Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths among Nepal's Yolmo Buddhists

408 Pages·2003·3.35 MB·English

by  Robert Desjarlais

Sensory Biographies
ethnographic studies in subjectivity
Tanya Luhrmann and Steven Parish, Editors
1. Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar,
by Jennifer Cole
2. Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists,
by Robert Desjarlais
3. Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community,
by Kathryn Linn Geurts
4. Sins Between Cultures: Christianity, Cultural Change, and Moral Torment in
a Papua New Guinea Society, by Joel Robbins
Sensory Biographies
Lives and Deaths among
Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists
Robert Desjarlais
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley / Los Angeles / London
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers for permission
to reprint quotations from these works: Sheep Meadow Press, Poems of
Jerusalem and Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition, by Yehuda Amichai, copyright
© 1988 by Yehuda Amichai; Bantam Dell Publishing Group, The Tibetan
Book of the Dead, composed by Padma Sambhava and translated by Robert
Thurman, copyright © 1994 by Robert A.F. Thurman; Snow Lion
Publications, Living in the Face of Death: The Tibetan Tradition, by Glenn H.
Mullin, copyright © 1986 by Glenn H. Mullin, and Introduction to Tibetan
Buddhism, by John Powers, copyright © 1995 by John Powers; Kensington
Publishing Group, The One Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, by Garma
Chen-Chi Chang, copyright © 1962 by the Oriental Studies Foundation, all
rights reserved, reprinted by permission of Citadel Press/Kensington
Publishing Corp.; Oxford University Press, The Buddha, by Michael
Carrithers, copyright © 1996 by Michael Carrithers; Penguin Books U.S.A.
and Far West Translations, The Life of Milarepa, by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa,
copyright © 1977 by Far West Translations, used by permission of Dutton, a
division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2003 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Desjarlais, Robert R.
Sensory biographies : lives and deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists /
Robert Desjarlais.
p. cm.—(Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-23587-8 (cloth : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-520-23588-6 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Ghang Lama. 2. Kisang Omu. 3. Lamas—Nepal—Biography.
4. Buddhists—Nepal—Biography. 5. Death—Religious aspects—
Buddhism. 6. Nepal—Religious life and customs. 7. Helambu Sherpa
(Nepalese people)—Religion. I. Title.
BQ962.H35 D47 2003
294.3⬘923⬘09225496—dc21
[B] 2002016553
Manufactured in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 0403
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free
(TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).I
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Note on Transliteration ix
Kurbgraphy 1
Hardship, Comfort 20
Twenty-Seven Ways of Looking at Vision 54
Startled into Alertness 102
A Theater of Voices 133
“I’ve Gotten Old” 152
Essays on Dying 161
“Dying Is This” 176
The Painful Between 182
Desperation 189
The Time of Dying 201
Death Envisioned 206
To Phungboche, by Force 219
Staying Still 230
Mirror of Deeds 236
Here and There 245
“So: Ragged Woman” 255
Echoes of a Life 275
A Son’s Death 309
The End of the Body 315
Last Words 328
Notes 353
Glossary of Terms 375
References 379
Acknowledgments 389
Index 393
Illustrations
Figures
1. Ghang Lama (Mheme), 1997 21
2. Thodong as seen from the south, 1998 33
3. Surje Lama, 1998 49
4. A page of a Tibetan religious text, the Bardo Thedol 68
5. The chhorten in Boudhanath 77
6. The view from Thodong, 1998: Lhatul Lama, the author,
and Surje Lama 88
7. Kisang Omu, 2001 103
8. A wedding in Malemchi, 1989 111
9. Women working in the fields below Thodong, 1989 162
10. Kisang Omu in her early fifties 220
11. Phur Gyalmu with her sister and grandson, 1998 268
12. Ghang Lama, 1998 276
13. The two sides of a “purification print” 300
14. Ritual cleansing of the deceased, Thodong, 1988 301
Maps
1. Location of Yolmo region in Nepal 9
2. Map of Yolmo region 10
Table
1. Yolmo people noted in this book 16
vii
Note on Transliteration
Most Yolmo wa, or “Yolmo people” (Yolmo wa is nowadays usually pro-
nounced as “yhol-mo wa,” with an aspirated y leading into “ol-mo”),
speak their national language, Nepali, as well as a distinct Tibetan-
derived language known to them today as Yolmo. Linguists have
identified this unwritten language as Kagate, a Tibetan dialect that ac-
quired its name because it was first recorded as spoken among a group
1
of kbgate, or “paper-makers,” in eastern Nepal. It is now clear that ear-
lier generations of this group of kbgate originated from the Yolmo re-
gion of Nepal. The grammar, syntax, and lexicons of the Yolmo lan-
guage are quite similar to those of many Tibetan dialects, especially
classical Tibetan. A majority of Yolmo wa rely on both Yolmo and
Nepali in everyday conversations, and talk in one language is often in-
terspersed with phrases from the other. Yolmo wa have no standard
method of writing Yolmo. When people write out Yolmo words, they
usually use Tibetan or Nepali (Devanagari) scripts, each of which poses
obstacles to perfect transliteration. English letters are less accommodat-
ing still.
Yolmo words cited in this book are spelled phonetically, as they
might sound to the English ear; I determined these spellings in consul-
tation with Yolmo colleagues. Since many Yolmo words, especially reli-
gious terms, have direct correlates in the Tibetan language, the corre-
lates are often noted, spelled as they are in written Tibetan. They are
2
transcribed according to Wylie’s system of Tibetan orthography. The
3
spelling of Nepali words follows the method of R. L. Turner. Foreign
ix