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Jue Liang, "Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel" (Oxford UP, 2026)
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C
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello everyone. I'm here today with Dr. Joy Leung Juliang is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who holds a BA and MA from Renmin University of China 2009 2011, as well as an MA from the University of Chicago. 2013 a notably great year. We were both there at the same time and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in 2020. Her research and teaching engage questions about continuities as well as innovations in the gender discourses of Buddhist communities communities. She's also interested in the theory and practice of translation in general and of Tibetan literature in particular. We're here today to talk about her new book, Conceiving the Mother of Tibet, the Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Ioshitsogyo, a really wonderful study of the early biographies of Yeshe Tsogyo, who is arguably the most famous woman in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. The book examines four different aspects of Yeshe Sogyo's identity as a disciple, as a Tantric consortium, as a kandroma, or sky traveler, and as a mother, combining both detailed philological analysis and rich theoretical discussion. Through this exploration, it provides what Liang calls a Tibetan Buddhist theory of gender, one that nimbly rejects some of the binaries that we often fall into while in discussing gender and Buddhism. This book is really valuable to the field and I'm excited to talk about it today. So thank you so much for joining us, Joy.
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D
Thank you so much for having me, Kate. And it's a great honor and I'm very excited to be here.
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C
Yes. So I'll start with our opening question. How did you get interested in Yeje Sogyao?
- [03:14]
D
Thank you, Kate. It's actually a less exciting story than some people might think. So you already mentioned that we overlapped during our time at University of Chicago Divinity School. At that time, I was interested in both studying Sanskrit and also studying Tibetan literature. I think I decided to narrow it down to Tibetan narrative literature when I started my PhD at University of Virginia. And I know that I'm interested in Buddhist narrative literature, I'm interested in women in Buddhism. So the natural intersection will be women spirography in Tibetan Buddhist literature. So I had a conversation with my advisor, Curtis Schaeffer at the time. He said, why not Ye Shiz? And I said, well, someone surely has written a book on it. And it turns out no one has written a book on Yeshi Tokyo's biographies. There is this wonderful book by Anne Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen, which is really, I think, the first really influential field defining book on thinking about women in Tibetan Buddhism. But it's not really a book about the literary tradition of Yeshizogyo. And just so happens at that time, a group of nuns, or Kenmo scholar nuns at Nlarungar in Eastern Tibet, a Buddhist Academy, published in 2014 a 15 volume collection of Tibetan Buddhist women's life stories. The mostly Nang Taurus from India all the way into Tibet. And it actually contains a entirely new life story of Ichi Tokyo that we have never seen before. And I'm happy to talk about that one a little bit later. But the coming together of those circumstances made me decide, of course, and I think that's what I should work on. And the rest is history.
- [05:03]
C
Yeah. And interest in these issues. The fact that the field hadn't produced A book about this and then all these new materials. Reading through the book, I was struck at how many of the texts that you're discussing have only really become extant in the past 10 years. So it really is a groundbreaking study based on lots of new information. And just so I know a lot of people listen to this channel who may not be Tibetanists, may not be Tibetanists yet, but maybe if you could briefly give listeners who don't know so much about Tibetan Buddhism an introduction to who Ye Xe Tsogyo is. What role does she play in Tibetan Buddhism, especially today?
- [05:41]
D
Of course, I'd be happy to. So to think about Tibet is also to think about. It is now generally considered to be a Buddhist country, but Tibet has not always been Buddhist. And there are many different legends and stories associated with how Tibet was either conquered or transformed, converted to Buddhism. And one of the most popular version is that during the time of the Tibetan Empire, so that would be the 8th century, there are a series of three Buddhist kings. The second of the three, King Chisong Deten, was determined to construct the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet called Sanye, and it still stands today in central Tibet. During the construction, there were a lot of malicious spirits kind of obstructing the construction project. And King Chison Daezen decided to invite a Tantric teacher whose name is Padma Sambhava to come to Tibet to help subdue those malicious spirits. Padma Sambhava was invited to Tibet and subdued the spirits, helped the completion of Sanye, and also recruited many disciples, King Chisung Daezeng included. And another thing that happened during in this legend is that Chisung Daezen has a wife or queen whose name is Yeshi Tsogyo, who also became Padmasambhava's disciple upon Padmasambhava's departure. She was the one in later traditions to be considered to be responsible to record all of Padmasambhava's teachings and encode them into secret forms and bury them all over Tibet to ensure that it is transmitted to future generations. So this is a very abbreviated version of the Padma Sambaba myth and Yesheitsuke of Spro in it. But in short, to think about Ye Shi Tsugyo's role in Tibetan Buddhism. I called her the Matron Saint of Tibet is she is really the first Tibetan Buddhist woman, the first woman in Tibet who converted to Buddhism, became a Buddhist practitioner. She's also the one who's responsible for a lot of the very earliest Tibetan Buddhist teachings that were handed down to us to posterity. So I'd like to think of that she exists in the Tibetan Buddhist imagination both directly and indirectly, in that people will read her life stories like I did, obsessively over a couple of years, and practitioners will read it. They will have practices about her, they will have rituals associated with her as a deity, indirectly. I think you also see that I mentioned Ye Xe Tsugyo is the transmitter and authenticator of a lot of Tibetan bullets Buddhist teachings. She is also taking on further emanations of later generations of Tibetan Buddhist women. So really, she is a defining figure if we want to think about how femininity or womanhood is thought of in Tibetan Buddhism.
- [08:48]
C
Yeah. And the book is really lovely in that it meditates on this important place that Iche Tsogyel holds in the Tibetan Buddhist imagination today. I know a lot of students really gravitate towards her as this pioneering figure, but then also tries to understand the history quite deeply. Although you note in the book that you're not interested in the question of, you know, did Yeshe Tsogyel exist as a historical figure or not? I know that this is a question that you miss it all the time, and you say, I'm interested in her as, you know, this literary actor figure in the Tibetan Buddhist imaginary rather than as historical figure per se. Can you say a bit more about that?
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D
Yeah, of course. And I should clarify that by saying that I am not interested in her historicity in the context of this book is not to say that that's not an important question. I think it is, but at the time when I was writing the book, and as far as I know, as of today, we still don't really have definitive historical evidence, thinking about inscriptions or thinking about newly discovered texts, supposedly from the time of the Tibetan Empire, that unambiguously mentioned someone whose name is Ye Shi Tsogyo. So we just don't have enough evidence to make a decision on this question. I think it's an important question, but for this book, Conceiving the Mother of Tibet, it really deals with not Ye Shizoge as a historical figure, but Ye Shizoge as a literary figure. And it is about her literature tradition that actually flourished 600 years after the time she's said to have lived. So the question historically applies less to the materials that I'm really reading. They're from the 14th and 15th century and not the 8th century, where Yeshi Tokyo is active. And I think I would love to hear more evidence about her historicity. And if you have to press me for an answer for that and I think she likely was associated with a real human. And there were probably queens of the Tibetan King Chisung Daezen, who we have a little bit more historical evidence on as really have been a ruler of Tibet at the time. I think it's entirely possible there were female Buddhist practitioners associated with different Indian teachers who were visiting Tibet at the time. But for now, we unfortunately just don't have definitive evidence for that.
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C
Yeah. And so your work is concerned with the textual evidence that we do have, which largely, as we'll discuss, starts to really get written somewhat later for very interesting reasons. But first, just to again, situate us in the broader world of scholarship on women in Tibetan Buddhism. How is your book responding to you mentioned in the book? 20 years ago there was not a whole lot written about women in Tibetan Buddhism. And now there's a lot more. How do you see yourself as contributing to that lineage?
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D
Yeah. Thank you, Kate. This is a great opportunity for me to give a shout. Out of all the books on women in Tibet that I have read, I think I already mentioned Anne Klein's meeting the Great Bliss Queen a while ago. And I should probably first thank Janet Gatzel for first in about 20 years ago edited a volume called Women in Tibet, which to my knowledge is the first of its kind dedicated to discuss women's role in not just Tibetan Buddhism, but Tibetan history and culture, ranging from the time of Tibetan Empire to contemporary popular culture in the People's Republic of China. Janet is also the first person to discuss one of the very important life story, or nang, tasks that I have used as source in this book that is attributed to a treasure revealer named Jin Mei Gungan. So I think that is a time when we are discovering where is women in Tibetan Buddhism and to look for women's presence kind of retroactively writing Tibetan history with the inclusion of Buddhist women in it. And I think a little bit later, we have a lot of, I think, a second generation of scholars coming in and thinking about, most importantly for my own research, Sarah Jacoby and thinking about Holly Gailey, who actually started writing a little bit more about what impact did women have in Tibetan Buddhism. And also more critically start thinking about what does the term women mean in a Tibetan cultural context? And by extension, what does gender mean? How do we think about personhood? I think Sarah Jacob Kobe very famously mentioned this idea of a relational identity in her study of Sir Kangzhou, a 20th century Tibetan Buddhist teacher. And then Holly Gaby also wrote very, I think, innovatively about how we think about consular relationship as containing a rich interplay of interpersonal aspirations, but also interpersonal relationships. So those are really important to me, and I think the last one, maybe then I'll stop, is to think outside of Tibetologists. I really was inspired by Amy Langenberg and Irmana Salgado's work to think about a postcolonial critique of how should we read women and gender into a tradition that may not necessarily have such a word in the beginning? And how does actually philology and careful, very much grounded ethnographical work in a Salgado case could play into our own scholarship? So I think I stand on the shoulder of chance, and we're at a very fortunate time when we are able to have a lot more resource to help us think about issues like women and gender in Buddhism writ large.
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C
Yeah, that's great. And the introduction of the book serves as a useful guide for all the research that's out there on an increasing collection of sources. And you propose as your method for, again, this methodologically quite challenging question of how do you read women and gender into the historical record when you're reading texts that don't conceptualize these things in the same way as we do? And you propose what you call liberation philology as the book's mythological signature. Can you unpack what that term means for you and what you're maybe pushing against?
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D
Yeah. Thank you. I should mention that this is again, not just me, but deeply inspired by Amy Langenberg in her book Birth in Buddhism, where she referred to Sheldon Pollock's three different meanings of three different goals of philology. So the first one is a textual meaning, the second one is a contextual meaning, and the third one is a philologist meaning. So the textual meaning is a little bit more self explanatory. It's how words, grammars and syntaxes help us understand the language, the contextual meaning meaning that how historical contexts, linguistic conventions, cultural customs also impact how we should understand a certain string of words so as to make sure we're understanding within its own historical context. But also, I think Amy and also Sheldon Pollock very illuminatingly pointed out, there is also the philologist meaning in that we're always coming to the text with our own presuppositions. There was never really a neutral position from which one could read a text. And I think once you have come to terms with that, it actually makes approaching historical text a little bit easier for me, as when you are in your graduate study, you acquire linguistic skills, so then you have the ability to at least tackle the textual meaning. And the contextual meaning of the text. But also I think it's important for us to realize we also have an ethical responsibility to the text that we're reading. They are not really passive objects for us to explain away. I'd rather like to think of the text as something that we're co creating a worldview in that I would like to give the benefit of doubts in a way to the text I'm reading to think they are genuinely edifying, they're genuinely inspiring stories in the case of Yeshe Togyo, but also for me in the task of a reader of a translator of Tibetan text to also contribute to the continuous edification or the continuous inspiration of the text in the context that I am situated in, which is today is in Cleveland, Ohio. But in a larger context of Anglophone scholarship and in a world where we are thinking about issues like postcolonialist critique, we're thinking about issues about gender and so on, so forth.
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C
Yeah. And you talk about how this way of framing this liberation philology allows you not to fall into this binary of either saying, oh, these texts were sort of possibly written by men, mostly for a male audience. They contain, you know, statements about the inferiority of the female body. These are just misogynistic or on the other side, putting the pressure on a text to be, you know, it reveals liberatory claims about the equality of women and, you know, the feminine nature of awakening right between. You can chart a path that is not either of those two extremes.
- [19:10]
D
I agree and I think. Thanks for identifying. I think the two camps that I have mentioned in the introduction chapter is. I think it's very easy if you're reading with a pre modern Buddhist text talking about women to say that, well, this is probably a case where misogyny comes in, women were dismissed as inferior and that's the end of the story. Or you could read a lot of famous Buddhist texts I'm thinking about the one I used to teach the most is the Goddess chapter in the Vimalakirti Sutta. And that is the one where you can see very clearly the Goddess who is feminine in gender, clearly challenges the obtuse male disciples from the Shuvakas and then seemingly demonstrating that there is no such thing as gender distinctions in enlightenment. And it's also very easy to say that, yes, ultimately Buddhism does not really discriminate because the Goddess chapter. And I think both, neither of those are really wrong. But also it's very. I think there is a productive space to think about how could those two really exist at the same time, within the same tradition. And how could this both exist even in the same Buddhist teacher? Maybe just writing about the Nang Tuar, the life story, talking about female inferiority in one, and then writing a commentary on the sutra and talking about the non discriminating nature of enlightenment on another day and how do they coexist and how do we make sense of that? I think it's a more productive question.
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C
Yeah. And allowing ourselves to recognize that the tradition doesn't have to be univocal. That would be extremely strange for a very long and internally diverse tradition to have one position about women and gender. And I appreciate the nuance that you bring to these conversations. And then one final. I found this to be a really helpful distinction. When you're speaking about gender, you distinguish between linguistic, theological, gender. So you know, the notion that wisdom is a feminine quality and then social gender, how gender functions in, you know, the everyday lives of people. Can you tell more about why you wanted to separate those terms and kind of how it affects your reading of these texts?
- [21:39]
D
Yeah, of course. And I think this probably comes again as part of my obsession with the fine points of language. And I should also mention, I want to thank Sonam Kachu, I think, for having a lot of conversation with me when I was finishing my dissertation on this very topic of how do we think about gender operating on different levels? So I propose to have multiple layers of gender when we're thinking about that, in particular in the Tibetan Buddhist case. So the first one is, I think there is a little bit of intermixing of biological and social gender, meaning that gender operating on the mundane, everyday, unenlightened level. So you are born into a male or a female, gender and sex. And there really is not a strong distinction between gender and sex when we're talking about the Tibetan language. So what is largely perceived to be biological or physiological is also strongly associated is the social. And there's more nuance to that, and I'm happy to get into that maybe later. But generally you have biological and social gender largely correlate with one another. But then there is also the gender of words. Sanskrit is a language that has different genders for nouns, and so does many other languages. I'm thinking like German, French, Spanish, just to name a few. While Tibetan doesn't really have a noun technically gender endings or suffixes, and it does borrow a lot from gender concepts from Sanskrit. So for example, you mentioned that wisdom is considered to be gendered female and in the case of Sanskrit, Tibetan. So in this Indo Tibetan tradition, I think it's important to keep in mind it's not really just the case. When we think about, maybe in Spanish or French, a word is gender feminine doesn't mean we have strong feminine associations with a certain word. But in Sanskrit and Tibetan, when we think about wisdom, it is actually considered to be a actual goddess who is the embodiment of wisdom. So there is a stronger association of certain very important liberative concepts associated with Buddhism that are gendered. And the gender actually plays a role in this theological construction. So that is what I propose in this book is to think about. In addition to the biological, social, gender, there is also another layer that I call linguistic, theological, and that largely correlates with what's operating on the extraordinary or on the enlightened level to think about the goddess Prajnapramita or the perfection of wisdom. So she is considered to be an enlightened being. But gods have gender, as do many other forms of existence in Buddhism. So I think that is also something we could take seriously of. How does enlightened gender feel like? And how do people reconcile with those two different layers of think about, of difference in forms, in terms of existence? So that is what I use to guide my reading throughout the text.
- [25:12]
C
Yeah. And I see that being a really helpful concept for teaching because without really thinking about it, sometimes we jump from, oh, if wisdom is gendered feminine, if there's in the Mahayana case, bodhisattvas, even that says this about the place of women in society. And this analytical distinction between social gender and linguistic, theological gender is a helpful pause to make sure we're not just assuming that all of these imply each other. So great, we'll jump into the chapters a bit. Now. Chapter 1 explores textual representations of Iosogyal and as you sort of alluded to before, there's a gap of several centuries between the 8th century when Iitzogiel is said to have lived and when she starts popping up in the literary record. So where do we find the first writings about Ye Sheitzogyo and how do they portray her?
- [26:10]
D
Thank you. And yeah, so the first chapter is really a literature review as of me digging through the pre 14th century Tibetan narrative historical writing to see where could we find Yeshe Tsogyo. Right. It's a historical or philological project. And the reason I said earlier also of that we don't have archaeological evidence from the 8th century, but we do have is evidence prior to this flourishing of her literary tradition in the 14th century. We do have scattered, sporadic, usually very short references to her in Tibetan narrative writings. So one of the earliest Tibetan sources that mentioned the name, not the full name Yesheitsogyo, but just the name is in the testimony of Ba and Wa. So the Ba Shi or the corpus. And in the earliest recensions, Louis Dani and Daniel Hirschberg has done fascinating work on this corpus. In the Ardiha's recension she was not there. But in the later recensions, presumably in the 11th century, what you will see is there's a mention of a queen by Chisuntesen with the name and the gill in some cases was spelled in an irregular way as to what we commonly seen. So that is earliest mention we can find of her. And there's two 13th century Buddhist histories by Kaba Daewoo and Naoba Pendetta. So the extensive history of Buddhism in India and Tibet and the religious history of the Ne Wu Chuzhong. So in those two what we see is just a mention of a name of Queen Kharten Sa, again related to what we have seen in the Ba Qi before or the testimony of Ba. So there are some mentionings of a queen of Chisung TSEN before the 14th century, most likely in the name of Karchin Sa, meaning a lady, aristocratic lady from this kingdom or region called Karchin. She was usually identified as Buddhist. There are some accounts of her taking refuge along with the king and becoming Buddhist with Padmasambhava, but we don't really know if the name has consistently been associated with Carchinsa and it's not always the case. So the earliest mention of Ye Shi Sogyo I think give us very limited information about her. We know that she's likely associated with this place called Karchin, which correspond with later full length life stories of her. We know she's likely associated with King Chi Song Daeze and probably his queen. And we know that she was likely Buddhist. And in some cases her name is also recorded as Sokyo. But the more Buddhist part, and the Yeshe meaning primordial wisdom, was added in much later traditions. So it is more specifically in the Ningma school of Tibetan Buddhism and more specifically in the Nima treasure tradition that use revealed literature or revealed texts as its scriptural source starting from the 12th century that we see more mention of Yeshi Tsokyo. So the first one we'll think about is Nyang Nima Esser and Guru tre Wang, the two founding figures of the Treasure tradition in the 12th and the 13th century. And in their religious history and in their life story of Pamasambhava we have the first more detailed mention of someone whose name is Yishi Tsugyo, who was associated with Perma Samova as one of his disciples. And I think Nyongyo also has a very specific association of Yehicojigyo with Vajra Akilaya or Dorje Puba. Transmission we have mentions and again thanks to Janet Gato for bringing this up of potentially a life story an of Yeshi Tokyo by Gu Che Wang. But everyone has been looking around for years, no one has found it. It'll be great if we can find earlier historical evidence. Yoshitogyo was brought up again in the 14th century by this other treasure revealer, Ogen Lingba, who wrote a lot of type of narrative literature called the Katang. And those are literatures about the Tibetan Empire and about narratives about things happening at the time. So Yishi Tokyo's name popped up in the Khatung literature in the section that deals with queens. So she was again listed as one of the queens and who was associated with Pama Sombhava. And the main resource I used are actually the later two full length life stories of Yeshe Tokyo. So the first one is first discovered by Jake Dalton and Janet Gyaltzo, I think in lhasa in the 1990s, attributed to a treasure revealer who supposedly lived in the 14th, mid 14th century whose name is Jimegunga. And this is about 80 pages long in terms of becha size. And it is the earliest known full length life story of Hirshi Tokyo. And very curiously, an almost identical life story was later re revealed by the very famous Bhutanese Treasury Vealer whose name is bemalingba in the 15th century at a different location. And Liz Engowski, who's another scholar who has done a lot of work on Yeshizogyo, has looked at some historical evidence and mentioned that there's potentially a link between those two. There might be teaching transmissions, but we don't have direct evidence for that. So that is the first four lens that popped up in the 14th century. And another one I used is likely attributed to Dorje Lingba, but again we don't have definitive evidence for that, but through stylistic and content choices and through its depiction of Yeshi Tsogyo as someone who's not yet associated with King Chisung Taizen. So I go into a little bit more detail in the first chapter about what are some features of earlier narrative about Yeshi Tokyo. What are some features than the later ones. So this is likely another 15th century or at least early stratum of Yeshitsuke literature. It's about, I think, 180 folios in length in one of the manuscript versions. So this is also likely the longest that we have. And it is entitled the Nangtar, the Extensive Life Story of Yehic. So I rely on mostly those two life stories and a lot of other genres of narrative literature in the church tradition, which I think one of them will come up in chapter two, called Question and Answer or Shulin. So really it's scouting through the pages and to think about, so where is Yeji, Tokyo? And what do people talk about when they mention her name? And what are some stories, biographical details that associate with her that I can accumulate in all sorts of narrative literature?
- [33:50]
C
And when those full biographies are getting sort of written for the first time in the 14th and 15th centuries, why do you think that's the time? What else is going on in Tibet at the time that makes the conditions rife for this new interest in these full, you know, hagiography biographies of Yeshitzogyal?
- [34:11]
D
Thanks. That's a great question. And I think it's important to think about why do we not have anything about Yesheatsukyo at the time she is said to have lived or immediately after when she's had to live, but only appearing 600 years later? I have a few theories and I think a lot of it has to do with in which school this literature tradition is appearing. So a lot of the earlier mentions and especially the later full length life stories of Yeshe Tsovil appeared, like I said before, in the treasure tradition or the termite tradition of the Nima school of Buddhism. And at this time, what we have is the Nyingma School is, as its name suggests, Nyingma, meaning it's the old school of Tibetan Buddhism. So what it claims to be old is in contrast to the Sarma School or the new school of Tibetan Buddhism. So the doctrinal or canonical authority the Ningma School rely on is said to have come from the time of Tibetan Empire. In contrast, what the Sarma or the new school claim to have inherited the doctrinal authority from is through the new translations that came into Tibet only after the 11th century. So it is a time when the Sarma School or the new translation school is gaining popularity, it's growing in size, and the Nima school had the need to respond and to establish their own authority. So one of the ways to do it, I think, is to cohere a narrative story of the Tibetan Empire. And how does Buddhism play into that? So I think Yeshe Tokyo, as one of the imperial figures that is associated with the transmission of Nyingma School, become standardized as part of this narrative imagination in the 13th and 14th century. And another thing I think particularly applicable to Ye Shi Sogil is because it's her feminine identity. So there is also. The Ningman school is also more likely and more widely acceptance of non monastic practitioners, especially in the treasure tradition. So this is also a time when women started to practice Tibetan Buddhism not just as a renunciant or not just as nuns, but also as householder practitioners. So the need to also look for female exemplars I think contribute to the rise of eminence of Yeshe Tokyo at this time.
- [36:53]
C
Yeah, it's a fascinating situation where the Sarma schools are bringing in new texts that can speak to modern needs and conditions and enigma. The old school, they need texts that can kind of do the same thing, speak to contemporary concerns, but they also need them to be old. And the treasure tradition, in which people are revealing texts written during the old time, but then hidden and revealed later in Iyesha Sokyo as sort of this connecting figure, is a fascinating way of thinking about why she was kind of like the right woman in the right place for the right time. The right qualifications, you said, not me.
- [37:33]
D
But I do think it's an opportune time for narrative literature about a female figure to arise who has a tie to the empirical past, but also to serve the role of connecting to the present.
- [37:49]
C
Yeah, I like the structural comparisons of, you know, for instance, her to Ananda, the disciple of the Buddha, who, you know, records a lot of the Buddha's texts which were passed down orally because Yeshaya Tsogyal has this quality of having a perfect memory, something I'm jealous of, but is sort of uniquely well positioned to help solve this structural issue. Not that you're suggesting that people are inventing characters, but part of why there's this rich efflorescence of text is that, you know, it met the moment. So, you know, as you referenced just now in chapter two, you take up the genre of jilen, or question and answer texts, in which a disciple is posing questions to a teacher and getting answers and they go back and forth. You notice that in these Yulin texts, female disciples such as Yezogyl, who ask questions to the teacher, often Padma Sambhava, often preface those questions by maybe talking down about themselves or talking about their own inferiority, saying oh, you know, I just have this unfortunate female body because of my bad past karma. And again, you're trying not to read these texts as either just rank sexism or as liberatory. So how do you read these passages?
- [39:06]
D
Thank you. That's a good question. Maybe I'll start by talking about what Shulin is. So like you said, it's literally means question and answer. It's not a new genre that is created by treasure writers. We see early examples in Dunhuang text, but really, again, like you said, they're not inventing new genres, but skillfully adopting things from the past. The genre of Shulin, the figure of Ye Shi Tsogyo to serve purposes of preserving and propagating their religious practices and teachings in the present. So the genre of Shulem becomes a very prevalent genre in a lot of treasure cycles. A cycle is a collection of revealed treasure text. So you invariably see a Shulin popping up. And usually they are question and answers from again, the time of the Tibetan Empire. So the two most popular teacher figures in the Shulin text are either Vimalamitra or Pavna Sambhava. And in the Shulings with Padmasambhava, you will see see the disciple asking the most question would be Yeshi Tsogyo. There are other disciples asking questions. Sometimes Yeshizogyo will be asking questions with a group of female disciples. Sometimes you'll see the king on Chisung Daezen also being the disciple who is requesting teaching and receiving answers from a Papa Sambhava. The interesting thing about Shulin and I also mentioned this in another article that discusses its formal similarity with Buddhist scripture is that they are, I would argue, deliberately modeling themselves after the Buddhist scripture format. So if you have read any Buddhist sutra, you will remember there is always beginning with Thus have I heard the Buddha was residing at a place a certain time with a certain retinue, and so on and so forth. So there's a description of the environment and one disciple will rise from the audience and ask the Buddha a question. And the Buddha said, great question, and proceed to give the teaching. And in the end, almost invariably the disciple will be overjoyed having received the teaching and then express their appreciation of that. So a lot of times when you read certain sutra, you will think about what's the meat of the sutra is what the teaching given by the Buddha. But why is there a need to have this narrative framework that is kind of bookending the beginning at the end of the teaching? And I think they serve a certain function, right? Because it gives concrete details of where this teaching happened. It is a record, it is a narrative record, and that's authenticating the authority of those teachings as genuine transmissions from the Buddha. And very similarly, a lot of the Treasure Shulin text has a similar structure. Where it was mentioned, Parmasambhava was, in his time in Tibet, usually staying at this certain time and a certain place and with a certain group of disciples. And this group of disciples, one or a couple among them, usually Yeshe Tsogyo, will ask him a question and pray him to bestow the teaching on such and such. And then Panmasama will give the teaching. And in the end, most likely, he will. Most frequently he will ask Ye Shizoge or other disciple to commit it to memory in certain cases to conceal them as treasures. So again, if you're reading them for the teaching that is contained, you might just overlook the narrative framework. But again, I think similarly to the sutras, this narrative framework serves as a way to authenticate those teachings contain therein as genuine teachings from Pamba Sambhava, who at this time also started to be referred to as the Second Buddha. So they serve to authenticate Buddhist teachings. But what's interesting is that a lot of the Shulens are asked by Yeshitogy or by other female disciples. So one thing you don't see in Buddhist sutra, but you see in Shulin is sometimes these requests are prefaced by a confession of female inferiority, and then they are preceded by an admonition from Parma Sambha. One of the examples I used, and I think it's quite remarkable, is a question and answer with seven female disciples in chapter two, It's Yoshi Tokyo. Along with six other royal ladies, each ask question, a question to Padmasambhava in this Shulin. And before they ask, they confess their own different types of inferiority and request a teaching that is particularly addressing their own inferiorities. So one will say, I am slow mentally. Can I receive a teaching that is easy to understand? Or someone will say, I have a lot to do. I'm a married householder. I have husband and have kids to take care of. Can I receive a teaching that is not fast, that can happen, that's effective within its lifetime? And invariably Parmasambhava will respond and say that you, womankind, are limited in your intellect, you are distracted, you have much to do, you are fickle in mind, name your female inferiority. But also I find what is really interesting is that he also invariably at the end, will give the female disciples the teachings they ask for and exhort them to practice regardless of their deficiencies. So what does that do? And I think is a very, very much interesting question. Right. You could think of this as evidence of women being considered inferior. I think that's not a wrong interpretation. But also, if you read closely about what kind of inferiority or inconvenience or disadvantage they are professing, you will notice a lot of them are. There are internal inferiorities. They have limited intellect. Maybe they are fickle, maybe they are easily swayed. But there are also external difficulties. Meaning that women will talk about, I have a husband, I have to serve. I am consumed by domestic labor. I have kids, I have difficult relationship with in laws, I have extra illnesses as a woman. So a lot of them are also circumstantial, meaning that it's not up to their control. It's rather associated with their condition of being a woman. So I think one way to read this is to say that maybe we could also understand this as a recognition of the real difficulty women would encounter in their lives at this time. Is this a feminist critique of the structural inequality in Tibetan society? I don't think we will go that far. But I do think this is at least a nod to or understanding of the real difficulties Tibetan women would have encountered during that time. So that is one thing. And another important thing, I think, is to think about, why would Padmasambhava give them teaching if they're inferior? And in this case, I'm really inspired by Reiko Onoma's work on the Pali tradition, especially in the Vinaya of how the very first Buddhist woman, Mahaprajyapati, actually was able to receive permission to ordain herself and to become a Buddhist nun. So the story of Mahaprajyapati is that she has to ask the Buddha three times. The Buddha warned her, be careful. Don't set your mind on this thing. And therefore, presumably rejected her. So she became really desperate, was crying outside the door. Ananda, the Buddha's disciple, saw her favorite disciple, saw her and asking, what's going on? And she said, well, the Buddha did not want me to go forth and become a female renunciant. So Ananda went to the Buddha and asked on behalf of Mahpuchapati, and saying, that wasn't Mahaputrapati on your father, okay? So he started with a question about women's spiritual capacity. So saying that hypothetically, Lord, if women were to become renunciant, would they have the ability to. To achieve the fruit of arhatvut, that is, the fruit of enlightenment? The Buddha said, yeah, hypothetically, if they become renunciants, they would be able to. So that's a logical argument to say that, well, if women have the opportunity, they could become enlightened. And then Ananda added a second argument saying that, well, and Lord, please consider Mahabra Chabadi, who was very kind to you, who basically would serve the role of your mother at this time. And wouldn't it be nice if she could reap the benefit of this practice? And that is the moment when the Buddha acquiesced and saying, okay, if MahavRajabati accept those eight conditions, that will be her renunciation or that will be her ordination. So there's a lot of debate about this. To say that to accept extra rules, usually considered to be surveilled, or subjecting women to inferior status, two monks, is that really a limitation putting on women? Or is this a condition that female renuncian can willingly accept in order to become practitioners? And I think Reiko Onuma has done a lot of interesting work, and I find her argument of saying that this is a condition that women can accept in order to gain access to Buddhist teaching also illuminating in thinking about Shulin text. So, yes, women in those Shulin texts do have to profess their inferiorities. Yes, they have to accept criticism, usually from Parma Sambhava, but having done this, they were still able to receive teaching. So I think there is also, you can think about this as a performance of inferiority and that becomes the condition of them receiving Buddhist teachings. And at the end of the day, wasn't that what we really are asking for is to have the opportunity to receive teachings and have the opportunity to practice? So in order to do that, if you have to accept certain conditions, I think that is maybe something that is acceptable in that literary tradition for women to do.
- [50:08]
C
Yeah, that in these requests, you're performing a certain kind of humility. And, you know, if you're studying Tibetan literature, you'll find performances of humility everywhere, including by male authors a lot of the time. But that it's, you know, whether we read that as, you know, just saying, oh, well, women are inferior. Unclear. Especially when you have a mix of, okay, women are especially prone to anger, that's an internal thing, versus women have to do a lot of work around the house. And that is a time limiting factor that acknowledges social, you know, socially imposed burdens on women, but that ultimately the tradition does affirm this universality of the potential for awakening and figuring out how to hold those things together. When we're reading these texts, I think you do Though that very, you know, with a lot of nuance and attention to detail and comparisons from across the Buddhist tradition. I always have students read the Terri gta alongside the theragata and you know, so these are the songs of the elder monks and the songs of the elder nuns from the Pali tradition. And the male monks are talking about, you know, obstacles being, you know, the three poisons and the standard, you know, obstacles to attaining liberation. And the nuns are talking about, you know, my husband, my in laws, the amount of work I have to do bearing children, you know, and so the account of what suffering is and where obstacles are coming from towards practicing the path. You know, again, it's not some social critique, but it does show this awareness that at least a decent portion of the burden of being born in a female body is the socially imposed burdens. So yeah, I really enjoyed that chapter. So then the next chapter. So as I should have said, chapter two is all about this role of Yeshaysohia's disciple. Chapter three then goes on to Yeshay Sogyel's role as consort. And so one of the famous aspects of Hyeshe Tsohel is that she's said to be Padma Sambava's consort. And again, just for those who are listening who may not know what that term means, can you just briefly say what it is to be a Tantric consort and how Yoshit. So Yeol's role as consort is important for her.
- [52:31]
D
Yes, thank you. And man, I have problem with the word consort but I also couldn't find a better one. So I think we'll just have to live with this. So it's gender but I can save that ranked for a different time. So I think if you think about the English term consort and it comes with the idea of something like a partner, Right. And it is probably self explanatory, but worth mentioning that there is not really a Tibetan word that lines up pretty neatly with this word consort in English. So when we are talking about consort in Tibetan Buddhism, we are usually in most cases referring to a female partner in Tantric Buddhist sexual practices who are associated with, for lack of better words, a bundle of baggage and abuse. So Nima School and especially Treasure tradition, like I mentioned before, are largely non monastic. So there are a lot of householder practitioners and practitioners will engage with heterosexual sexual Tantric practice with a partner. So Yeshe Tsogyo is the consort in a lot of those narrative literatures to the Indian teacher Padma Sambhava. And her identity as a consort also gives her access to Buddhist teachings but also was directly attributed to as one of the reasons of her enlightenment. And the word for consort that yiritsogyo was frequently referring to usually is the term of a kanjoma or term of a sky traveler or dakini in Sanskrit. So there is this theological definition of a kanjuma is someone who drove or who traverses the ka or the emptiness space. So it is someone who literally traverses emptiness space, which is also in many cases identified with wisdom. So they are considered to be. Could be. Again, we're playing with the theological and social gender. There is an enlightened conjunct, could be someone who is benefiting you on your path to enlightenment as a consort, helping you with your practice. But the wrong type of consortium could also be someone who will drag you down. So there's a lot of warnings about practicing with the wrong type of partners. So that is generally what a consort is. And specifically in the case of Ye Xe Tsukyao, she herself served as a consort. And in many of the Shulin texts, the question and answer texts, there's also a lot of discourse of her conversation with Parma Sambhava about who is a good consort and who is a bad consort. So that seems to be a central concern in the Nying community at that time is how to regulate Tantric practice. It has to do with heterosexual activities.
- [55:48]
C
Yeah. And you discuss in the book again with this kind of liberation philology outlook, that even as you're engaged in this detailed philological textual study of these practices, that you're approaching it from a context of knowing that you mentioned abuse, that there is a documented history of purported consort relationships, you know, being problematic in various ways. And so you're careful to note in the book that you want to separate out this historical textual study from, you know, the present day context of increasing awareness of teacher abuse scandals. How do you think about, like, why was that important to you?
- [56:33]
D
Thank you. That is a very important bracketing I have to do at the beginning of the chapter. And I think this actually has proven to be the most difficult chapter for me to write. Because if you were just reading a lot of the 14th, 15th century Literature about Yeshi Tsogyo, it does not really cover a lot of the pragmatic nature of Kangstu practice. And for good reason. Right. Because being able to be Palm Sanban's consort is the reason, why is it Tokyo received teachings and consort relationship is actually something Nyingma Buddhist writers at that time is trying to defend against. The Summer Critique, which is largely coming from a monastic practice perspective. And they were trying to really establishing consort practice as a legitimate form of Buddhist practice. So these two factors determined that the tone and the depiction of consort, especially Yu Shi Tsuge as consort, is largely in a positive light. But this is not to say that consort relationships are just unproblematic. And there's increasing evidence, both textual for pre modern times and also contemporary, that we have first person survivor report that because of the inherent, in many cases power difference between consular relationships and also because of in general still we have women as being in the marginal status in many of the contexts where we find country consular relationship. There is ample evidence of abuse, not just in contemporary times, but but also in pre modern times. So it is a problematic relationship. And some would argue that it probably lends itself very easily to abuse. And Amy Langenberg and Anne Glegg has done fascinating work in the contemporary American context of abuse in Buddhism. And Holly Gaily has written an article, I think, in the journal Religions on secrecy and how that defining feature of Tantric Council relationship again lends itself easily to abuse, more specifically in the Japan context. But I want to still do this thing in the Yeshi Tokyo literary tradition to say that cultural relationship in this very specific context, 14th 15th century Literature about Yeshi Tokyo, seems to be arguing against negative stereotypes of consort relationship being a correct form of Buddhist practice, and seems to be arguing for legitimate use of consort practice to serve Enlightenment purposes. But I wanted to bracket that as being very limited in scope and it serves a function in the book as to think about Yeshi toke's different roles. But I also want to point the reader to other larger contexts where this relationship is problematic.
- [59:48]
C
Yeah, and this is where the insight offered by the Liberation philology really came through, insofar as it would be really easy as a textual historical scholar to say, oh, you know, I don't know anything about the present day. You know, I've definitely said that if I want to get out of a difficult conversation, say I'm just focusing on these texts. But you know, you're saying if we're thinking of the textual meaning, the contextual meaning, and then the meaning that we as scholars bring to it in our present day context, it's not enough to just hide in historical study without being aware that discussions of these texts and these materials very much affect present day circumstances. So I thought that was really helpful. In the next chapter, chapter four. Four, you note that the title of the chapter is A Harmless Demoness and a Childless Mother. And those are, you know, clearly seem like paradoxes so I'll focus on the second one. Yeshay. So Yel is often said to be the mother of Tibet, and yet she's also this childless woman. And so you discuss how the maybe mythos of Yeshat Togiel as mother is again, distinct from the social role of actual human mothers sometimes. So can you say a bit more about that paradox?
- [61:12]
D
Of course. Thank you. And I think you definitely picked up on the mythos as a really important aspect of the identity and how Yeshi Tokyo's narrative works for this treasure tradition. And I think I was particularly inspired by Wendy Doneger and her work on the Shiva myth, where she mentioned that mythology myth comes in when you have to negotiate or you have to reconcile contradicting identities. And I think treating Yoshi Tokyo's life story as myth, not to say they're not real, but to say that they are myths in the sense that they have to negotiate or transcend contradicting identities, I think it's a productive lens for me, too, and hopefully for the readers, too, to understand Yeshe Tokyo and her literary tradition. And one thing I think is really interesting about Yeji Sogil is that she is very, very frequently referred to as the mother of Tibet. She's referred to her disciple as Mother Togil. But if you read her life story, and I think of all the sources that I looked at, I could find, none of them mentioned that she had children. So what do we make sense of this identity of she, her never having been a human mother, but also being constantly referred to as a mother by disciples and by later future generations of Tibetan practitioners? And I think also what does this motherhood identity mean for her? Right. So one thing to think about, and kind of going back to the theological, linguistic, and the difference between that and the social, biological, gender, is that it is a particularly rich avenue for us to think about. And. And we're talking on May 12, and Mother's Day has just passed. So it is really interesting to think about how complex and how nuanced the discourse is around mothers even in our own day and time. Right. So there's a lot of praise for mothers, selfless love. There also seems to be a lot of discontent of mothers actually not getting the treatment or the care or the support they need in a society. So there always seems like there's the valorization of motherhood, but also on the ground, mothers seems to be struggling quite a bit. And this comes out not exactly in this sense, but I think in the Tibetan Buddhist description of mothers. So if you read a lot of commentaries, you'll see the term mother usually is associated with wisdom. Right? Again we mentioned Paramita, the perfection wisdom. And she is a goddess who's considered to be the mother of all Buddhas. So wisdom as a feminine quality is what is generative of enlightenment. And in this sense it is the mothering. But you also read, you have ample examples in chapter two, you have that in the Shun text and in a lot of later texts associated with. With depiction of human mothers. There's also this female deficiency that is particularly associated with motherhood is. And you still hear this as today, right? Mothers are just so emotional, they're so attached to their kids that becomes their center of attention. So this selfish love of mother towards her children is actually something Buddhist writers write a lot as something of a negative tendency, negative traits of human women. And I should also probably say that to a large extent, the identity of a mother and identity of a woman are collapsed in the text that we talk about. So women are just by nature mothers. So how do we reconcile this a critique of mothers selfish love and the blindness to other things once they have children, but also this general praise of mother as mothers of all Buddhas as a source of wisdom. And I think you will have to read one of them as a theological understanding of the abstract virtue of, I think I call it in one case motherless, and then in another case a critique of the embodied messiness of the lived experience of motherhood. And that might be considered, pick your term, inferiority, disadvantage, inconvenience, or things that's holding female practitioners back. And one really, really fascinating example, what you see is, I think, quite funny actually is I cited this at the chapter as supporting evidence. Is Laozin Yang Jian Zhou Ma, the mother of Lo Chen Dharma Shui, who is a 17th century treasure revealer. So Luo Chengdamushri and Terta Lingba, they're brothers and they wrote a biography of their mother. Lao Jin drama. And so throughout this biography, supposedly it's about the mother. So you should be talking about her achievement and her special virtues. And there are some of that probably for the first three or four pages. But the rest of the text and the, I will say 90% of the text is actually dedicated to the activities of her son, which I find quite fascinating. It's the praise to the Great Mother, the Yumchen, but the life story is really not really about her. So how do you make sense of this? And I think is you can see here what Ye Shi Togyo is being praised to as Mother I would suggest it should be read predominantly as Mother Ness, meaning that she, as an enlightened feminine figure at this point, at the end of her teaching career, is already considered to be at a different plane, at the theological linguistic plane, where she embodies the virtue of wisdom. And also her special connection, her infallible memory, her special connection with teaching transmission also associate with, with the wisdom and with the Buddhist teaching. So there's a lot of theological construction around the female gender that Yoshitoge can be very neatly placed into. But we should not. And even the writers of these narratives about Yeshi Tokyo did not make an effort of making her a human mother. So we should not also collapse this with as a universal praise of the embodied mother who ship or what human mother have done for their children.
- [67:59]
C
Yeah, and you discuss a couple other of these really interesting contradictory ways in which Hye Seogyel is described. But readers will have to get the book for themselves to learn more. So in the conclusion, you resist the subtitle of the conclusion is in lieu of a neat conclusion. But you do gesture towards contemporary communities of Buddhist women, specifically at Larangarh, this place that you mentioned. And you talk about nuns, quote, creatively engaging with existing monastic systems to open up pathways for Buddhist women. So what are these Buddhist women doing with the legacy of Yeshe Tokyo? And why do you think that this is important to include as part of this ongoing evolution of who I Sha Togyo is for the tradition?
- [68:55]
D
I was hoping you asked this question because it's a little bit of a bummer, right? To think about oh Ye Shi Togo is just this abstract virtue of enlightened motherness, but not the embodied human mother and the experience of motherhood as we know it. But ending on the camels and the nouns from Larungar is important to me because they actually have done a lot of critical writing, I think, to reconstruct the identity of a mother in Tibetan Buddhism. They have published, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the interview, the 15 volume Life Stories of great Buddhist women. They have subsequently published many more writings by and about Buddhist women. And almost invariably at the beginning they will write introduction that actually discusses the virtue of motherhood. And I think for them, the argument they are making is quite fascinating, is they will make two arguments. One is that we all know that mothers are the embodiment of wisdom. But then they will go on to also say that mother is this warmth in your heart when you think about your own mother, your own amma. So I think what they are doing And I find really fascinating is they're creatively combining the enlightened quality in the theological, linguistic level of mother as wisdom with the embodied experience of human mothers, but twisted into a positive light. And human mother as a source of maternal warmth, human mother is the source of maternal care. Human mother is something you think about and you feel this joy in your heart. And they are saying that those two are one and the same thing. And they are using that also to argue for higher status of women in Tibetan society. And they're saying, if you respect mother, why would you not respect women? And therefore, women should have higher status, women should be protected, they should have rights to property in marriage, and so on and so forth. So I think that is in their writings, in this creative interpretation, I think, of the Buddhist two layered theological and social gender associated with motherhood. I think they're really doing something that's fascinating and making a very. Not a liberal, progressive, really, argument of all humans are born equal, but really combining the Buddhist virtue of mother and the lived experience of mother as something as grounds for respect for women in society. And I find that to be a fascinating theory to think with.
- [71:41]
C
Yeah. That if, you know, analytically we've distinguished the linguistic, theological from the social, here we have a group of women really creatively trying to retie those things together to make arguments for changing the social sphere. So we said at the outset we try to keep it, the podcast at a length that someone could go for, you know, a six mile run and not have to just keep running to listen to the whole thing. So I'll cut off some of the questions that, you know, again, folks should just read the book. But I'll ask the one last question. So what are you working on now? And what can we look forward to?
- [72:21]
D
Thank you. And for those of you who are out there running on the treadmill, biking, and don't stop because the podcast stops and you go for it. What am I working on now? I'm working on a bunch of things, actually. So the book will be out in a couple of days and I am currently in the thick of editing a volume that, Kate, you actually are also contributing to. So it's the Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary Buddhist Ethics with Eben Ionetti. I am contributing to, to the chapter on sexual ethics of survivorship, which is, I think of as me continuing to deal with my discomfort with the CONSORT chapter and trying to look at it from a contemporary light. And I think, Kate, you are writing a chapter on addiction and other therapeutic treatments, which is very, very exciting. And I'm also starting to think about two things and I have no idea. I mean a bliss full space of not having to decide, but probably have to decide pretty soon is one thing I've been thinking about is the road connecting Sichuan and Tibet and how that was a phenomenon or a really popular traveling route for tourists between China, mainland China and Tibet, especially tar in the 1990s and early 2000s. And I really wanted to look at road as a side of expression for people's spirituality. So thinking about why would tourists go through so much trouble taking on this 1500 mile trek by bike, sometimes on foot, some people walk it, but even if you're driving it is a drag. And why does this difficulty in travel inspires many people to do this? And how does it associate with the zeitgeist at the time in the late 1990s and early 2000s. So road as a form of spirituality is something I'm thinking about. I'm also starting to read about Tibetan Buddhist libraries, so the social function of it in particular. I think there has been a lot of fabulous scholarship on Tibetan Buddhist literature, canonical catalogs, book as a physical object in Tibet. But I think I would like to learn a little bit more about libraries and their social function in Buddhist monastic institutions. So that is something I have just started reading on.
- [75:04]
C
Those are great projects and I want to see them both in fully realized form, especially anything having to do with pilgrimage. Love it. But thank you so much for spending this time talking with us about your wonderful, exciting new book that's about to come out and we'll keep an eye out for future projects. So thank you so much and thanks to all the listeners to the New Books Network.
- [75:28]
D
Thank you Kate. Great talking to you.
- [75:30]
E
Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and Bluesky with the handle ew booksnetwork and subscribe to our weekly substack newsletter@newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.
- [76:05]
D
Sa.