Envisioning the Buddhist Mandala of Bhutan: The Importance of Terminology, Language, and "Secularities"
DESCRIPTION:
Tibetan emic terminologies used as functional equivalents for “religion” and “politics” in Bhutanese textual sources shed light on institutionalized and conceptualized boundaries between societal spheres in pre-modern Bhutan―in the spirit of the multiple secularities approach understood as social distinction and differentiation in a non-evaluating sense. Among the three major Buddhist governments established in the Tibetan cultural area in the 17th century, the Bhutanese government, nowadays as a constitutional monarchy with a Buddhist king, is the only one still in existence. Since Bhutan’s societal order is still profoundly grounded in the cosmological order of Tantric Buddhism, I present here an alternative analytical and inclusive framework for determining social distinction and differentiation in Bhutan in a chronological perspective that does include not only actual institutional arrangements but also integrates formative religious-doctrinal conceptualizations. Consequently, discourses about Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) can adequately consider the importance of terminology, language, and “secularities.”
SPEAKER:
Dagmar Schwerk, the Khyentse Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Tibetan Buddhist Studies, University of British Columbia
MODERATOR:
Christoph Emmrich, Director, Centre for South Asian Studies; Associate Professor in Buddhist Studies and the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto …...more
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