Speaker : Ivette Vargas-O'Bryan (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Austin College, USA)
Organizers : Department of Social Sciences of the IFP and Pondicherry University.
Abstract
Based on historical, textual and fieldwork findings in India, Nepal and Tibet, this book project explores the religious implications of illness in Tibetan biographies and medical texts specifically connected with an Indian Buddhist nun of the 10th century (Gelongma Palmo, Dge slong ma Dpal mo), the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara and the culprits of disease, the klu (Sanskrit. naga). Gelongma Palmo was an Indian Buddhist nun who contracted leprosy and became a founder of a popular lineage of fasting rituals (smyung gnas) in Tibetan Buddhist history. Although rarely do we hear about the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in the Indian and Tibetan contexts as feminine and connected with disease, this research reveals the feminine aspects of the cult of Avalokitesvara in terms of embodied enlightenment and ritual performance, and the instrumental value of illness. This work also reveals the historical connections between three different regions on the basis of a woman's experience with suffering and a fasting practice.
