Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro

Sarah Jacoby

Published by Columbia University Press 2014

Love and Liberation

Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro

Sarah Jacoby

https://doi.org/10.7312/jaco14768

Overview
Contents

About this book

Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro Künzang Dekyong Chönyi Wangmo (also called Dewé Dorjé, 1892–1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book records Sera Khandro's conversations with land deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members whose voices interweave with her own to narrate what is both a story of love between Sera Khandro and her guru, Drimé Özer, and of spiritual liberation.

Reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life

Author / Editor information

Sarah H. Jacoby is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. She is the coauthor of Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience and coeditor of Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and Their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas.

Reviews

With this original study of one remarkable woman's life writing, Jacoby illuminates questions about renunciation, desire, and love in tantric Buddhist practice and opens the way for further study.

Janet Gyatso:
[An] outstanding study of the extraordinary autobiography of Sera Khandro (1892–1940).

Jacoby's book gives us a big infusion of data regarding what many of us have been wondering about with respect to sexuality and gender relations in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in tantric communalities.

A complex work, rewarding in many ways this is a rare window into a world so different, and yet so historically recent Jacoby brings lots of food for thought and fresh new ways of seeing the familiar.

Janet Gyatso, Harvard Divinity School:
A detailed picture of the world of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the tantric variety, in the early twentieth century. It explores questions long in the mind of students of Tibetan Buddhism about how the arcane practices of tantric Buddhism actually figure in the lives—and loves—of real historical people, particularly women. A great contribution worthy of close attention.

Gray Tuttle, Columbia University:
You will laugh, but more often you will cry when reading this first-ever study of a nonmonastic woman who wrote a Tibetan-language autobiography and a biography of a man. Sarah H. Jacoby's study of gender and sexuality is pathbreaking in the field of Tibetan studies. Because the main research materials were authored by a noncelibate woman, this book gives rich insight into one woman's conception of the complex social, political, and even medical aspects of tantric consort practices. Jacoby grounds Buddhist theory in the lived experience of an actual practitioner and illuminates this topic based on her fieldwork in Tibet. Her work reveals modern Tibetan history like never before—not by tracking political or institutional history, but through attention to the life of a runaway girl who transforms herself from lowly servant to famous teacher through her extraordinary vision of her life.

Hildegard Diemberger, University of Cambridge:
Fascinating and compelling, this is a rare autobiography of a Tibetan female religious master. Jacoby combines pioneering research with high scholarly standards and delivers in a readable style a sensitive narrative rich in social, cultural, and psychological detail.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Preface and Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Technical Note on Tibetan and Sanskrit Words Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xix
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxi
Chronology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxiii
Maps Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxvi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SERA KHANDRO Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. A GUEST IN THE SACRED LAND OF GOLOK Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
3. ḌĀKINĪ DIALOGUES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
4. SACRED SEXUALITY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	188
5. LOVE BETWEEN METHOD AND INSIGHT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
EPILOGUE Love After Death Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Spelling of Key Tibetan Names and Terms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	395

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 456
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 19
- Other: 19 b&w photos

eBook

Published: October 14, 2014
ISBN: 9780231519533