Abstract
As we have seen, a tulku is the bodily emanation of an enlightened being who is able to choose the manner, time, and place of his reappearance on earth. Unlike in Hindu systems of reincarnation, however, it is not a soul or atman that moves from body to body, and unlike most other forms of Buddhism which argue that no thing is transferred from life to life, in the Tibetan system, it is consciousness that transfers from life to life. This matter of multiple lives presents a curious rhetorical situation for someone recounting his or her life. If he or she is an incarnation, where should the narration begin? How many lives should be recounted?
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Notes
See Campbell, Traveller in Space (NewYork: Braziller), 1996.
See ChogyamTrungpa’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Berkeley: Shambala, 1973), The Myth of Freedom (Berkeley: Shambala, 1976), and Crazy Wisdom (Boston: Shambala, 1991).
David Snellgrove, Four Lamas of Dolpo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. ix.
See David Germano, “Remembering the Dismembered Body of Tibet,” in Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet, ed. Melvyn Goldstein and Matthew Kapstein (Berkeley: University of California, 1998), pp. 53–94.
Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans. and ed. Sir HenryYule (NewYork: Scribner’s, 1903), p. 301.
Ibid., p. 92.
Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 112.
See Bhabha’s classic “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions ofAmbivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” `Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), pp. 163–184.
Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, The Life of Milarepa (NewYork:Arkana, 1977), p. 139.
Keith Dowman, The Divine Madman: The Sublime Songs and Drukpa Kunley (Middletown, Calif.: Dawn Horse Press, 1980), pp. 8–9.
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© 2001 Laurie Hovell McMillin
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McMillin, L.H. (2001). Reincarnate Lamas: Chögyam Trungpa and Chagdud Tulku. In: English in Tibet, Tibet in English. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299095_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299095_12
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