In 1240, Köten famously summoned the Central Tibetan Buddhist polymath Sakya Pandita, by then already an old man, to his court at Liangzhou. Examining Tibetan and Mongolian accounts about their meeting from the last seven centuries, this study shows that it was neither compelling philosophy nor some turn of faith that converted the Mongols. It was, rather, Sakya Pandita’s violent therapeutic intervention into the space of Köten’s ill body that wrenched the Mongol body politic into the Dharmic fold.

The fifth Dalai Lama was figured as the state’s absolute ruler on the basis of a power in excess of his own person. In technical terms, he was the latest in a rebirth line of Avalokiteśvara, here assuming the novel identity of a “renunciate king” or vow-bound sovereign.

In the first part of his two-part study, Ian MacCormack examines the theological foundations of the Dalai Lama’s divine kingship as articulated by the Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705), the 5th Dalai Lama’s regent. This nuanced depiction underscores the complex interplay between ultimate truth and conventional reality in Tibetan political theology.

Part two of this study can be found here

Continuously enfolding the lives, activities, values and times of all its previous inhabitants, the landscape is simultaneously unfolding to its current inhabitant or observer as a corpus of heterogeneous narratives – myths, legends, historical accounts or individual life-histories attached to it. […] ‘Landscape is time materializing.’

This study examines the phenomenon of borrowing and reusing portions of texts without attributing them to their ‘legitimate authors’ within the Buddhist world of contemporary Tibet. It shows that not only is such a practice not at all infrequent and is often socially accepted, but that it is used in this case as a platform to advance specific claims and promote an explicit agenda. Therefore, rather than considering these as instances of plagiarism, this essay looks at the practice of copying and borrowing as an exercise in intertextuality, intended as the faithful retransmission of ancient truths, and as an indication of the public domain of texts in Tibet.

thinkers developed the notion of a ‘concept’ in order to explain how it is that words are capable of applying to real objects, and how concepts can be used to capture elements of word meaning extending beyond reference to real objects. In particular, I will focus on the developments made by Phywa pa Chos kyi seṅ ge in the middle of the twelfth century, as well as on reactions to those developments by Sa skya Paṇḍita

… observance of the monastic rules was not intended to be only a matter of acceptance of institutional rules and lifestyles. […] educated monks understood a causal connection between the exercise of ethical behavior in a monastic lifestyle and progress on the path

Mahayana (and Tantric) Buddhism is often portrayed as antinomian or even “lay oriented” but, while certainly a strand, did not constitute the mainstream understanding, even in late India.

In recent years the community of Tibetan Buddhists has been agitated by an intense dispute concerning the practice of a controversial deity, Gyel-chen Dor-je Shuk-den. Several Tibetan monks have been brutally murdered, and the Tibetan community in general and the Geluk tradition in particular have become profoundly polarized. […] Why is Shugden so controversial?

An excellent explainer of the Dalai Lama’s antipathy towards this peculiar Gelug protector.

… does the garuda alight from the sky on the treetop with his wings grown instantaneously to maturity, or once he has been born in a crag or elsewhere, must his wings mature gradually?

An early account of the legendary debate that forever oriented Tibetan Buddhism South towards India—and away from China.

Important Note! Please also read pages 17–22 of David Jackson’s summary of the controversy this article stirred up, published eight years later in the same journal. Did you notice the original paper’s key methodological flaw?

Although you do not move…