Tag Archives: monks

The White-Robed, Dreadlocked Community: Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s Introduction to and Defense of the Ngakpa Tradition

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rigzin rabpel ling

(Ngakpa or non-celibate tantric yogis from the Rebkong ngakmang or tantric community performing rituals at Rigzin Rabpel Ling in July 2016)

Existing readers of this blog will know that my PhD research is concerned with ngakpa and ngakma (sngags pa/ma, the name for make and female long-haired, non-celibate tantric Buddhist vow-holders, ritual specialists and yogis). Ngakpa have been a crucial part of Buddhism in Tibet since the point of its very inception in that country, yet there continues to be a lot of misunderstanding about who ngakpa and ngakma are, what they do, what vows they hold and what role they have had or should have in Tibetan communities.

Dr Nida Chenagtsang is a ngakpa, traditional Tibetan doctor, scholar and teacher who hails from Malho in Amdo, North-Eastern Tibet. As I have mentioned elsewhere, for many years, he and his brother have committed themselves to preserving and promoting the Ngakpa tradition of non-celibate tantric practice both in Tibet and beyond. Continue reading →

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“You Can’t Watch Pornos in the Monastery”: Tibetan Tantra, Imagined Pleasure, and the Virtuality of Desire

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(Non-Tibetan Buddhist monks, ‘just watching’)

In my previous post on the life of 18th century monk turned non-celibate sexual-yogi Lelung Jedrung Zhepai Dorje, I noted how historically, debates in Tibet about the practice of tantric Buddhism have often revolved around whether or not practitioners should implement instructions and embody imagery included in the Highest Yoga Tantras ‘in the flesh’ or in more figurative or symbolic ways ‘in the imagination’. In the post, I proposed that some Western neo-tantric practitioners had perhaps projected overly rigid distinctions of ‘symbolic/actual’ onto indigenous tantric phenomena. I pointed out how in native Tibetan contexts, the lines between ‘actual’ and ‘imaginary’ in tantric practice could be quite blurry. Continue reading →

Bee Careful what Ewe Wish Four: Monks behaving badly and Grammar-nazi Genies

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dop dop post

Tibetan can be a confusing language – not least because it isn’t really one language at all. There’s still no standardized form of either written or spoken Tibetan, even if there have been attempts to produce them, and when it comes to the spoken language there are many, many registers and regional variations of both grammar, syntax, pronunciation and vocabulary. Tibetan language(s) is/are also notoriously filled with homophones and homonyms – like French, many Tibetan dialects have a lot of ‘silent’ or almost silent letters, and words that are spelled quite differently on paper may sound very similar to each other depending on one’s regional accent. The same word, either in its written or spoken incarnation, may have various meanings, depending on the context. The following story demonstrates just how dangerous language ambiguity can be. Continue reading →