HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 36 Number 1 Article 13 May 2016 The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power Annabella C. Pitkin Lehigh University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Pitkin, Annabella C.. 2016. The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power. HIMALAYA 36(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol36/iss1/13 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power Acknowledgements This research received generous support from a Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research: Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections. Kalsang Wangdu provided vital research assistance and fruitful discussion of the topic. I gratefully thank the Drikung Kagyu scholars who shared their expertise with me, particularly H.H. Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche and the Director and staff of the Drikung Kagyu Institute in Dehradun, India. I especially thank those Drikung scholars with whose philosophical perspectives and interpretations I engage here: Dordzin Rinpoche, Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen, and Karma Rinchen. Their erudition, generosity, and creativity shapes the inquiry of this paper. Needless to say, all errors here are my own. This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol36/iss1/13 The ‘Age of Faith’ and the ‘Age of Knowledge’: Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power Annabella Pitkin This paper approaches the dynamics of to negotiating secularism, modernity, and secularization and post-secularism among religious commitment using Tibetan Buddhist Tibetan Buddhists through the lens of ‘miracle’ philosophical tools, in ways that resonate with narratives, both oral and textual. I argue that contemporary debates about processes of such narratives function as a lightening rod for secularism in Asia and elsewhere. complexities surrounding secularism and its Keywords: Tibetan Buddhism, biography, yogic power, religious doubles. Tibetan Buddhist genres of secularism, memory, modernity. historical and biographical writing brim with accounts of extraordinary yogic abilities (Skt. siddhi, Tib. dngos grub and Skt. ṛddhi, Tib. rdzu ‘phrul), ranging from clairvoyance to flight. Combining interviews with Tibetan Buddhist scholars and practitioners, oral commentaries, and textual analysis, I engage with analyses of yogic power articulated by three contemporary, primarily diaspora-based Tibetan Buddhist scholar-practitioners. I argue that their analyses of yogic power offer approaches 96 | HIMALAYA Spring 2016 Introduction: Modernity, Secularism, and Yogic Power tioner educated in classic Drikung monastic and yogic curricula, who currently lives in New York City. Tibetan Buddhist accounts of extraordinary displays of yogic power, sometimes described as ‘miracles’ in English,1 My conversations with them focused on displays of yogic highlight complexities surrounding secularism and its power attributed to one early modern Drikung Kagyu religious doubles. Reading other people’s minds, walking master, a retreat hermit named Drikung Drubwang Amgön on water, knowing the future — accounts of such activities Konchog Lodrö Rinpoche (‘Bri gung grub dbang a mgon are familiar to millions of Tibetan and Himalayan Bud- dkon chog blo gros rin po che). This practitioner, here- dhists from the life stories of great Buddhist practitioners. after referred to as Amgön Rinpoche, lived from the late Yet narratives of extraordinary activities pose a potential 19th to mid 20th century. Taking oral and written stories challenge for audiences today. How do practices of telling of Amgön Rinpoche’s life as our starting point, Dordzin or writing, listening to or reading, and reflecting on such Rinpoche, Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen and Karma Rinchen stories fit with the categories of secularism, rationalism spoke with me about how to interpret accounts of yogic and modernity that are so influential in today’s globalizing displays in stories of Amgön’s and other masters’ lives. practices of knowledge production? Such questions reso- Dordzin Rinpoche, Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen, and Karma nate far beyond the Tibetan world. Rinchen each brought a slightly different perspective to A number of contemporary Tibetan Buddhist scholar-prac- bear on questions of secularism and yogic power, reflec - titioners, both in diaspora settings and in geographic Tibet, ing both generational differences and distinctions in the engage with these questions in ways that I argue contrib- focus of their own intellectual and religious interests. ute to ongoing debates among international scholars of Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen was educated in Drikung mo- religion and theorists of modernity. I focus here on the nastic settings, primarily in India. Today he is a leading perspectives of three exile-based scholars from one par- Drikung teacher of international as well as Tibetan and Hi- ticular lineage community, the Drikung Kagyu, a branch malayan students, and his own scholarly and pedagogical of one of the four main traditions of Tibetan Buddhism projects touch on questions of modernity and secularism active today.2 Their interpretations are part of much larger in a variety of ways. His extensive social media contacts contemporary conversations about cultural change and and his many international students and frequent interna- the role of religion happening across the Tibetan Buddhist tional travel in Asia and North America give him a broad world. While I focus here on the perspective of Drikung perspective on the complex philosophical and cultural thinkers based outside geographic Tibet, many of the environments in which contemporary Buddhists now intellectual currents these thinkers explore are transre- live. His incisive presentation of the relationship between gional. In particular, Tibet-based intellectuals actively modernity, secularization, accounts of yogic power, and engage parallel questions of memory, faith, and knowledge Buddhist devotional priorities is at the core of my analy- in significant and influential ways, often in dialogue wit sis in this article. He is a philosophical interlocutor with diaspora thinkers, although I cannot fully address those whom I have found it extremely fruitful to think. dynamics here.3 Karma Rinchen was Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen’s classmate I had the opportunity to explore questions about secu- and, later, student, and was Dordzin Rinpoche’s personal larism, modernity, and yogic power with three Drikung student for four years. He also has a multifaceted perspec- Kagyu scholars in a series of conversations in 2013 and tive, though his is slightly different than Khenchen Nyima 2014 in Dehradun, India, and New York City. I spoke with Gyaltsen’s. Karma Rinchen grew up in a nomadic area in the senior yogic retreat master Dordzin Drubpon Don- Gawa (sGa ba) in eastern Tibet, in the Kyura Terton Tshang drup Palden Rinpoche (Rdor ‘dzin sgrub dpon don grub (sKyu ra’i gter ston tshang) family. He was educated in dpal ldan rin po che; colloquially abbreviated as Dordzin monastic settings in geographic Tibet as well as in India, Rinpoche), who lives in semi-permanent mountain retreat and now lives a New York City lifestyle he characterizes in the southern Himalaya and is a leading instructor for as “urban.” He uses social media to engage with friends in Drikung retreat practitioners, especially at the important Tibetan communities in many parts of the Tibetan world, Lapchi retreat center in eastern Nepal; Khenchen Nyima but is less involved with non-Tibetan social networks Gyaltsen (Mkhan chen nyi ma rgyal mtshan, b. 1976), who than Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen. Karma Rinchen does not is a khenchen (a leading khenpo, i.e., abbot/professor) of the currently hold a public role as a Buddhist teacher, but he Kagyu Monastic College in Dehradun, India; and Karma has been asked to teach on several occasions, and Tibetan Rinchen (Karma rin chen, b. 1980), a lay scholar-practi- acquaintances turn to him for explanations of Buddhist HIMALAYA Volume 36, Number 1 | 97 ideas and practices. As a layperson with a wide acquain- Amgön Rinpoche’s Yogic Displays tance among Tibetan lay as well as monastic communities, Amgön Rinpoche became famous for his exceptional he describes his own perspective as bridging these views. meditative achievements and for his remarkable activities, Dordzin Rinpoche speaks from the vantage point of some- including clairvoyance, extraordinarily rapid travel, and one a generation older than Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen his expansion of food, drink, water, snuff, and medicine so and Karma Rinchen. In a sense his is the most ‘traditional’ as to render them inexhaustible. Stories about his yogic perspective I discuss here, though he, like