Himalayan Dialogue Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal

Here is a thorough anthropological study of Tibetan Lamaism combining textual analysis with richly contextualized ethnographic data. The rites studied are of the Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist tradition, including exchanges with the underworld, honouring of guardian deities, demon exorcism, recalling of the soul and the famed guiding of the consciousness in the Tibetan death rite. In contrast to textual analyses that have viewed the culture as a finished entity, here we see an unbound ritual process with unfinished interpretations. The authors focus is on the dialogue taking place between the Lamaist and the Shamanic regimes, as a historic development occurring between different cultural layers. The study powerfully demonstrates that inter relationships between subsystems within a given cultural matrix over time are critical to an understanding of religion as a cultural process. In short, this book is very interesting and fascinating and worth reading.