University of San Diego Digital USD Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship Department of Theology and Religious Studies 2016 Prayers of Resistance: Kalymyk Women's Covert Buddhist Practice Karma Lekshe Tsomo PhD University of San Diego,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digital.sandiego.edu/thrs-faculty Part of the Buddhist Studies Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Digital USD Citation Tsomo, Karma Lekshe PhD, "Prayers of Resistance: Kalymyk Women's Covert Buddhist Practice" (2016). Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship. 7. https://digital.sandiego.edu/thrs-faculty/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Digital USD. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital USD. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Field Note Prayers of Resistance Kalmyk Women’s Covert Buddhist Practice Karma Lekshe Tsomo ABSTRACT: Throughout decades of Soviet repression of religion and into modern times, groups of Buddhist women known as babushki matsik, or ‘‘group of old women precept holders’’ have covertly engaged in Buddhist practices in Kalmykia, following the Tibetan tantric tradi- tion. Located to the northwest of the Caspian Sea, the Kalmyk Republic of the Russian Federation is the only region of Europe with a predom- inantly Buddhist population. For centuries, the region has been the site of repeated migrations, shifting political and military alliances, and Russian Orthodox conversion efforts. The devastating period of forced relocation and exile in Siberia between 1943 and 1957 cost the lives of nearly half the Kalmyk population.