The Way Around: Walking into Revolution

The Way Around: Walking into Revolution Chairperson: Phil Condon The Way Around investigates revolution through personal accounts of pilgrimage, ecopsychology, and activism. For ten years (2006-2016), I engaged in various forms of circular travel across the world to understand the true shape of revolution—its etymology, its use throughout history, and if revolution might be some universal inertia that drives us all forward. The journey begins in 2006, where I travel around the world for a year. I weave together discoveries of place and planet with a 500-year historical account of human circumnavigation. Returning to Portland, Oregon, I’m introduced to the practice of long-distance running through circling around several Pacific Northwest volcanoes on foot. This more localized form of circumnavigation further attunes me to the cyclical patterns of ecology, which pulls me into more political orbits of activism and civic engagement to protect these spaces. I get involved with Occupy Wall Street and one evening run for several hours around the Portland encampment, a kinesthetic revolution evolving into a meditation on political revolution. After circling the globe, orbiting volcanoes, and budding as an activist, in 2014, I travel 7,000 miles to Western Tibet and circumambulate 21,778-foot Mount Kailash. Here, I find circumambulation functioning both as spiritual practice and cultural survival. This journey would direct me a year later back to Northern California, my birthplace, where, in 2015, I organize a fifty-year anniversary circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais, a tradition started in 1965, by poet Gary Snyder. The aperture of my personal revolution through all of these experiences continues to focus locally inward, towards home. In my new home in Missoula, Montana, on the opening day of the 2015 COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, I hold a demonstration on the University of Montana campus and incorporate circular walking to represent the planet’s six mass extinctions. In the end, after a decade of circuitous experiences, each brought me closer and closer to home, closer to a shared tension of rootedness and curiosity for the whole. I discovered that transformation—personal, political, planetary—moves in sweeps of cycles, and The Way Around attempts to illustrate this revolutionary heritage we all carry with us, not just as humans but as expressions of a planet ever-revolving, ever-renewing, and constantly requiring overthrow to thrive. Revolution, I found, is everywhere

Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change

Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change is the first publication that brings together leading experts from different disciplines to discuss the introduction of printing in Tibetan societies in the context of Asian book culture. Readership: All interested in Tibetan Studies, in Asian Book Cultures and the history of printing as well as in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of books as artefacts

Tsongkhapa’s Coordination of Sūtra and Tantra: Ascetic Performance, Narrative, and Philosophy in the Creation of the Tibetan Buddhist Self

The dissertation examines the life narrative of Tsongkhapa Losang Dragpa (1357-1419), the influential founder of the Ganden school of Tibetan Buddhism, primarily through the lens of the bodhisattva path to enlightenment, a topic that animates much of Indian Buddhist literature and Tsongkhapa’s own writings. Over the course of five chapters, the dissertation (1) contextualizes Tsongkhapa’s social, political, and historical circumstances, the limiting factors for that narrative; (2) explores the social nature of life narratives themselves, particularly Tibetan Buddhist ones, and the many sources on which Tsongkhapa drew in creating a self in relation to the bodhisattva ideal; (3) analyses the topic of asceticism as a constellation of practices that embody traditional ideals, which the dissertation uniquely relates to both monastic and, perhaps surprisingly, tantric discipline in the construction of a bodhisattva/would-be buddha self; (4) synthesizes several themes within Tsongkhapa’s oeuvre in relation to the bodhisattva path to enlightenment, highlighting the irreducibly social nature of embodied enlightenment; and (5) proposes that Tsongkhapa’s social activities, specifically his so-called Four Great Deeds, instantiate the ideal of the enlightened self’s acting within society, specifically his context of fifteenth-century Central Tibet. The dissertation relies primarily on Tsongkhapa’s brief intellectual autobiography, Excellent Presence, his earliest biography, Haven of Faith, a number of Tsongkhapa’s systematic writings, and a variety of primary and secondary sources that contextualize elements of the historical, sociological, religious, and theoretical analyses presented throughout the five chapters. In biographies of Tibetan Buddhist figures, emphasis on the hagiographic tends to obscure the social, political, and historical contexts in which their subjects act, which in turn tends to reinforce the Weberian notion of Buddhism as an individualist path. Emphasis on individual achievement (simultaneously including yet excluding lineages, practices, philosophical positions, and so on) tends to reinforce the inverse, Foucauldian notion that this is a deliberate attempt to obscure various power struggles that actually define religious actors and institutions. In the case of Tsongkhapa, modern scholarship has tended to present the remarkable success of his Ganden school either to his individual genius in advancing (allegedly) unique philosophical positions or to social facts (e.g., his efforts at monastic reform), political facts (e.g., Phagdru dominance over rival Sakya), and historical facts (e.g., Mongol allegiance to his successors) largely unrelated to his personal charisma, erudite scholarship, or social impact. As a sort of middle way between these extremes, it is possible to locate within these contexts the specific achievements of the individual who is—according to both general Buddhist understanding and contemporary theorists in philosophy, psychology, literary studies, and sociology—deeply socialized. As social documents, life narratives, inclusive of biography and hagiography, function as indices of tradition, just as do practices of monastic and tantric asceticism, all with goals of embodying the principles articulated in the systematic literature within the social, political, and historical contexts to be transcended. This ideal, then, proves to be fully situated within social contexts, and Tsongkhapa’s Four Great Deeds instantiate it in relation to both individual achievements of asceticism and the institutionalization of communal and educational capacities to replicate the processes engendering this ideal, buddhahood. In sum, Tsongkhapa’s life narrative expresses the expectations and ideals of Tibetan Buddhist culture in a way that proves complementary to systematic presentations and to “lived” practices of monastic and tantric asceticism

Central Asian Sources and Central Asian Research

In October 2014 about thirty scholars from Asia and Europe came together for a conference to discuss different kinds of sources for the research on Central Asia. From museum collections and ancient manuscripts to modern newspapers and pulp fiction and the wind horses flying against the blue sky of Mongolia there was a wide range of topics. Modern data processing and data management and the problems of handling five different languages and scripts for a dictionary project were leading us into the modern digital age. The dominating theme of the whole conference was the importance of collections of source material found in libraries and archives, their preservation and expansion for future generations of scholars. Some of the finest presentations were selected for this volume and are now published for a wider audience

The Picnic Makers of Bongo: Developing rituals and ritualising developments in a transitioning frontier Bhutanese community

My thesis is based on a year's ethnographic fieldwork conducted in what has been called 'frontier zones' or 'zones of contact' in the anthropological literature of the Himalayas (Pratt 1991 as cited in Shneiderman, 2010: 291). Because of its removed distance from Bhutan's civilizational centre, Bongo was home to a multifaceted indigenous culture that is part of what Tucci (1980 [1970]) called 'folk religion' of the Tibetan cultural area. However, as the Bhutanese state embarked on a systematic modernisation process in the 1960s, precocious children from Bongo became one of its primary beneficiaries. Because of its close proximity to the neighbouring Indian hill stations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, many of these children received British-style managerial education. Their new competencies enabled them to rise through the ranks of the then nascent Bhutanese civil service. However, the earliest interventions that these educated members of Bongo made in their community was to emulate the state's sophisticated Buddhist culture in their community in what I call the development of rituals. Similar processes can be witnessed in other Himalayan areas that Ortner (1995: 359) labelled as 'religious upgrading', where adoption of Buddhism was the first and primary manifestation of development and progress. From 2008, when the Bhutanese state became secularised and as successive elected governments promoted a material culture that is amendable to their more immediate electoral imperatives, Bongo's communal capabilities have been recalibrated to serve what I call a ritualised development. Therefore, I employ Shneiderman's (2015) distinction between the 'practice' and 'performance' of rituals to argue that "the process of modernisation [has been] a process of ritualization" in Bongo. In view of the rich ritual culture that I was confronted with in my fieldwork, my research seeks to ask why the so-called 'development' or 'modernisation' (as some prefer to call this phenomenon) takes on ritual form in certain historically peripheral societies? In answering this primary question, I found that the state acts a major cause and catalyst of change, and so, this thesis asks what role does the state play in triggering such transformations? But contrary to some simplistic perceptions, the people can be agentive actors and can often mediate effectively with what is called the 'state effect' (Shneiderman, 2010: 291). Therefore, my research seeks to answer what broader impact does such modernising processes and 'objectification of culture' have on the redistribution of key economic resources and in realigning the axis of power between centrally and peripherally located actors in the state

When glaciers vanish : nature, power and moral order in the indian Himalayas

La présente thèse est une étude ethnographique qui examine le savoir en tant que pratique située au Ladakh, dans l’Himalaya indien. Elle analyse les implications socioculturelles des deux moteurs de changement en jeu au Ladakh: l’un est d'origine socio-économique et lié à la production du Ladakh en tant que zone frontalière, tandis que l’autre est de nature environnementale et entrainé par les changements climatiques. Alors que le Ladakh est demeuré hors de la portée de l’État bureaucratique pendant l’administration coloniale britannique, la région s’est trouvée reconfigurée en zone frontalière stratégique après l’indépendance de l’Inde des suites des guerres successives avec le Pakistan et la Chine. L’Indépendance a mené à la partition de l’Inde et du Pakistan en 1947; cette thèse examine la portée à long terme des évènements traumatisants de la partition tels qu’ils se sont déroulés au Ladakh et comment les Ladakhis établissent des liens entre ces évènements et les changements climatiques. L’État indien s’est produit dans la région à travers une volonté de dominer les montagnes, principalement par le développement d’infrastructures et par l’intégration du savoir local des Ladakhis dans l’appareil militaire. La militarisation a restructuré l'économie du Ladakh, redéfini la structure des ménages, contribué à l’exode rural, déplacé la centralité des activités agropastorales et, tel que la dissertation le soutient, altéré de manière significative la connexion de la population locale avec l'environnement. La rationalisation croissante de la perspective sur l’environnement aujourd'hui contribue à la fragmentation des liens qui unissent les domaines naturels et humains dans la cosmologie locale de même qu’à l'abandon des pratiques rituelles connexes. Parallèlement, la région est touchée par des effets distincts des changements climatiques, en particulier la récession des glaciers. La thèse juxtapose l'expérience subjective de ces vastes changements dans la vie quotidienne des villageois de la Vallée de Sham avec les faits historiques environnementaux, démontrant ainsi que les événements historiques locaux influent sur les perceptions des changements environnementaux. L'analyse démontre qu’un phénomène objectif tel que la récession des glaciers est interprété à travers des réalités locales. Plus précisément, selon la conception du monde locale, un glacier en retrait est une figure rhétorique d’une transformation de la condition humaine. Comme le fait valoir la dissertation, l’interprétation culturelle ne constitue pas un obstacle à l'objectivité de l'histoire naturelle de la cosmologie locale. L’interprétation culturelle et l'expérience empirique s’avèrent par ailleurs essentielles à la vitalité des connaissances locales sur l'environnement et à la performance des pratiques associées.The dissertation presents an ethnographic study that examines knowledge as a situated practice in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalayas. It analyzes the sociocultural implications of two drivers of change at play in Ladakh: one is of socioeconomic origin and linked to the production of Ladakh as a border area, while the other is environmental and driven by climate change. Ladakh, which remained outside the scope of the bureaucratic state during the British colonial administration, found itself refashioned into a strategic border area following India’s independence and successive wars with Pakistan and China. Independence led to the partition of Indian into India and Pakistan in 1947; the dissertation examines the long-term, traumatic events of the partition in Ladakh, tracing connections to current perceptions of climate change. The independent Indian state has produced itself in the region through the taming of its mountains, primarily through infrastructure development and the co-optation of Ladakhi knowledge of the environment by the military apparatus. Far-reaching militarization has restructured Ladakh’s economy, consequently redefining household structure, contributing to village depopulation, displacing the centrality of agro-pastoralist activities and, as the dissertation argues, significantly altering the local population’s engagement with the environment. The increasing rationalization of the outlook on the environment today contributes to the fragmentation of links between the natural and human realms within the local cosmology and the abandonment of related ritual practices. Concurrently, the region is impacted by distinct effects of climate change, in particular glacier recession. The dissertation juxtaposes both the subjective experience of wide-ranging environmental changes and changes in everyday village life with historical facts, showing that local historical events influence perceptions of glacier recession and the depletion of natural resources. The analysis demonstrates that objective phenomena such as glacier recession are interpreted through local realities. Specifically, in the local worldview, a vanishing glacier is a trope for changes in the human condition. Yet, as the dissertation further argues, such cultural framing does not preclude the objectivity of natural history in local cosmology. Moreover, cultural framing and empirical experience, therefore, are shown to be essential to the vitality of local knowledge about the environment and to the performance of associated landscape practices

Six Ways of Being Religious

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H. P. Blavatsky's Theosophy in Context: The Construction of Meaning in Modern Western Esotericism

To contact the author for further details go to www.h-e-r-m-e-s.orgAbstract of PhD Thesis by Tim Rudbøg, 15 December 2012 H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy in Context: The Construction of Meaning in Modern Western Esotericism H. P. Blavatsky’s (1831-1891) Theosophy has been defined as central to the history of modern Western spirituality and esotericism, yet to this date no major study has mapped and analysed the major themes of Blavatsky’s writings, how Blavatsky used the concept ‘Theosophy’ or to what extent she was engaged with the intellectual contexts of her time. Thus the purpose of this thesis is to fill this gap. The proposed theoretical framework is based on the centrality of language in the production of intellectual products, such as texts—but contrary to the dominant focus on strategies, rhetoric and power this thesis will focus on the construction of meaning coupled with a set of methodological tools based on contextual analysis, intellectual history and intertextuality. In addition to an overview of Blavatsky research this thesis will map and analyse Blavatsky’s use of the concept ‘Theosophy’ as well as Blavatsky’s primary discourses, identified as: (1) discourse for ancient knowledge, (2) discourse against Christian dogmatism, (3) discourse against the modern natural sciences and materialism, (4) discourse against modern spiritualism, (5) discourse for system and (7) discourse for universal brotherhood. In mapping and analysing Blavatsky’s discourses, it was found that her construction of meaning was significantly interconnected with broader intellectual contexts, such as ‘modern historical consciousness’, ‘critical enlightenment ideas’, studies in religion, studies in mythology, the modern sciences, spiritualism, systemic philosophy, reform movements and practical ethics. It, for example, becomes clear that Blavatsky’s search for an ancient ‘Wisdom Religion’ was actually a part of a common intellectual occupation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that her critique of the Christian dogmas was equally a common intellectual trend. To read Blavatsky’s discourses as the idiosyncratic strategies of an esotericist, isolated from their larger contexts or only engaged with them in order to legitimise minority views would therefore largely fail to account for the result of this thesis: that in historical actuality, they were a part of the larger cultural web of meaning