Andrew Quintman: “The notion of sacred geography is fascinating to me”

How did you end up becoming a scholar of Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas? Was it an interest in this geographical space that encouraged you to study Buddhism? Or was it an interest in Buddhism that led you to explore life in South Asia?

That’s an interesting way to put it! Let me tell you how it all came together for me. So, I had a really keen interest in Buddhism as well as South Asia when I was pursuing my undergraduate studies at Hampshire College. It is a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts in the United States. I was a philosophy major. I was deeply interested in the big questions of life, so I was studying mainly Western philosophy. I soon realised that philosophy was good for articulating questions and developing theoretical answers to those questions but it seemed somehow to lack a practical aspect. I was looking for something more. That’s when I started to become interested in Asian religions. When I did a Study Abroad programme in Tibetan Studies in India and Nepal with the School for International Training, it absolutely changed my life. I went back some years later and became the director of that programme. Being in Kathmandu helped me appreciate Buddhism not just as a philosophy or something from a textbook but as a living tradition and practice. By the way, I have also lived in Delhi for two years to learn the Tibetan language and translation. Through my experience in South Asia, I found Buddhist teachers who seemed really authentic and kind of resonated with me.

A lot of scholars working in the field of Buddhist Studies are also practitioners. Do scholarship and practice necessarily enrich each other, or is it a more complicated sort of relationship since scholars are also expected to be objective?

That’s a great question! Previous generations of academics saw this as more of a conflict. There is a contradiction in the sense that, as an academic, you need to create a scholarly distance and have a critical approach to your topic. To be an insider or practitioner could, therefore, be seen as compromising. In my generation, and more so with the younger generation, those two perspectives — insider and outsider — are both really important. They can sometimes come into conflict with each other but otherwise they mutually support each other. As an insider, you have access to certain kinds of knowledge and understanding, a kind of context that is very difficult to get purely as an outsider who is a historian, critic or scholar.

If you don’t mind my asking, which tradition do you practise in?

Oh, sure! I practise mainly in the Tibetan tradition. The first and closest teacher I had was a Tibetan master called Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. He passed away a few years ago. He was the abbot of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, a monastery in Woodstock, New York, where I lived after graduating college. It became a place for me to imbibe and understand the practice deeply. Living in Asia, especially India and Nepal, I had the good fortune to be in contact with some of the greatest living masters. I have had close connections mainly in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism but was also extremely fortunate to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama a few times with my students at the School for International Training. He gave us a private audience almost every semester, and kindly engaged with the students.

Tell us about your forthcoming book Buddhism on the Border: The Formation of Religious Tradition on the Frontier of Tibet and Nepal with Columbia University Press.

Buddhism on the Border is related to the figure of Milarepa, who was the protagonist of my book The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa (2014). Prior to that, I translated Tsangnyön Heruka’s biography of Milarepa into English as The Life of Milarepa (2010). With Buddhism on the Border, I turn to a famous retreat centre where Milarepa meditated for 12 years. It is called Brag dkar rta so, which means White Rock Horse Tooth in English. It is a really powerful location that used to be a hermitage and became a monastery in later years. It acquired a more influential position as it became a centre for book printing and wood block printing. These activities were expensive but important for the transmission of Buddhist teachings. My study is located in the 18th and 19th century through the lens of a prolific writer, scholar and lama named Chökyi Wangchuk. He was the abbot of the monastery. He was very progressive in some ways. He had a vision not only to rebuild what was decimated due to war in previous decades in that region but also to bring together various kinds of Tibetan Buddhist traditions to create something new.

This book looks at Tibet’s southern border with Nepal, and the Mangyul Guntang corridor in particular because it is close to the main trade route between Tibet and South Asia. The small hermitage is far from the power centre of Lhasa, so it has been absent from academic discussions of Buddhist history and culture. My attempt is to study and show how borderlands shaped the development and transmission of Buddhism in this area. Because of the proximity to the trade route, there was a high degree of economic and religious mobility.

What are your thoughts on “sacred geography” as a theoretical framework in Buddhist studies? Does it seem relevant to your work, or would you call it a bit dated?

The notion of sacred geography has been fascinating to me both as a scholar and as a practitioner. It is important to understand the role that landscape plays in the lives of people in Tibet and in parts of South Asia such as India, Nepal and Bhutan. In fact, the entire Himalayan range is dotted with locations that are imbued with significance as sites of powerful religious practice. Buddhism on the Border is about both, the impact of a place on forms of religious expression, and the role religion plays in creating and recreating a place. When you adopt an interdisciplinary approach, and look at historical, biographical and doctrinal literature, poetry, ritual texts, inscriptions, and various other sources, you understand how sacred geography interacts with human geography and cultural geography. You learn to appreciate how people’s relationship with a particular landscape supports their spiritual practice. There is a dialogue between the outer landscape and the inner landscape.

You have been working on a project called Life of the Buddha. The story of Shakyamuni has been told by various authors. What makes this project unique?

It is an interdisciplinary project looking at textual and visual representations of the Buddha’s life. It is a collaboration between myself at Wesleyan University and two professors at the University of Virginia – Kurtis R Schaeffer and Ariana Maki. The project is based on 17th century murals found at the Takden Phuntsokling monastery in western Tibet. It used to be the seat of the Jonang lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. These murals, depicting the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, are accompanied by an extraordinary literary narrative by Taranatha — the founder of the monastery — often referred as The Sun of Faith (Dad pa’I nyin byed).

We travelled to this place, and were astounded by the Jonang murals that visually recreate events from the life story of the Buddha. This project involved photographing murals, translating texts, and analysing the links between the texts and the images. Before this project, very little was written about these murals, and there was no complete visual documentation either. We have created a digital resource for scholars and practitioners to engage with these images and the literature produced by Taranatha. Apart from leaving behind a biography of the Buddha, he also composed a scene-by-scene painting manual. It is believed that it was meant for those who were responsible for creating the Jonang murals. One of the things that really stands out is Taranatha’s attempt to foreground the landscape.

The master-disciple relationship is central to the practice of Tibetan Buddhism, and these power dynamics have come up for discussion during the recent MeToo movement. When Buddhist nuns and lay Buddhist women practitioners spoke up about sexual harassment in religious centres, how did you deal with that?

You are right. The figure of the guru is important in many Buddhist traditions and especially in the Vajrayana Tantric traditions of Buddhism. We know that a position of authority is ripe for abuse. There are many historical examples of this, and it continues to take place. It is important for us to understand how and where this kind of abuse takes place so that we can work to the best of our abilities to expose it and mitigate it. There are many people — South Asian as well as western scholars and practitioners — who have dedicated their lives to this work. I think we have to acknowledge that some Buddhist traditions are orthodox and they have been resistant to change. For Buddhism to continue to be relevant, they must change. At the same time, there are many progressive Buddhist teachers speaking up on the issue of nuns’ ordination. In some parts of the world women have not been permitted to get full ordination as a bhikkhuni and this has left nuns in a subordinate position. There are situations wherein the junior most monk is considered superior to the senior most nun. These kinds of power structures are really antithetical to the egalitarian spirit of Buddhism.

The Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women has been doing some pathbreaking work in highlighting such concerns. Do you follow their work?

Yes! They have done tremendous work, and there is a lot more to do. That’s the way of the future. I have to be honest and realistic with my American students who have a very romantic view of what Buddhism looks like. They are often unaware of the social problems in South Asian contexts where Buddhism is practised. I try to show them a bigger picture.

What sort of pedagogical approach do you adopt while discussing religious topics in a secular environment? Do you include aspects of contemplative practice?

I teach in a religious studies department in a secular university. Many students are interested in practice, and not just theory. I am always clear with them that I am not a Buddhist teacher. I am an academic. But yes, I do have a long exposure and training in practice. In my seminar on Buddhist traditions, students watch videos of teachers from Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana and modern Western traditions. We talk about what practice is like. Sometimes, in class, we explore mindfulness-based stress reduction practices developed by Jon Kabat-Zin. One of the basic practices is an introduction to mindful eating. Everyone takes a raisin and directs their attention to what it looks like, smells like, tastes like. They hold it, squeeze it, place it on their tongue, notice their physical reaction to it. Over the course of five or 10 minutes, they slow down the process of eating that is usually automatic. When this process is broken down, students get to reflect on the nature of how we live.

How does the work of bell hooks speak to you? In numerous books, she writes about how her scholarship and pedagogy were informed by her Buddhist practice.

It’s interesting that you bring up bell hooks; one of my introductory courses has readings around Buddhism and racism. The work produced by bell hooks is critical to understanding how to approach the social issues we have today. I would also like to mention Jan Willis, the first Black woman to teach Buddhist Studies, who was my predecessor in the Department of Religious Studies at Wesleyan University. She is a Professor Emerita who has done some amazing, ground-breaking work on Buddhism and race. The work of Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens and Jasmine Syedullah is also quite significant. They talk about “radical dharma” while discussing contemporary Buddhist practice in the US. Dharma must be used to rectify the deepest social ills we face today. Else, it’s not true Dharma.

Tell us about your work with the Buddhist Digital Resource Centre. What digital tools and materials are available to support the study of Tibetan Buddhism?

I am currently the president of the Buddhist Digital Resource Centre. It is the world’s largest digital library of Buddhist texts. It owes its existence to the mission of E Gene Smith — who was the field director of the Library of Congress Field Office in India between 1980 and 1985. When Tibetans in exile came to India, many of them showed up with nothing but their religious texts. He played a major role in preserving, reprinting, photographing, digitizing and disseminating them. He took early retirement from the Library of Congress and founded the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Centre in Massachusetts in 1999. It is now called the Buddhist Digital Resource Centre. We hope that our rich archival resources can be useful to scholars, practitioners, researchers and translators. Apart from digitizing Buddhist texts in Tibetan, we are also working with Mongolian, Burmese and Khmer texts.

Given your long-standing engagement with Tibetan Buddhism as a scholar-practitioner, and your strong ties with Tibetan community members in various parts of the world, how do you view the ongoing non-violent campaign for a free Tibet?

Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in Tibetan communities is familiar with the suffering they have faced and cannot fail to be moved by it. I hope that, in the future, they have a place of their own to practise their culture freely. When will that happen? Who knows? But, as the prominent Tibetan intellectual Jamyang Norbu — who lived in Dharamshala for many years, and now lives in the US — says, “All conditioned phenomena are impermanent, so why should the Tibetan situation be an exception?”

Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.