Inseparable Companions

Chapter 3 begins my analysis of the courtship between Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche enacted through the fifty-six letters of their correspondence, exchanged between 1978 and 1980. In this chapter, I explore their use of Indic and Tibetan literary models to express affection, to engage in the sport of attraction in tantric terms, and to convey their emergent sense of partnership, mutual reliance, and joint mission. Specifically, I contrast the idealized portrait of Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche found in their respective hagiographies with the more humanizing and multifaceted representation in their correspondence, in which the future couple's own voices come to the fore. I argue that the personal and prophetic dimensions of their courtship are inextricably intertwined, both being integral to their emerging agency as a couple.

Epilogue

The Epilogue provides an account of the couple's activities after the publication of Jewel Garland and a summary of Tāre Lhamo's final years as narrated to me by Namtrul Rinpoche. I also translate his final love letter to Tāre Lhamo on the one-year anniversary of her passing. Following that, I bring the reader up to date with developments in their ongoing religious community at Nyenlung Monastery, addressing issue of lineage succession after the passing of Namtrul Rinpoche in 2011, which includes the installment of his son, Tulku Laksam Namdak, as lineage heir and the identification of the reincarnation of Tāre Lhamo in India.

A Tantric Couple

Chapter Five treats the joint career of Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche from 1980 forward as represented in his hagiography, Jewel Garland. In contrast to the intimate words exchanged between lovers in their correspondence, Jewel Garland portrays the public personae of this tantric couple, whose visionary talents and ritual prowess formed the basis of their many accomplishments promoting the revival of Buddhism in Golok. Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche are depicted side by side traveling throughout Golok to unearth their revelations, bestow tantric initiations, establish ritual practices at monasteries, and construct stūpas and temples. I argue that the writing of Buddhist hagiography is itself constituent of cultural revival and a means to reposition Buddhist masters at the center of society and as the main agents of Tibetan history.

Local Heroine

Chapter 2 examines the hagiographic portrait of Tāre Lhamo as a local heroine during the years leading up to and including the Cultural Revolution. The representation of this period in her hagiography, Spiraling Vine of Faith, elides the specter of state and her own personal losses and instead narrates the period through a series of miracle tales that portray Tāre Lhamo as a tantric heroine, addressing the immediate needs of her local community. In this way, I argue that Spiraling Vine of Faith constructs a redemptive narrative amid the devastation of the Maoist period and provides a poignant means for restoring a sense of Tibetan agency in the wake of cultural trauma.

Emissaries of Padmasambhava

Chapter 4 explores how Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche construct a vision of their shared destiny as emissaries of Padmasambhava in their correspondence. I pay attention to the Buddhist terms in which Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche articulate their future course of action, thereby demonstrating how destiny—as mobilized by the future couple—leaves plenty of room for human initiative. I argue that Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche summon the karmic momentum of the distant past, through a visionary and dialogic process, as a force to bolster their sense of agency in negotiating the contingencies of their historical conjuncture.

Daughter of Golok

Chapter 1 situates Tāre Lhamo's early life in the vibrant Nyingma milieu of pre-1950 Golok as the daughter of a prominent religious figure, Aphang Terchen. Born to ecclesiastic elite, Tāre Lhamo had a remarkable degree of access to esoteric teachings in a male-dominated religious sphere. I explore how Tāre Lhamo's identity was embedded in the social structure of Golok through family ties and in the symbolic system of Tibetan Buddhism through her identification as a living ḍākinī with an illustrious series of female antecedents, including Yeshe Tsogyal and Sera Khandro. I argue that authoritative female antecedents—divine, mythic, and historical—provide a cultural space for exceptional Buddhist women, like Tāre Lhamo, to gain recognition and play a significant role in Tibetan religious history.

Introduction

After introducing the couple and the gendered lens of the book as a whole, I narrate my own literary and ethnographic encounter with this Buddhist tantric couple to draw the reader into the Tibetan region of Golok, a nomadic area on the border of Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces, where Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche lived, traveled and taught. The Introduction asks how Tibetans themselves have construed their own recent history and suggests that Buddhist hagiography is an important site for Tibetans today to narrate an alternative history, since classical genre conventions preclude overt political statements and allow for a symbolic retrieval of Tibetan agency. I introduce the literary sources to be analyzed in this book as a new archive through which to explore the issue of minority voices in China.