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This thesis offers an exploration of how one brings a Tibetan sacred text to being - and to voice - in the unfamiliar, and perhaps unlikely, landscape of Northern California. Through 16 months' fieldwork with a Nyingma Buddhist community based in Berkeley, California I ask how the production of the sacred is undertaken here by American volunteers who are largely neophytes to Tibetan Buddhism. Against a backdrop of the history of Tibetan textual production - largely populated by masters, monastics, and artisans - I explore what kind of work (both physical and imaginative) American volunteers must undertake in order to render themselves effective creators of the sacred in this American industrial setting. Drawing on current research that explores the adaptive capacities of Tibetan Buddhist traditional practices, I will offer a new facet to this flexibility through an investigation of the ways these texts and their surrounding practices are creatively deployed to meet the needs of their American makers. In this work I follow the sacred objects through their entangled physical and social creation in the various branches of this California community, from the construction of spaces ripe for sacred work, through fundraising, printing, and finally to the distribution of texts to the Tibetan monastic community in Bodh Gaya, India. In the conclusion I return to the question of how an American volunteer becomes an effective creator of a Tibetan Buddhist sacred text in Berkeley California, contributing a unique and rich case to the study of diasporic Tibetan text production. Ultimately, I will demonstrate that the very practice of creating and deploying Tibetan sacred texts offers a frame through which volunteers come to re-interpret and re-shape their spatial and temporal landscape. This dissertation seeks to bridge often disparate fields of study, allowing encounters between (and contributions to) such bodies of work as: the anthropological study of making, craft, and innovation; media and religious practice; the affective temporality of sacred relics; and the cross-culturally unique, agentive qualities of books.

The religions in Taiwan are diverse. Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity are the major religions in Taiwan. These religions are also close with Taiwan society and people life. Since the training and education of religion manpower is the critical effect to religions development, this study uses document analysis to investigate the development of major religions and the training and education of religion manpower (including missionary, professional, academic, and general knowledge) in Taiwan for the purpose of understanding existing conditions and problems. In addition, this study uses in-depth interviews and questionnaires to investigate the training and education of Dzongsar Institute. This study tries to give reference to Taiwan via comparing the training and education between Taiwan religions and Dzongsar Institute. The results indicate that since the difference of environments and development between Taiwan religions and Dzongsar Institute, the orientation between Taiwan religions and Dzongsar Institute is also different. The religions in Taiwan are diverse and the religions in Taiwan should tie with the development of Taiwan for improving the development of religions. In the other hand, Dzongsar Institute sets at a single religion environment and has no visible competition so Dzongsar Institute could to its best to develop Tibetan Buddhism and foster the manpower. Moreover, there are different training and education of missionary, profession, academy, and general knowledge between Taiwan religions and Dzongsar Institute. Summary, Taiwan religions are developed in training and education of missionary, academy, and general knowledge but should improve in professional training and education. On the other hand, Dzongsar Institute is not developed in training and education of missionary, academy, and general knowledge but is developed in professional training and education. Therefore, this study suggests enhancing the depth of professional training and education and improving the courses and contents of professional training and education in Taiwan religions.

Thangkas are Tibetan paintings which can be explained in many different points of view. Their meaning is different for Buddhist practitioners, painters, collecters, arts historians or researchers. This thesis should introduce the variaty of perspectives. The composition of the painting is given by the patron, artist or follows the Buddhist sacred scripts. Preparing the base, drawing, using colour pigments, outlining and doing final details belong to the process done by the master himself or partially by his students or monk or layman helpers. For impowering the thangka for the Buddhist praxis is necessary to do a sacrification ceremony by an educated monk. It is a religious and also social event connected with the painting. Thangkas are then used for the visualisation of figures of the Tibetan pantheon, mostly peaceful and wrathful deities. They are used in the monasteries, temples, home shrines or altars, are part of Buddhist ceremonies and festivals shown to the audience hung on the terraces or carried by the monks. Their vivid topics and colours encharme not only monks and lamas but also laymen. The expression differs according to local schools influenced by artists of Kashimiri, Bengali, Nepalese or Chinese origin. Tibetan painting style was probably created in the second half of 15th century...

The article contains a biography on Theos Bernard, the first western Yogi.

Examining an Atlanta area Tibetan Buddhist center as a symbolic and imagined borderland space, I investigate the ways that meaning is created through competing narratives of spirituality and “culture.” Drawing from theories of borderlands, cross-cultural interaction, narratives, authenticity and material culture, I analyze the ways that non-Tibetan community members of the Drepung Loseling center navigate through the interplay of culture and spirituality and how this interaction plays into larger discussions of cultural adaptation, appropriation and representation. Although this particular Tibetan Buddhist center is only a small part of Buddhism’s existence in the United States today, discourses on authenticity, representation and mediated understanding at the Drepung Loseling center provide an example of how ethnic, social, and national boundaries may be negotiated through competing – and overlapping – narratives of culture.

The history of landscape painting in the West has dictated and reiterated a phenomenological point-of-view derived from the Cartesian coordinate plane system. After having journeyed to northern India for eight months, I became influenced by other pictorial conceptions of space, namely the radial cosmological mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism and yantras of Hinduism. Unable to fully eliminate the coordinate plane system from the recess of my mind, I embarked upon a creative journey through consciousness in which my own studio practice provided the means to construct a new orientation, not only in terms of the perceivable, external world, but within the realm of my own embodied mind.

The history of landscape painting in the West has dictated and reiterated a phenomenological point-of-view derived from the Cartesian coordinate plane system. After having journeyed to northern India for eight months, I became influenced by other pictorial conceptions of space, namely the radial cosmological mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism and yantras of Hinduism. Unable to fully eliminate the coordinate plane system from the recess of my mind, I embarked upon a creative journey through consciousness in which my own studio practice provided the means to construct a new orientation, not only in terms of the perceivable, external world, but within the realm of my own embodied mind.

This study explores the idea that the Western adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism is in fact a continuum of the Protestant Reformation. With its inhospitable terrain and volatile environment, the geography of Tibet has played an important role in its assimilation of Buddhism. Demons, ghosts and gods are a natural part of the Tibetan world. Yet why is it that Tibetan Buddhism often downplays these elements in its self portrayal to the West? Why are Westerners drawn to an idealistic view of Buddhism as being rational and free from belief in the supernatural when the reality is quite different? This thesis will show that in its encounter with Western modernity Tibetan Buddhism has had to reinvent itself in order to survive in a world where rituals and belief in deities are regarded as ignorant superstition. In doing so it will reveal that this reinvention of Buddhism is not a recent activity but one that has its origins in nineteenth century Protestant values. While the notion of Protestant Buddhism has been explored by previous scholars this thesis will show that rather than solving the problems of disenchantment, Buddhist Modernism ignores the human need to find meaning in and to take control over one’s surroundings. In doing so it will argue that rather than adopting a modern, crypto-Protestant form Buddhism, Westerners instead need to find a way to naturally transplant Tibetan Buddhism onto their own surroundings.