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When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (Hardcover)
By: Hildegard Diemberger

When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty, Hildegard Diemberger
 
Our Price: $60.00
Members Price: $49.50
Author: Hildegard Diemberger
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0231143206 / 9780231143202
Publication Date: Nov 2007


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Product Code: 15089
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Description About the author Contents
 
In the fifteenth century, the princess Chokyi Dronma was told by leading spiritual masters of her time that she was the embodiment of the ancient Indian tantric deity Vajravarahi, known in Tibetan as Dorje Phagmo, the Thunderbolt Female Pig. After suffering a great personal tragedy, Chokyi Dronma renounced her royal status to become a nun, and, in turn, the tantric consort of three outstanding religious masters of her era. After her death, some of Chokyi Dronma's masters and disciples recognized a young girl as her incarnation, the first in a long line of powerful and influential female reincarnations. Today, the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo leads the Samding Monastery and is a high government cadre in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

This volume centers on the translation of the first biography of Chokyi Dronma recorded by her disciples in the wake of her death. The text reveals an extraordinary phenomenon: although it had been believed that women in Tibet were not allowed to obtain full ordination equivalent to monks, Chokyi Dronma not only persuaded one of the highest spiritual teachers of her era to give her full ordination, but she also established orders for other women practitioners and became so revered that she was officially recognized as one of two principal spiritual heirs to her main master.

In this book, Hildegard Diemberger offers a number of theoretical arguments about the importance of reincarnation in Tibetan society and religion, the role of biographies in establishing a lineage, the necessity for religious teachers to navigate complex networks of political and financial patronage, the cultural and social innovation linked to the revival of ancient Buddhist civilizations, and the role of women in Buddhism. Four introductory, stage-setting chapters precede the biography, and four conclude the book, discussing the establishment of the reincarnation lineage and the role of the current incarnation under the peculiarly contradictory aegis of the communist system.

When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet, Hildegard Diemberger, Columbia University Press, Hardcover, 2007, 394 pages, $55.00

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