The Australian Association of Buddhist studies will hold its next event on on Thursday 22 August in the Rogers Room (N397), John Wooley Building (A20), University of Sydney. The topic will address The Words and World of Gebchak Nunnery: Tantric Meditation in Context. This will be a hybrid session.
The Words and World of Gebchak Nunnery: Tantric Meditation in Context
This discussion will share an ethnography of how a Tibetan contemplative nunnery reads, writes and practices the words of its own corpus, thereby demonstrating the orientation of their Buddhist learning towards mind-body holism. The aim of the discussion is to contrast modernity’s ways of knowing (its tendency to index reality in language of fixed meanings) with the more tacit, embodied knowledge of Tibetan contemplative culture, where orality and literacy, knowledge and creative vision, and theory and method are less distinct. The discussion’s further aim is to consider the practical implications of this contrast for methodology in Buddhist Studies, and for adapting contemplative pedagogy in higher education.
Dr Elizabeth McDougal is a Canadian who trained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in India and Tibet for 17 years. She completed a Masters of Indian Philosophy in Varanasi, and a Masters and PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney. She is a Tibetan-to-English translator for a lineage of contemplative nuns and a lecturer in Applied Buddhist Studies at Nan Tien Institute.
Gold leaf covered schist reliquary in the form of a stupa. Kusana period, North Western India. National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan. Copyright: Huntington, John C. and Susan L.Huntington Archive
