Sensory biographies : lives and deaths among Nepal's Yolmo Buddhists / Robert Desjarilais.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Desjarlais, Robert R.

Series:

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 2.

Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lamas--Nepal--Biography.

Lamas.

Buddhists--Nepal--Biography.

Buddhists.

Death--Religious aspects--Buddhism.

Death.

Helambu Sherpa (Nepalese people)--Religion.

Helambu Sherpa (Nepalese people).

Nepal--Religious life and customs.

Nepal.

Ghang Lama.

Kisang Omu.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 396 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Robert 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:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Note on Transliteration

Kurāgraphy

Hardship, Comfort

Twenty-Seven Ways of Looking at Vision

Startled into Alertness

A Theater of Voices

"I've Gotten Old"

Essays on Dying

"Dying Is This"

The Painful Between

Desperation

The Time of Dying

Death Envisioned

To Phungboche, by Force

Staying Still

Mirror of Deeds

Here and There

"So: Ragged Woman"

Echoes of a Life

A Son's Death

The End of the Body

Last Words

Notes

Glossary of Terms

References

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612762796

9781597348935

1597348937

9781282762794

1282762796

9780520936744

0520936744

OCLC:

475930157