"Territorial Spirits and Sacred Sites: An Ecological Reading of the Treasure Tradition"

Closed Workshop: By Invitation Only

This workshop is organized by Oriane Lavolé, PhD student in Religious Studies. 

Workshop focus:

How do Tibetan treasure revealers navigate the animated landscape to locate and retrieve hidden teachings? This half-day workshop examines treasure revelation as an ecological practice of attunement to and influence on more-than-human networks. Drawing on their own research in their respective fields, three leading scholars will explore how treasure revealers’ capacity to read environmental signs and engage with territorial spirits establishes them as founders of sacred geographies.

The workshop will illuminate treasure revelation as a collaborative process involving humans, landscape, and animating spirits, offering fresh perspectives on the intersection of Tibetan Buddhism, ecology, and visionary practice. Participants will gain insights into cutting-edge scholarship on the Treasure tradition while engaging with methodological questions arising from the environmental humanities in the Himalayas.

For the first half of the afternoon, each speaker be invited to give a twenty-minute talk followed by ten minutes of questions and answers. The second half of the afternoon would then be devoted to a roundtable discussion.

Program

David Germano, "Changing Times and Changing Treasures: Exploring the Ecology of Terma in the Early Great Perfection Tradition."

Abstract:

The Great Perfection was pivotal for early Nyingma treasure revelation traditions, whose contents were famously summarized as the traditions of Guru (Padmasmabhava),  Avalokiteśvara, and the Great Perfection (bla rdzogs thugs gsum). From the eleventh to fourteenth centuries,  the Seminal Heart (snying thig) emerged as the dominant form of the Great Perfection through a series of treasure revelations, and thus we can to some degree chart the changing nature of treasure traditions through the lens of tracking a single continuous treasure arc as indexed by a tradition over a four century period, which happens to largely coincide with the initial evolution of the treasure tradition itself. I will thus examine closely the colophons, historical narratives, and auto/biographical narratives from this literature during this period for indications of the changing nature of treasure traditions. I will pay particular attention to what it tells us about human-Land relationships and the relationship of treasure revelation to place. I will also contextualize it within the other dominant place-based model of scriptural revelation in traditions, namely the broader cosmological revelatory forces known as “the three sources of the teaching” (bstan pa’i btsas gsum), which also acts as a primordial and historical source of the tradition’s dissemination, and experiences ebbs and flows, advancement and recession, with named eras, people, and places. The juxtapositon of these two models, as far as I know, has not been explored in scholarship and should be illuminating. Finally, the early Seminal Heart tradition was profoundly elemental in its nature—philosophies and practices of earth, water, fire, wind, and space—but this orientation was gradually marginalized over time. I will thus investigate the degree to which this elemental character relates to treasure revelation of this early period and its changes over time. 

Bio:  

David Germano is Professor of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has led many centers and projects over the years in software development, entrepreneurship, cultural documentation, scholarship, Tibetan literature, media production, student flourishing, educational reform, and contemplative sciences. He has a deep expertise in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation and in the tantric and Great Perfection (dzokchen) traditions in particular. Since 2011, he has drawn upon that expertise to extensively support the creation and application of new forms of contemplative practice, environments, and applications in education, architecture, entrepreneurship, engineering, and many other contexts. He founded the Contemplative Sciences Center at UVA in 2012 and currently directs the Generative Contemplation initiative, which brings together scholars, lineage holders, meditation teachers, and designers to explore the past and future of contemplation through an innovative blend of humanistic scholarship, scientific research, and creative design.

Robert Mayer, " A Landscape Infused with Dharma"

Abstract: 

Integral to the Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhisms of India were their ongoing revelations of new scriptural texts that could be deemed Buddhavacana. The Tibetan Nyingma school retained a similar outlook with its famous Treasure or Terma (gter ma) traditions, claiming to model these on the Indian precedents. One of the most important methods for Nyingma Terma revelation is known as Earth Treasure or Sa-ter (sa gter). Sa-ter employed Tibet’s complex hierarchies of terrestrial deities together with the cosmologies they populated as conduits, using them to link the past with the present, and to infuse the minds of the Buddhas into the landscapes of Tibet.

Bio:     

Robert Mayer joined the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Faculty of Oxford University in 2002, and retired in 2020. He remains active as a Faculty associate, and currently runs two seminars. The Treasure Seminar is an interdisciplinary approach to the interrelated fields of hidden treasures and revealed scriptures, and the Padmasambhava, Uḍḍiyāna, and Tibet Seminar is an interdisciplinary approach to the person of Padmasambhava, in history, myth, and ritual, with  additional focuses on the regions of Kashmir, Uḍḍiyāna, and Tibet, and their mutual interactions. Most of his publications have been related to the Nyingma school of Tibet.  

Emily Yeh, "Human-Environment Relations in Contemporary Tibet: The Politics of Air, Water, and the Deities that Reside in Them"

Abstract:

Rituals to restore dried springs through klu practices and to call or prevent precipitation have a long history on the Tibetan Plateau, yet little research has been done on these practices in contemporary Tibet. This presentation considers various efforts to both restore dried springs and call or prevent rain in contemporary Tibet, the human-non-human relations that underlie those efforts, and how these are shaped by the broader sociopolitical context. First, Yeh will explore the efforts over the past two decades by grassroots environmental protection groups and initiatives, some supported by larger institutional programs and others not, to protect water sources, catalog springs, and revive those that have dried up. Through an exploration of the rituals, their accompanying other practices, and the ways these efforts have been discussed by their organizers, she will discuss them as the product of plural onto-epistemologies, shaped by sedimented practice of klu but also by scientific knowledge, broader goals of enhancing cultural vitality, and state efforts (ultimately successful) to stop them. Second, Yeh will briefly discuss various efforts to modify weather, setting them in relation to state cloud-seeding efforts.

Bio:       

Emily T. Yeh is a professor of Geography and College Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado Boulder.  She has conducted research on development and nature-society relations in Tibetan parts of the PRC, including the political ecology of pastoralism, conflicts over natural resources, vulnerability to climate change, the politics of nature conservation, emergent environmentalisms, the cultural politics of entrepreneurship, and the infrastructuralization of nature. Her book Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development explored the intersection of the political economy and cultural politics of development as a project of state territorialization.  She also edited Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands and is currently an editor of Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.