Traveller in Space: Gender, Identity and Tibetan Buddhism

(Paperback)

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In this revised edition of June Campbell's ground-breaking and ambitious work, many of the key issues concerning gender, identity and Tibetan Buddhism, are now broadened and further clarified in order to create a better understanding of the historical importance of gender symbolisation in the very construction of religious belief and philosophy. With its cross-cultural stance, the book concerns itself with the unusual task of creating links between the symbolic representations of gender in the philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism, and contemporary western thinking in relation to identity politics and intersubjectivity. A wide range of sources are drawn upon in order to build up arguments concerning the complexities of individual gender roles in Tibetan society, alongside the symbolic spaces allocated to the male and female within its cultural forms, including its sacred institutions, its representations and in the enactment of ritual. And in the light of Tibetan Buddhisms popularity in the west, timely questions are raised concerning gender and the potential uses and abuses of power and secrecy in Tibetan Tantra, which, with its unique emphasis on guru-devotion and sexual ritual, is now being disseminated worldwide. What is made clear in this new edition, however, is that Campbell's ultimate aim is to elucidate, through the use of a psychoanalytical perspective, something of the dynamic inter-relationship between the inner lives of individuals, their gender identities in society, and the belief systems which they create in order to provide cohesion, continuity and meaning, whether it be in the east or the west.

Reviews

"Essential reading for anyone concerned with a creative encounter between Tibetan Buddhism and the West"--Kirkus
"Certainly one of the most important books on Tibetan Buddhism which has been written in the last years"--Numen

Author Bio

June Campbell began studying Buddhism in the 1960s and was among the first western students to study Tibetan Buddhism in India with exiled lamas from Tibet. In 1977 she travelled throughout Europe and North America as a Tibetan translator during the time that Tibetan Buddhist centres were being established in the West. As a university lecturer she later combined her interest in gender and religion by teaching both Religious Studies and Women's Studies.