Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra

Rae Erin Dachille's Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra goes beyond the standard philosophical, ritual, and textual discussions of authentic or authoritative aspects of body mandala practice. Dachille focuses on a debate between fifteenth-century Tibetan scholars Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (1382–1456) and Khedrup Gelek Palzang (1385–1438), examining the creative citational practices related to body mandala found in Khedrup's Ocean of Attainment of the Guhyasamaja Generation State and Ngorchen's Destroyer of the Proponent of Evil and Dispelling Evil Views, illuminating the role of body mandala as a method for tantric practitioners to comprehend true reality, as the body provides a context and support for that realization. The complex tensions couched within the rhetorical devices, representational methodologies, and citational strategies deployed by these scholars has much to tell us about the notions of tradition and innovation, rupture and continuity, and reality and fabrication, and Dachille's observations are...