Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1988. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 983-1001).

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Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis explores the nature of the socialization and commitment process in the Western Buddhist context, by investigating the experiences of practitioners affiliated with two Buddhist Centres: the Theravadin Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre and the Gelugpa Tibetan Vajrayana Institute. Commitment by participants is based on the recognition that, through the application of the beliefs and practices of the new religion, self-transformation has occurred. It follows a process of religious experimentation in which the claims of a religious reality are experientially validated against inner understandings and convictions, which themselves become clearer as a result of experimental participation in religious activity. Functionally, the adopted worldview is seen to frame personal experience in a manner that renders it more meaningful. Meditative experience and its interpretation according to doctrine must be applicable to the improvement of the quality of lived experience. It must be relevant to current living, and ethically sustainable. Substantively, commitment is conditional upon accepting and succesfully employing: the three marks of samsaric existence, duhkha, anitya and anatman (Skt) as an interpretive framework for lived reality. In this the three groups of the Eight-fold Path, sila/ethics, samadhi/concentration, and prajna/wisdom provide a strategy for negotiating lived experience in the light of meditation techniques, specific to each Buddhist orientation, by which to apply doctrinal principles in one’s own transformation. Two theoretical approaches are found to have explanatory power for understanding the stages of intensifying interaction that lead to commitment in both Western Buddhist contexts. Lofland and Skonovd’s Experimental Motif models the method of entry into and exploration of a Buddhist Centre’s shared reality. Data from participant observation and interview demonstrates this approach to be facilitated by the organizational and teaching activities of the two Western Buddhist Centres, and to be taken by the participants who eventually become adherents. Individuals take an actively experimental attitude toward the new group’s activities, withholding judgment while testing the group’s doctrinal position, practices, and expected experiential outcomes against their own values and life experience. In an environment of minimal social pressure, transformation of belief is gradual over a period of from months to years. Deeper understanding of the nature of the commitment process is provided by viewing it in terms of religious resocialization, involving the reframing of one’s understanding of reality and sense-of-self within a new worldview. The transition from seekerhood to commitment occurs through a process of socialization, the stages of which are found to be engagement and apprehension, comprehension, and commitment. Apprehension is the understanding of core Buddhist notions. Comprehension occurs through learning how various aspects of the worldview form a coherent meaning-system, and through application of the Buddhist principles to the improvement of one’s own life circumstances. It necessitates understanding of the fundamental relationships between doctrine, practice, and experience. Commitment to the group’s outlook and objectives occurs when these are adopted as one’s orientation to reality, and as one’s strategy for negotiating a lived experience that is both efficacious and ethically sustainable. It is also maintained that sustained commitment is conditional upon continuing validation of that experience.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-294). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007.

Buddhist tantric practitioners embrace the liminal status of the human body to manifest divine identity. In piercing to the pith of human embodiment, the tantric practitioner reconfigures the shape and contours of his/her reality. This article investigates the evolution of one particular technique for piercing to the pith of the body on Tibetan soil, a ritual practice known as body mandala [lus dkyil Skt. deha-man. d. ala]. In particular, it uncovers a significant shift of emphasis in the application of the Guhyasamaja body mandala practice initiated by champions of the emerging Gandenpa [Dga' ldan pa] or Gelukpa [Dge lugs pa] tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) and Mkhas grub rje (1385-1438). This article reveals some of the radical implications of ritual exegesis, ranging from the socioreligious aspects of securing prestige for a tradition to the ultimate soteriological goals of modifying the boundaries between life and death and ordinary and enlightened embodiment.

Bzhad pa'i rdo rje (1697-1740), the Fifth Sle lung Rin po che, was a religiously and politically controversial figure and an incredibly prolific author, having written or compiled over 46 volumes worth of mainly religious texts. A high-ranking Dge lugs pa sprul sku, Sle lung is seen as having gradually "defected" to the Rnying ma school, although he self-identified as a follower of the "non-sectarian" (ris med) perspective. Sle lung also acted as a spiritual advisor to most of the major central Tibetan rulers during the course of his life, most significantly Mi dbang Pho lha nas (r. 1729-1747). But despite numerous features of fascinating interest, Sle lung and his writings have received very little scholarly attention, and this thesis is intended to fill this unfortunate lacuna. The present study begins with an extended biographical examination of Sle lung's life, and the political and religious unrest in central Tibet at the time in which he was deeply invested. I pay special attention to the controversies that surrounded him, particularly his purported sexual licentiousness and his ecumenical work which was unpopular among his more sectarian Dge lugs pa critics. This opening biography provides critical historical context as I move on to examine two of Sle lung's most important literary works. The first is the sixteen-volume Gsang ba ye shes chos skor, a massive cycle of teachings by Sle lung and his students that integrates tantric theories derived from Sle lung's experience with Gsar ma (specifically Dge lugs pa) teachings. The second work is the Bstan srung rgya mtsho'i rnam thar, a unique text in Tibetan literature which consists of an apparently unprecedented compilation of Tibetan Buddhist protector deity (bstan srung, chos skyong) origin myths. I will make sense of key features of these two works within the larger context of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the political and personal concerns of Sle lung himself.

The dissertation examines the life narrative of Tsongkhapa Losang Dragpa (1357-1419), the influential founder of the Ganden school of Tibetan Buddhism, primarily through the lens of the bodhisattva path to enlightenment, a topic that animates much of Indian Buddhist literature and Tsongkhapa’s own writings. Over the course of five chapters, the dissertation (1) contextualizes Tsongkhapa’s social, political, and historical circumstances, the limiting factors for that narrative; (2) explores the social nature of life narratives themselves, particularly Tibetan Buddhist ones, and the many sources on which Tsongkhapa drew in creating a self in relation to the bodhisattva ideal; (3) analyses the topic of asceticism as a constellation of practices that embody traditional ideals, which the dissertation uniquely relates to both monastic and, perhaps surprisingly, tantric discipline in the construction of a bodhisattva/would-be buddha self; (4) synthesizes several themes within Tsongkhapa’s oeuvre in relation to the bodhisattva path to enlightenment, highlighting the irreducibly social nature of embodied enlightenment; and (5) proposes that Tsongkhapa’s social activities, specifically his so-called Four Great Deeds, instantiate the ideal of the enlightened self’s acting within society, specifically his context of fifteenth-century Central Tibet. The dissertation relies primarily on Tsongkhapa’s brief intellectual autobiography, Excellent Presence, his earliest biography, Haven of Faith, a number of Tsongkhapa’s systematic writings, and a variety of primary and secondary sources that contextualize elements of the historical, sociological, religious, and theoretical analyses presented throughout the five chapters. In biographies of Tibetan Buddhist figures, emphasis on the hagiographic tends to obscure the social, political, and historical contexts in which their subjects act, which in turn tends to reinforce the Weberian notion of Buddhism as an individualist path. Emphasis on individual achievement (simultaneously including yet excluding lineages, practices, philosophical positions, and so on) tends to reinforce the inverse, Foucauldian notion that this is a deliberate attempt to obscure various power struggles that actually define religious actors and institutions. In the case of Tsongkhapa, modern scholarship has tended to present the remarkable success of his Ganden school either to his individual genius in advancing (allegedly) unique philosophical positions or to social facts (e.g., his efforts at monastic reform), political facts (e.g., Phagdru dominance over rival Sakya), and historical facts (e.g., Mongol allegiance to his successors) largely unrelated to his personal charisma, erudite scholarship, or social impact. As a sort of middle way between these extremes, it is possible to locate within these contexts the specific achievements of the individual who is—according to both general Buddhist understanding and contemporary theorists in philosophy, psychology, literary studies, and sociology—deeply socialized. As social documents, life narratives, inclusive of biography and hagiography, function as indices of tradition, just as do practices of monastic and tantric asceticism, all with goals of embodying the principles articulated in the systematic literature within the social, political, and historical contexts to be transcended. This ideal, then, proves to be fully situated within social contexts, and Tsongkhapa’s Four Great Deeds instantiate it in relation to both individual achievements of asceticism and the institutionalization of communal and educational capacities to replicate the processes engendering this ideal, buddhahood. In sum, Tsongkhapa’s life narrative expresses the expectations and ideals of Tibetan Buddhist culture in a way that proves complementary to systematic presentations and to “lived” practices of monastic and tantric asceticism.

Cette recherche a comme objectif l’étude d’un des thèmes clef dans la vaste œuvre du poète et essayiste mexicain Octavio Paz (1914-1998) : les analogies entre l’érotisme, le poème et le sacré comme chemins ou voies d’union et de réconciliation humaine, idée qui est particulièrement renforcée dans son œuvre à partir des voyages et du séjour en Orient –spécialement en Inde– entre 1951 et 1968. Pendant la période nommée « cycle indien » (‘ciclo hindú’), Paz s’est intéressé aux différentes traditions de la pensée orientale, particulièrement le bouddhisme, et surtout son orientation tantrique. Ce mémoire analyse les apports les plus significatifs du bouddhisme à l’œuvre de Paz. À partir de l’étude de concepts comme la vacuité, le silence, l’autre bord (‘otra orilla’), l’union extatique transcendante et la libération, ce mémoire soutient que Paz a approfondi les analogies entre l’érotisme, la poésie et le sacré en ne les concevant pas seulement comme expériences de réconciliation mais en les menant au-delà, au plan transcendental, à partir de l’union extatique dans la vacuité. Même si ce mémoire tient compte d’un grand nombre d’œuvres d’Octavio Paz, qui vont de El arco y la lira (1956) à Vislumbres de la India (1995), une attention particulière est dédiée à deux textes qui sont les plus représentatifs du résultat de sa rencontre avec l’Orient, Ladera este (1969) et El mono gramático (1974), dans lesquels il est possible d’observer les analogies que Paz établit entre l’érotisme, le poème, et le bouddhisme tantrique à partir de l’expérience de l’altérité (‘otredad’), qui propose à l’être humain la recherche de son ‘autre’ pour se réconcilier dans l’unité, et de l’expérience de dissipation dans la vacuité. La conclusion générale de l’étude souligne que l’érotisme, le poème, et le bouddhisme tantrique se proposent dans l’œuvre de Octavio Paz comme trois chemins parallèles de révélation par lesquels l’être humain peut accéder à sa plénitude, état manifeste dans l’expérience extatique. / This research studies a key subject in the work of the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (1914-1998): the analogies between eroticism, poetry and the sacred as three human ways of union, reconciliation, and liberation that are particularly reinforced in his work since his journey to and stay in the East –especially in India- between 1951 and 1968. During the period called Hindu cycle (‘ciclo hindu’), Paz was interested in different traditions of oriental thought such as Buddhism, especially in its tantric orientation. This study analyses the significant contributions of Buddhism to Paz’s work. The examination of concepts like vacuity, silence, another shore (‘otra orilla’), ecstatic transcendental union, and liberation proves that Paz studied the analogies between eroticism, poetry and the sacred in depth, broaching them not just as reconciliation experiences but taking them further (‘más allá’) to the transcendental level of ecstatic union in vacuity. Although a large number of Paz’s works are considered, from El arco y la lira (1956) to Vislumbres de la India (1995), particular attention is dedicated to two poetics texts which are the most representative of his encounter with the East - Ladera Este (1969) and El mono gramático (1974) - where we can observe the analogies that Paz established between eroticism, poetry and tantric Buddhism, through the experiences of ‘otherness’, which proposes to man the search of the ‘other’ to reconcile in unity, and dissipate in vacuity. The general conclusion of the study emphasizes that eroticism, poetry and tantric Buddhism are proposed in Octavio Paz’s work as three parallel ways of revelation from which human being can achieve plenitude, which is manifest in the ecstatic experience. / Esta investigación tiene como objetivo el estudio de un tema clave en la extensa obra del poeta y ensayista mexicano Octavio Paz (1914-1998): las analogías entre el erotismo, el poema y lo sagrado como caminos o vías de unión y reconciliación humana, ideas que se refuerzan particularmente en su obra a partir de los viajes y estancias en Oriente –especialmente en La India- entre 1951 y 1968. Durante el período denominado ‘ciclo hindú’, Paz se interesó en diferentes tradiciones de pensamiento oriental entre las que destacó el budismo, sobre todo en su orientación tántrica. Esta memoria analiza las significativas aportaciones del budismo a la obra de Paz y, a partir del estudio de los conceptos de vacuidad, silencio, otra orilla, unión extática trascendente y de liberación, se sostiene que Paz profundizó en las analogías entre el erotismo, la poesía y lo sagrado, no planteándolas sólo como experiencias de reconciliación sino llevándolas ‘más allá’, al plano trascendental, a partir de la unión extática en la vacuidad. Aunque se tiene en cuenta un buen número de obras de O. Paz desde El arco y la lira (1956) hasta Vislumbres de la India (1995), se dedica una atención particular a dos textos poéticos que son los más representativos del resultado de su encuentro con Oriente, Ladera este (1969) y El mono gramático (1974), donde se observan las analogías que Paz establece entre el erotismo, el poema y el budismo tántrico a partir de la experiencia de ‘otredad’, que propone al hombre una búsqueda de su ‘otro’ para reconciliarse en la unidad, y de la experiencia de disipación en la vacuidad. La conclusión general del estudio subraya que el erotismo, el poema y el budismo tántrico se plantean en la obra de Octavio Paz como tres caminos paralelos de revelación por los que el hombre puede acceder a su plenitud, estado manifiesto en la experiencia extática.