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This inquiry started by examining my own and others experience of Zen, and comparing it with Self Organised Learning. The aim was to see what effect each system had on the lives of the participants. The thesis plots how I had a tacit reliance on myself as a measuring instrument, and how this became an integrating theme running through my 'finally chosen' methods. The methodological difficulties caused by the paradox of trying to understand Zen and also be scientific converged when I realised that I had treated myself as the central measuring instrument throughout the inquiry. It was this discovery which allowed the thesis to be treated as a koan from a Zen perspective and yet to be a contribution to academic knowledge. The thesis traces how personal authenticity became the defining characteristic informing all my methodology. This inquiry asks and answers the question can research be transpersonal? Initially the research started out looking at a transpersonal issue in the form of asking those who had regular interactions with a Zen master about their experience. This learning curve was contrasted with Learning Conversations with postgraduates at the centre for the Study of Human Learning, using inner directed learning in their research projects. During the research process, several major re-orientations took place which, necessitated changing my method and my interpretation of the data. These shifts of direction were largely driven by a need to find a method of inquiry which was appropriate to uncovering the transpersonal qualities I was investigating. As the inquiry developed I widened my sources of data to include art, fiction, accounts of death and grieving, and satsang (questions and answers with a master) in order to give an in depth picture of the impact of the transpersonal on participants' lives. In treating the thesis as a koan there can be no emphasis placed on which purposes related to which outcomes. It was in the gradual abandonment of such a stance that the deeper insights and resolutions occurred. During the inquiry I eventually identified the qualities of wholeness, authenticity and openness as the defining characteristics which appeared to trigger changes in direction. Such an approach made it necessary to examine the implications for validity that approaching transpersonal issues in this way had uncovered.

This thesis intends to add to the field a sense of how deities pervade ordinary life in Tibetan cultural regions and what this means for those who live there. The study thus aims to develop understandings of the types of ritual healing which take place in this environment, one wherein landscapes are inhabited and experienced as embodiments of spirited agencies. In the thesis I suggest that, for my fieldwork regions of the Rebgong valley at least, ritual healing can best be understood a process by which beings are brought into right relations, both mutually and in connection with other beings, human and deity. I suggest here that all practices, whether ritual or medical, pertaining to health and well-being in Rebgong are predicated upon this type of epistemology; a cultural matrix of healing. This matrix is one in which healing is by definition is about humans and deities maintaining right relationship. I explore what this sensibility means for those who live in the Rebgong valleys primarily through ethnographic accounts of three particular ritual practices in Rebgong villages: the renewal of the labtsé tributes to the mountain gods, the Leru harvest ritual, and the performance of a tantric ritual cham dance. Forms of ritual healing I discuss in the thesis include circumambulation, medical and tantric practices, those of the trance or spirit mediums, dance and divination. I argue that all these rites and practices connected to health and well-being in a broad sense can be understood under one cultural matrix of healing in which spirited agency is focal. I argue that inherent to understanding this matrix is a focus on how deities, as embodied landscapes, appear within it, and how they are understood to exist and interact with human affairs, particularly those relating to health and well-being. In this regard, themes that I explore throughout the thesis are those of luck, purification, empowerment, embodiment and blessing. The study is intended, in a Bakhtinian sense, as a body of words which do not bring closure but rather seek to engage in a dialogical conversation that simultaneously responds to past scholarship and anticipates response.

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Mujû Kokushi was born in 1227, some forty years after the great upheaval caused by the struggle between the Taira and Minamoto families. His was a century of religious controversies which were often the outcome of a search for a form of Buddhism capable of answering the spiritual needs of the masses. Mujû could see no incompatibility between the traditional forms of Buddhism and a truly popular religion. He wrote the Shasekishû in order to demonstrate that every aspect of Buddhism can be practical and useful. For instance, he said that although the practice of Shingon Buddhism is usually thought to be proper only for princes and priests, nowhere in the Scriptures is such an idea stated. Every man or woman, he felt, must avail himself or herself of the miraculous power of the magic formulae of esoteric Buddhism. Mujû did not want to discard all the new schools of buddhist thought which had sprung up during his lifetime, but he deplored their excesses and the narrowness of their views, which bred prejudice and intolerance. This dissertation is composed of two parts of approximately the same length. The first part is an effort to present Mujû points of view through, the study of his life and writings, more specifically of the Shasekishû, a collection of sermons and tales written during the years 1279-84. Mujû's goal is twofold: first, to prove the practicality of Buddhism, its unfailing availability through the compassionate care of many Buddhas and bodhisattvas who vowed to save humanity. Second, to show that the truths of Buddhism are unchangeable, and that differences of opinion are merely different ways of considering the same idea. Therefore, the new sects, such as the Pure Land sect, were grossly mistaken when they claimed to offer the only valid solution to the problems of the time. There is an answer to each individual need, and it is made available through Buddha's universal expedients, or hôben. In Japan , hôben is made tangible in the various native gods or kami, and in the form of poetry called waka, which Mujû regards as the highest expression of Buddha's golden thought and the ultimate means of communion between the Japanese mind and transcendental Truth. For this reason, Mujû equates waka with the magic formulae of esoteric Buddhism or dhâranî. In the Shasekishû, Mujû gives many examples of the application of buddhist ideals in daily life. His humorous approach, the lighter vein of the second part of his book, is perhaps intended to make the revelation of the Truth less formidable. The second part of this dissertation is a selection of translated texts chosen to illustrate the main points of the argument. The text used for this study is edited by Watanabe Tsunaya, Shasekishû , Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei 85, (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1966). / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The southern Silk Road kingdom of Khotan was long considered by Chinese pilgrim monks to be just another stop on the road to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. The aim of this dissertation is to recast Khotan as a unique and innovative mediator of religious and cultural expression within the Buddhist network through an analysis of the Khotanese silk princess narrative, the tale of an eastern princess who is credited with acquiring the secrets of Chinese sericulture for the Khotanese king.

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