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Living Treasure

Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in Honor of Janet Gyatso

Published by Wisdom Publications
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
LIST PRICE $40.99

About The Book

Senior scholars and former students celebrate the life and work of Janet Gyatso, professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School. Inspired by her contributions to life writing, Tibetan medicine, gender studies, and more, these offerings make a rich feast for readers interested in Tibetan and Buddhist studies.

Janet Gyatso has made substantial, influential, and incredibly valuable contributions to the fields of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. Her paradigm-shifting approach is to take a topic, an idea, a text, a term—often one that had long been taken for granted or overlooked—and turn it inside out, to radically reimagine the kinds of questions that might be asked and what the answers might reveal. The twenty-nine essays in this volume, authored by colleagues and former students—many of whom are now also colleagues—represent the breadth of her interests and influence and the care that she has taken in training the current generation of scholars of Tibet and Buddhism. They are organized into five sections: Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Biography and Autobiography; the Nyingma Imaginaire; Literature, Art, and Poetry; and Early Modernity: Human and Nonhuman Worlds. Contributions include José Cabezón on the incorporation of a Buddhist rock carving in Central Asian culture; Matthew Kapstein on the memoirs of an ambivalent reincarnated lama; Willa Baker on Jikmé Lingpa’s theory of absence; Andrew Quintman on a found poem expressing worldly sadness on the forced closure of a monastery; and Padma ’tsho on Tibetan women’s advocacy for full female ordination. These and the many other chapters, each fascinating reads in their own right, together offer a glowing tribute to a scholar who indelibly changed the way we think about Buddhism, its history, and its literature.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Wisdom Publications (June 6, 2023)
  • Length: 544 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781614298007

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Raves and Reviews

“Plumbing the extraordinary depths of Tibetan language, Janet Gyatso has been revealing the riches and wisdom of Tibetan civilization in all its myriad complexities over a lifetime.”

– Lama Jabb, author of Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature: The Inescapable Nation

“Janet Gyatso truly is a living treasure. She is an inspiration for scholarly excellence in the fascinating dimensions represented in this book—studies in Tibetan literature, the Nyingma tradition, gender and sexuality in Buddhism, early modernity, the more-than-human world, and so much more.”

– Sarah H. Jacoby, author of  Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro

“Janet Gyatso has contributed enormously to our understanding of the emergence and nature of Tibetan modernity.”

– Jay L. Garfield, Smith College, Harvard Divinity School, and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies

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More books in this series: Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism