the biographical process of a tibetan lama

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The Biographical Process of aTibetan LamaTanya Maria Zivkovic aa University of Adelaide, AustraliaPublished online: 23 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Tanya Maria Zivkovic (2010): The Biographical Process of aTibetan Lama, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 75:2, 171-189

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The Biographical Process of a Tibetan Lama

Tanya Maria ZivkovicUniversity of Adelaide, Australia

abstract This paper is concerned with the social life of a deceased Tibetan Buddhistlama. It details the role of death and successive lives in a lifestory that ends not withthe passing of the subject but with his rebirth. Ethnographic attendance to tales toldabout the lama’s death and reincarnation, and their textualization in the Tibetanconvention of hagiography, or namtar, draw attention to quintessentially Tibetanunderstandings of the lifecourse. I argue that posthumous forms of the lama challengethe notion of biological death, and, in so doing, demonstrate that life can continue innew mediums including relics, reincarnation and hagiographical representations.

keywords Death, reincarnation, life course, biography, Tibetan Buddhism

Introducing Khenchen Sangay Tenzin

During saka dawa, the religious festival that commemorates the birth,death and enlightenment of the Buddha, a young incarnation of themonastery’s former abbot led his fellow brethren in prayers recited

in his temple in Darjeeling, India. A stream of local villagers and townspeoplepaid homage to the 14-year-old boy, who, perched on a high throne, sat elevatedabove two rows of elder lamas and nearest to the altar with its golden sculp-tured depictions of Buddhist deities. The procession of laity bowed down toreceive his blessing ( jinlab) with hands pressed together in a position ofprayer. In a momentary exchange, he touched their heads as they presentedhim with money and long white scarves (kata), the traditional offeringsbequeathed to reincarnate lamas. Continuing in their devotional tour of thetemple, lay devotees paid their respect to the relics of the young reincarnation’spredecessor, the spiritually acclaimed Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, directing theirdeference to remains enshrined in an elaborately adorned reliquary (chorten).

ethnos, vol. 75:2, june 2010 (pp. 171– 189)

# 2010 Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francisissn 0014-1844 print/issn 1469-588x online. doi: 10.1080/00141841003678767

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The participants in this devotional circuit wore small pendants around theirnecks. One side carried the image of the young boy poised with ceremonial hatand robes. The other contained a print of his former self, 70 years old with along grey beard as the late monastery abbot.

In Tibetan tradition, reincarnated lamas and their holy relics contain thehistory of a lineage of incarnations.1 These succeeding forms are continuingentities that extend a linear lifestory of the lama and also reproduce a circularnarrative, refashioning the socio-religious ideal of the Buddha and the blueprintof his biography, the exemplary figure whose birth, death and enlightenmentrepresent the path toward spiritual awakening. Commonly propagated bytheir disciples, stories about these religious adepts often begin as oral accountsof their mystical feats and abilities and culminate in narratives of saintly deathand reincarnation. These tales are faithfully circulated among disciples anddevotees before being woven into the formalized biographical traditionknown as namtar (the story of ‘full-liberation’ often documented after thepassing of a spiritual master), a tangible representation where the life of thelama is etched through word and inscribed onto the world.

In the field of anthropology, life history research tends to draw on certain(usually Euro-American) assumptions about the lifecourse, particularly its tem-poral dimensions (Crapanzano 1985; Langness & Frank 2001; Myerhoff 1978;Van Gennep 1977). In this body of work, it is often taken for granted that ourlifecourse ends in inevitable, irrevocable death (Langness & Frank 2001:113).While recent works have problematized the naturalization of death (Desjarlais2003; Gupta 2002; Kaufman & Morgan 2005), it is largely taken for granted thatwhen it comes to the end of life, biology can transcend cultural context. Thedeceased body will break down; the matter once contained within will leakout from our defunct apertures; skin will tighten and lose its elasticity; ourconstituent parts decompose; death is thus an unsurpassable and universaltermination of our bodily existence.

In these writings, the experience of grief and loss that accompanies the deathof loved ones reflects a belief that when a person dies we are no longer able tohave an embodied engagement with them. The deceased may in some senselive on in the memories and dreams of others, in their inscriptions on theworld: through photographs, writings, memorials, film and other devises(Behar 1991). However, the shared understanding that these technologiessignify the deceased does not ordinarily mean that they embody their presence.This paper emphasizes a need for more critical attention to culturally specificunderstandings of life and death, for the presupposition that our life trajectories


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are ‘natural’ and that biology determines our experience of death has littlerelevance to the life-histories of eminent Tibetan Buddhist lamas.

Among their devotees, spiritually acclaimed Tibetan Buddhist religiousfigures are believed to be an embodiment of ‘uncommon spirituality’, exudinga certain ‘spiritual presence’ that can have ‘positive effects’ on those whocome into contact with them (Ray 1986:59). These ‘effects’ are not limited toa singular physical form or lifespan: the lama continues to engage with theworld in various posthumous modalities. Particularly eminent high-statuslamas are believed to be able to transcend death and transmogrify intoobjects or into other people in ways that continue their lifestory. In much thesame way, the relics of the Buddha have been explored as an extension of hisbiography (Strong 2004). Relics develop a ‘powerful narrative’ (Strong2004:7), inscribing new chapters in a biographical process that ends not withthe death of the Buddha but with the activity of his relics.2 Even after thepassing of the Buddha, his biography goes on. Relics embody a biographicalblueprint, the quest toward enlightenment, the becoming of a Buddha andhis saintly death. Directly implicated in Strong’s notion of biographicalprocess is a common Buddhist belief that persons can reside in objects anddifferent temporalities, beyond the confines of a singular corporal form(Empson 2007, see also Gell 1998; Strathern 1994).

I extend Strong’s (2004) thesis on the biographical process of the Buddha toinclude the lives of spiritual masters in the Tibetan tradition. Where Strong(2004) asserts that ‘relics of the Buddha can best be understood as expressionsand extensions of his biography’ (p. 229), I contend that relics, along with otherconditions – including reincarnation, bodily transmogrification and hagio-graphy itself – are also ‘spreaders and continuators’ (Strong 2004:229) of thelama’s presence.

Discussing the Lama’s DeceaseIn 2004–2006, during an 18-month period of ethnographic fieldwork in

India’s Darjeeling Hills, I lived next door to Sakya Guru Monastery, a religiousinstitution in the Sakya3 tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The monastery housedaround 130 monks, many of whom were young novice monks from theDarjeeling area and also Nepal, who, along with their monastic training,were undertaking classes in Tibetan and English language. Many others wereinvolved in performing more advanced religious rituals for the local communityas well as undertaking retreats. A small number of senior monks were Tibetanexiles who had escaped from Tibet after 1959. The local community informed


Biographical Process of a Tibetan Lama 173

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me that this monastery operated under a remarkable lama who performed themiraculous feat of producing relics at the time of his death. This lama,Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, a learned scholar, experienced meditator andesteemed monastic abbot passed away in 1990 and his reincarnation was recog-nized and formally enthroned in 1997. The supranormal activities said to occuraround the time of his death were central themes in the biographical narrativesabout him that circulated in the local vicinity before becoming inscribed in text.These activities, which included the production of holy relics from his bones,the delayed decomposition of his body and later his reincarnation into a newbodily form, created new possibilities for interacting with the lama beyondthe limits of a singular life.

With the passage of time spent in one place, I heard many tales aboutKhenchen Sangay Tenzin’s capacity to manifest in multiple forms. His pur-ported transmogrification involved the appearance of images produced inbones remaining in the funeral pyre, the formation of pearl-like balls (ringsel)from bone, as well as altered atmospheric conditions in the form of rainbows.Other marks of mastery included the abbot’s ability to remain in a state of med-itation with no bodily decomposition, the sweet smell of flowers around thebody days after death and the ability to consciously and willfully incarnateinto another physical form. Narrated stories of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’sability to manifest in multiple forms signaled his mastery over the processesof death and, in turn, augmented the devotion of his followers.

Tibetan Buddhist bodily relics, like the relics of Theravada Buddhism(Tambiah 1984, 1985; Taylor 1993, 1997), are often viewed as signs of spiritualmastery that emerge at the time of death. Indeed, particular types of bodilyrelics are categorized within early scriptures as indicative of a saintly death.Signs that indicate a saintly death include images on bones; ringsel, or small crys-talline spheres emerging from bodily remains; lights from or around the corpse;mysterious sounds surrounding the corpse; earth tremors and atmosphericphenomenon (Martin 1994:281–2).4

Ringsel are etymologically understood as ‘held/proliferating (bsrel) for a longtime (ring)’ (Germano 2004:54), or ‘“kept for a long time”, hence, “cherished”’(Martin 1994:274). The multiplication of these spheres, or ‘increasing bone’(peldung), refers to the proliferation of ringsel over time (Allione 1984:185, 203–4; Martin 1994:277; Germano 2004:55). In the context of my fieldwork, all infor-mants referred to these spheres as ringsel. According to scripture, distinctions aremade between variant types of spheres with divergent bodily origins and corre-sponding differences in color, size and strength. The ringsel discussed in this



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paper are of two types: those that formed on the remains (bones) of the lama’scorpse and those that developed from tsa-tsa, iconographic figures molded fromclay combined with physical remains and produced by disciples.

Faith, however, was not shaped by these occurrences alone. As Gupta(1992:189) notes in relation to narratives of reincarnation, ‘the circulation ofthese stories itself depends on (and creates) an acknowledgment of both theirpossibility and authenticity’. Veneration of the lama was formulated throughthe recollection and remembrance of these signs. Narratives of his death func-tioned as mnemonic devices in a biographical process that transported the lamafrom the past and into the present. The following accounts are re-presentations,legendary tales which, over time, became increasingly sedimented in the mindsof followers.

Revealing Rainbows, Resisting Rigor Mortis, Transmogrifying BonesA week after Khenchen Sangay Tenzin died his body was still warm and when he wascremated his bones transformed into the shape of deities. It is after death that we cantruly know a lama and their ability. Chatral Rinpoche,5 a very high lama and a goodmeditator, ordered that the monastery not tell the public that he had died. We wereinstructed to say he was sick but then after three or four days the weather changed.There were rainbows in the sky like flowers and people began to know. People werecrying and they wanted to come in and see him. They wanted to see his body, to bewith him. People were saying that something is happening in Darjeeling, a Rinpochehas died. He was showing himself not just to the monks here but to the whole ofDarjeeling. Everyone could see it in the sky. They felt these blessings from Rinpoche.

Attempting to convey the saintly status of the former abbot, Tashi, a monasticfollower of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, recounted memories of the abbot’spassing that encapsulated cultural signs of spiritual mastery. Seated behind adesk in the monastery office, he informed me that the spiritual realization ofthe lama is synonymous with a display of his accomplishments at the time ofdeath. High-lamas reveal their power when they are in-between bodies; atsuch junctures, their mind stream is particularly amenable to affecting anddirecting the processes of the body and the world at large. No longer confinedto a singular bodily form, Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s followers believed that hecould manifest through other appearances or markers of saintly death and thesewere embraced as both an indication and outcome of an elevated spiritualstatus. These accomplishments were narrated as an ability to impede the phys-ical flaccidity ordinarily preceding rigor mortis, retain a meditative state,



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suspend the processes of decomposition, maintain warmth in the body, producea pleasant scent, transmogrify bones into images of Buddhist deities andmanifest rainbows. Monitoring the post-death meditation state (thugdam),another high-lama directed the monks not to tell the public that KhenchenSangay Tenzin had died because they, eager to pay their last respects, couldinterfere with the meditation or bring about its premature cessation. Accordingto Tibetan convention, disrupting the body after death through noisy soundsor emotional laments can prove detrimental to the mind-stream of thedeceased (Childs 2004:146; Desjarlais 2003:278–9). Nonetheless, communi-cation persisted between the lama and his followers: when the weather beganto change and rainbows appeared in the sky ‘like flowers’, the local communityin Darjeeling knew that a lama was dying despite the monastery withholdingthis information.

Rainbows and other atmospheric phenomena are culturally understood assigns of religious importance in Tibetan cosmology that often accompany thedeath of high-lamas (Mills 2003:285). Tibetan Buddhism has a long historyof literature that describes the nature of death and outlines skillful waysto explore the dying process and even attain liberation from the cycle ofrebirth (Germano 1997:460). Among early hagiographies, there are manyaccounts of the extraordinary transmogrifications of men, and sometimeswomen. The most remarkable of these bodily transformations is therainbow body ( jalu), a sign of full-liberation, where the deceased body literallydisappears into light, leaving nothing behind other than hair and fingernails(Kapstein 2004; Tokarska-Bakir 2000:110; Vargas 2003:17). This imagery oflight is evident in the accounts of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, with particularreference to atmospheric lights or rainbows. When followers saw the rain-bows in the sky, they ‘felt blessings’ from Khenchen Sangay Tenzin. Blessings( jinlab) were palpable manifestations of the lama’s presence. ‘Received by wayof giving’, is, according to Martin (1994:274), a philologically correct meaningof the Tibetan term ‘byin-rlabs’ (jinlab), a reciprocal relatedness where ‘gifts’ arereceived from venerated beings that are ‘intended to assist in the developmentof those same qualities in the receiving individual’; and reception is dependentupon the faith of the follower and the extent of the lama’s spiritual mastery,highlighting a reciprocity between the deceased lama and his devotees.In this context, objects can be imbued with the qualities of persons, andpersons, not necessarily limited to ‘selfhood’, ‘skin’ or ‘conceptual unity’, canmake anthropomorphic correspondences (Jackson 1998:6–7) with worldlyphenomena.



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Ringsel and ReincarnationKhenchen Sangay Tenzin was a great master who stayed in thugdam, for nine dayswith his body erect in meditation posture producing warmth and a sweet scent likeflowers. And there were many colored lights in the sky appearing as flowers. Thenwhen he was cremated there was a lot of ringsel found in the ashes and some bonesremained in the shape of Guru Rinpoche.6 From other bones in the funeral pyre wemade small chorten shape statues called tsa-tsa and we distributed them to themonks. Afterwards more ringsel manifested from the top of one of these tsa- tsa.This can happen in the case of great masters. His present incarnation was found inDharamsala. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Sakya Trizin recognizedhim as the incarnation of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin.

The production of ringsel is commonly featured in narratives about KhenchenSangay Tenzin. The transformation of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s corpseinto small crystalline pearl-like spheres and bones in the shape of the popularBuddhist deity, Guru Rinpoche, acquired great significance. As objects ofworship, they elevated, exalted and embalmed the status of the lama.

In relics, the lama is both omnipresent and localized, paradoxically one andmany. As sites of his extended presence, they have pragmatic value enablingdevotees to access the deceased lama in a tangible and immediate form. Anthro-pomorphism of these objects became apparent through their ability to docertain things the living lama could do. Transmitting blessings to followersand replicating themselves over time, these material forms, with their abilityto multiply, represent and substitute the lama, they can continue his lifestorybeyond physical demise.

The most dynamic duplication of the lama is his successive human incarna-tion, Tenzin Kunga Gyaltsen. Devotees’ remembrance of his retrospective life,sustained by the circulation of narratives that emphasize the power he revealedduring death, affirm their faith in his new reincarnated form. Multiple manifes-tations, as extensions of the lama, inform a belief in the continuity of presence.Collective representations of the lama are brought into the present and carriedinto the future by both the stories that continue to be told and the embodimentsthat inspire them.

Multi-sited PresenceDorje, another monk in the Sakya Monastery, shared the following descriptionof Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s passing. His narration shares many features withthe two aforementioned accounts. Recounting the proliferation of ringsel and



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the successive physical incarnation of the lama, he further accentuates the waysthat engagement with the lama is made possible after his death.

When he died I was very small, it was more than fourteen years ago. I remember onthe day when we burnt his body many people came. The body was burnt right outthe front of the temple. I remember it was incredible that day. We all thought it wasvery amazing. The weather was really something special and in the sky the cloudswere like flowers. Falling they were, like flowers falling in the sky. And there wererainbows, rainbows all over the sky in circles. You would see them there, then theywould move there, then there. We saw this and that’s why we felt, we believe andwe know that our abbot was really powerful. After he was cremated we searchedin the ashes and there was so much ringsel. Some of it is with the reliquary(chorten) in the temple. You can see it in there. When we found it, it was white andshiny, like pearls, like little pearls. They are very strong; you cannot break them.This ringsel is very precious. When we found the ringsel we knew our abbot to be amaster . . .

A lama shows their power when they die. When Khenchen Sangay Tenzin died hismind did not leave. A little tiny part of his mind stayed in his body. We call it sheba.7

His sheba stayed in him. It stayed in his body for nine days. Usually when a persondies their mind leaves the body but he kept his mind in his body. Because he kepthis mind in his body there was some warmth on his skin. For days his body waslike this, warm. This is a sign of him being a master.

The supranormal feats of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin were not limited to hisdeath. His reincarnation also served to inspire reverence among his followers.

In the monastery we did not notice it. But some of the lay people in Darjeeling sawthe sky become rainbows like flowers again. They say the sky was the same as whenwe cremated Khenchen Sangay Tenzin. It was the same time that he was comingback. They saw the sky, the flowers, the rainbows and thought he was being reborn.

In the process of physical death, according to Dorje’s narrative, KhenchenSangay Tenzin maintained the state of thugdam over nine days, keeping amind or part of his mind (sheba) in his body in a conscious state. Accordingto Buddhism, all sentient beings possess a quality of non-ordinary, luminousawareness, but unless the being abandons habitual cognitive and sensorymodes of being in the world, their awareness is unrecognized when alive, atthe time of death and through the journey of successive rebirths. Mind is notpresented as monadic in character. Rather it is manifold, a dynamic processof which sheba or consciousness is part. In Tibetan medical and religious



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discourse, there are eight sheba: the five sensory consciousnesses, and mentalconsciousness, afflictive consciousness and ground consciousness (Tai Situpa2005:229–30). At the time of death, the sheba dissolve in stages, expressing theloss of each sense faculty in the gradual termination of human life. In thismanner, the dying body is something out of our control. The ability toconsciously control the process of death is considered unlikely for the noviceBuddhist; however, it is in direct contrast to the ordinary dissolution of thehuman body that the spiritual master is able to mentally exert power over theprocess of death and choose the circumstances of his next birth. In Dorje’saccount, the rainbows that dominated the sky at the time of KhenchenSangay Tenzin’s passing re-appeared and were witnessed by some of his faithfuldevotees as a sign of his rebirth. These visual displays of altered atmosphericphenomena were interpreted as concurrent with the lama, signifying theextension of his presence beyond death.

One week after the cremation, monks from the monastery rummagedthrough the funeral pyre in search of ringsel. Unlike the commoditization of reli-gious relics from Thai Saints (Tambiah 1984, 1985; Taylor 1993, 1997), I have notheard any reports of these ringsel entering the market place. Rather, it iscommon practice for ringsel to be divided up and distributed to the followersof a lama with the remainder enclosed within a chorten. Adorned with sparklingjewels, a golden memorial chorten of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin formed part ofthe devotional circuit that devotees traversed in their circumambulation ofthe monastery temple. Monks and laity alike would prostrate toward theringsel. Widely considered to derive from and represent the lama, ringsel wereconsidered capable of transmitting blessings to recipient devotees. Ringseloften manifest from the cremated body, but they can also develop outside ofcremation contexts, forming from the unburned deceased body, the skin andhair of living persons, even from images (Martin 1994:285).

The transmogrification of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin was evocative of thesigns of saintly death represented in scripture. ‘Signs’ were inclusive of the relicphenomenon: the appearance of images produced in bones remaining in thefuneral pyre, the formation of ringsel, as well as the production of altered atmos-pheric conditions in the form of rainbows, three of the major classificationsdescribed by Martin (1994:281–2) in his citation of the ‘Blazing Remains’Tantra. Clearly, post-mortem marks of saintliness have filtered down the reli-gious hierarchy to shape the terminology and everyday discourse of monasticand lay practitioners; however, the above narratives of the lama’s patronsinclude other legitimizing features to detect saintly status that were considered



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as saintly as the scriptural indicators mentioned above. These included theabbot’s ability to remain in a state of meditation with no bodily decomposition,and the appearance as well as scent of flowers around the body at the time ofdeath and rebirth. Further, the hagiography of Khenchen Sangay Tenzinincludes colored conch shells and his intact or unburned skull to the holyrelics discovered in the funeral pyre. The appearance of these material formsin the ashes of extraordinarily high lamas is not uncommon practice amongTibetans. Woven into the fabric of monastic discourse, these signs constituteda shared, collective representation of saintly death. Thus, people learn to recog-nize mastery through the stories that embalm the status of lamas. Veneration isboth formulated and conventionalized through the recollection and narration ofthese signs.

Buddhist scholars have observed that the more saintly religious adeptsappear to be, the more powers followers attribute to them (Tambiah 1984),and this ability extends beyond death through the celebration of relics. Asobjects, they personify and are shaped by the life from where they came,active materials that exemplify a cultural belief where ‘seemingly inert, “dead”substances can take on life, especially in response to devotion directed theirway’ (Martin 1994:277). Thus, relics are not only residual vestiges of a deceasedsaint. For his devotees, Khenchen Sangay Tenzin is not seen as a cohesive sep-arate entity confined to one singular body and lifespan. Relics of his previousbody are an extension of his being. The incarnated form is a continuation ofhis human lineage. The atmospheric conditions of the phenomenal world arealso interpreted as his reflection. Because Khenchen Sangay Tenzin is not con-ceived as wholly separate from objects that symbolize him, his image bearsmore than pictorial representation, his relics are more than symbolic and hisreincarnation is more than substitutionally or functionally equivalent. Theseforms, in some sense, are embodiments of the lama. Thus, for the believer,the relics themselves are not to be distinguished from the sanctified formwhence they came (Martin 1994). Phenomenologically speaking, remnants ofphysical form continually embody the deceased’s presence.

As the physical body of the lama is not seen as a cohesive and separate entity,his followers do not conceive Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s existence as confinedto one singular body or lifespan. Enduring through time, the lama continues tohave a critical and influential social presence through the extension of his life innew physical forms and the stories that circulate about them. ComplementingStrong’s (2004) examination of relics as a continuation of a biographical processthat begins with the Buddha’s previous lives, these narratives articulate the



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expansion of a Tibetan master’s lifestory through a successive incarnation,which – together with his relics and signs of saintly death – assert an extensionof his presence. These successive forms reproduce the past and enable followersto participate in a living tradition (Trainor 1997:148).

The Reincarnated LamaThe reincarnation of high-lamas are enmeshed in stories of supranormal

events (Barlocher 1982; Ray 1986:42) that are reported to religious authoritiesand followed by search parties who set out to find their reappearance (Mills2003:268). The recognition or recruitment of an incarnate lama often followsthe appearance of signs that signify the place and conditions of rebirth to his devo-tees. These might include a dream occurring to a lama’s follower, a relation to thedeceased or a parent of the new incarnate; the child’s ability to recite religioustexts; an affinity for religious practice or objects; or recognition of previouslyowned ritual items used in their former life or people known in previous lives(Aziz 1976:349). I was told that Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s followers, after witnes-sing the rainbows that surrounded the monastery, made fervent requests to SakyaTrizin, the head of the Sakya lineage, to find the reincarnation of their spiritualleader. Then, together with the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Sakya Trizin confirmedhis rebirth in a 2-year-old boy who was later enthroned at the monastery inDarjeeling and given the name Tenzin Kunga Gyaltsen Rinpoche. The methodfor the verification of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin entailed the designation ofnames of likely candidates, children with particular religious attributes, ontopieces of paper contained in a vessel and placed before a shrine over a week ofprayer. The ritual, which took place in the room of the late abbot, was presidedover by monks from his monastery. Upon notification of the name that wasdrawn from the vessel, both the Dalai Lama and Sakya Trizin confirmed theselection through their own divinatory insight, and the official recognition andenthronement ceremonies were able to proceed.

Tenzin Kunga Gyaltsen is considered to be the incarnation of KhenchenSangay Tenzin and faith in this embodied transformation or transition isaffirmed in the narratives that emphasize the lama’s ability as they proceedfrom one body to the next. The memory of the incarnate lama is assumed toextend back to their previous lives; the abilities or predispositions from onelife recur in the next.

In a conversation with one of Tenzin Kunga Gyaltsen’s teachers, I wasinformed that the young incarnation, who – at the time of my fieldwork –was 14 years old, was exceptionally intelligent because of the extent of his



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progress in the dharma during his former life. His teacher explained that we allhave imprints (bag chags) from our previous lives, but for the majority of us theseimprints are not understood. The situation is different for an incarnate lamawhose present physical existence is a conscious continuation of prior lives.He explained:

Rinpoche is very intelligent. In his former life he was a great lama, very scholarly andpowerful; he was in meditation for nine days after passing away. Because he was anexceptional practitioner, scholar and philosopher it is not difficult for Rinpoche tolearn. When he is taught something new he understands very quickly and I don’tmean just superficial knowledge but real sophisticated understanding. KhenchenSangay Tenzin taught the Dalai Lama many times; his wisdom was extraordinary.When Rinpoche finishes his philosophy studies here he will return to [his] Sakyamonastery in the role of abbot. He is an incarnation of a very high-lama, very special.

In this testimony to an intelligence that is attributed simultaneously to formerand current incarnations, the young Rinpoche is seen as an ongoing manifes-tation of his former life. In the case of Tenzin Kunga Gyalten, his karmicimprints included a propensity toward the religious teachings; however, it isnot uncommon for physical imprints, such as marks on the body, moles orbirthmarks, to be taken as a form of evidence that links the current incarnationto their former body (Mills 2003:286). In the early stages of my fieldwork, Iwas introduced to a young man who had a large birthmark on his forearm.He informed me that this mark was evidence of his former life in Tibet.Having consulted a local lama during his childhood, his family discoveredthat it was an imprint of an injury the boy had received in a previous existence.The scars of another body were inscribed onto the young man’s currentphysical form.

Within the confines of a gruelling daily schedule, a conversation I had withTenzin Kunga Gyaltsen about his studies revealed some biographical infor-mation. When he said, ‘I have always studied philosophy. I studied it wayback in the past. I study it in the present and will continue to study philosophyinto the future’, I perceived his use of tense as incorporating a duration limitedto his apparent 14-year-old lifespan and progressing into a ‘future’ defined by theyears lived in a single body. However, I am aware that a faithful follower ofKhenchen Sangay Tenzin would in all likelihood perceive the words of theyoung reincarnation differently. The life of the spiritually realized lama doesnot flow in a singular and limited direction. The continuity of the lamaacross physical forms challenges perceptions of a singular body and linear



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lifespan; childhood can follow the life course of a predecessor and thetransformative process of rebirth can shape a social reality where intellectualgrowth is conceived in terms of enduring tendencies from previous lives.

Clearly, however, the situational nature of the cultural setting with its stricttraining regimes cannot be overlooked. Also the ordinary monk in theTibetan system will undergo a process of extensive educational training(Miller 1957), but for the incarnate lama, these training practices are considerablymore demanding (Logan 2004; Ray 1986:51). This common portrait of youngincarnations as exceptionally intelligent, particularly in religious studies, isshaped by extensive instruction, instilling in them the knowledge of theirpredecessors. In the monastery, I witnessed Rinpoche’s verbosity in theEnglish language; his ability far exceeded that of his peers. Other monksaffirmed that his knowledge of Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan languagewas better than their own, and this was attributed to the trainings undertakenin his former life. The intelligence of young incarnates, embodied and carriedover from the history of previous lives, exists, however, alongside a rigorousroutine of education. Scholarly pursuits begin before sunrise and end into thenight. Scriptures are memorized both before and after formal classes that runthrough the day. Rinpoche’s hours were longer than those of his monasticbrethren. He was subjected to more examinations, had the added influence ofprivate tuition and he had fewer opportunities to engage in recreational activi-ties like walking through the village, visiting a family house to watch televisionor converse about non-Buddhist things. Regulated by the monastic institution,the young lama’s life is shaped into a particular pedagogical form.

The namtar of Khenchen Sangay TenzinBiographical extensions of the lama through lifestory are not limited to the

oral accounts of followers or the materializations that form the content of theirnarrative. The stories of Tibetan Buddhist exemplars are formally documentedin the form of namtar, a tradition that links spiritual masters ‘in the chain ofenlightened beings going back to the Buddha himself’ and ‘legitimate(s) lineagesof spiritual masters living in times closer to our own’ (Robinson 1996:67). Theconstruction of narrative, it has been argued, combines personal and culturalmeanings that are brought into dialogue with each other (Mumford 1989)and imbued with fictional qualities (Bruner 1984; Crapanzano 1984; Geertz1988; Robinson 1996).

For the monastic community, the namtar is a testament of the lama’s power,of his capacity to transcend limitations, even death. It is a re-presentation that



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follows conventional semantic guidelines, mapping the Buddhist path ofspiritual accomplishments and liberation (Williams 2000:21–30), on the onehand, and, on the other, it reveals the pragmatic objectives of its composers(Tambiah 1984:132; Taylor 1997). In the interpersonal context of a biographiesproduction everyday traits are erased. The effects of aging and the naturalnon-controllable process of dying are airbrushed so that the final productcommunicates only those aspects of the Lama’s life which mark him out asan examplary being (Reynolds and Capps 1976: 4–5).

The hagiography of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin traces his years of Buddhisttraining: it lists the various texts studied, exams performed, ritual initiationsreceived and bestowed, retreats undertaken, his monastic positions includingabbot and teacher, his publications and teachings, commissioned iconographyand scriptures, and exalted disciples. But it is, according to the text, the finaldeed of his life that ‘transcended’ all others. So I turn here to the final chapterof this lifestory to present the hagiographical account of Khenchen SangayTenzin’s death and reincarnation, and, moreover, to show the intended effectof these tales on the religious lives of his followers.

At the age of 87, according to the biography, Khenchen Sangay Tenzinbecame indifferent to mundane activities and focused only on his own religiouspractice. His death is portrayed as a purposeful event. The text states that hepassed away in order to inspire his disciples to practice Buddhism by remindingthem of the impermanence of their lives (Jampa Tenzin et al. 2005:33).According to the text, the discovery of relics in the funeral pyre served toimpress everyone and to increase their faith in Khenchen Sangay Tenzin(Jampa Tenzin et al. 2005:34). A request to Sakya Trizin, the head of KhenchenSangay Tenzin’s lineage, to find the reincarnation signifies his followers’ ferventdevotion. Although the text itself does not describe the methods of verificationit conveys, as is customary in this genre of writing, the chosen boy displays thesame characteristics as his predecessor.

Buddhist hagiographies are constructed so that they may induce a particularmanner of recollection: the focus on his supranormal attainments are intendedto inspire religious interest in the reader and provide an impetus for spiritualpractice in their own lives (Taylor 1997:292–3). As stated in its forward, theobjective of the text is to:

[G]ain merit and blessings as well as to propagate the divine deeds of H.E. the lateKhenchen Sangay Tenzin Rinpoche. . . it is our aspiration that this book willenhance spiritual enthusiasm among the readers8 (Jampa Tenzin et al. 2005).



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It is thus intended that the power of the lama be transmitted through a textualmedium. It is not only Khenchen Sangay Tenzin’s physical remains that aremarked with his divinity (Mills 2003:267), the hagiographical record also perme-ates with his religious practice. The spiritual mastery that he displayed duringlife is not confined to actions of the past; their documentation contributes toa selective yet enduring portrait of the lama where word and form convenein narrative and hagiography, further inscribing his transmogrified relics andreincarnation.

Hagiographical representations of the lama become functionally equivalentto him, transmitting blessings to a recipient audience and presenting the peda-gogy of spiritual awakening encapsulated in the Buddhist biographical process.They carry important Buddhist cosmological concepts regarding the nature oflife and death, affirming the view that Buddhism can alleviate the sufferings ofbiological death. The lama’s life and his ‘divine deeds’ are re-presented as amodel to be emulated, revered and incorporated through praxis. Althoughencouraged in text and Buddhist teachings, emulating the lives of spiritualmasters is not common practice for the majority of Buddhists. Emulation isan ideal and one upon which devotion does not depend. Most practitioners,monks and laity alike, are content enough to revere the miraculous achieve-ments of a high-lama without following the blueprint of his biography.

ConclusionThis paper attended to the evolution or extension of a lama’s posthumous

lifestory. In this biographical process, the lama continues beyond death innew materializations. A chronicle of conversations about the death ofKhenchen Sangay Tenzin, which unfolded in the ebb and flow of daily livingwithin his monastery, portrayed how narratives of spiritual mastery extend astory of a life, or rather lives. For Tibetans, being is not a finite experience.There is a belief in reincarnation, a series of lifetimes one after the other,which impact on other possibilities regarding cultural trajectories of theperson, and affect the way that histories are mapped along the course of lives.In the case of spiritual leaders, death is not an end as such; their stream ofbeing is a conscious continuum linking different temporal and spatial modesof existence. Thus, lamas like Khenchen Sangay Tenzin are not subject to thehistorical limits of one lifespan; they recur, challenging the linear sequence ofthe lifecourse with childhood at one end and old age and death at the other,for the child lama is ‘inhabited by their (adult) thoughts and gestures’ (Gupta2002:33). This achievement, as we have seen, is often accompanied by external



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signs such as those displayed by Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, including thedelayed deterioration of the body, the appearance of rainbows, transmogrifica-tion of the body into relics and reincarnation. The combination of these featuresstarkly contrast biological imperatives of aging and physical demise, which, inthis case, do not adequately reflect the social conventions of the spirituallyadvanced lama and the rendition of their lives through word and text.

This biographical extension of a lama’s lives through animate materials notonly challenges the notion of biological death that remains in anthropology, italso demonstrates that life can continue in new forms: new bodies (the reincar-nation of the lama), relics, texts and narratives. Among Tibetan Buddhists,objects such as texts and relics are often considered to be ‘active’ and ‘living’agents (Germano 2004:52). They are thus given the same status as the livingpersons from where they came. Importantly, the posthumous life of the lamacontinues differently in these various materials. Ownership of the relicsbelong to the monastery and a few select devotees, making them, like the phys-ical reincarnation of Khenchen Sangay Tenzin, more guarded and less accessi-ble than the oral and textual lifestories of the lama. However, like text, verbalaccounts of his life are, in some sense, synonymous with the lama. In TibetanBuddhism, it is not only tangible objects that can transmit the sacred propertiesof the deceased. In a worldly sense, a lama’s power is differently distributed inthese forms in so far as access to them is restricted for members of the Buddhistcommunity, but this is not to say that the different materiality of these formsmatter in terms of their soteriological power. Among the most devoutBuddhists, there is a belief that all objects – material and immaterial, animateand inanimate – emanate from, and are coterminous with, the lama.

AcknowledgementsI thank the participants in this study for sharing their stories. Also, I would like toacknowledge the editors and anonymous reviewers for their input into this paper.

Notes1. It is important to note that spiritually advanced incarnate lamas are not representative

of the majority of Tibetans, or even the majority of monastics. The highly revered,preeminent members of the Buddhist monastic community are marked out fromthe relative ‘ordinariness’ of the common monk (Mills 2003:266). Even the categoryof the incarnate lama is multidimensional in character with varying levels of spiritualdevelopment. The incarnate lama does not belong to a homogenous group: some areborn enlightened; others have to train and relearn the realizations of their previousincarnation (Ray 1986:54).

2. In exploring the biographical process, rather than biographies per se, the life of thelama is explored as a focus for religious devotion and not as a biographical individual.



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3. Originating in the eleventh century, the Sakya tradition is one of four main schools ofTibetan Buddhism.

4. The Tibetan textual sources of Martin’s discussions on the signs of saintly death,including the phenomenon of relics, are drawn from the Nyingma Tantra, theSku-gdung ‘Bar-ba’ (‘blazing remains’). Another scriptural description presents aquintet of signs, including spiritual bodies, bones, lights and sounds but excludingatmospheric events (Germano 2004:61). Here Germano (2004:61) cites Longchenpa’srevision of ‘Blazing Remains’ in his The Treasury of Words and Meanings.

5. Rinpoche, meaning ‘precious one’, is commonly used to refer to incarnate lamas.6. Guru Rinpoche was a Tantric yogi who is revered among Tibetans for turning

Tibet’s hostile local spirits into protectors of the Buddhist teachings and enablingBuddhism to flourish in the country.

7. As Tokarska-Bakir (2000:73, n. 8) states, the ‘Tibetan terminology for the mind/intel-lect/consciousness is a complicated one. ‘Mind’ may be called bLa, Yid, Sems, rNampar she’s pa [sheba] etc’. In field research, participants frequently glossed the terms sem,namshey and sheba as ‘mind’.

8. No page number indicated in text.

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the biographical process of a tibetan lama

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