The Words and World of Gebchak Nunnery (Dr. Elizabeth McDougal)

This discussion shares an ethnography of how a Tibetan contemplative nunnery reads, writes and practices the words of its own corpus, thereby demonstrating the orientation of Buddhist learning towards mind-body union. The aim of the discussion is to contrast modernity’s ways of knowing (its tendency to index reality in language of fixed meanings) with the more tacit, embodied knowledge of Tibetan contemplative culture, where orality and literacy, knowledge and creative vision, and theory and method are less distinct. The discussion’s further aim is to consider the practical implications of this contrast for philology in Buddhist Studies, and the need for embodied contextualisation of both knowledge and methodology.