Paul Donnelly

Northern Arizona University, Comparative Cultural Studies, Faculty Member

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On the Union of Emptiness and Bliss: Buddhist Thought and Tantric Practice

The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies, 2023

Tibetan Buddhism was established and developed in a period when tantric Buddhism had become the n... more Tibetan Buddhism was established and developed in a period when tantric Buddhism had become the new orthodoxy in the great Mahāyāna centers of northern India. The philosophical "schools" of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra were being synthesized with the tantric practice lineages of the siddha traditions associated with the "Highest Yoga Tantras." Tibetan yogi/scholars were the recipients of this rich collection of Mahāyāna sūtras and śāstras as well as tantras and the teachings of the siddhas. By the fourteenth century, Tibetans began to create doctrinal systems that sought to unify and reconcile Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and tantric texts as well as the seemingly divergent lines of interpretation according to a scholastic analytical approach and an experiential one. By deploying long-established hermeneutical structures Tibetan scholars created grand syntheses that negotiated and sometimes uni ed the relationship between Mahāyāna thought and tantric praxis, culminating in the unifying categories of emptiness of other and Great Madhyamaka.

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Liberation through Seeing: Screening The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Religions , 2018

The text known in English as The Tibetan Book of the Dead is arguably the principle source for po... more The text known in English as The Tibetan Book of the Dead is arguably the principle source for popular understandings of Tibetan Buddhist conceptions of death. First translated into English in 1927, subsequent translations have read it according to a number of interpretive frameworks. This paper examines two recent films that take The Tibetan Book of the Dead as their inspiration: Bruce Joel Rubin's Jacob's Ladder (1990) and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2009). Neither of these films overtly claim to be depicting The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but the directors of both have acknowledged that the text was an influence on their films, and both are undeniably about the moment of death and what follows. The analysis begins with the question of how, and to what degree, each of the films departs from the meaning and purpose of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, before moving on to examine the reasons, both practical and ideological, for these changes. Buddhist writer Bruce Joel Rubin wrote a film that sought to depict the death experience from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, but ultimately audience expectation and studio pressure transformed the film into a story at odds with Tibetan Buddhism. Gaspar Noé wrote and directed a film that is based on a secular worldview, yet can be seen to be largely consistent with a Tibetan Buddhist reading. Finally, I consider if, and to what extent, these films function to express or cultivate an experiential engagement with Tibetan Buddhist truths and realization, concluding that Jacob's Ladder does not, while Enter the Void largely succeeds, despite the intention of its creator.

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Pilgrimage in Buddhist Tibet

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2018

The English word "pilgrimage" has been used to translate the Tibetan nekor or nejel, which means ... more The English word "pilgrimage" has been used to translate the Tibetan nekor or nejel, which means to circumambulate or to meet a sacred place, respectively. "Tibet" here refers not only to the modern Tibetan Autonomous Region but also to what has been called "Ethnographic Tibet." This area includes the three provinces of Utsang, Kham, and Amdo, but also regions outside the modern political borders of China, such as Ladakh, Zangskar, Bhutan, Dolpo, and Mustang. The people across these regions share a common written language, largely similar social institutions and values, and a shared sense of historical connection. Though lesser known in the West than the doctrinal and meditative traditions of Tibet, pilgrimage has always been central to the religious lives of the people of the Tibetan cultural regions. In fact, while doctrine and meditation have been the purview of the elite monastic scholarly minority, pilgrimage has been far more pervasive and practiced by laypeople as well as the monastics for purposes both worldly and soteriological. Though religious elites or even ordinary Tibetans may describe pilgrimages in sophisticated Buddhist doctrinal terms, what they actually do is often as rooted in indigenous Tibetan conceptions of place and sacred power as it is in Buddhism.

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Where the Heroes and Sky-Goers Gather: A Study of the Saurata Pilgrimage

Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist doctrine and meditative traditions have been extensively studied a... more Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist doctrine and meditative traditions have been extensively studied and are well-known even to non-scholars, but pilgrimage and other non-elite practices have received far less attention. Pilgrimage is one of the most important practices for Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhists, whether traditional scholars, ordinary monks, lay yogis, or Buddhist laypeople. Scholarship on pilgrimage has increased significantly since the 1990s, and has tended to focus on territories within the political boundaries of the Tibetan provinces of the People's Republic of China. This study looks at a pilgrimage in what was once the far western end of the Tibetan empire, but is now within the political boundaries of India. Being outside of the People's Republic of China, this pilgrimage escaped the disruption of such practices that occurred within the PRC during the Cultural Revolution and after. Having interviewed people in the region, and performed the pilgrimage myself, this study shows that this pilgrimage possesses features common to Tibetan pilgrimage to sites of tantric power, but also has its own unique qualities. This study provides new data that contributes to the growing body of knowledge of Tibetan pilgrimage and to our understanding of such practices among the Buddhists of Himalayan India.

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"Madhyamaka" entry in Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Buddhism

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"Madhymaka" entry in Oxford Bibliographies

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"Nāgārjuna" entry in Oxford Bibliographies

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"Mūlamadhyamakakārikā" entry in Oxford Bibliographies

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