicate matters of race and gender?
Is it possible that a Western Woman can overcome her biases to present a portrait of
Tibet that could be viewed as conventionally authentic?
21 II. SKELETONS OF THE “OTHER”: POST-COLONIALISM AND NARRATOLOGY Within David-Neel’s texts the transcendence and philosophical authenticity function within the author and enable her to present a Tibet that is viewed as, conventionally, authentic. This causes me to return to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s striking analysis of My Journey to Lhasa. Along with a brief description of the geographic and political isolation of Tibet and a few words that honor David-Neel’s accomplishments—both as a traveler and scholar/ practitioner—he adds the following sentence “ Its [ the book] great merit is that it conveys the authentic flavor of Tibet as she found it, described with affectionate humor. Perhaps scholars and historians today would challenge many of the author’s opinions, but this does not affect her work’s intrinsic worth” ( Gyatso i). The idea that one of the leading voices on Tibetan history and culture would claim that a westerner was able to provide a level of authenticity regarding his culture is a significant statement. Indeed, the idea that a western woman could produce an authentic Tibet within her books is in direct contradiction with much post-colonial theory. In the introduction to this thesis, I put forth a framework of philosophical authenticity or transcendence that is built on a hybridized view of Buddhism and Western philosophical thought. I will use this basic framework to enhance a post-colonial reading of these texts. One of the first and most influential post-colonial theorists, Edward Said, notes the idea of authenticity from a person outside a culture is an impossibility. In
Orientalism he states “ no production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever
22 ignore or disclaim its author’s involvement as a human in his own circumstances… there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality” (11). Said argues that discourse and subjectivity disallow an outside person the ability to express an authentic indigenous personality through language and text ,or, rather, that people are incapable of sufficiently breaking down the subject /object dichotomy to achieve a transcendence of thought that will allow for an honest and untainted representation of another culture.
Said’s post-colonial theories continued to evolve over the course of his life. In one of the later developments, he positions the critic in a liminal space between the culture and the system that he is observing. In The World, the Text, and the Critic Said positions the critic’s individuality “at a sensitive nodal point” where “On the one hand, the individual mind registers and is very much aware of the collective whole, context, or situation in which it finds itself. On the other hand, precisely because of this awareness -- a worldly self-situating, a sensitive response to the dominant culture -- that the individual consciousness is not naturally and easily a mere child of the culture, but a historical and social actor in it” ( The World, the Text, and the Critic15). Hence, the simple act of being aware of discourse, individuality, or subjectivity—according to Said—is not enough to break free from these. As such, the individual critic (or author) is always bound to the prevailing social and political factors of their discourse community but not always predetermined by them. This cultural programming leaves the individual no critical space to acknowledge agency or authenticity in that which he or she perceives as other. As much of Said’s work is founded on Michel Foucault’s middle work on discourse, this theoretical problem is to be expected. However, as illustrated in the introduction,
Foucault’s work does not argue for a wholesale exclusion of transcendence or
23 enlightenment. If David-Neel’s Buddhist practices produced a sufficient enough limit
experience then it can be expected that a transcending of the self/other binary is not only
possible, but also expected.
In The Order of Things, Foucault lays out his particular view of the structures and
discourses that are inherent in any type of humanist study. Foucault is concerned with
“observing how a culture experience the propinquity of things, how it establishes the
tabula of their relationships and the order by which they must be considered” this system
of relationships between a culture and what it classifies still underlies nearly all work in
the humanities (xxiv). These relationships are not merely relational on a subject/ object
level but also, in a hierarchical fashion. That is to say, that by understanding the
underlying system of signs of any culture and then attempting to interpret them into one’s
own sign system involves much more than a simple linguistic quid pro quo. Rather, the
observer interpreter must immerse herself sufficiently within a culture to understand the
totality of the sign, signified, referent relationship and their complex interdependent
nature. This is, according Said, an impossible goal and for Foucault perhaps a less than
noble one as this immersion would indicate that the observer was seeking self-perfection
outside of herself. However, if we return to the Dalai Lama’s claim of authenticity in the
text we see that there is, at very least, a tension between the theory and what the Dalai
Lama sees as the ultimate triumph of the praxis.
This chapter will challenge the idea that discourse is intractable with relation to
issues of authenticity in two works by Alexandra David-Neel. Two very important things are at play within these texts. The first of these is the effect of long-term cultural
24 immersion and role-play as a native or insider. Alexandra David-Neel travelled for several years on the Tibetan plateau in the guise of a Tibetan mendicant. She spoke
Tibetan and projected as an outward persona that was so convincing that the Tibetans (a people known for their distrust and animosity towards foreigners) she encountered did not give her a second glance. In her texts she is the Western embodiment of Bhabha’s mimicry. Second is the use of deep meditative and spiritual practices as a means of breaking down the subject/ object distinctions that permeate western thought. These two factors are what enable Alexandra David-Neel’s text to achieve a (mostly) authentic view of Tibet and her people. As mentioned in the introduction, Michel Foucault, Helmuth
Plessner, and other twentieth-century philosophers believed in the value of the limit experience as a means to place oneself outside of discourse (Plessner refers to this state as “transcendence”). The physical and mental practices that David-Neel engages in and masters are the tools that esoteric Vajrayana Buddhism uses to achieve enlightenment, and enlightenment—from a Buddhist perspective— is beyond the reach of discourse.
Even if David-Neel did not achieve enlightenment, the practices would place her mind and body in a liminal area spacious enough to affect an erasure of the subject/ object binary. This is not to say that her works are homogeneous in their authenticity. Rather, each work has its own distinctive trajectory and multiple levels of narrative structure that are, to use a Buddhist analogy, like the layers of an onion that must be peeled back in order to reveal the core, the core, in this instance, is our true nature.
The text My Journey to Lhasa allowed Alexandra David-Neel to achieve moderate fame, notoriety and a bit of infamy. This book (while not her first published piece on the Himalayan region or Buddhism) was the start of her life as an expert on 25 Asiatic cultures and practices. The text itself occupies an ambiguous chronology. Her
time in the region started in 1911 and ended in 1924, the journey spanning several years.
However, since she did not carry any writing implements for fear of being recognized as
a foreigner, the text itself was written after she left Tibet in 1924. It was published in
1928 with little critical fanfare but garnered wide interest from those who were intent on
learning about the mysterious and heretofore unexplored east. Magic and Mystery in
Tibet was published two years later in response to requests for a more detailed treatment
of the esoteric rights and practices she witnessed and performed.
“All writing, even the most intentionally subversive is confined by the
parameters of discourse at a particular moment, which is always an imperfect present”
this quote from Roland Barthes book Writing Degree Zero speaks volumes of the task
when trying to analyze a text like My Journey to Lhasa. For within this text numerous
discourses struggle for position and many “ imperfect presents” rise, fall, and cascade
over and around each other in a tangled web of space time that leaves the reader
wondering exactly who said a thing and when that thing was said. Here the question of
identity evokes further questions of authenticity. Further, readers are always in an imperfect present as they read texts of this nature due to the constantly fluctuating socio- historic position of Tibet and the surrounding Himalayan countries. Alexandra David-
Neel’s journey was indeed subversive. The British and Tibetans tried (and succeeded numerous times) to keep her out of the land of snows and she eventually triumphed.
Authenticity is a central issue throughout these texts. As is the possibility that
Alexandra David-Neel (a French woman) was able to give the Tibetan (and other
26 Himalayan peoples) a true and authentic voice in the texts. This would be considered
more of a conventional use of the word “authentic” predicated on some form of truth- value. I contend that she does but that the authentic nature of the “other” is not so easy to discern. It is clear that as she progresses on her path of self-discovery David-Neel is more
easily able to produce an authentic picture of a foreign culture. Further, the authenticity
that His Holiness speaks of may be that of a person looking for enlightenment and undergoing the myriad of experiences along the journey. In this context, “authenticity” is more adequately defined as a transcendent or primordial nature. Tibetan Buddhists often use the term Bodhicitta or mind of enlightenment. It is this, transcendent form of authenticity that allows David-Neel the opportunity to produce a conventionally authentic picture of Tibet. Therefore, it is necessary to dissect the overlapping levels of narration for it is in the liminal areas of the text where one narrator is fading and the next level is ascending that the reader can find authenticity. It is possible to believe that since David-
Neel’s account was for decades the only account by a Westerner (and therefore the only one in a western language) of the lives of Tibetans in pre-invasion Tibet that scholars would be forced into a position of acquiescence regarding the truth-value in the construction of the people she met.
The Orientalist View These texts do have many elements that fall under the traditional orientalist mode.
In clarifying precisely what is meant by Orientalism I return to Edward Said who states,
“The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed
the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes
about, or researches the Orient--and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist,
27 sociologist, historian, or philologist--either in its specific or its general aspects, is an
Orientalist, and what he or she says or does is Orientalism” (Orientalism 2). By writing
about, studying, and traveling to the East, David-Neel is an orientalist. Said further
expands and generalizes this definition to include “a style of thought based upon
ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and (most of the
time “the Occident” (2). David-Neel is clearly writing an Orient into existence while
simultaneously studying its traditions and philosophies. The main questions surrounding
her work concern the levels of authenticity, self, and subjectivity evidenced in the texts
and how does her study and practice of Vajrayana Buddhism inform these three very important factors. David-Neel seems to fall into familiar western predicated assumptions,
particularly when she is introducing certain elements of the narrative. In Magic and
Mystery in Tibet David-Neel disparages one of the most important figures in Tibetan culture “ It is impossible, I said, to know exactly what the historical Padmasambhava, who preached in Tibet centuries ago, was like. Nevertheless, it is certain that his followers have made him the hero of legends that encourage drunkenness and absurd, pernicious practices. Under his name, they worship an evil spirit” (53). By disparaging the most venerated of figures in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon David-Neel is clearly functioning from her Western orientalist point of view. As an educated woman conversant in Buddhism she would be well aware of the dire nature of the insult to
Padmasambhava and all Tibetan Buddhists.
The meditative practices that David-Neel engages in generally take some amount
of time and effort to show lasting results. As such, there are many points in both texts
where Alexandra David-Neel seems to be asserting a pro western, orientalist, hegemony 28 on the text and the Tibetans she portrays. These points are where many readers
(especially those in the western Buddhist convert community) draw their analysis and
impression of David-Neel as an overt racist and many write her texts off as being
incapable of accurately presenting Tibetans or Tibetan culture. However, this analysis
does not take into account the ways in which Vajrayana practices function on the
mindstream of a dedicated practitioner. The methods are designed to be swift but not
immediate and during the course of many months and years people often go through
periods of less than amenable behavior. These practices are designed to allow the
transcendent self (a self that is free from biases and duality) the opportunity to develop
and manifest. To be sure, there are many points in the text that read like an orientalist
view of the Himalayan region.
In the preface to My Journey to Lhasa David-Neel remarks about listening to
stories told by the XIII Dalia Lama’s inner circle “ while listening to them I wisely made a liberal allowance for legend and exaggeration” ( xxxii). With this statement, David-
Neel positions herself as the only voice of authority or truth in the text. In addition, she also professes kinship with “Oriental scholars” (xxxiii). It is clear that in these two instances in the preface David-Neel is positioning herself squarely on the side of the west with regard to truth, authority, and knowledge of the east.
David-Neel plays with the idea of the dirty native as well; she writes, “I started at last for the spring, after having been earnestly entreated by Yongden to avoid washing
my face, which had now become nearly the orthodox color of a Thibetan countrywoman”
(89). In this sense, the white western woman’s clean flesh has to be sufficiently dirtied to
29 blend in with the natives. Naturally, the Tibetans would have a noticed someone with
very fair skin roaming about the countryside and into Lhasa, however, we learn at different points in the text that David-Neel that David-Neel applies soot to her face from the bottom of her beggar’s bowl. This shows that there was (at least in her mind) a correlation between appearing dirty and appearing Tibetan (82). She also applied Chinese ink to her hair to darken it she notes, “my fingers got their share of dye! But this did not matter much, for the personality of the old beggar mother I had assumed required me to be as dirty as possible” (82). Through this performance of race David-Neel physically mimics Tibetans outwardly while inwardly transforming, transcending, and ultimately subverting Western biases. The idea that eastern peoples where dirtier and less sanitary than their western counterparts is another common trope for colonialism and western domination. William Kupinse notes that Britain’s discourse on hygiene in her colonies is a “subset of the larger mechanism of empire’s hegemonic description of its subjects”
(251). The message is naturally that a dirty, unclean, (usually Eastern) people must be civilized by a western power. In making his point Kupinse quotes from a late nineteenth century journal The Sanitary Record “ They [ the people of India] must be made clean by compulsion until they arrive at that degree of moral education when dirt shall become hateful to them, and they will keep themselves clean for their own sake” (250). David-
Neel, in telling her readers that the Tibetan women were extremely dirty, reinforces this discourse through her narrative. In addition, this idea that David-Neel must “put on” her
Tibetan identity is linked back to the Sartrean idea of bad faith and the fact that she is not en-soi Tibetan. This also connects to Bhabha’s thoughts on mimicry in that she is mimicking the outward appearance of a Tibetan while not being Tibetan.
30 Further, David-Neel also provides that one of her main reasons for traveling to
Lhasa is the “absurd prohibition which closes Thibet. A prohibition—one could hardly think it possible—that extends over a gradually increasing area is now placed on foreigners who wish to cross territories over which they could travel at will a few years ago”(xxiv). David-Neel, in this instance, levels a severe insult at both Tibetan sovereignty and British power in the region. First, from the outside of Tibet the British
Empire still controlled India and was intent on extending its influence into the Himalayan country. At the same time, the Tibetans were deeply suspicious of all foreigners and generally ran them out of the country as soon as they were discovered. The idea that
David-Neel did not respect either of these power structures (British and Tibetan) places her in unique colonialist mind set. Within the context of this paper it is her decision to ignore the Tibetans views on who should be allowed to enter their land; how dare the
Tibetans keep a woman of her station and learning out of their county.
Finally, in My Journey to Lhasa there is a scene where a local herder asks
David-Neel and Yongden for a divination about the whereabouts of a missing cow. Her companion, Yongden, begins to chant mantra and meditate; David-Neel then makes the claim that she can follow his thought “He is asking himself where is the unlucky cow to be found? I know nothing about it. That is not the question, however. What is the best thing to say to the poor fool who is asking me?” (99). Here, we get David-Neel claiming to read the mind of Yongden and she feels that she knows that Yongden feels the man is a fool for asking for a divination. On one level she is clearly not allowing Yongden to speak for himself, she could have told this bit of the narrative just as well from his point of view; however, she felt it more appropriate to use her own western character to call 31 this man and his beliefs foolish. In this instance she makes a conscious (and conspicuous)
decision to take this narrative out of a direct speech mode and place it in an indirect
speech mode. In so doing, she constructs and represents this version of the other she
endows him with many traits that a contemporary orientalist would evince. If as
Emmanuel Levinas writes, “To understand a person is already to speak to him. To posit
the existence of the other by letting him be is already to have accepted that existence, to
have taken it into account”; what can be said about speaking for the other (6)? Since
Yongden is allowed (nominally) the agency to speak for himself through the use of direct
speech in the rest of the texts we can argue that David-Neel is allowing him limited
agency in all other situations and specifically takes that objectivity away from him in an attempt to buttress her claim that many Tibetans felt that the rights and esoteric parts of
their religion were foolish and primitive. However, in order to believe this we must fall
into the trap of presuming that a westerner can speak authentically for the subject of
colonial discourse because the author/ narrator is capable of peering inside the mind of
the other. When considering how and in what ways a westerner can ascertain the true
state of the other Gayatri Spivak writes, “When we come to the concomitant question of
the consciousness of the subaltern, the notion of what the work cannot say becomes
important” (82). Therefore, even though we are told what Yongden must be thinking we
are only receiving a message from the western narrator. Further, in the passage above, by conveying Yongden’s thoughts through her voice she textually denies him subjectivity. In this way, David-Neel's text can be analyzed similarly to the way Said analyzes Arthur
James Balfour’s discourse on Egypt where Said notes, “Two great themes dominate his remarks…knowledge and power, the Baconian themes” and that “the object of such
32 knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny… to have such knowledge of a thing is to
dominate it” (Orientalism 32). David-Neel—by asserting that she can discern Yongden’s
thoughts and motivations—makes his very consciousness and authenticity the object of
her knowledge and therefore he becomes the subject of her power. In addition, where
Balfour does not “let the Egyptian speak for himself” David-Neel is incapable of
allowing the Tibetans to speak for themselves (33). Again though, David-Neel’s
meditative practices and insight into Tibetan culture could give rise to a self that transcends normal biases and speaks in a way that could be considered authentic. There are many stories about Tibetans that have a great deal of faith in Lamas or objects that turn out to be less than holy, however, the results of venerating the objects or devotion to the Lama often bring about real results. Thinking along these lines, we can suggest that
David-Neel is using this incident to show the power of this level of devotion. This is something that only someone who has seriously practiced Tibetan Buddhism would understand and therefore David-Neel (through the figure of Yongden) is subtly aligning herself with the Tibetan view on these matters.
In Magic and Mystery in Tibet David-Neel again asserts a tone of western superiority. She portrays the highest-ranking Lamas and Tulkus that she meets as either otherworldly or not explicitly male. She speaks of the men being wrapped in
“shimmering silk” and how she wants to “wake up in a real bed, in some country…where men wear ugly dark coats” (1). The inference here is that Western men wear ugly clothes and therefore it is feminine to wear bright, flashy, silky clothes. By writing in this way, she starts this second book about the region in a completely familiar orientalist mode.
Further, David-Neel—by referring to the men as genii and “incarnated Lamas”11 she 33 casts them as not entirely human and not entirely trust worthy. She uses quotation marks
around the words “incarnated Lama” in a manner that would indicate that she does not
believe in the traditional Tulku system of Tibet. This is odd since she allies herself
closely to the authorities in Tibet and those powers were (predominantly) Tulkus.
While travelling in northern Tibet David-Neel states “Two hours after my arrival,
I already knew all about the neighbouring region. Truly, there was not much to be said about it” (154). Again, we see David-Neel taking on the role of expert when she has little practical knowledge of the area. Her casual dismissal that in a few hours she knew all about her surroundings shows just how deeply the orientalist mindset had penetrated into
the discourse. As she was in that area to attempt an audience with a high-ranking Lama,
she tried to rely on subterfuge and deception to achieve this goal. The Lama was in strict
retreat and had two attendants with him to take care of his more mundane needs. This did
not matter to David-Neel who “started for the lama’s cave. I wanted to reach it while the
trapas12 were busy in their tent with their morning devotions. I hoped…to be able to
approach…unexpectedly and have a look at what he was doing. This was not at all etiquette” (154-155). In accordance with the rules of retreat in the Tibetan tradition, the practitioner is not supposed to see anyone other than other retreatants and the attendants13. Despite her familiarity with the rules of retreat (and the fact that she herself had engaged in some retreats) she felt that her mission to see this Lama was more important than the customs and protocol of the Tibetan people. It is clear that David-Neel is using the Tibetans to further her own ends and that she willfully flouts custom in order to gain what she seeks. This position is in line with Edward Said’s contention that western orientalists were only interested in oriental peoples as an intellectual proletariat 34 that was useful because the westerner could interpret it14. This can also be said about the
whole of David-Neel’s adventures ( and the subsequent books) she needed the Tibetans in order to learn about meditation and ritual practices so she could then practice them and critique them.
The level of the primary narrator’s perceived superiority over her eastern companions is telling. Our narrator recalls a scene where the party must attempt to blend in with the local populous “We must go down, I said, if need be; as far as the mendong in
front of the gompa. In that way, if people see us in the early morning we will not appear
strange, and can pretend that we have slept at the monastery or near it” (86). What strikes the reader about this passage is that Alexandra David-Neel( as narrator) is telling her
Tibetan travelling companion and guide (both of who are men) about a very specific way in which they should approach a monastery. The comedy here is that Alexandra David-
Neel (a westerner) is written and constructed as being more perceptive about the ways of mountain travel than two people who grew up in Tibet. This part of the story culminates with one of her male counterparts being questioned by the headman of the village while she is ignored. The author and narrator appear to have some level of tension. The author wishes to be seen as providing an accurate account of the events. However, the narrator is always attempting to usurp the text from the author. This is done primarily through the
areas of the text where the narrator assumes a dramatically superior or dramatically
subservient role. By asserting western superiority (through telling her companions how to
blend in with their own people), our narrator casts herself as having the upper hand.
However, when life-threatening events are encountered the narrator quickly shifts to tone
and language that is more respectful of the Tibetan people. For example, later in the text, 35 Alexandra David-Neel and a female Tibetan are crossing a rope bridge. At this point, the
young Tibetan girl begins to scream that something is wrong with the bridge: “‘It is loosening,’ she repeated, with such a convinced tone that I began to doubt. This Thibetan lass who had often crossed rivers in that way naturally knew more than I did about knots, straps, and hooks”( 94). The encounter with the Tibetan men is only ten pages earlier in the text. However, the tone and superiority of Alexandra David-Neel’s portrayal of the incident would indicate that she is still feeling the effects of being enmeshed in a male dominated discourse and this retelling of the event is colored by her own ethnocentrism.
When her life is very much on the line, however, her instinct of self-preservation briefly clears the vestiges of Euro-centrism and allows her to heed the pleas of the young girl. It is at this point in this text that David-Neel stops creating the western dominated self that was prevalent in the earlier (in narrative chronology not in creation or publication time) and more combative Magic and Mystery in Tibet and begins to truly immerse herself in the discourse community that dominates the rest of the text—that of Tibetan women. This narrative rupture allows access to her transcendent self that in turn gives her the ability to break down the self-other dichotomy and gain a more accurate view of the “other.” Sara
Mills discusses some of these issues in her work Discourses of Difference in which she analyzes My Journey to Lhasa and discusses the reasons for both the tepid critical reception and an ongoing assault on the book as untrue. Mills notes that the skeptical
(which I often refer to as the western or superior) narrative voice serves “to place the reader in collusion with the narrator” (147). This Western narrator, while still seeking enlightenment, has not moved beyond her Western discourse on race.
36 Narratology and the Breakdown of Subject/Object Distinctions Alexandra David-Neel begins the text of My Journey to Lhasa with the admission
that she has deceived a foreign missionary. This admission, the narrator-agent’s15 role as deceiver, sets the tone for the way in which this narrator survives on the icy and treacherous road to Lhasa. The character is deceptive, but does that mean that the author and narrator are deceptive? The deceptive nature of this type of text is fore grounded in the work of Gerard Genette who claims that it is not the authors who create the utterances in a work of fiction but the actual characters16. In this case, and most of the text, the
narrator-agent (by dint of the semi-autobiographical nature of the text) is associated with
the author David-Neel. This association does not contradict Gennete’s assertion it simply
demands a very critical view of the role the author’s life plays in interpreting these texts.
This dichotomy is critical if I am to move forward with an analysis that would separate
the corporeal Alexandra David-Neel from the textual one. The problem of who said what
and when is an issue, which, when it comes to direct addresses to a reader, becomes
trickier and more interesting. The split of author and narrator also brings in a sense of the
distinction between story time and narrative time. This separation is needed to provide
analysis of the discursive nature of race and gender at play in the texts. Further, this will
facilitate a deeper look at the nature of self-creation at play in these texts. In My Journey
to Lhasa, Alexandra David-Neel is creating a female Tibetan self while simultaneously
attempting to keep her French self preserved and intact. This preservation of her western
self is critical in the construction and manipulation of the text. It is the fact that the
character is performing a Tibetan identity while traveling in Tibet this complicates a
straightforward post-colonial critique, and brings me to the need to employ a post
37 colonial narratology to examine the “points of view selected… the modes of discourse
exploited, the actanial roles fore grounded… to shed light on the nature and functioning
of the ideology narratives represent and construct” (Prince 6163). Both of her books were
rendered solely from her (and presumably Yongden Lama’s) memory of events. Early in
Magic and Mystery in Tibet, she writes herself into a typically western ethnocentric
position despite her biology and her need to be submissive to the guidance of her Tibetan
spiritual teachers.
The cultural aspects of Tibet are usually represented in the text in only one of two ways, a sense of superiority, a sense of disgust, or a combination of the two. These two distinctive modes of analyzing events seem to leave out the mode of cold detachment that is prevalent in much of the travel literature of the time. A complicated relationship to the concept of Western superiority is important and consistent across the works of many authors17 disgust, however, seems to play a central role in certain passages from
Alexandra David-Neel’s works. When David-Neel as narrator has a reaction to some of
the more mundane aspects of life on the Tibetan plateau, the description comes out
colored with her own preconceived and western indoctrinated tastes. For example, when
narrating about personal hygiene customs we read, “In a country where everything is
done in public, down to the most intimate personal acts, I was forced to affect peculiar
local customs which embarrassed me greatly” (My Journey to Lhasa 108). One could
easily misinterpret the passage to be simply about the modesty of a middle-aged western
woman. This analysis would, of course, be correct on the surface; however, when we start to peel away layers and examine the passage in detail we can come up with deeper meaning. One thing that is troubling for the narrator is the fact that she must remain 38 incognito, any bathing she might do would expose parts of her body that she has not
darkened with soot. In addition, it was not common for Tibetans to bathe daily as the high altitude and cooler climes did not necessitate it. If the narrator were to bathe, she would
have exposed herself on a cultural and corporeal level as an outsider in this land. This
cultural practice (daily bathing) rather than her white skin would have been what the
Tibetans would grab onto as proof that she was an “other.” This revelation of the
narrator’s alterity is a concern. How can a white European narrator allow herself to be viewed as an “other” and still maintain her cultural supremacy? In addition, as noted in
the introduction, Tibetan society at this time was deeply suspicious and possibly violent
towards foreigners, therefore a measure of the narrator’s trepidation could come from a
very real fear for her life. Further, we can examine how certain hygiene practices demarked the self from the other. William Cohen notes, “Racial thinking, particularly in
the nineteenth century, relies on a language of hygiene, purity, and taint, frequently establishing distinctions through notions of mixture and hybridity” (xvi). From David-
Neel’s perspective, her whiteness is purity and the way that she has darkened her hair,
face, and hands causes her to self-identify with the impure other. Many of the epistemic
breaks that occur in the narrative are directly related to her underlying discomfort with
being regarded as Tibetan by Tibetans while simultaneously regarding certain segments
of the population as learned and possessing the wisdom she wishes to acquire.
In this instance, we get the sense that David-Neel knows that her Tibetan act is
actually in bad faith. She knows that she is not inherently anymore Tibetan than Sartre’s
waiter is inherently a waiter. Further, as Sartre’s thinking on the matter evolved, so must
an analysis of David-Neel. In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre notes that , “Man is 39 not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to
be…man is nothing other than what he makes of himself”(22). Meaning that by an
extreme act of will, denoted by the fact that was performing an identity for most of her
waking life for months and years, it is possible for David-Neel to be acting in good faith
as a Tibetan; however, she is still subject to the stress that a long term performance of
identity can bring about.
Enter the Abject Here, we can surmise that her disgust with cultural practices is not; however;
confined to elimination. On the next page, she speaks of the only time that she was too
disgusted to eat what was offered to her. The refusal of food would be an unthinkable
breach of religious etiquette in Tibet18. The identity “mendicant pilgrim” is loaded with
cultural and religious significance. For Tibetans (and all Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhists) the accumulation of merit through good deeds and generosity form an important part of the road to enlightenment. These situations require a specific give and take; in this case, the host family is offering shelter and the labor to prepare a meal. The task of the mendicant is to accept whatever is offered thereby completing the transaction. To refuse what is offered would not only be considered rude on a cultural level, but also would prevent the accumulation of merit by the offering party and this would be viewed as a severe impediment on the family’s quest for nirvana. I should note that while she rarely refuses a meal our narrator does often express a severe displeasure at the food that she is given. The narrator and her companion Yongden are given shelter by a poor Tibetan family. This type of scene is repeated often throughout the book due to the narrator’s
disguise as a Buddhist pilgrim. However, in this particular portion of the narrative Neel
40 and her Tibetan companion show complete contempt and visceral disgust at the meal they
are offered. The scene opens “Yongden declares that he will buy some meat, if there is
any to be had in the village” the scene proceeds and the host procures a large stomach
that has been stuffed with the organs and entrails of several animals (109). The narrator notes as a foreshadowing to this, “Most Tibetans eat without any repugnance the putrefied flesh of animals which have died of disease” (109). The trope of nausea in this passage can be read in conjunction with Julia Kristeva’s reading of nausea:
nausea makes me balk at that milk, cream, separates me from the mother
and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their
desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it. But
since the food is not an “other” for “me,” who am only in their desire, I
expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion
through which “I” claim to establish myself. (3)
By a rejection of the cultural norms and practices in this part of the text, the narrator is
clearly attempting to distance herself from the Tibetans among whom she is traveling.
Clearly there is a difference between milk or cream and entrails and organs; however, textually the narrator has created an actor who is outwardly a female Tibetan and inwardly female and French. By expelling her disgust at the meal, the actor in this scene is manifesting the tension between inner and outer, self and other.
We can juxtapose the incident with one that deals with far more disgusting subject
matter from her later work Magic and Mystery in Tibet. The narrator is recounting a scene where she is told about the practice of rolang19.
41 The celebrant is shut up alone with a corpse in a dark room. To animate
the body he lies on it mouth to mouth, and while holding it in his arms, he
must continually repeat mentally the same magic formula…After a certain
time the corpse begins to move…At last the tongue of the corpse protrudes
from its mouth. The critical moment has arrived. The sorcerer seizes the
tongue with his teeth and bites it off. (135)
What is striking is the lack of emotion conveyed by this narrator. There is no revulsion or nausea at the thought of a person biting off a corpses tongue. This tale is related with a matter of fact tone that is distinctly different from the tone in the previous passage. It is as though this narrator is as comfortable with this rite as someone indigenous to the land of
Tibet is. In this way, it seems as if this narrator is more Tibetan than the narrator of My
Journey to Lhasa is. What makes this interesting is that the narrator in Magic and
Mystery in Tibet is known to be a westerner by those she interacts with, while in My
Journey to Lhasa the narrator is in disguise as a Tibetan. It is as though the outward projection of western subjectivity in one book gives the narrator enough cover so that she can only deal with things she finds repugnant in an inward manner. However, in the book where the narrator is not physically performing a Tibetan identity she can deal with these incidents in a cool and detached manner. In both books her position, race, and motivations are not fixed.
Perhaps one of the main differences in the above passage is that the narration
shifts from a purely homodiegetic to a hetero/ homo diegetic combination. Whereas this
story is related to the primary narrator creating, in a sense, an internal story that is framed
42 by the main narrative to provide textual cover for her more native inclinations. The function of this particular internal story is to insulate the primary narrator from charges of
going native. Recall that this book was written two years after My Journey to Lhasa and by placing this narrative in the mouth of a Tibetan character narrator the author can recount the story with little emotion and lend some credence or truth-value to the tale. By placing the narrative in a Tibetan narrator’s voice the reader is compelled to believe that the matter of fact tonality surrounding this tale is how a Tibetan would feel about this practice, and more importantly, how a Tibetan would describe it. The actanial role of the
Tibetan narrator shifts from the subject of the narrative to an active sender, in this way, the Tibetan voice comes out authentically. This shift functions to access (and appropriate) the voice of the Tibetans. As Merleau-Ponty states, “My access to a universal mind via reflection, far from finally discovering what I always was, is motivated by the intertwining of my life with other lives, of my body with the visible things, by the intersection of my perceptual field with others, by the blending in of my duration with the other durations” (The Visible and the Invisible 49). By shifting the actanial roles David-
Neel is using the voice of the Tibetan narrator to convey information that a westerner should, by societal norms, find distasteful. The fact that David-Neel does not show a visceral reaction to this rite is evidence that she has achieved a level of transcendence sufficient to challenge her Western biases. This transcendent self is not burdened by
Western notions of clean and dirty and therefore is able to relate an authentic picture of this event.
Alexandra David-Neel wrote these books after her journey to Lhasa and her stay
in Tibet. In many ways, the author was working out and processing much of what she 43 experienced through the writing of this text. By allowing her characters (the narrator) in
the text the freedom to be disgusted and offended by what she experienced, Alexandra
David-Neel was constructing her post Tibetan adventure identity in such a way that
would be palatable to a western audience. Further, this idea of self-creation or self-
perfection through writing is in line with the work of many theorists, most notably
Michel Foucault and especially in his essays “Self-Writing” and “Technologies of the
Self.” In “Self-Writing” Foucault notes that , “ what others are to the ascetic in a
community the notebook is to the recluse” and “ writing constitutes an essential stage in
the process to which the whole ascesis leads: namely the fashioning of accepted
discourses, recognized as true, into rational principles of action” ( Ethics 208-209). We
can see that David-Neel’s work functions on both of these levels. First, her books
function as a roadmap for her experiences and a sounding board for her ideas about the
course of her spiritual development. In addition, the writing process allows her to
immerse herself in the Tibetan discourse community as a way of furthering her
transformation into a Vajrayana practitioner.
With this reading we can see that Alexandra David-Neel was not in any way
overly concerned with critical reception to her work, but rather that her Western view of
the world permeated the text (perhaps subconsciously) and drove much of the narrative in ways that were in concert with the overwhelming discourse concerning the east at the time. Therefore, we can view these areas of tension (when the character of Alexandra
David-Neel is confronted with a disturbing custom or less than palatable meal) as places in the text where the subtext begins to break through. Again, this hearkens to Kristeva’s point on the relationship of horror and abjection. These points of intersection between a 44 character (in this case the narrator) and her numerous layers of identity are the places
where a conventional post-colonial analysis would be insufficient. The Tibetan discourse
community begins to break free of the stranglehold that the West has on the narrator. As
such, the Tibetan voice is a direct product of the (primarily) western constructed
subjectivity of the narrator’s abjection of her external racial performance. While it may
not—in a strict sense—be possible to abject (or abjectify) oneself, it is possible to abject
performed identities, and this is what the narrator is doing on a textual level in this
passage.
There are several points in the text where the narrator shows some awareness of
the fact that she is a character that is read. She illustrates this awareness by directly
addressing her audience. For example, after regaling a Tibetan morality tale about the
evils of drunken monks the narrator states, “But enough! Thibetan stories about monks and the lamaist church are a rich mine of humor, and if we are once sunk in it we shall never get to the end of the chapter” (211). Even though I name this person as the narrator,
the separation one normally sees between author and character bound narrator is not so
clear in this passage. The self-awareness of being within a chapter is dramatic. In
addition, this passage leaves the reader with a confused sense of the chronotopic space of the novel. What space/ time does the narrator of this passage inhabit, is this speaker the narrator we have been listening to throughout this tale? Alternatively, is she somehow someone else? Mikhail Bakhtin defines the chronotope as “the intrinsic connectedness of
temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (84). So
then, it seems that there are, at minimum, three different times and two spaces on this
page: the time of the events of the novel, the time of the writing down of the events, and 45 the time of reading the events. The two spaces would be the textual creation of the land of
Tibet and the space where the author actually sat down to compose the text. In addition, if we have numerous intersecting chronotopes, then it makes sense that we also have multiple narrators. Perhaps, what we have is an author and a narrator who have been irrevocably changed and influenced through immersion in the East and, as such, we get multiple layers of both authorial and narrative voice struggling for dominion over the text. The author and narrator are also involved in the cycle of interdependence and contingency that Merleau-Ponty speaks of in his work. These layers manifest with competing agendas in a more western narrator, a narrator sympathetic to Tibet and
Tibetans, a narrator inclined towards women’s issues, and a narrator that seems oblivious to the undertones of misogyny at play in Tibet. These differing narrative actors are overlapping and, in many places, tightly bound together. The points of interest are where the voices stand in opposition to one another and where one or more breaks through whatever the dominant voice in the text is at that time. The narrator that makes the statement above is clearly aware of her place and her lack of existence outside the text.
However, the level of self-realization in a statement like this is indicative of a
character/ narrator that not only understands her place within the text, but also is aware of
the text’s place within the larger society/discourse. This understanding is directly related
to the practices and meditations that the narrator (and author) is undertaking. This kind of
textual self-awareness confirms many of the claims surrounding how philosophical
authenticity is related to the (re) presentation of authenticity in these texts. By this, I
mean that when a character acknowledges her (or his) existence within a text—in this
case, a book— it is only natural for the reader to postulate the position that the narrator 46 envisions her text to occupy within society. In this case, Alexandra David-Neel as author is fashioning an identity for herself as an expert on Tibetan culture and ritual practices; the latter is cemented with the release of Magic and Mystery in Tibet. It is this goal of self-fashioning that I will examine in detail in the final chapter of this thesis. In addition, when the reader interacts with this passage we can begin to separate the narrator that is experiencing the action and events of the story from an external narrator who is relating this in a time that (in relation to the story) is in the future.
Shortly thereafter, this narrator extols the virtues of the Tibetan practice of placing Mani stones, prayer flags, and poetic or philosophical verses along travel routes, ferry landings, and bridges. She notes that she feels that these things are vastly preferable to the Western custom of placing gaudy advertisements along every thoroughfare. After two paragraphs of this, the narrator states, “I beg my readers’ pardon. I am but a savage”
(211). Again, we get a direct address from the narrator to the reader. In this instance however, it seems that the aim is to put some critical distance between the narrator and both the Tibetan people and her own western subjectivity. Hence, this places the narrator in a liminal area concerning her own subjectivity and the Tibetan self that she has created. Interestingly in this case, we get a sense that the narrator feels this critical distance is needed to reassert her position of superiority ( and by extension superiority of the West) over the native peoples whose practices and aesthetic sense she is lauding. This point of tension is a narrator who is sympathetic to the aesthetics of the Tibetan people yet simultaneously refers to them as savages, brigands, etc. On surface these two sentences seem to locate the narrator in an orientalist framework; however, unlike many westerners that Edward Said writes about Alexandra David-Neel does not fit the mold of 47 someone for whom “Everything they knew, more or less, about the Orient came from books written in the tradition of Orientalism” ( Orientalism 94). At least, that is, - if we are ready to accept the supposition that the speaker of these lines is the post journey
Alexandra David-Neel. The post journey author has definite experiential knowledge of the land and people of Tibet. However, the narrator of these passages is still in the process of gaining this knowledge and therefore could conceivably fall under the criteria that Said lays out in Orientalism as such, it is important to discern both the narrator’s specific time frame and level of direct contact with the East up to this point.
Conclusion We know from the biography The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel that the author’s initial contact with the east including its spirituality and philosophy, came exclusively from books written by white male scholars who came to the study of eastern philosophy with their own cultural assumptions and prejudices. However, it was not until her travels to the east concluded that she began to write about it. Hence, she was no longer immersed in the culture by dint of geographic location but by her continuing practice of Tibetan Buddhism and study of the culture that gave rise to it. Meditation practices and ritual were central to the rest of her life and, if the Tibetan mediation texts cited in chapter one are to be believed, her continued practice would serve to loosen the grip that her native discourse had on her while increasing her ability to think and write from the perspective of a serious practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. This long-term practice of Tibetan meditation techniques led to her being able to achieve a transcendent self that, being free from Western biases, was able to portray the events and people in these novels authentically.
48 III. AN EXPLORATION OF VOICE IN THE WORK OF ALEXANDRA DAVID-NEEL Voice as a political term is central to an understanding of how David-Neel’s texts function in relation to the areas of Western and Eastern philosophy as laid out in the introduction. The primary texts for this study provide two distinct communities that the author interacts with during her journeys. Using these texts, I examine the breakdown of the male/ female binary as it relates to voice. It is my contention that in Magic and
Mystery in Tibet David-Neel assumes an individual yet masculine voice as a means to keep herself on the same social level as the rest of the figures in the text, figures that are almost exclusively male and of a high social or religious position. In My Journey to
Lhasa, however, she assumes a more feminine construction, evidenced in both the winding description of the trek and the way in which she female characters out of much of the narrative. This is not to say that I feel that her tone is subservient, rather she makes clever use of communal voice to provide her character with a dominating position even if she is surrounded by a patriarchal society while also assuming that she can speak for both male and female Tibetans. It is also interesting to note that in both texts, even though we have a female narrator, the voice of Tibetan women is virtually silent. This is perhaps most striking in My Journey to Lhasa where, as noted earlier, the narrator spent the bulk of her time in the company of women. Finally, in one of the most dramatic passages in
Magic and Mystery in Tibet David-Neel details the practice of chöd. This practice
(alternately named by David-Neel the Mystic Banquet) is one of the most misunderstood
49 practices to emerge from the Mahayana/ Vajrayana tradition. Besides the obvious factors of visualized self-sacrifice, what is very important about this practice is that all of the primary lineages of this practice in Tibet come through a single practitioner, a woman named Machig Labdrön. It would make sense that this section of a male gendered text would have some evidence of a feminine poetic. However, due to factors related to
David-Neel’s meditation practice, there is no evidence of a feminine poetic in these texts.
Her transcendent self does not allow for a poetics that can be classified along rigid gender lines anymore than it could allow classification based on race. Even if we agree that
David-Neel nears or even accomplishes both kinds of authenticity at times within her books, we must also consider the ways in which gender divisions complicate this task.
Despite My Journey to Lhasa being described as the epic story of the first
Western woman to penetrate the interior of Tibet, one would be hard pressed to get a real sense of the character and voice of Tibetan women. Clearly, a Western woman would not be able to mimic the political voice of women in an Eastern country. However, rather than even attempting to do so, Alexandra David-Neel—at first glance—appears to write women out of the narrative and, much of what she does write about Tibetan women in
My Journey to Lhasa centers around their duties in the kitchen and the lack good hygiene
( by western standards) in this regard. Certainly, there are vague references to this person’s wife or daughter but to paraphrase Eve Kofsky Sedgwick, the most important and interesting relationships in this text are either “between men” or between a narrator who is still buying into patriarchal Western and Eastern constructions of gender and a country.
50 In order to consider a reading of these (or any) texts based on a gendered
difference in the text we must construct a working definition of what a gendered poetics
is or could be. On this vexing question Nancy K. Miller states,
if any poetics of gender must acknowledge its difference from the universal, from
the universal’s claim of impartiality, a feminist poetics must go further still in
terms of its own project, beyond acknowledgement of the difference gender
makes, and recognize, in Berg’s formulation, that it must itself be a continual
reminder that there is nothing impartial. (xiii)
In other words, in reading these texts by David-Neel we must understand that all texts
and all readers are encumbered with their own sets of biases and preconceived notions.
Hence, what this chapter will provide is evidence of how the gendered poetics of the texts
fluctuates in conjunction with episodes of bad faith, interdependence, and limit
experience. These hallmarks are directly related to how David-Neel’s transcendent self is
materializing within the texts.
The unfixed and discursively created nature of gender is also a consideration for
these texts. In the case of Alexandra David-Neel, the performative nature of her gender is
complicated by the performed racial identity she takes on during the course of My
Journey to Lhasa. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (building on Michel Foucault’s
earlier work) points to the problematic nature of gender in a political context, “ juridical
systems of power produce the subjects they consequently come to represent…the
feminist subject turns out to be discursively constituted by the very political system that
is supposed to facilitate its emancipation”( 516-531). Considering that the entrenched
51 power in Tibet and in the West was male dominated, David-Neel, by entering into Tibet, was subverting, and challenging the power structure of both the colonizing male power and the indigenous power structure. In My Journey to Lhasa David-Neel states from the outset that she is undertaking a mission that the patriarchal power structures of both East and West do not want her to take. She writes “A previous experience had proved to me that in the disguise of a poor traveler I could escape notice” (2). By escaping notice of the
Tibetans and Western officials, she lets the reader know that she intends to subvert the entrenched power structures of both cultures. Further, when Alexandra David-Neel is dealing with Tibetan nobility (as is the case in much of Magic and Mystery in Tibet) she is dealing with a group of men who in many ways regard her as a curiosity. In fact, in
Magic and Mystery in Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama states that he asked to meet her because he thought that there was no way that woman, much less a western woman could be a serious practitioner of the Holy Dharma. This is evidence that even when David-Neel is challenging western patriarchy she is surrounded by a Tibetan society that has similarly complicated views on the place and importance of women. The view is complex because while women had no real political power in Tibet they did exert some power in the religious sphere. As pre-invasion Tibet was a theocracy, these two competing discourses were often in conflict. This is not unlike the relationship of power that many western societies had with their dominant religions. In the Tibetan religious arena, women were revered and cherished as consorts, dakinis, and emanations of Tara an important Female
Buddha in the Vajrayana tradition. In Christianity there are female saints and the Virgin
Mary. Hence, the political subjugation of women does not fully conform to the dominant religious ideology in a given culture.
52 This lack of political power and voice that women had in Tibet can be “politically
problematic if that system can be shown to produce gendered subjects along a differential
axis of domination or to produce subjects who are presumed to be masculine. In such cases, an uncritical appeal to such a system for the emancipation of “women” will be clearly self-defeating” (Butler 516-531). The problem with Tibetan society, specifically pre communist invasion, lies in the fact that, as noted in chapter one, key to Tibetan
Buddhist philosophy is the concept of Bodhicitta. All sentient beings posses the capability to become enlightened hence there should be no discrimination based on gender. However, in practice women were (and in many ways still are) subjected to male dominated power structures both in the home and in the religious sphere. In fact, women were practically invisible in Tibet as in most of the world (politically speaking) during the chronology of these texts. This invisibility no doubt helped Alexandra David-Neel complete her journey in a land where foreigners were forbidden since no one of any political power paid attention to women. Nor could they conceive of a woman as being
brave enough and smart enough to pull off this intricate of a deception. However, despite
her gender she does not attempt to give voice to Tibetan women. To quote Gayatri
Spivak, “The subaltern cannot speak” (104).
The gender politics of these two texts reveal a bit about how being immersed in
the world of men or the world of women can affect the voice of the characters in the text.
In this chapter, I will show how the differences in dominant gendered discourse communities create specific textual difference. In other words, I will use both texts against one another to establish a poetics of gender for each text. Further, I will examine the formal elements of each text to unpack the layers of gendered poetics in each text. 53 As Tibet was a Buddhist theocracy, the role of women within the religion must be
considered in any analysis that looks at a topic that is as political as voice in literature.
The political status of women in Tibet was vexing to say the least. In his autobiography
The Lord of the Dance, His Holiness Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche spoke about the position
of his mother within Tibetan Buddhism as “ an emanation of the deity Tara herself” and
“There were several highly realized lamas in the Tromge family, and my mother was the
most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet’s five great wisdom Dakinis” (4). Contrast
this very high position in spiritual matters with an incident involving her break from her
father. Rather than being able to leave the family’s home she needed to create a rift with
her father to be allowed to go from his house (18). Ergo, she felt that she could not leave of her own volition but had to create some tension to affect her move and gain some freedom.
His mother commanded tremendous respect from within the Tibetan Buddhist
community; yet despite the theocracy in place, she did not wield any significant political
power. It must also be noted that this family was of the aristocracy of Tibet. They held
tremendous land and livestock that, after her father died, passed on to Delog Dawa
Drolma indicating that she could own land and hold property. It is noted that at her death
what to do with her fortune was one of the first questions that the young Chagdud Tulku
(then 14) had to deal with. So again, the complexity of gendered power relations builds as she was allowed to own property and leave an estate, yet her power apparently did not extend beyond her personal wealth. This is clearly evidenced in a story about a local businessman whom she requested to meet about matters outside the spiritual realm, this man refused, rudely, to meet her. In fact, it took a display of her spiritual qualities to gain 54 an audience with this businessperson. This would never happen if the person requesting a
meeting were a man.
The Feminine Discourse Community David-Neel confronts the idea of different listening communities early on in the
text when she states, “People listened to Yongden, or to myself, if the audience happened
to be mostly women” (60). This simple sentence sets up the relationship of the genders for the entirety of the text. Men listen to men and women listen to men and occasionally women listen to other women. There is a separation of the genders and in many ways women are almost entirely absent from the text. When David-Neel leaves women out of the text it may be that her empathy and interdependence is less than at other points in the text. Further, one could surmise that by keeping the voice of women subjugated David-
Neel was acting in good faith with relation to her native discourse community. It may have been a bad faith effort to illustrate the voice of women in a community that itself does not recognize the legitimacy of importance of female voice. This is quite dramatic especially when one considers that David-Neel, when she had the good fortune to spend time in someone’s home, was placed in the realm of women. When David-Neel has her first encounter with a Tibetan kitchen and with the woman who maintain order in the kitchens. She writes,
I was to experience things which until then I had only observed from afar. I
should be sitting on the rough floor of the kitchen, which was dirty with the
grease of the soup, the butter of the tea, the spit of the inmates. Well-meaning
women would offer me a scrap of a piece of meat which they cut on the lap of
55 their dress which had been used, maybe for years, as a handkerchief and a kitchen
towel. (78)
That is all the detail she mentions of the women. There was no dialogue conveyed in the narrative. The Tibetan women are silent, which is more striking because we know that
David-Neel understood spoken Tibetan. David-Neel claims later in the same passage that despite her distaste for the unclean surroundings “such penance would not be without reward…I should gather a quantity of observations which would never have come within reach of a foreigner, or even, perhaps, of a Thibetan of the upper classes” (78). However, despite this claim about gaining an insight into the Tibet of the kitchen and ostensibly a
Tibet populated by women, David-Neel most often writes about interactions with men. It is clear that simply writing about men does not indicate a male voiced text. The very layout of the story in My Journey to Lhasa is much less direct to its subject matter and winding. It is as if the form of the novel takes after the long and winding route that
David-Neel and her companion took to gain entry to Tibet. The circuitous route that the text takes does not leave, in this passage, enough space for her character to experience a breakdown in bad faith via an empathic relationship to the women in the kitchen. Neither is David-Neel sufficiently immersed in her spiritual journey to begin to see the fruits of the practices manifest in breakdowns of self and other. Her askesis (to use Foucault’s term) and transcendence are incomplete at this point in the narrative.
There is a specific incident in the text where Alexandra David-Neel was in peril.
The travelling party was attempting to cross a gorge using a traditional rope pull system.
56 She was lashed to a young Tibetan woman to make the crossing; however, during the cross there was a problem with the bridge,
But what of my companion? She was rather pale and looked with
frightened eyes at the point where the strap to which we were suspended
was fastened to the hook. “What is the matter with you?” I said. “ I have
called my Tsawai lama to protect us. You need not fear.” With a slight
motion of the head she indicated the hook. “The strap is coming loose,”
she said trembling…At last we safely landed on a projecting rock of the
cliff. Half a dozen women took hold of us, expressing their sympathy in
loud exclamations”. (93-95)
In this passage, Tibetan women are characterized as timid and fearful as opposed to western women who exhibit bravery and are able to invoke their Tsawai Lama (root
Lama) to protect them. This would indicate that David-Neel has a better grasp on the intricacies of spiritual practice that the native-born Tibetan woman. Further, despite
David-Neel gaining access to a variety of Tibetan homes this is one of the few times in the text were we are treated to words directly ascribed to a Tibetan woman using first person tense. These words show Tibetan women as fearful and prone to fits of hysteria, much like the prevailing discourse about women in the west during this time. It would seem that the female discourse community that David-Neel is entrenched in and writing from is not Tibetan. Rather, she has internalized her native western discourses’ views on the lack of importance of women in general and what women say in particular. This is applied to an exponentially greater degree to women of non-European ancestry due to the
57 orientalist tendencies of the times. Hence, the feminine gendered poetics that are most evident in this text belong to a western paradigm rather than a “universal” one.
However, David-Neel’s own fear in this situation is telling. David-Neel is not so
far advanced along her spiritual path to not be afraid in the face of her own potential
death. But, she is at a point where she is open to what a limit-experience can offer in the
way of transcendence and this particular near death encounter functions as a form of
Foucauldian limit experience. While certainly not as direct as suicide or as colorful as
some of the extreme sadomasochistic practices that Foucault utilized. This type of
confrontation of death, as limit experience, can propel a properly attuned individual to the
next level in her quest for transcendence. As Foucault points out, “The idea of a limit-
experience that wrenches the subject from itself is what is important to me… however
boring, however erudite my books may be, I’ve always conceived of them as direct
experiences aimed at pulling myself free of myself” (Power 241-242). David-Neel used
this limit experience as a place in the text where the voice of a female Tibetan could
break through.
Further in the text, David-Neel states, “I had already noticed that my headgear,
arranged after the Lutzekiang fashion, attracted a good deal of notice…It now looked
conspicuous, and people questioned my native land” (95). Here she notices that her
outward projection of Tibetanness is not adequate in her new surroundings. This might be
written off as a simple and practical admission. However, later in the same passage
David-Neel speaks about some more appropriate headgear that she found on her travels.
She notes, “Who could still doubt that it [the bonnet] had been sent to me, as I felt on the
58 day we found it in the Forest?” and “at the bottom of my heart, after having experienced the various kinds of protection which it offered me, I did not feel still more inclined to believe that it truly had been sent to me by some mysterious friend” (95-96) One can see that subtle shift in the text. The narrator moves from a position of criticizing the other female characters to becoming more enveloped in her new identity as a Tibetan. She is, through the limit-experience, transforming from a Western woman that is incapable of reproducing Tibet to a woman whose transcendent self is emerging and allowing her to portray the beliefs and the people she is studying. Further, she finds that she is also able to involve herself in the cultural practices she encounters.
What is interesting to consider is precisely how Alexandra David-Neel constructs
gender within her texts. When doing a feminist reading of these two books, we must also
examine the creation of women as subject within the text, as Butler states, “It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and
politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of “women,” the
subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through
which emancipation is sought (537-545). The primary woman as subject in the novels of
David-Neel is a western woman of some financial means. This narrator makes little to no
attempt to create Tibetan women in any way subjective or not. In addition, when reading
this text it is incumbent on the reader to consider the influence of the latent Orientalism
that permeated any Western study of the East. In chapter one, I noted David-Neel’s own
admission with regard to her self-admitted affiliation with Orientalism, as the term was
used in the 1920’s. This interrelated nature of feminist readings of texts and post-
colonialism is addressed in Gender Trouble where Butler states, 59 [Writing about the political assumption that there must be a universal basis
for feminism] That form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism
for its efforts to colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support
highly Western notions of oppression, but because they tend as well to
construct a “Third World” or even an “Orient” in which gender oppression
is subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential, non-Western
barbarism” (558-568).
My reading of this text falls, somewhat, in line with Butler’s in that I am not allowing
some form of post-modern cultural relativism the opportunity to excuse the ways in
which David-Neel constructs or removes the women she writes about in My Journey to
Lhasa. This is to say that the cultural immersion that David-Neel experiences (even when
coupled with an externalized performance of race) does not give the text any leeway when it comes to the issue of women’s voice or lack of women’s voice in the text. In fact, one could argue that that her immersion and performance as a Tibetan woman should have created a myriad of opportunities for the voice of these women to come through in the text, however, this does not occur. The absence of women from the text may in some way be meant to highlight the lack of their voice in the political realm of pre-invasion
Tibet. In this way, one can read between the silences of the Tibetan women in the text in an effort to construct a valid gendered poetics.
Further, in My Journey to Lhasa David-Neel has (at best) a complicated
relationship to the cultural practices of the Tibetan people. For example, when discussing
how Tibetans deal with the sick and infirm she writes,
60 The old peasant had left his village with a group of friends to travel around
the Kha Karpo on a pilgrimage. An illness, whose cause he could not
understand, had suddenly deprived him of his strength…His companions
had slackened their pace; they had even stopped for a whole day, and then
had gone on their way. Such is the Thibetan custom, even in the desert,
where an abandoned sick man, if he cannot reach a dokpas encampment,
will die of starvation when once his provisions are exhausted. (42)
She treats this custom with what appears to be indifference, as if this seems perfectly natural. Hence, we can regard her character as perhaps “going native” concerning this aspect of the life of a nomadic pilgrim. However, we can contrast her indifference to the plight of the sick pilgrim with her very strong and at times visceral reactions to other
Tibetan customs; especially those regarding hygiene and food safety. It is these sites of tension where the idea voice itself becomes complicated. The voice here is that of a neophyte practitioner whose transcendence is not fully complete. The indifferent tone to the custom is a sort of middle ground neither extremely happy with this situation nor is she really troubled by it either.
The contested nature of voice is addressed in Fictions of Authority Susan Sniader
Lanser states “As a narratological term “voice” attends to the specific forms of textual practice and avoids the essentializing tendencies of the more casual feminist usages. As a political term, “voice” rescues textual study from a formalist isolation that often treats literary events as if they were inconsequential to human history” (5). In this way, voice in
David-Neel’s text does not have to be an either/or when looking for political or textual
61 authenticity but, rather a combination of the two. For example, we see the conflation of
political versus textual voice in this passage where after “counseling” the Tibetans and
seeing David-Neel laughing at him and what he had told a group of pilgrims Yongden
(her travelling companion) says, “What does it matter?” Said Yongden, smiling. “The girl
will get three days’ rest, a little massage, and good food, and as the mother has the
precious zung and will not leave her daughter, the other people will not abandon her,
either. That is good honest work, and, moreover, I learned such tricks from you” (53).
What voice is going on here and what does this say about the character of David-Neel
and Yongden? He has learned his tricks from a woman. This places the role of women in
a familiar (by western standards) light; that of a deceiver and corruptor of men. Further, if
Yongden has learned how to meld the Buddhist requirement to help sentient beings with
the idea that telling lies in order to do so is acceptable we can read the assimilation of
these two ideas as evidence that David-Neel’s transcendence allows her to portray this
type of ethical dilemma in a way consistent with how a Buddhist Lama would understand
his own actions. However, there is more at work in these texts than a simple male
/female binary; rather, these issues are conflated by the role of class in Tibet during the
chronology of the novels. The issue of class, and its relationship to gendered poetics, is best evidenced in the second book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.
Male Dominated Discourse Community Unlike David-Neel’s first book, Magic and Mystery in Tibet is, at its core, a text
about her interaction with various Buddhist masters from Tibet. Also, in this book David-
Neel is shown as a serious practitioner of Buddhism. This seriousness of her practice
leads to many of the philosophical realizations outlined in the introduction. This is not to
62 say that this text is evidence of a feminine poetics, but rather, that there are places in the
text where the different characters act as surrogate voices for the women of Tibet and
treat their stories with reverence and respect in a way that does not occur in the first book.
For example, when discussing a delog “A woman whom I met in a village of Tsarong
had, some years ago, remained inanimate for a whole week. She said she had been
agreeably astonished by the lightness and agility of her new body and the extraordinary rapidity of its movements. She had only to wish herself in a certain place to be there immediately” (29). One way to read this passage is to note that the woman telling this tale to David-Neel is not present in the narrative; her voice only exists as a product of
David-Neel’s story telling. Ergo, David-Neel is functioning as this woman’s surrogate voice. The truth-value of the description needs to be critically assessed. The use of the pronoun “she” is indicative of a person speaking for someone else using indirect discourse and the fact that David-Neel heard this story directly from the woman and chooses to recount it here. By using the third person in discussing the delog, the reader is left with the impression that such a person may or may not have any subjectivity. This would then challenge any claim to conventional authenticity. In contrast, the Tibetan women in My Journey to Lhasa at least have words the limited placed in the voice by a characterization of them through the text. This woman’s story is with an indifferent tone for such a fantastic tale. David-Neel does not challenge the truth of the woman’s story and is just conveying information. This shows that she is willing to believe the story enough to include it, without any disclaimers, in the text. These actions are evidence that despite the complications that gender places on the narrative she is still moving toward a transcendent self. As such, she is able to convey this story without bias. However, before
63 we cast David-Neel in the light of a woman who was simply writing in a more masculine
mode we must, naturally, consider her intended audience.
In the preface to Magic and Mystery in Tibet David-Neel directly addresses the
question of intended audience, “ many persons expressed a wish, both in articles devoted
to my book and in private conversation, to know how I came to live among the lamas,
and also to learn more about the doctrines and practices” (ix). Clearly, from the outset,
this text, as opposed to My Journey to Lhasa, is aimed at a very specific audience. This
audience consists of those that are interested in Tibetan culture and Vajrayana Buddhism
from an academic perspective and those that are interested in the fundamentals of practicing Tibetan Vajrayana. This difference in audience may account for the fact that
David-Neel does not allow Tibetan women even the marginal level of subjectivity in this text that she did in her earlier work. By retelling the delog’s story without utilizing her as
a character or actant David-Neel asserts a dominion over this woman much like the
monastic hierarchy claimed over the whole of Tibet. Further, she appropriates the entirety
of what this delog said similarly to the use of communal voice as a means of dominating
this woman. David-Neel is dependent on this “other” for this entire narrative, and in
many ways this appropriation and dependence on the other is a large part of this book.
Conversely, the native Tibetans are dependent on David-Neel to tell their story to the
west. Hence, the cycle of interdependence manifests in the text.
Yet, despite appropriating and telling this story the author/ narrator is not Tibetan
and when she tries to use Tibetan voice to rhetorical advantage, she is acting in bad faith.
Alexandra David-Neel is neither a Tibetan nor a delog; hence, the words that she ascribes
64 to this woman and her story are always tinged with this element of bad faith. However,
she is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and this complicates her own relationship with
the stories she tells. Finally, David-Neel did learn much about the Tibetan idea of death
and the afterlife from this woman. Her lucid descriptions of her body being lightweight
and able to travel great distances with just a thought are basic ideas that Tibetans posses
about the afterlife. This learning from an “other” is congruent with Foucault’s principled
stance about the role of Gurus in the development of philosophical neophytes. This education is part of the path that Buddhist practitioners take and it allows her the ability
to accurately portray this tale without falling into familiar patterns of bias.
Even when David-Neel encounters female practitioners of Tantric Buddhism, she
does not seem to give their point of view any greater credence than the men of Tibet would have at this time. For example, when discussing a brief bit of teaching she received from a nun she writes, “One of the nuns surprised me by explaining their meaning. ‘ All of these are non-existent,’ she said pointing out the monstrous forms of the Bardo’s phantoms. ‘Mind evokes them out of the void and can also dissolve them into the void.’ ‘How do you know that?’ I asked, doubting that the good woman could have evolved this theory by herself” (67). You will note that David-Neel cannot believe that a nun could have studied hard and meditated in such a way that her authentic nature (and the knowledge that comes with it) could be revealed in a display of wisdom and learning.
Rather, her first assumption is clearly predicated on the notion that women received no training in Tibet and did not have any time, or means, to undertake the long and strenuous meditation retreats that male practitioners often did. Further, David-Neel never questions male practitioners in the same way. Rather she seems to take what they say at face value. 65 This text does deal with more fantastic material than the earlier work, yet the fact that she seems to take accounts of reincarnated lamas, wind-runners, and dancing corpses as more true because men relate them to her is a primary reason why the duality of gendered discourses is relevant to this study. Yet, if we really look at what is happening we see that
David-Neel is actually showing how deeply knowledgeable these women are. The phrase
“Mind evokes them out of the void and can also dissolve them into the void” is emblematic of a deep understanding of the non-substantial nature of phenomena, a key point in Buddhist doctrine. This small phrase is an accurate portrayal of how the Tibetans view all phenomena and, as such, positions these women as not simply informed but also practiced in the meditative arts.
David-Neel, in spite of her seeming indifference to the political voice of Tibetan women, gives them some measure of respect. In Magic and Mystery in Tibet, she speaks of the women who live on the plains of Tibet thusly, “Numerous examples of strange contrasts are to be seen in Tibet, but what most astonished me was the tranquil courage of the womenfolk. Very few Western women would dare to live in the desert, in groups of four or five or sometimes quite alone” (66). This excerpt does two very important (and complementary) things. The first and most obvious is valorizing the strength of Tibetan women by placing them on a level of resolve that is higher than their western counterparts. Further, by suggesting “Very few Western women would dare…” David-
Neel is reminding us that she is one of this special type of western woman who has endured this life. Further, she is connecting the reader of this text to her earlier work and in doing so she reminds the reader that women are absent (in voice) in her earlier work.
66 Conclusion Voice is a complex and vexing issue in the study of David-Neel’s texts. However, in order to understand the ways in which a transcendent self can produce an authentic view of the “other” we must consider the predominant discourses of gender within the observed community and the author. Further, by examining the near absence of women from the texts it is easy to establish that the author was often hindered in her quest by her own complicated relationship to gender. The two cultures that David-Neel must navigate are severely patriarchal and place little to no value on women within the political sphere.
Yet, women are highly valued and venerated within the religious structure that dominates the political sphere in Tibet. Hence, David-Neel’s relationship to gender in her writing is not only complex, but this relationship is further complicated when she realizes that women in Tibet do have spiritual lives and aspirations and that some women are able to leave society and undertake long meditation retreats.
The transcendence that David-Neel experiences is still very much challenged by the differing discourse communities that she finds herself in. In My Journey to Lhasa even though she is surrounded by women, listens to women, and (presumably) speaks with women; she chose to deemphasize any trace of a female Tibetan within the text. The only time she does speak directly about women is immediately after a near-death limit experience or during an episode where here appearance was becoming troublesome. After these experiences, she seems to be able to ally herself with the Tibetan populous and
Tibetan Women. In addition, she places women in the familiar role of deceiver this trope is unique in these texts because the deception that David-Neel is perpetrating is necessary
67 for her spiritual development. This development into a transcendent self that, in time,
allows her the ability to portray a conventionally authentic Tibet.
When it comes to spiritual matters David-Neel’s text eventually places Tibetan women on equal footing with men. By allowing herself to be taught complex doctrinal principles (such as the teachings on the Bardo’s phantoms) by women, David-Neel is realizing that the title of “lama” is not gender specific. This realization that is evidenced when she writes about speaking with a learned nun and her veneration of the Tibetan women who form a spiritual community in the middle of nowhere are where we see a transcendent David-Neel able to write about women without any preconceived
Westernized bias directed at their accomplishments. These are the places in Magic and
Mystery in Tibet where she ceases to be a Western woman attempting to subvert dominant power structures to show that she is equal to men and becomes a transformed figure able to write free of prejudice about a subject that still confounds scholars to this day.
68 IV. CONCLUSION The goal of this study was to investigate how realization of philosophical transcendence would affect a writer’s ability to breakdown the self/other binary and create a conventionally authentic representation of a different culture and its people. To begin this, I needed to create a specific framework regarding philosophical authenticity and then deploy these ideas within the text. The introductory chapter brought Eastern and
Western ideas about the self, subjectivity, and authenticity into conversation as means of illustrating the vast similarities in how these seemingly different philosophies actually have much in common. These two texts, by nature of their subject matter, provided a fertile ground to explore two of the primary self/ other binaries— East/West and female/male. The chronology of the texts also places them in the middle of an important epoch. The total time from Alexandra David-Neel’s first footsteps in Sikkim to the publication of Magic and Mystery in Tibet spanned from 1911 to 1932. During this time the age of British imperialism was coming to an end.
The binary opposition that underpins most post-colonial studies is an obvious choice for the study of David-Neel’s work. My analysis complicated the issue of a strict post-colonial reading by deploying narrative theory and a syncretic East/West view of what precisely selfhood, subjectivity, and authenticity could be. The addition of an existentialist and post-existentialist criteria for the subject allowed for greater latitude in the analysis concurrent with the author’s practice of advanced meditation techniques.
69 While it may have been more appropriate to stick with only an examination of
how meditative practices dissolve the fallacy of self/other I felt it was necessary to relate
certain states of meditative awareness with the work of western philosophers. The
primary reason for this is that there, as yet, is no agreed upon philosophical bridge
between Buddhism and contemporary Western literary theory. Further, by using points in
the text where the author was encountering an intense experience, I was able to prove that
there is a clear relation between achieving a transcendence of self and the author’s ability
to create an accurate picture of an “other.”
Gender is the other primary binary opposition examined in this study. Close
reading of the texts reveal points where the differing gendered discourse communities
that the narrator travels in have some predictable and unpredictable effects on the text.
The most dramatic effect on the text is the near absolute absence of women from the
narrative. Further, in Magic and Mystery in Tibet where David-Neel is engrossed in the world of men she appropriates the story of a woman without giving voice to her. In this way David-Neel is assuming a more masculine and dominant position in relation to this woman. The role of gender complicates the role and use of transcendence in these texts.
It is clear that from a post-colonial perspective David-Neel is able to accomplish both
philosophical and conventional authenticity. Yet, it is equally clear that gender
complicates and, at times, destabilizes her own transcendence. The destabilization of
David-Neel’s spiritual accomplishment should not be viewed as a failure of the author as
Buddhist practitioner. Rather, when David-Neel is not able to break from the prevailing
discourses surrounding gender, they are viewed as important hallmarks along her path.
The points in the text where she succumbs to these discourses are nearly always followed 70 by an instance in which she functions and writes from her transcendent self. Thereby
evidencing the way in which the trajectory of a Buddhist practitioner’s path is often just
as complicated as the relationship of gender to a study of writing.
It is impossible to believe “East is East and West is West and never the Twain shall meet,” as Kipling’s poem stated. David-Neel’s writing proves that the two could
meet, even if that meeting happens in covert fashion. Further, despite an entrenched
Western world view that permeates these texts, David-Neel had many places textually
where she is aware that she her transcendent self is more in line with Tibetan thought
and sensibilities than her own native Western discourse. In addition, the points in the text
where she experiences strong emotion , either positive or negative, are where she
textually produces a sort of epistemic breach that allows her Eastern sensibilities to
override her Western predispositions. These examples prove that while we may not be able to totally escape discourse we can change the way we identify with it and, in some exceptional cases, change the very discourse that we are subject to. In addition, we can utilize these points to gain greater sense of empathy for “others” and, as such, find common ground on many of the issues that still prevent honest dialogue between cultures.
Regarding Magic and Mystery in Tibet, the analysis of this text shows that West
and East can coexist within a shifting matrix of power relations and personal political and
philosophical agendas. One of the most important messages in this text is that when it
comes to ascetic practices one’s previously held notions or even biases can be subverted
for the greater good of working on the self. It is clear when David-Neel describes the
71 ritual of the dancing corpse or the chöd practices she is doing so from a place beyond her native , and somewhat orientalist, mode. This metaphorical distance can be attributed to the fact through the thirteen year time span these two books cover she was practicing
Dharma. The shift in her view on Tibetans from My Journey to Lhasa through Magic and
Mystery in Tibet can be ascribed to her uncovering her Bodhicitta nature over the course of many years.
The other text I examined still leaves me with many questions surrounding female voice and the subaltern nature of the women of early twentieth century Tibet. For a text where the main character is enveloped in the world of women to produce so little evidence of their voice both politically and narratively is quite disturbing. It easy to claim that the author was simply writing for a perceived audience of male adventurers and cloistered , predominantly male, academics. While I feel that this may have some bearing on the final construction of this text there are certain elements—specifically when the narrator notes that her journey is against the wishes of the male dominated government—that do not fit well with this line of reasoning. Telling a male audience that her entire saga is based on going where men told her not go and the fact that she misled men through the entire tale may make for compelling reading, but it may not have endeared her to the very gender based power structure that she openly defied.
The philosophical basis for the West’s domination of the East is built on an unsteady foundation made of texts predicated on the notion that the East and the West have nothing in common and share no common points within their indigenous philosophies. We know that this is incorrect. Western philosophy and Buddhism agree on
72 many points and many of the differences they exhibit come from the fact that Tibetan
Buddhism understands that there are varying levels of reality. These levels are most often
ascribed two broad categories, the relative and the absolute. These categories are the
primary reason why His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama can ascribe a level of
authenticity to the texts of Alexandra David-Neel. The texts present some critical problems with regards to authenticity, notably the pejorative in which the texts describe
Tibetans (even when the person doing the describing is Tibetan) and the aforementioned lack of any real female Tibetan perspective in the text. The Dalai Lama’s use of the word
“authentic” may in fact be in reference to the spiritual quest that David-Neel undertook.
Finally, as a male monastic the Dalai Lama is most familiar with a world of men, at no time beyond early childhood was in the company of women. This is not to say that he ignores the plight of women—to the contrary he has hosted and attended numerous summits on the rights and position of women in Tibetan Buddhism—but simply that his own framework for what is authentic on the relative level is dominated by men as practitioners and men in positions of power and prestige.
73 Notes
1 It should be noted that prayer does not have the same connotation in Tibetan Buddhism. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that one prays to are not separate from one’s authentic nature; rather, they are aspects of that nature. 2 This is to say a Buddha that has never strayed from his/ her own true nature 3 Samsara- literally means “to be constantly moving.” In respect to Buddhist philosophy it generally refers to the “the three realms of cyclic existence that have the nature of an ocean of suffering” and “the relative nature of the world.” (Sherab and Dongyal, Illuminating the Path 72) 4 A sacred fast offering. 5 When a true mahasiddha performs a feast offering and invokes the sacred retinue they are bound to appear. 6 This text is also known as The Heart Sutra of Prajñaparamita 7 The Tripitaka is the collection of the earliest Buddhist texts. It is usually broken into three parts the Vinaya or codes of monastic conduct, the Sutra or discourses of the Buddha, and the Abidharma which contains the early writings on Buddhist philosophy, psychology, cosmology, metaphysics etc. 8 This tantra is the foundational tantra in Nyingma Buddhism. 9 Sherab and Dongyal A Small Treasury of Prayers 13-23 10 As a practitioner becomes more seasoned her inner wisdom flows with less obstruction. This inner wisdom is often referred as an inner Guru. 11 The use of quote marks is hers. 12 Attendants 13 See Dorje, Jigdral Mountain Retreat Instructions. 14 “To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the Orientalist, brought into reality by him, or as a kind of intellectual proletariat useful for the Orientalists grander interpretive activity, necessary for hisperformance as superior judge, learned man, powerful cultural will.” (Said, 74 Orientalism 208)
15 P Narrator-Agent- is defined by Gerald Prince as a narrator who is a character in the events recounted and has a measurable effect in them. 16 Genette, Gerard Narrative Discourse (6-7). 17 Including Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Regarding Western notions of Superiority in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe writes, “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality” and “It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry”(783). Edward Said notes that in Kim, “Kipling condescends to neither. He follows the lama wherever he goes in his wish to be freed from ‘the delusions of the Body,’ and it is surely part of our engagement in the novel's Oriental dimension, which Kipling renders with little false exoticism, that we can believe in the novelist's respect for this pilgrim” ( Kim, 31-32). These readings show some of the complexity involved in Western writers that write about, and create, the East. 18 The prescriptions regarding Monastic function in Dana paramita (the perfection of generosity) is laid out in the Vinaya pitaka the collection of texts regarding the rules of conduct. (Panchen and Dorje 14-62) 19 Roughly translated as “the corpse who stands up” or “the dancing corpse
75
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