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The Life and Times of Mingyur Peldrön: Female Leadership in 18Th Century Tibetan Buddhism

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The Life and Times of Mingyur Peldrön: Female Leadership in 18th Century Tibetan Buddhism Alison Joyce Melnick Ann Arbor, Michigan B.A., University of Michigan, 2003 M.A., University of Virginia, 2008 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia August, 2014 ii © Copyright by Alison Joyce Melnick All Rights Reserved August 2014 iii Abstract This dissertation examines the life of the Tibetan nun Mingyur Peldrön (mi 'gyur dpal sgron, 1699-1769) through her hagiography, which was written by her disciple Gyurmé Ösel ('gyur med 'od gsal, b. 1715), and completed some thirteen years after her death. It is one of few hagiographies written about a Tibetan woman before the modern era, and offers insight into the lives of eighteenth century Central Tibetan religious women. The work considers the relationship between members of the Mindröling community and the governing leadership in Lhasa, and offers an example of how hagiographic narrative can be interpreted historically. The questions driving the project are: Who was Mingyur Peldrön, and why did she warrant a 200-folio hagiography? What was her role in her religious community, and the wider Tibetan world? What do her hagiographer's literary decisions tell us about his own time and place, his goals in writing the hagiography, and the developing literary styles of the time? What do they tell us about religious practice during this period of Tibetan history, and the role of women within that history? How was Mingyur Peldrön remembered in terms of her engagement with the wider religious community, how was she perceived by her followers, and what impact did she have on religious practice for the next generation? Finally, how and where is it possible to "hear" Mingyur Peldrön's voice in this work? This project engages several types of research methodology, including historiography, semiology, and methods for reading hagiography as history. It considers Mingyur Peldrön's life story as a frame for understanding the temporal "bridge" between the long seventeenth century and the nineteenth century rise of the Non-Sectarian (Rimé, ris med) Movement. The dissertation is organized to give the reader the perspective of moving increasingly closer to understanding Mingyur Peldrön through her own words. The work moves thematically from an external study of her hagiography, its authorship, and the content of its composition, to questions of how and where we are able to hear Mingyur Peldrön's own words. Throughout the study, questions of how we understand hagiographic narrative, and what it can tell us about actual historical events, are addressed from several perspectives. The dissertation argues that the lives of Tibetan religious women before the twentieth century were much more varied than previously thought. Mingyur Peldrön's Life offers an example of female leadership and empowerment that is unprecedented in Tibetan women's religious history. "Chapter One: Reading the Namtar of Mingyur Peldrön," considers Mingyur Peldrön's hagiography as a literary work. This chapter discusses the organization of the text, literary references, stylistic choices made by Gyurmé Ösel, and how we can understand hagiographic, biographic, and autobiographic narrative systems in Tibetan namtar (rnam thar). In "Chapter Two: The Life and Times of Mingyur Peldrön," I briefly summarize the narrative of Mingyur Peldrön's life, as it is presented in the larger context of the hagiography. "Chapter Three: Incarnation and Identity" addresses representations of Mingyur Peldrön – her personality and previous lives – as they appear in the hagiography. In particular, this chapter considers the role of gender and public identity, notions of prestige, Mingyur Peldrön's previous lives, and eighteenth century representations of iv feminine identity. In particular, Mingyur Peldrön was considered to be an emanation of Yeshé Tsogyel, and Gyurmé Ösel's interpretation of this well-known Tibetan figure is crafted to fit the Mindröling context. In "Chapter Four: Hearing Mingyur Peldrön's Voice," I return to the questions of voice and authorship in the hagiography, and present some of the moments in Gyurmé Ösel's work wherein Mingyur Peldrön is quoted directly. It is in these quotations that we begin to "hear" Mingyur Peldrön's voice. Chapter Four considers one woman's role in shaping and negotiating the doctrinal and social morés of the eighteenth century Central Tibetan Nyingma community. v Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my advisor Kurtis Schaeffer for his continued guidance and excellent advice, and for helping me learn to think like a scholar. Thanks to my committee members David Germano, Karen Lang, Anne Kinney, and Andy Quintman. Their support throughout my graduate (and undergraduate) education served as the foundation for this project, and their feedback will certainly inform future stages of the project as well. Thanks to Khenpo Khonchok Sherab at Songtsen Library in Rajpur and Dr. Jampa Samten at the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, for countless hours spent reading and discussing the Life of Mingyur Peldrön. At the University of Virginia, thanks to Tseten Chonjore and Ngawang Thokmey. I have been extremely lucky to meet great teachers and interlocutors, at the University of Virginia and elsewhere. Particular thanks go to Chuck Mathewes, Betsy Napper, Cindy Hoehler-Fatton, Paul Groner, Clarke Hudson, Sarah Jacoby, Miao-fen Tseng, Shu-chen Chen, John Nemec, Ben Ray, Michelene Pesantubbee, Christi Merrill, Gareth Sparham, Alex Gardner, Luis Gomez, and Donald Lopez. The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without support from the University of Virginia, the Fulbright Foundation, Songtsen Library, and the Central University of Tibetan Studies. I would like to thank Larry Bouchard, Liz Smith, Neeraj Goswami, and Vinita Tripathi for their endless support and patience, and for doing everything in their power to help move this project forward. In India, thanks to Dipitman and Kumkum Roybardhan, Gauri, Yuko Tanaka, and Shashi and Sucheta Panicker, for their overwhelming hospitality. Thanks to Her Eminence Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, for giving her blessing to the project, and to His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinlé Dorjé, for supporting the study of Tibetan women's history. I have been very lucky to have a strong support network of family and friends, colleagues and comrades, who helped in myriad ways throughout this process. Thanks to Laura Trumbull, Anna Johnson, Erica Prochaska, Sara Lewis, Brenton Sullivan, Kerri Hudson, Free Williams, Dave DiValerio, Amy Kimball, Angie Pilon, Andy Hegle, Andy Harrington, Jed Verity, Elizabeth Miller, Chris Bell, Cici Haynes, Christie Kilby, William Robinson, Ben and Erin Nourse, Betsy Mesard, Arya Burt, Natasha Mikles, Joe Laycock, Steve Weinberger, Pete Faggen, Jann Ronis, Dominic and Jeannie Sur, Gloria Chien, Matt Burgess, Julie Regan, Dominique Townsend, and Katarina Turpeinen. Thanks to Everett Sullivan, Margaret Nourse, and Adam Fayed, for sharing new perspectives. I would like to thank my parents, parents‐in‐law, siblings, and all my family for their patience and continual support. Thanks also to Dan, Viji, and Robert, for doing double duty as occasional academic advisors. None of this would have been possible without the endless support and love of my husband, Eric Dyer. Thank you for being my life partner and friend throughout this process, for sharing adventures with me, living life alongside me, and brightening many days. Thank you for your trust in the value of this project, for listening and discussing conundra large and small, always reminding me of the value of teamwork, doing everything in your power to help move the project along, and traveling to the ends of the earth for a good cup of tea. I look forward to many new adventures together. vi A Note About Linguistic Conventions At the first occurrence of a Tibetan name or term, the word or words will be given in phonetics, followed by transliterated Tibetan in parentheses. All phonetics, except where quoted from other sources, will be in accordance with the Tibetan and Himalayan Library's phonetic conversion scheme. Likewise, all Tibetan transliterations will adhere to the Wylie transliteration system. Tibetan proper nouns and text titles that have been translated into English by other sources will adhere to the initial English transliteration. I have included diacritical marks for Sanskrit terms. vii Table of Contents ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………...v CONVENTIONS………………………………………………………………………………....vi INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 GOALS OF THE STUDY……………………………………………………………………………………………………….1 WOMEN IN TIBETOLOGY…………………………………………………………………………………………………...3 QUESTIONS DRIVING THE STUDY AND METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………….5 HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HAGIOGRAPHY…………………………………………..……………………………………..6 TIBET AT THE TURN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY……………………………………………………………….9 LITERATURE AND THE CREATION OF MINDRÖLING MONASTERY……………………………………………...17 THE WOMEN OF MINDRÖLING………………………………………………………………………………………….23 THE QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP………………………………………………………………………………………..26 CHAPTER BY CHAPTER DESCRIPTIONS……………………………………………………………………………….29 CHAPTER ONE: READING THE NAMTAR OF MINGYUR PELDRÖN………………...31 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..31 The Genre of Namtar………………………………………………………………..………………………………….32
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