Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths Among Nepal’s Yolmo BuddhistsRobert Desjarlais's graceful ethnography explores the life histories of two Yolmo elders, focusing on how particular sensory orientations and modalities have contributed to the making and the telling of their lives. These two are a woman in her late eighties known as Kisang Omu and a Buddhist priest in his mid-eighties known as Ghang Lama, members of an ethnically Tibetan Buddhist people whose ancestors have lived for three centuries or so along the upper ridges of the Yolmo Valley in north central Nepal. It was clear through their many conversations that both individuals perceived themselves as nearing death, and both were quite willing to share their thoughts about death and dying. The difference between the two was remarkable, however, in that Ghang Lama's life had been dominated by motifs of vision, whereas Kisang Omu's accounts of her life largely involved a "theatre of voices." Desjarlais offers a fresh and readable inquiry into how people's ways of sensing the world contribute to how they live and how they recollect their lives. |
Contents
Hardship Comfort | 20 |
TwentySeven Ways of Looking at Vision | 54 |
Startled into Alertness | 102 |
A Theater of Voices | 133 |
Ive Gotten Old | 152 |
Dying Is This | 176 |
Desperation | 189 |
Death Envisioned | 206 |
Mirror of Deeds | 236 |
Ragged Woman | 255 |
A Sons Death | 309 |
Last Words | 328 |
Notes | 353 |
Glossary of Terms | 375 |
Acknowledgments | 389 |
To Phungboche by Force | 219 |
Other editions - View all
Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths Among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists Robert R. Desjarlais Limited preview - 2003 |
Sensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths Among Nepal's Yolmo Buddhists Robert R. Desjarlais No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
actions asked bardo bhaja bodhicitta bodhisattva body bombo Boudhanath brother Buddhist Chabahil Chhe Gyalbu chhorten conversations cremation cultural daughter death deceased deeds deities dhanga dharma died Dolma dreams dying echo elders engagements everything eyes father funeral rites Ghang Lama gompa hardships heartmind husband Kānchā Karma karmic Kathmandu Kisang Omu Lama's lamaic later Lhatul lineage look marriage married means memories Mheme Milarepa mind moral mother narrative Nepal Nogapu Norbu Nyemba once one's person Phungboche Phur Gyalmu Pramod present rebirth Rinjin Lama ritual sense sensory Shakya shalgar Sherpa Shomkharka skilled social someone sorrow speak spoke stay story talk Tamang tape texts thangka there's things Thodong thought Tibetan Tibetan Buddhist tion took Tsele Natsok Rangdröl understand village vision visual voice Wangel wife woman worry writing Yolmo lamas Yolmo lives Yolmo region Yolmo women