White Robes, Matted Hair: Tibetan Tantric Householders, Moral Sexuality, and The Ambiguities of Esoteric Buddhist Expertise In Exile

Joffe, Ben Philip

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

White Robes, Matted Hair: Tibetan Tantric Householders, Moral Sexuality, and The Ambiguities of Esoteric Buddhist Expertise In Exile Público Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/wp988k847

Abstract

This dissertation offers an ethnographic study of ngakpa/ma (sngags pa/ma, m.f.) – Tibetan Buddhist non-monastic, non-celibate tantric yogis and yoginis – living in the Tibetan diaspora. Like monks and nuns, ngakpa/ma are professionally religious, yet unlike their monastic counterparts they can marry, have families, and pursue worldly work. Living in ‘the village’ like ordinary laypeople but also spending much of their time in retreat or working as ritual specialists for hire, ngakpa/ma occupy a shifting, third space between monastic renunciation and worldly attachments. Based on roughly five years of fieldwork research conducted in Tibetan and Tibetan Buddhist communities in India, Nepal, Northeastern Tibet, and the United States, this thesis explores how ngakpa/mas’ historically decentralized, morally ambiguous esoteric expertise has become implicated in various projects of cultural preservation and reform for exile Tibetans, even as it has come to circulate and have meaning well beyond the purview of ethnic Tibetan communities and interests. Chapters One to Five offer an overview of how ngakpa/ma and ngakpa/ma orientations have been pinned down (or have failed to be pinned down) in exile, via language; gendered divisions of labor; in physical space and permanent institutions; through hair, clothing, and embodied comportment; and as part of new family and career trajectories. Chapters Six to Nine examine how contentious esoteric tantric yogic practices, associated with sexuality and Tibetan medicine in particular, are being popularized and reframed in exile in new ways and for new audiences as part of increasingly transnational networks of exchange. In these chapters, I underscore the polysemous quality of tantric practices, and reflect on my own collaborations with a Tibetan ngakpa-doctor to translate and share information on Tibetan tantric yogic practices more widely. In conclusion, I assess trends and quandaries that have dominated the academic study of secrecy and esoteric religions and highlight the implications and value of an ethnographic approach to researching tantric traditions.

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