The Selfless Ego

Lucia Galli is Research Fellow at the Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l’Asie orientale (CRCAO, Paris, France) and a member of the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE – PSL), where she is currently working within the framework of the ANR/DFG-funded research project Social Status in the Tibetan World (TibStat). She holds a D.Phil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford, UK, with a thesis on the nyindep (nyin deb, ‘diary’) of the Khampa trader Khatag Dzamyag (Kha stag ʼDzam yag). Franz Xaver Erhard is researcher at Leipzig University, Germany. He holds a PhD in Tibetan Studies with a dissertation on contemporary Tibetan literature and has published widely on Tibetan fiction and the history of Tibetan print media. His current research project focuses on ‘Secular Life Writing in Early Modern Tibet’ with a study of Kalon Tenzin Paljor’s Autobiography Music of Candid Speech.

Introduction Part I: Memory and Imagination in Tibetan Hagiographical Writing 1. Between Self-Expression and Convention: Tibetan Reflections on Autobiographical Writing 2. Nested Autobiography: Life Writing Within Larger Works 3. From Song to Biography and from Biography to Song: The Use of gur in Marpa’s namthar 4. The namthar in Khalkha Dzaya Paṇḍita Lobsang Trinle (1642–1715)’s Clear Mirror 5. Reincarnation and Personal Identity in The Lives of Tibetan Masters: Linking the Revelations of Three Lamas of the Dudjom Tradition 6. Traces of Female Voices and Women’s Lives in Tibetan Male Sacred Biography 7. Forest Walking, Meditation and Sore Feet: The Southern Buddhist Biographical Tradition of Ajahn Mun and His Followers Part II: Conjuring Tibetan Lives 8. Memory, Politics, and Peace in the Autobiography of Sumpa Khenpo 9. Genealogy, Autobiography, Memoir: The Secular Life Narrative of Doring Tenzin Penjor 10. The Crafting Memory of the Self. Reflections on Tibetan Diary-Keeping 11. Family Matters: Women’s Spaces and Quiet Truths in House of the Turquoise Roof and Dalai Lama, My Son 12. The Wandering Voice of Tibet: Life and Songs of Dubhe 13. Bearers of the Past, Bridges with the Beyond: The Complicated Lives of Ordinary Objects