Soteriology as a Gift System: Religious Practice Among the First Tibetan Buddhist Nun Scholars

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

Second Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Vesperi, Maria

Keywords

Tibetan Buddhism, Nuns, Gift, Scholasticism

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnography of a small community of Tibetan Buddhist nuns, primarily from ethnically Tibetan Himalayan villages within the nation-state of India, who are among the first group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns to receive a scholastic education. My data is the result of three months of fieldwork involving participant-observation and both formal and informal interviews. I argue that the nuns maintain a position of "soteriological inclusiveness" regarding the status of women, which implies soteriological but not social equality. I employ theory on "the gift" in the modern world to discuss the nuns' religious practice, where "habituation," is a method of "learned spontaneity." I consider emotion as a commodity of gift exchange, where feeling serves as a clue to the strength or weakness of religious practice. The nuns' plans for the future reflect the highest forms of service in this Tibetan Buddhist gift system, which do not depend on receiving Geshe degrees or becoming fully-ordained nuns.

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