The Presence of Divinity in Tibetan Buddhist Ritual -- Martin Mills

Monday March 1st, 5 pm in EALAC Lounge Room (403 Kent Hall)
Martin Mills
The Presence of Divinity in Tibetan Buddhist Ritual

An examination of the performance of ritual amongst Tibetan Buddhist communities in the Western Himalaya. The lecture will look at certain principal ritual actions - such as the recitation of scripture and mantras - in the performance of exorcistic and healing rites, and examine the manner in which these ritual actions are linked by their participants to the question of divine presence, whether in the form of classical tantric evocations of divine power, or in the form of more localised possession events.

Dr. Martin A. Mills is Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He is co-director of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research, and author of Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism (Routledge 2003). He has carried out research on the Western Himalayan region of Ladakh and the Tibetan refugee communities of India and Nepal for the last fifteen years. He is presently carrying out research on the constitutional history of the Dalai Lamas’ government. Further information can be found on http://www.abdn.ac.uk/religious_studies/staff.