Light of Kailash Lecture 19: Magic in Tibetan Buddhism
With Dr. Cameron Bailey – 🗓 November 17th, 2024 ⏰ 3pm UK time
Online via Zoom
Magic in Tibetan Buddhism
Like other commonly used categories in the study of Buddhism, such as “religion” and “tantra,” the term “magic” has a certain natural appeal that is easy to understand on an intuitive level when interpreting certain phenomenon and discourse within the tradition but is exceedingly difficult to precisely define. Unlike other analytical categories, however, “magic” is often singled out by critics as especially unhelpful, misleading, or even worse in the context of Buddhist studies specifically, a colonialist relic used to denigrate parts of the tradition(s) under study, or employed as an excuse to ignore certain aspects of these tradition(s). However, drawing on Western Renaissance and occult sources it is possible to construct an analytical category of magic with a more positive valance that more accurately captures the symbiotic, if at times strained, relationship between normative religious practice and more specialized magical practice in Buddhist traditions. The discourse of magic as an extra-ordinary form of action for producing super-normal effects suffuses Tibetan literature, from miracle tales of siddhas to practical handbooks of ritual sorcery. While there is no one term in Tibetan that is a precise analogue to the category of “magic” there are a variety of terms that are not readily translatable and understandable without recourse to it.