A01=Janet Gyatso
Abbreviation
Allegory
Author_Janet Gyatso
Autobiography
Bibliography
Bodhisattva
Buddhism
Buddhist texts
Career
Category=DSB
Category=QRFB21
Chakra
Dalai Lama
Deity
Drubchen
Dzogchen
Emptiness
Episode
Epithet
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Gyatso
Hagiography
Ideology
Incarnation
Incarnation (Christianity)
Jigme Lingpa
Kagyu
Lingpa
Literature
Longchen Nyingthig
Longchenpa
Monastery
Narrative
Nyingma
Padmasambhava
Palden Sherab
Recitation
Reincarnation
Religion
Religious experience
Religious text
Renunciation
Rhetoric
Rinpoche
Rite
Sakya
Samantabhadra
Samye
Sanskrit
Self-image
Sentient beings (Buddhism)
Shrine
Soteriology
Standard Tibetan
Stupa
Subjectivity
Tantra
Tantras
Theory
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan literature
Tibetan people
Treatise
Trisong Detsen
Tulku
Vajra
Vajrayana
Veneration
Vimalamitra
Writing
Year
Yeshe Tsogyal
Yidam
Yogi
Product details
- ISBN 9780691009483
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Nov 1999
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Apparitions of the Self is a groundbreaking investigation into what is known in Tibet as "secret autobiography," an exceptional, rarely studied literary genre that presents a personal exploration of intimate religious experiences. In this volume, Janet Gyatso translates and studies the outstanding pair of secret autobiographies by the famed Tibetan Buddhist visionary, Jigme Lingpa (1730-1798), whose poetic and self-conscious writings are as much about the nature of his own identity, memory, and the undecidabilities of autobiographical truth as they are narrations of the actual content of his experiences. Their translation in this book marks the first time that works of this sort have been translated in a Western language. Gyatso is among the first to consider Tibetan literature from a comparative perspective, examining the surprising fit--as well as the misfit--of Western literary theory with Tibetan autobiography. She examines the intriguing questions of why Tibetan Buddhists produced so many autobiographies (far more than other Asian Buddhists) and how autobiographical self-assertion is possible even while Buddhists believe that the self is ultimately an illusion.
Also explored are Jigme Lingpa's historical milieu, his revelatory visions of the ancient Tibetan dynasty, and his meditative practices of personal cultivation. The book concludes with a study of the subversive female figure of the "Dakini" in Jigme Lingpa's writings, and the implications of her gender, her sexuality, and her unsettling discourse for the autobiographical subject in Tibet.
Janet Gyatso is Associate Professor of Religion at Amherst College. She is the editor of In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.
