Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity

by Melvyn C. Goldstein (Editor), Orville Schnell (Foreword), Matthew T. Kapstein (Editor)

Following the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, the People's Republic of China gradually permitted the renewal of religious activity. Tibetans, whose traditional religious and cultural institutions had been decimated during the preceding two decades, took advantage of the decisions of 1978 to begin a Buddhist renewal that is one of the most extensive and dramatic examples of religious revitalization in contemporary China. The nature of that revival is the focus of this book. Four leading specialists in Tibetan anthropology and religion conducted case studies in the Tibet autonomous region and among the Tibetans of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. There they observed the revival of the Buddhist heritage in monastic communities and among laypersons at popular pilgrimages and festivals. Demonstrating how that revival must contend with tensions between the Chinese state and aspirations for greater Tibetan autonomy, the authors discuss ways that Tibetan Buddhists are restructuring their religion through a complex process of social, political, and economic adaptation. Buddhism has long been the main source of Tibetans' pride in their culture and country. These essays reveal the vibrancy of that ancient religion in contemporary Tibet and also the problems that religion and Tibetan culture in general are facing in a radically altered world.

Genres: Buddhism, Religion, Sociology, Politics, Nonfiction, History

235 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 1998

About the author

Melvyn C. Goldstein is John Reynolds Harkness Professor of Anthropology and Codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Reviews

[Clifton]

I’ve read all of the other books on Tibet by Goldstein and loved all of them except this one. This is a collaborative work with several other authors, each section’s author is indicated on the top left of the page.

This book is worth the purchase if only for Goldstein’s sections. The others I found difficult to get through. A large portion talks about nonsense mystical Buddhism as though it factually happened (somebody levitating, for example). please. It can be interesting to consider how these rituals relate to Tibetan culture etc but it’s not really presented that way, and personally I’m not interested in woo.

As far as readers of Goldstein, Goldstein’s section is about 50 pages. you can skip this novel but Goldstein does talk about post-Cultural Revolution era Tibet. Maybe you can find a used copy or a pdf somewhere.