xx, 236p., Gloss., Bib., Index, 21 cm. (First edition published in 1996)
CONTENTS
CONTENTS:- Acknowledgements; Glossary; Preface to the Revised Edition; Introduction; When Iron Birds Appear; Archaic Female Images and Indigenous Culture; The Lotus Diety - A Lost Goddess; Monastic and the Emergence of the Lineage of the Self-Born; 'Free of the Womb's Impurities' - Divine Birth and the Absent Mother; At One with the Secret Other; A 'Traveller in Space' - The Significance of the Dakini and Her Sacred Domain; Questions of Self and Other; Perspectives on Culture and Gender; Conclusion;
DESCRIPTION
Gender, Identity and Tibetan Buddhism is a cross-cultural study which creates links between the symbolic representations of gender in the philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary thinking in relation to identity politics and intersubjectivity. It traces some of the important cultural factors in the representations of gender in Tibet's archaic images, its monastic institutions, and in the symbolic space allocated to the male and female in its religion. And in the light of Tibetan Buddhism's popularity in the west, June Campbell raises important questions concerning the potential uses and abuses of power, authority and secrecy in the sexual practices of Tibetan Tantra, now that its teachings are being disseminated throughout the world. Taking a psychoanalytical perspective, the author elucidates the dynamic inter-relationship between the inner lives of individuals, their gender identities in society, and the belief systems which communities create, both east and west.
