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CHANDRA CHIARA EHM

Buddhist Nuns and the Process of change in Tibetan Monastic Communities

QUEENS WITHOUT A KINGDOM WORTH RULING

Looking through the walls of a cloistered monastic community, such as a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, is nearly impossible as lay person. These religious communities are multi-layered in being simultaneously places of spiritual development, Buddhist scholasticism, and religious devotion. Chandra Chiara Ehm lived for nearly a decade behind the walls of Khachoe Ghakyil Ling nunnery in the Nepalese Himalayas. During this time, she collected the nuns’ stories and studied their lifestyle and their scholarship.

This book invites the reader to step through the convent’s walls to explore Tibetan monastic life from the perspective of the nuns. Her ethnography offers a first-hand account of life in the nunnery, carefully calibrated within a theoretical frame to investigate the historical social aspects of monastic institutions.

Another important theme Ehm depicts is the religious hierarchy and the remarkable changes that globalisation, feminism, and secularisation have brought to this gender balance and the nuns’ monastic life in recent years.

This vivid and comprehensive study of female monastic life provides novel insights with essential implications for the inter-and intra-religious analysis of monasticism today.

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Nepal's Dalits in Transition

Eds. David N. Gellner, Krishna P. Adhikari

For too long Nepal’s Dalits have been marginalized, not just socially, economically, and politically, but from academic accounts of Nepalese society as well. This volume forms part of a welcome new trend, the emergence of Dalit Studies in Nepal, led by a new generation of Dalit scholars. It covers a wide range of issues concerning Nepal’s Dalits and offers a snapshot of the advances that they have made—in education, in politics, in the bureaucracy, economically, and in everyday relations. At the same time the book documents the continuing material disadvantage, inequality, discrimination, both direct and indirect, and consequent mental suffering that Dalits have to face. It also touches on the struggles, hopes, and dilemmas of Dalit activists as they seek to bring about a new social order and a relatively more egalitarian society. Nepal’s Dalits in Transition will be essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, or future of social change in Nepal.

Contributors: Krishna P. Adhikari * Tilak Biswakarma * Arjun Bahadur BK * Steve Folmar * David N. Gellner * Raksha Ram Harijan * Sambriddhi Kharel * Ram Prasad Mainali * Purna Nepali * Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka * Krishna Shrestha * Manoj Suji * Ramesh Sunam.

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ROCK AND STONE

The Presence of the Divine in Nepal and India

By - Niels Gutschow

Rock and stone, like water, plants, and trees, are part of what surrounds us in nature. All elements possess the potential to embody the divine. As such, they are what turns nature into a sacred landscape: rocks and mountain ranges are perceived as religious symbols that grace and protect the habitat. Rock and stone seem to contain ‘the call of a cosmic force struggling to break free.’ The cult of stone can be traced back to the megalithic structures of the Neolithic Age and the worship of meteorites in the Ancient Orient as ‘ensouled’ stones. These are presented in the book’s introduction. The main chapter documents stone worship practised in the context of the urban culture of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley. There, thousands of unworked stones without any distinctive iconographic features represent the Supernaturals – whether deities named at some point in the past in accordance with the Hindu tradition or spirits or unnamed ancestor deities. These stones absorb impurities, act as guardians, and often demand blood sacrifices. Placed in open shrines, they represent the idea or essence of place, the genius loci, and the limen between the netherworld and the world of human beings. Individuals, families, and lineages maintain a predefined, stable relationship with these landmarks in rites of passage or during annual urban rituals. In addition, the book documents the Lords of Place of Tibetan and Chetri villages in northern and western Nepal, including the Earth Goddess among the Kond in Odisha and the manifestation of Śiva in the form of a liṅga or in the aniconic form of an unworked pebble.

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The Sherpa Buddhist monk Ngawang Leksh. (1913– 1983), familiarly known as Auleshi—a name that might be approximated as “Uncle Benedict” in English—occupies a unique place in the history of Buddhism in twentieth century Nepal. At once an accomplished artist and a yogi living always in retreat, he eschewed the trappings of a “Buddhist master” but taught instead through his art and, above all, his personal example. In this, he embodied the ideal of transmitting the Dharma without teaching a word. As we honor the hundred-and-tenth anniversary of his birth, and fortieth since his death, with those who knew him now few, it seems appropriate to make available to all what may be recalled of his life and work.

The Life and Work of Auleshi

Sherpa Buddhist Artist and Adept

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Drenpa’s Proclamation : The Rise and Decline of the Bon Religion in Tibet

SPITI The Gigantic Valley of Many-Hued Strata : Archaeological and Historical Research in the Western Himalaya

Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling : Buddhist Nuns and the Process of change in Tibetan Monastic Communities

The Life and Work of Auleshi : Sherpa Buddhist Art and Adept

The Practice of the Tigle of the Elements

Title of the Month

Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling : Buddhist Nuns and the Process of change in Tibetan Monastic Communities

Rock and Stone : The Presence of the Divine in Nepal and India

The Life and Work of Auleshi : Sherpa Buddhist Art and Adept

Harigaon Revisited : Chronicle and Outcomes of an Excavation in Kathmandu

SPITI The Gigantic Valley of Many-Hued Strata : Archaeological and Historical Research in the Western Himalaya

Buddhist Cave Sanctuaries

The Nepalese Caitya : 1500 Years of Buddhist Votive Architecture in the Kathmandu Valley

Drenpa’s Proclamation : The Rise and Decline of the Bon Religion in Tibet

Mustang : The Culture and Landscapes of Lo

Two Illuminated Text Collections of Namgyal Monastery : A Study Of Early Buddhist Art and Literature In Nepal

A Concise History of the Glorious Sakyapa School

Recently Added

Mithila Art : A 360 Degree Review of Madhubani Painting

Centring Women in Nepal’s Economy and Society – The Collected Works of Meena Acharya (2 Volumes)

Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling : Buddhist Nuns and the Process of change in Tibetan Monastic Communities

Nepal : Historical Study of a Hindu Kingdom (Volume I & II)

Architecture in Nepal (A Dissertation submitted for the degree of D. Phil. (Arts) of the University of Calcutta)

Tibetan Books | བོད་ཀྱི་མཚོ་བོ།

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Deal of the week

The Fifth Dalai Lama and His First Three Administrators

The Call of the Blue Cuckoo : An Anthology of Nine Bonpo Texts on Myths and Rituals

Feast of the Morning Light : The Eighteenth Century Wood-Engravings of Shenrab’s Life-Stories and the Bon Canon from Gyalrong

Commentary on Bringing Dreams onto the Path from the Compassionate Sun of the Mother Tantra

Bonpo Thangkas from Rebkong

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