Feminist theory and psychoanalysis combine in this unusual study of
Tibetan Buddhism by a Scottish woman with a unique experience of
the tradition. Since Campbell became a Buddhist in 1967, she has
lived in a Himalayan nunnery, studied at Tibetan monasteries in
India, and traveled throughout Europe and North America as an
interpreter to the late Kalu Rimpoche, who had spent 14 years in
solitary retreat and was at that time one of the most senior
Tibetan lamas in exile. Campbell tells us that for several years
she was the tantric consort of Kalu, despite the fact that he was a
high-ranking abbot with vows of celibacy. She believes that the
Tibetan use of sexuality as part of the mystical path is flawed,
because the insistence on secrecy denies the integrity of the woman
as an individual capable of relationships in which mutuality is the
key factor. Drawing on Robert Paul's Freudian analysis of Tibetan
Buddhism, she targets the 13th-century creation of the Tulku,
whereby lamas are believed to reincarnate themselves generation by
generation, as a way of sidestepping the mother, and the feminine,
with the implied identification of the sacred with the masculine.
She argues that women stand for the mysterious "other" from a male
perspective and, as such, serve merely as objects through which men
have access to wholeness. Campbell gives us a succinct account of
Buddhism and its Tibetan "heterodox" form. Campbell believes that a
basis for a more authentic role for women can be found in the cult
of the dakini, female spirits, and she pleads for diversity as well
as oneness in the spiritual quest. In spite of occasional
obscurity, essential reading for anyone concerned with a creative
encounter between Tibetan Buddhism and the West. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this revised edition of June Campbell's ground-breaking and
ambitious work, many of the key issues concerning gender, identity
and Tibetan Buddhism, are now broadened and further clarified in
order to create a better understanding of the historical importance
of gender symbolisation in the very construction of religious
belief and philosophy. With its cross-cultural stance, the book
concerns itself with the unusual task of creating links between the
symbolic representations of gender in the philosophy of Tibetan
Buddhism, and contemporary western thinking in relation to identity
politics and intersubjectivity. A wide range of sources are drawn
upon in order to build up arguments concerning the complexities of
individual gender roles in Tibetan society, alongside the symbolic
spaces allocated to the male and female within its cultural forms,
including its sacred institutions, its representations and in the
enactment of ritual. And in the light of Tibetan Buddhisms
popularity in the west, timely questions are raised concerning
gender and the potential uses and abuses of power and secrecy in
Tibetan Tantra, which, with its unique emphasis on guru-devotion
and sexual ritual, is now being disseminated worldwide. What is
made clear in this new edition, however, is that Campbell's
ultimate aim is to elucidate, through the use of a psychoanalytical
perspective, something of the dynamic inter-relationship between
the inner lives of individuals, their gender identities in society,
and the belief systems which they create in order to provide
cohesion, continuity and meaning, whether it be in the east or the
west.
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