Saturday, July 31, 2010

90 seconds in front of the jokhang, lhasa

note the absence of western tourists and the presence of military goose-steppers,who continually patrol the square before the jokhang.



Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Lecture Online

Hamburg University has made the talk I gave on Hierarchy and Gender in Buddhist Monasticism available online. In case your absence last night was not an indication of lack of interest, you can listen to the talk here

or go straight to the mp3 file here.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

vegetarians in bhutan

my friend ariana, with whom i had the joy of sharing a birthday lunch with on my five-hour stopover in kathmandu last tuesday, has posted an interesting reflection on vegetarianism in bhutan.

read it here.

Friday, July 02, 2010

not in india

nearly every one of my four years in india has included some travel outside the country, and this is no exception. the next stop on a fairly whirlwind tour (five countries four continents, two months) will be germany, where i'll be giving a talk at hamburg university on "hierarchy and gender in buddhist monasticism," and enjoying both the company of my friend Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen and an intense few weeks translating the stories about they very first bhikshunis as a visiting scholar at the university's center for buddhist studies.

here's the abstract for the talk:

The nature of Buddhist social organizations has been a topic of great debate and often of grave misunderstanding. Focusing on Buddhist responses to caste, many observers have found cause to celebrate Buddhism as promoting an egalitarian social order. However, even a cursory examination of Buddhist monasticism makes it clear that hierarchy itself is not discarded outright as an ordering principle. This talk draws on narratives from the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya (MSV) that depict the life of the early Buddhist order, to explore the ways hierarchy is deployed within Buddhist monasticism, as a means of organizing social institutions but also as an integral part of personal training. Since gender is the single most important determinant of location within Buddhist monastic hierarchies—literally dividing Buddhist monastics into two distinct orders—this paper most directly addresses the hierarchical relation between men and women, or monks and nuns.

To that end, this talk will first describe the particular constructions of gender displayed in the MSV’s narratives. What we note is that Buddhist monasticism’s interventions in prevailing constructions of female gender benefited women greatly, yet mainstream constructions repeatedly re-inscribed themselves on Buddhist nuns’ lives and institutions. This talk will then explore moments of parity between the male and female monastic orders, along with the hierarchy that generally prevails between them. Finally, it will argue that the hierarchical relationship between the monks and nuns’ orders is characterized not by unidirectional dominance of one over the other, but by asymmetrical reciprocity, with each encouraged to offer different forms of care to the other. I will conclude with some observations as to the implications of these care-taking responsibilities on the current debate on bhikṣuṇī ordination within the Mūlasarvāstivāda monastic code that is followed by Tibetan Buddhists.



for more details, see this pdf or the department's website.