Himalayan hermitess : the life of a Tibetan Buddhist nun / Kurtis R. Schaeffer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schaeffer, Kurtis R.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orgyan Chokyi, 1675-1729.

Orgyan Chokyi.

Buddhist nuns--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Biography.

Buddhist nuns.

China--Tibet Autonomous Region.

Tibet Autonomous Region (China)--Religious life and customs.

Tibet Autonomous Region (China).

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 220 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.

Summary:

Orgyan Chokyi (1675-1729) spent her life in Dolpo, the highest inhabited region of the Nepal Himalayas. Illiterate and expressly forbidden by her master to write her own life story, Orgyan Chokyi received divine inspiration to compose one of the most forthright and engaging spiritual autobiographies of the Tibetan literary tradition. Her life story is the oldest of only four Tibetan autobiographies authored by women. It is also a rare example of writing by a pre-modern Buddhist woman, and thus holds a unique place in Buddhist literature as a whole. Translator Kurtis Schaeffer prefaces the text with an illuminating study of the life and times of Orgyan Chokyi and an extended analysis of the hermitess's view of the relation between gender, suffering, and liberation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [187]-213) and index.

ISBN:

0195152980

0195152999

OCLC:

52424038