Revue D'etudes Tibétaines Est Publiée Par L'umr 8155 Du CNRS (CRCAO), Paris, Dirigée Par Sylvie Hureau
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Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Tibetan Religion and the Senses edited by James D. Gentry numéro cinquante — Juin 2019 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines numéro cinquante — Juin 2019 ISSN 1768-2959. Directeur : Jean-Luc Achard. Comité de rédaction : Alice Travers, Charles Ramble, Jean-Luc Achard. Comité de lecture : Ester Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Perugia), Fabienne Jagou (EFEO), Rob Mayer (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford), Fernand Meyer (CNRS-EPHE), Françoise Pommaret (CNRS), Ramon Prats (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Charles Ramble (EPHE, CNRS), Françoise Robin (INALCO), Alice Travers (CNRS), Jean-Luc Achard (CNRS). Périodicité La périodicité de la Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines est généralement bi-annuelle, les mois de parution étant, sauf indication contraire, Octobre et Avril. Les contributions doivent parvenir au moins six (6) mois à l’avance. Les dates de proposition d’articles au comité de lecture sont Novembre pour une parution en Avril, et Mai pour une parution en Octobre. Participation La participation est ouverte aux membres statutaires des équipes CNRS, à leurs membres associés, aux doctorants et aux chercheurs non-affiliés. Les articles et autres contributions sont proposés aux membres du comité de lecture et sont soumis à l’approbation des membres du comité de rédaction. Les articles et autres contributions doivent être inédits ou leur réédition doit être justifiée et soumise à l’approbation des membres du comité de lecture. Les documents doivent parvenir sous la forme de fichiers Word, envoyés à l’adresse du directeur ([email protected]). Comptes-rendus Contacter le directeur de publication, à l’adresse électronique suivante : [email protected] Langues Les langues acceptées dans la revue sont le français, l’anglais, l’allemand, l’italien, l’espagnol, le tibétain et le chinois. La Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines est publiée par l'UMR 8155 du CNRS (CRCAO), Paris, dirigée par Sylvie Hureau. Hébergement: http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/journals/ret/ v Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines numéro cinquante — Juin 2019 Tibetan Religion and the Senses edited by James D. Gentry James D. Gentry Introduction pp. 5–12 Jiri Holba The senses in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism from a philosophical perspective pp. 13–39 Robert Mayer A Bon tantric approach to the senses: the evidence from Khu tsha zla ’od’s Black Pillar (Ka ba nag po man ngag rtsa ba’i rgyud) pp. 40–55 Carmen Meinert Embodying the divine in tantric ritual practice: examples from the Chinese Karakhoto manuscripts from the Tangut empire (ca. 1038–1227) pp. 56–72 James D. Gentry Liberation through sensory encounters in Tibetan Buddhist practice pp. 73–131 Katarina Turpeinen Luminous visions and liberatory amulets in Rig ’dzin rGod ldem’s Great Perfection anthology pp. 132–149 Cathy Cantwell The Ceremony for Imbibing the Siddhis, with particular reference to examples from Nyang ral Nyi ma ’od zer’s bKa' brgyad bde gshegs ’dus pa pp. 150–165 Anna Sehnalova Unicorns, myrobalans, and eyes: senses in ritual structure and matter in g.Yung drung Bon, a Tibetan tantric tradition pp. 166–211 iv Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines Natasha L. Mikles Tears like fluttering leaves: karmic resentment and the senses in Gesar’s journey through hell pp. 212–234 Ana Cristina O. Lopes Seeing through your eyes: senses, emotions, science, and the plasticity of personhood in Tibetan Buddhism pp. 235-256 v Tibetan religion and the senses Introduction James Gentry (University of Virginia) he senses, as the very foundation of our experience of the world, fundamentally shape our sense of reality and mediate T our relationships with other people, places, and things. In recent decades the sensorial turn in the social sciences and the humanities has shown that the senses are not simply the neutral effect of biological and neurological processes, but are also constructed— historically, culturally, and politically.1 This acknowledgment of diverse human sensoria has found expression in the study of religion in a re-sensualization of traditional fields of inquiry. The religious body, material sacra, sacred landscape, and other themes that were typically sidelined in the study of religion have now come to the fore as researchers newly inquire into the diverse sensory regimes and rationales operative throughout the world’s religious practices and beliefs.2 This new focus indeed signals a sharp turn from the previous emphasis in religious studies, which tended to “privilege spirit above matter, belief above ritual, content above form, mind above body, and inward contemplation above ‘mere’ outward action.”3 1 For a rich description of the state of the field of “sensory studies,” including an extensive bibliography of relevant publications up to the year 2013, see David Howes, “The Expanding Field of Sensory Studies”, Sensory Studies, 2013, https://www.sensorystudies.org/sensorial-investigations/the-expanding-field- of-sensory-studies/. Important instances of this impulse are Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures (London, Routledge, 1993) and David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press 2003). 2 Important examples include Birgit Meyer (ed.), Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Graham Harvey and Jessica Hughes (ed.), Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses (Sheffield, UK; Bristol, CT, Equinox Publishing, 2018). 3 Birgit Meyer and Dick Houtman, “Introduction: Material Religion—How Things Matter,” in Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, eds. Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer, 1–23 (New York, Fordham University Press, 2012): 1. James Gentry, “Tibetan religion and the senses”, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 50, June 2019, pp. 5–12. 6 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines In the study of Tibetan religion, and the study of Buddhism more broadly, the sensory turn has been slow to gain traction. This stagnation is perhaps due to lingering perceptions of Buddhist traditions as fundamentally world abnegating and therefore dismissive of rich attention to sensory experience. But encounters with Buddhist societies, and Tibetan Buddhist societies in particular, immediately confront the visitor with a profusion of aesthetic forms, ranging from protective cords, relic pills, amulets, and other portable sacra, to masked dances, statues, stūpas, temples, and sacred caves, mountains, and other pilgrimage sites. Such encounters give the distinct impression that it is these expressive forms, with their capacity to captivate and enthrall the senses, that are the preeminent features of Tibetan religious life, above and beyond whatever it is Tibetans profess to believe. But sacred sensory objects and the power of sensory encounters with them have also been an explicit focus of Buddhist doctrinal thinking for centuries. For Tibetan intellectuals who inherited Indian Buddhist discourses, the senses and sensory objects have been productive not only for figuring experiences of the sacred for the populace. They have also been important focal points to think through. Tibetan religious thinkers have formulated and argued over a diversity of opinions concerning the roles of the senses in religious life. Equally if not more diverse have been the Tibetan religious liturgical and narrative attempts to work through the sensory lives of their audiences of spectators, performers, and readers to bring about a wide spectrum of effects. This special issue of Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines is the first concerted attempt to study Tibetan religion from the perspective of sensory studies.4 It considers the roles of the senses in Tibetan religion from a diversity of vantage points, exploring how the senses figure in both the Bon and Buddhist traditions through focused studies that range across philosophical, liturgical, and narrative literary genres, and ethnographic fieldwork settings. This issue owes its inception to the panel, “Religion and the Senses,” held at the 15th IATS conference in Bergen, Norway, in June 2016. This panel was organized through the funding of the KHK “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe,” at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany by Carmen Meinert, Cathy Cantwell, and Robert Mayer. After the idea was hatched to 4 It would be remiss in this regard not to mention the pioneering work of Robert Desjarlais, Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths Among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), which marks the first sustained inquiry into the sensorial lives of Himalayan Buddhists. Tibetan religion and the senses 7 organize the panel papers into a volume, additional contributors were called upon to complete the issue. It is hoped that this effort might help spark similar research projects focused on the senses in Tibetan religion. v Throughout most considerations of the nature and role of the senses in Tibetan religion there is a palpable tension: how have Tibetan religious traditions positively enlisted the senses given the premium placed in Buddhist traditions in particular on cultivating a strong sense of disenchantment with sensory involvements as a precondition for realizing the ultimate reality of emptiness, often construed as utterly beyond the confines of sensory experience. The senses are thus paradoxically framed in Tibetan religious traditions as fundamentally deceptive, but also as the only tangible raw materials which practitioners have to work with in their spiritual pursuits. This