1 00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:20,880 Today's speaker is Kate Fitzgerald, who's a recent graduate from the Ohio State University's Department of Comparative Studies. 2 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:28,290 Her research focuses on contemporary Tibetan religion or rhetoricians, late Buddhism and women's practises. 3 00:00:28,290 --> 00:00:39,720 Her work can be seen in, for instance, the Asian Theatre Journal, The Erotica Handbook of Asian Theatre, the read, the Tibetan and Asian Anthology. 4 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:49,620 Today, she will talk about the preliminary practises and job blood in East Kallus Palms and the transformative nature of women's labour. 5 00:00:49,620 --> 00:00:55,260 And without further ado, Kitty, take it away. Thanks so much. 6 00:00:55,260 --> 00:01:03,260 I'm going to try to share my screen, hopefully with some success. 7 00:01:03,260 --> 00:01:07,310 OK, can you see the PowerPoint? Yes. 8 00:01:07,310 --> 00:01:12,500 OK, perfect. So thank you so much for inviting me to talk today. 9 00:01:12,500 --> 00:01:17,990 It's been really nice in the past two weeks. And I'm also looking forward to the coming speakers. 10 00:01:17,990 --> 00:01:28,850 It's kind of nice. During during this quarantine self isolation period to get a little bit of scholarly brain food is really nice. 11 00:01:28,850 --> 00:01:36,350 So I'm going to talk. Basically, my talk today comes from one of my chapters, my dissertation. 12 00:01:36,350 --> 00:01:45,500 And then after I'm finished, I also just wanted to mention that if if there's interest that I can also talk a little bit about the 13 00:01:45,500 --> 00:01:49,970 kind of process of performing fieldwork or the transition from field work to dissertation writing, 14 00:01:49,970 --> 00:01:52,730 because that's what's been most fresh in my mind. 15 00:01:52,730 --> 00:02:01,070 So especially for current graduate students, is that if, you know, that's if there are questions about that, it can be helpful to to discuss. 16 00:02:01,070 --> 00:02:04,760 And I'm happy to talk about this. OK. 17 00:02:04,760 --> 00:02:13,460 So I will begin this on the laughs and grimaces simultaneously as she recalls her own preliminary practises. 18 00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:20,600 She shows me on her body where she developed wounds during her prostrations, her palms, her knees, her head. 19 00:02:20,600 --> 00:02:26,310 She closes her eyes tightly and recites mantras breathily in the countenance she adopts whenever she discusses things. 20 00:02:26,310 --> 00:02:31,220 And the met him. She talks about the wear and tear her body experienced while accumulating her 21 00:02:31,220 --> 00:02:35,420 one hundred thousand frustrations of the aching joints and bloody bandages, 22 00:02:35,420 --> 00:02:42,080 which toward her wounds open when she changed them. She speaks of this time, but the combination of pride and reverence. 23 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:46,940 It was difficult. She completed it. She was changed by it. 24 00:02:46,940 --> 00:02:55,320 So in this paper, I explore the preliminary practises of a group of women in a Tibetan region in rural Qinghai Province called Bumba MEMA. 25 00:02:55,320 --> 00:02:55,830 Specifically, 26 00:02:55,830 --> 00:03:06,660 I focus on nuns and lay women who utilise a set of teachings and practises which are originally composed by the fourth floor Bunjil or Knewton Dorji, 27 00:03:06,660 --> 00:03:09,030 which is on the left side of the screen here. 28 00:03:09,030 --> 00:03:17,610 And the second text, which I have pictured up on the screen just this past January when I was back in the field, 29 00:03:17,610 --> 00:03:23,670 there were new a new set of teachings. Basically, the kind of meat of the teachings were the same. 30 00:03:23,670 --> 00:03:28,830 And by the same individual. But did they they have produced a new text as well. 31 00:03:28,830 --> 00:03:33,700 So the preliminary practises have been compiled and edited in by the current full bundle. 32 00:03:33,700 --> 00:03:41,220 Tenzin Yeaman. I'm pushing these practises and teachings not only initiate practitioners into the Chicken Club you tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, 33 00:03:41,220 --> 00:03:46,860 but also more fundamentally into Vajrayana Buddhism at it as it is practised in this region. 34 00:03:46,860 --> 00:03:51,990 Although amongst Imlay, male practitioners also tend to perform the same preliminary practises. 35 00:03:51,990 --> 00:03:57,510 I focus specifically on women because of their unique relationship with physical labour. 36 00:03:57,510 --> 00:04:02,400 So in this presentation I will address women's domestic labour, child labour, 37 00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:06,390 by which I don't mean child labour, as in like children working in factories. 38 00:04:06,390 --> 00:04:11,130 I mean women giving birth to children. I'm trying too hard to use this word labour. 39 00:04:11,130 --> 00:04:15,180 And I think it comes across more about kids performing labour. 40 00:04:15,180 --> 00:04:24,180 But I mean, the kind of labour involved in giving birth to your child and then rearing them as well as religious labour. 41 00:04:24,180 --> 00:04:29,430 OK, so OLMA Mama is a nomadic area and you shoot Tibetan Autonomous Region. 42 00:04:29,430 --> 00:04:37,380 And it's located on the border between Luncheon and Z. So this map here, you can kind of see that little red splotch on the bottom. 43 00:04:37,380 --> 00:04:43,530 It's a little bit in between the kind of yellow bit to the left of there. 44 00:04:43,530 --> 00:04:47,130 So it's right on the border between those two regions. 45 00:04:47,130 --> 00:04:54,000 The main forms of economic production in this region are a combination of nomadic animal husbandry and caterpillar fungus cultivation. 46 00:04:54,000 --> 00:05:01,600 Nomadic household duties are almost exclusively performed by women, while men take responsibility for the economic duties outside of the home. 47 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:06,210 And because of a transition within the economy towards settlement and enforced schooling, 48 00:05:06,210 --> 00:05:12,900 which is happening across Tibetan regions, many families have transitioned or partially transitioned into town life. 49 00:05:12,900 --> 00:05:16,980 So opportunities to live with full time nomadic communities are limited. 50 00:05:16,980 --> 00:05:27,120 Nevertheless, the Young Tung family maintains a Full-Time nomadic settlement and continue to use the kind of summer winter camp model. 51 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:33,960 After ceremonies at a monastery. Sixty seven year old Yelton sister Tiba and her husband gets a tip as the woman here 52 00:05:33,960 --> 00:05:40,140 with the she asked me to give her give them a ride home to their nomadic settlement. 53 00:05:40,140 --> 00:05:46,290 Tipa is a tiny woman, stocky in stature and never seen without her head dressing a heavy crown of amber, 54 00:05:46,290 --> 00:05:51,330 coral, turquoise and bone gems sewn onto claw straps that drape far down her back. 55 00:05:51,330 --> 00:05:58,320 She's quick to smile and loves a bit of gossip, but her fingers are bent at all angles from arthritis and prolonged overuse. 56 00:05:58,320 --> 00:06:03,030 After arriving at dusk, I spend the night in their settlement and when we get up the following morning, 57 00:06:03,030 --> 00:06:07,140 the two day full moon is still out over the mountains and the four women currently 58 00:06:07,140 --> 00:06:12,870 at home are out collecting Yorketown before releasing the axe to Grace for the day. 59 00:06:12,870 --> 00:06:17,910 I squat to pee overlooking the fields where a soft fog is rising off the Mountain Dew and go to wash up and 60 00:06:17,910 --> 00:06:24,860 sip us house where I schedule her son and gets they are still sleeping and the with the youngest children, 61 00:06:24,860 --> 00:06:28,380 Kinjo Pommel, who is tip his daughter and it's all them nunnery. 62 00:06:28,380 --> 00:06:33,840 None is wrangling the stove back to life and tells me there's no hot water yet to wash. 63 00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:38,070 So we use cold water to brush our teeth and wash our faces. A teenage girl, 64 00:06:38,070 --> 00:06:44,610 Tatiana and I take buckets and yolks down to the stream at the bottom of the valley to collect water for the day when Joe Paterno 65 00:06:44,610 --> 00:06:51,030 Bruce tea on the now roaring fire and the men come out of their rooms to ensure the herds are set on course to their proper pastures. 66 00:06:51,030 --> 00:06:55,020 And then they receive breakfast over a breakfast of milk, tea and Sumba. 67 00:06:55,020 --> 00:06:57,180 The family discusses plans for the day. 68 00:06:57,180 --> 00:07:03,420 Everyone is finishing up their morning prayers as a bustle about washing up, eating, dressing and preparing for their work. 69 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:09,930 Kinjo promos. Prayers are interrupted as she refills tea and washes dishes and table puts down her hand. 70 00:07:09,930 --> 00:07:12,510 Money will to comb the children's hair. 71 00:07:12,510 --> 00:07:18,990 She's rough getting out the nuts, occasionally using the butt of her comb to smack the wiggling and whining children into compliance, 72 00:07:18,990 --> 00:07:21,670 all the while continuing to recite her prayers. 73 00:07:21,670 --> 00:07:29,520 Kinjo Pump continuously has to stop recitations to get up and stoke the fire, replenish water, feed others and go get done. 74 00:07:29,520 --> 00:07:33,960 So much happens in the nomadic household before the sun fully rises and the days where it continues. 75 00:07:33,960 --> 00:07:39,720 There are all waking hours as family members tend to animals clean and then the house and stables cook five meals. 76 00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:45,360 Care for children and transform raw animal products into items that can be consumed or sold. 77 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:50,940 For women whose families have transition to village or town life, domestic and child care responsibilities shift. 78 00:07:50,940 --> 00:07:55,830 Women are still responsible for waking up before the rest of the family, starting a fire in the stove, 79 00:07:55,830 --> 00:08:00,600 fetching water from wells, preparing tea, waking and dressing children, cooking all the meals. 80 00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:07,590 Keeping the fires lit. Cleaning the house and entertaining guests. But they leave behind the responsibility to collect and process dung for fuel, 81 00:08:07,590 --> 00:08:14,460 milk the herds and make butter and cheese as well as processed meat and other duties as well. 82 00:08:14,460 --> 00:08:18,930 The daily necessities of sustenance can be purchased at a store instead of produced at home, 83 00:08:18,930 --> 00:08:22,620 which theoretically gives women more free time in the home. 84 00:08:22,620 --> 00:08:29,400 In either the nomadic encampment or the town centres, the domestic labour of the household best almost exclusively on the shoulders of women. 85 00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:36,090 These responsibilities and daily activities shape the ways in which women talk about and think about their religious practise. 86 00:08:36,090 --> 00:08:41,400 Women's labour not only encompasses the realm of domestic labour, but also spreads to the duties of child care. 87 00:08:41,400 --> 00:08:46,680 And so child birth rearing, education, discipline and nurturing. 88 00:08:46,680 --> 00:08:54,270 And eight is sixty four years old and has given birth 11 times, four of her children, two boys and two girls have died. 89 00:08:54,270 --> 00:09:00,780 She also adopted an infant after its mother died in childbirth, leaving her with seven biological and one adopted child. 90 00:09:00,780 --> 00:09:05,640 She tells me about the loss of her twin boys a number of times during our time together. 91 00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:12,090 She repeats this story when we discuss my own fertility, a favourite subject amongst my female friends as well as she. 92 00:09:12,090 --> 00:09:20,910 When she recounts her oral history to me alone in her home, her husband away for work, she went into labour and delivered two twin boys herself. 93 00:09:20,910 --> 00:09:26,680 She cut their umbilical cords herself, wrapped them in a blanket and went outside to tend the herds. 94 00:09:26,680 --> 00:09:30,510 If she didn't bring home the animals and milk them. They could die or get ill. 95 00:09:30,510 --> 00:09:36,330 And then the whole family would starve. She was haemorrhaging blood and the twin boys were weak and sickly. 96 00:09:36,330 --> 00:09:42,780 She tried to nurse them and tend the herds. But before her husband could return home, the children died. 97 00:09:42,780 --> 00:09:49,470 She went to a hospital and received an injection to stop her own bleeding. But there was nothing to be done for the babies. 98 00:09:49,470 --> 00:09:52,500 Over the course of nearly three years of fieldwork and interviews, 99 00:09:52,500 --> 00:09:58,740 I came to see that every woman I interviewed over the age of 35 has lost at least one child. 100 00:09:58,740 --> 00:10:04,650 Reasons for this high child mortality rate amongst these women have various causes, including higher rates of pregnancy, 101 00:10:04,650 --> 00:10:10,200 complicate complications like hypoxia from high altitude populations and pre-eclampsia. 102 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:16,320 Because of the high fat diet of nomads, nomadic populations also lack access to hospitals, 103 00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:21,720 something sometimes living more than a day's journey away from any kind of medical centre. 104 00:10:21,720 --> 00:10:24,630 The climate and environment also play an important role. 105 00:10:24,630 --> 00:10:30,540 This region has habitable camps at over forty five hundred metres, which is well above the tree line, 106 00:10:30,540 --> 00:10:36,690 and temperatures can reach as low as negative 40 degrees Celsius. And there's very high winds as well. 107 00:10:36,690 --> 00:10:41,340 At least one child drowned in a river during my fieldwork period. 108 00:10:41,340 --> 00:10:44,700 So whatever the myriad causes, it is reality of life with its population, 109 00:10:44,700 --> 00:10:50,100 that motherhood comes with the burden of seemingly inevitable child mortality. 110 00:10:50,100 --> 00:10:53,400 In addition to the obvious difficulties of pregnancy and labour, 111 00:10:53,400 --> 00:11:01,260 along with the treacherous emotional processes involved in child loss, women's child rearing duties do not end with birth. 112 00:11:01,260 --> 00:11:10,050 I mean, in this picture with her little girl got pregnant with her fifth child at 40 years old, her next oldest son was 12 years old at the time. 113 00:11:10,050 --> 00:11:14,790 And she recalls to me having to stop him from breastfeeding after she became pregnant, 114 00:11:14,790 --> 00:11:19,200 although he obviously eat solid food and no longer relied upon breast milk for nutrition. 115 00:11:19,200 --> 00:11:24,570 He still suckled for comfort at night or when he was upset after becoming pregnant unexpectedly. 116 00:11:24,570 --> 00:11:31,280 She had to stop him from breastfeeding so that the foetus would not be deprived of the nutrients going to her breast milk. 117 00:11:31,280 --> 00:11:35,940 His experience is not unique in that most mothers stop Breck's breastfeeding one child when they become 118 00:11:35,940 --> 00:11:41,790 pregnant with another due to the enormous strain that breastfeeding and pregnancy put on a woman's body. 119 00:11:41,790 --> 00:11:48,930 Child rearing duties not do not end after menopause either, as most grandparents live with one of their sons and his new bride and continue to 120 00:11:48,930 --> 00:11:53,340 care for their young children until the grandparents are too sick to contribute. 121 00:11:53,340 --> 00:11:56,790 Young children often cleave to their grandparents and frequently sleep with 122 00:11:56,790 --> 00:12:01,140 and are more attached to their grandfather or mother than their own parents. 123 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:04,590 Mothers and grandmothers can frequently be seen carrying their smallest children 124 00:12:04,590 --> 00:12:10,200 tied to their backs or strapped to their fronts when they carry baskets, water on their backs. 125 00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:14,460 Children in this region are now required to enter school between eight and nine years old. 126 00:12:14,460 --> 00:12:16,710 But traditionally, children stay close to their mothers, 127 00:12:16,710 --> 00:12:22,740 sharing every aspect of life until the child either enters a monastery or marries into another household. 128 00:12:22,740 --> 00:12:28,170 For male children, they will ideally find a bride to enter the home and they will never leave their parents for me. 129 00:12:28,170 --> 00:12:34,980 For example, her journey as a mother and wife began when she was 19 years old, and she continues to breastfeed and care for an infant. 130 00:12:34,980 --> 00:12:43,810 Twenty two years later, when her son decides to marry, she will again take on the responsibility of child care. 131 00:12:43,810 --> 00:12:48,600 Despite the strain of domestic and child labour upon both them as women, 132 00:12:48,600 --> 00:12:52,720 the first entry point into serious religious practise is also physical labour. 133 00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:59,650 Although there's a large diversity across Tibetan Buddhist strict traditions on the timing, order and pace of the preliminary practises, 134 00:12:59,650 --> 00:13:04,540 we might generalise by saying that novices in the new mom and SILC Chen and suckage and cogie 135 00:13:04,540 --> 00:13:10,600 schools of Tibetan Buddhism utilise preliminary practises as a way of initiating new members, 136 00:13:10,600 --> 00:13:17,340 preparing practitioners for tantric initiation and introducing the fundamental practises of the lineage. 137 00:13:17,340 --> 00:13:20,680 The many practise that are divided into these, 138 00:13:20,680 --> 00:13:28,010 the general outer preliminaries and then the extraordinary inner preliminaries, each of which have their own divisions. 139 00:13:28,010 --> 00:13:33,280 The outer preliminaries involve study and contemplation on the fourth thoughts that turn the mind. 140 00:13:33,280 --> 00:13:40,450 What we might also call the four motivations to practise the inner preliminaries involve, as you can see here, 141 00:13:40,450 --> 00:13:46,030 are taking refuge generating Buddha to the reciting the mantra and performing the meditations of USA, 142 00:13:46,030 --> 00:13:51,850 making Mundulla offerings and then performing good or yoga. And there's different kind of divisions of this depending on the teaching. 143 00:13:51,850 --> 00:13:57,050 But this is the specific kind of delineation that's used in this monastery. 144 00:13:57,050 --> 00:14:04,070 I focus in this paper on the first of the inner preliminaries, the process of taking refuge in the three jewels. 145 00:14:04,070 --> 00:14:11,240 So this process involves risk recitation of a specific verse while performing full body frustrations. 146 00:14:11,240 --> 00:14:18,740 This process of frustration, accompanying visualisations and recitation of the refuge pair is repeated one hundred thousand times, 147 00:14:18,740 --> 00:14:21,770 which sounds like a number that you hear a lot in kind of Buddhist literature. 148 00:14:21,770 --> 00:14:29,030 And you kind of think, yeah, a hundred thousand times, but a hundred thousand times is really a significant number of times. 149 00:14:29,030 --> 00:14:31,550 So what does a frustration entail? 150 00:14:31,550 --> 00:14:39,640 Frustration is a movement of the body from a fully erect position to laying completely prone upon the ground and a return to a standing position. 151 00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:41,810 This kind of like a Berbee. 152 00:14:41,810 --> 00:14:48,260 This movement is accompanied by hand motions that place the fingertips together with the thumbs resting in the spaces between the palms. 153 00:14:48,260 --> 00:14:51,620 The hands move up to the crown of the head, down to the throat, down to the heart, 154 00:14:51,620 --> 00:14:55,240 and then open palms facing forward as the body moves down to the floor. 155 00:14:55,240 --> 00:14:59,090 When down on the ground, the arms go straight above the head, palms spot on the ground, 156 00:14:59,090 --> 00:15:04,040 and then the palms, the hands move up to the crown of the head with the fingertips pressed together. 157 00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:09,560 After rising once again to a standing position, the hands return to the heart centre before beginning the process. 158 00:15:09,560 --> 00:15:19,920 Again, this physical act is performed while reciting the refuge prayer, the one that's used in this particular tradition that I have up on the screen. 159 00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:29,150 It's interesting, but it's generally the same kind of idea as all refuge, prayers and visualising in the field of accumulation. 160 00:15:29,150 --> 00:15:33,950 And this is all done. A hundred thousand times. I want to emphasise again. 161 00:15:33,950 --> 00:15:41,960 So how do women themselves understand the act of taking refuge through a process of rather extreme physical labour? 162 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:49,850 Forty five year old mother of six control tells me how she accumulated three thousand prostrations every day during her preliminary practises. 163 00:15:49,850 --> 00:15:57,170 She downplays her own abilities by telling me of certain monks or young men who can accumulate up to five thousand in one day. 164 00:15:57,170 --> 00:16:02,960 When I point out the fact that she continued to care for a family of eight during this process, she laughs. 165 00:16:02,960 --> 00:16:08,330 I ask her about the effects on her body and she says it was very painful to eat, 166 00:16:08,330 --> 00:16:13,370 walk, sleep, crouch to use the toilet or bend to pick anything up during this time. 167 00:16:13,370 --> 00:16:19,280 But she mentions that she is used to hard work, not unaccustomed to aching joints and sleepless nights. 168 00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:26,670 She tells me however, many prostrations one can do is good, and the point is just to keep going. 169 00:16:26,670 --> 00:16:32,940 Tribune is a 56 year old nun. But she stays at home with her ageing parents approximately half of the year. 170 00:16:32,940 --> 00:16:36,570 She performed her preliminary practises in the nunnery while in retreat. 171 00:16:36,570 --> 00:16:42,960 Her young cousin, who's also a nun, stayed with her to cook, clean and fetch water, keep the stove lit and make tea. 172 00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:49,710 She points to the parts of her body that caused her problems during the practise. Her back, her knees, her shoulders. 173 00:16:49,710 --> 00:16:54,780 She mentions that she performs doesn't. Dozens of fasting rituals is nuni every year. 174 00:16:54,780 --> 00:16:58,440 So she knows that discomfort is best dealt with gradually. 175 00:16:58,440 --> 00:17:04,410 You can get used to anything you do, enough of prostrations or more mental and physical, she says. 176 00:17:04,410 --> 00:17:11,340 So she still suggests anytime that one feels exhausted, it's just rest in the beautiful emptiness of the mind that comes from exhaustion. 177 00:17:11,340 --> 00:17:18,210 But don't rest too much or too long, she says to sit for one minute after every prayer beads cycle, 178 00:17:18,210 --> 00:17:24,280 which is one hundred and eight frustrations, and then break apart the sessions. Many of the women took time away from their household. 179 00:17:24,280 --> 00:17:28,470 Their monastic duties during their preliminary practise is to do a kind of retreat. 180 00:17:28,470 --> 00:17:34,000 But others had to squeeze in domestic and child care duties around their busy schedule. 181 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:40,730 So women presented the following as one example of an ideal schedule while performing the first step of the preliminary practises. 182 00:17:40,730 --> 00:17:49,120 So for daily practise sessions broken apart around the larger three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner in this region, there are five main meals, 183 00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:56,300 but the three breakfast, lunch, dinner or the kind of larger, more important meals and then interspersed with the secondary two meals. 184 00:17:56,300 --> 00:18:01,380 So the kind of mid-morning and mid afternoon snacks, but their meals as well. 185 00:18:01,380 --> 00:18:09,840 And then along with various tea breaks. So when women emphasised again and again that it is very important to eat enough food and to sleep well. 186 00:18:09,840 --> 00:18:12,780 But it is also important not to rest too much. 187 00:18:12,780 --> 00:18:18,420 If your muscles get cold and stiff, it will be even more difficult to get going again, according to the children. 188 00:18:18,420 --> 00:18:26,300 The nun from the previous photo, the best method is to maintain a slow but steady spit pace throughout all waking hours 189 00:18:26,300 --> 00:18:30,480 from the beginning days when the body is still adjusting to this new level of exercise. 190 00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:38,260 Maintain this same schedule, but move more slowly. So, for example, you might kind of do a lot of calculations involved in this. 191 00:18:38,260 --> 00:18:47,760 So in the beginning you might imagine aiming for one hundred prostrations per hour, but then maybe you can work yourself up to six hundred per hour. 192 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:51,840 So 20 per 100 per every 20 minutes. 193 00:18:51,840 --> 00:18:59,640 But she mentions don't focus too heavily on the number of frustrations, but rather on maintaining the quality of your meditation and intention. 194 00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:04,140 But also do not stop even when the meditation falters or the mind wanders. 195 00:19:04,140 --> 00:19:09,780 Keep moving. Keep pushing forward. This message was consistent through all the advice I received. 196 00:19:09,780 --> 00:19:14,700 Transfer information on the Buddhist path is not soft and pleasant, but neither is a woman's life. 197 00:19:14,700 --> 00:19:24,800 So keep going. So religious and domestic labour are both forms of work, as in their systems of action that produce results. 198 00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:32,640 Religious and domestic labour are also ways of indicating morality, good behaviour and dedication to parents duties or monasteries. 199 00:19:32,640 --> 00:19:35,570 Women perform more labour than their male counterparts. 200 00:19:35,570 --> 00:19:40,650 And this unique relationship with physical labour is conceived of in two important ways by the women of America. 201 00:19:40,650 --> 00:19:47,510 Mama. The first is as an obstacle to practise. And the second is as an essential element of liberation. 202 00:19:47,510 --> 00:19:52,280 In either of these cases, Labour does something to women. It either prevents them from having the time, 203 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:59,180 resources or freedom to participate in religious sex activities or their domestic labour makes them better practitioners. 204 00:19:59,180 --> 00:20:08,030 This is the kind of two ways that women frequently talked about the relationship between their religious practise and their domestic labour practises. 205 00:20:08,030 --> 00:20:15,830 This framework of efficacy both indicates productivity as well as plot relies upon labour and effort as a transformative tool. 206 00:20:15,830 --> 00:20:21,290 These two ways of understanding the relationship between labour and religious realisation are not mutually exclusive. 207 00:20:21,290 --> 00:20:26,120 And the same woman might express both views even over the course of one conversation. 208 00:20:26,120 --> 00:20:30,320 Domestic labour is both the same Zorich burden that detracts from spiritual practise, 209 00:20:30,320 --> 00:20:36,290 as well as a training for both the aversion to this and toric world necessary to begin the spiritual journey, 210 00:20:36,290 --> 00:20:44,140 as well as the extreme dedication and perseverance necessary to achieve spiritual accomplishment. 211 00:20:44,140 --> 00:20:52,260 OK, so first on the on on Labour as a as an obstacle. 212 00:20:52,260 --> 00:20:57,210 So one way that women talk about domestic labour, especially related to the household in childcare, 213 00:20:57,210 --> 00:21:01,310 is that it's a distraction and an impediment to practise. 214 00:21:01,310 --> 00:21:06,680 This is an argument familiar to both male and female householders throughout Buddhist history. 215 00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:13,280 The argument being that the home and its demands detract from the householder's ability to break away from this entire world. 216 00:21:13,280 --> 00:21:18,830 Adding a layer of gendered analysis, I find that female interviewees are much more likely to bring up their domestic 217 00:21:18,830 --> 00:21:22,760 duties in relationship to religious practise than their male counterparts. 218 00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:29,900 When asking nuns, for example, at telling nunnery about their experiences becoming nuns, almost every nun stated that they chose a religious life, 219 00:21:29,900 --> 00:21:36,510 at least in part to avoid the pain and suffering of marriage and its subsequent labour. 220 00:21:36,510 --> 00:21:43,590 So I've got to here quote a little vignette from my Field Notes. 221 00:21:43,590 --> 00:21:49,120 So it's in the present tense. I think I get my tenses mixed up a lot in these field note pieces. 222 00:21:49,120 --> 00:21:55,470 So bear with me. I went with this animal to its own nunnery to deliver some medicine and deity cards to 223 00:21:55,470 --> 00:22:00,000 the retreat centre where nine nuns are in their first month of their three year retreat. 224 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:08,400 We stop at the house of Nundle. We go through old cassette tapes together because no one believes they are starting to deteriorate with age. 225 00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:12,480 There are two types of Lamberton cinema's music which we listen to with joy. 226 00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:16,230 There's also a tape of lummox in cinemas preliminary practise teachings, 227 00:22:16,230 --> 00:22:21,630 which is almost that he made for her because they were not able to meet often during her preliminaries. 228 00:22:21,630 --> 00:22:27,350 She says the teachings were really helpful and enabled her to complete her practises. 229 00:22:27,350 --> 00:22:33,050 We then sit around and gossip about former nuns who now put on makeup and post pictures with boyfriends, and we chat. 230 00:22:33,050 --> 00:22:40,690 We watch videos from the wedding of numbers niece enough to. She married two nephews of one of the lamas at the monastery. 231 00:22:40,690 --> 00:22:48,920 No, over. Can't tell. Her niece cried when she had to be married because they all agree that becoming a wife is pure of suffering. 232 00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,060 And this somewhat teases me that I should become a nun. 233 00:22:52,060 --> 00:22:58,760 And I explained that it is very difficult to be a nun in America with no monastic community, no source of income and no teacher. 234 00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:04,820 They tell me that becoming a nun would actually limit my mobility and my opportunities to travel and benefit others. 235 00:23:04,820 --> 00:23:12,440 They say that what I'm doing now is better than becoming a nun. So I quote this entry from my Field Notes at length to highlight a few things. 236 00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:19,660 The first is the point of view of nuns about marriage, a point of view shared by a lot of women, laywomen as well. 237 00:23:19,660 --> 00:23:26,750 Marriage is painful in this region. Marriage generally occurs when a young woman leaves home and enters the household of her husband. 238 00:23:26,750 --> 00:23:33,860 Although some women marry into a household close to their own homes, many women marry into into a household a significant distance from their parents. 239 00:23:33,860 --> 00:23:40,280 Women generally have the right to return to their parents home once per year for a visit or if there is an illness or birth. 240 00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:45,410 There are some occasions when a man, a man would leave his family and enter the family of his wife. 241 00:23:45,410 --> 00:23:53,810 But this practise is looked down upon in this region, and men in this situation are viewed as having lacking economic power within the home. 242 00:23:53,810 --> 00:23:57,920 When women enter a household, they often marry all the brothers of the home at once. 243 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:06,110 This practise developed in order to keep hereditary lands together and prevent multiple brothers from demanding separate plots of land or herds, 244 00:24:06,110 --> 00:24:08,540 and thereby diminishing the wealth of the family unit. 245 00:24:08,540 --> 00:24:13,340 The tradition remains and use today because nomadic life requires a lot, a large amount of work, 246 00:24:13,340 --> 00:24:17,210 and having more than one young man and a home is seen as a great advantage. For example, 247 00:24:17,210 --> 00:24:20,600 of one husband remains at the nomadic settlement to tend the herds and another husband can 248 00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:25,220 take animal products to sell in a distant region without leaving the home vulnerable. 249 00:24:25,220 --> 00:24:33,950 Women tend to not be able to drive or to have any formal education, making them less able to participate in informal economies in town centres. 250 00:24:33,950 --> 00:24:40,400 But they are needed in the home to care for the frequently large family of her in-laws, husbands and children. 251 00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:48,180 As the nuns pointed out to me, for a young woman. Marriage means separation from one's own family as well as introduction into an unfamiliar family. 252 00:24:48,180 --> 00:24:53,750 Almost all marriages are still arranged, although this practise is really changing rapidly. 253 00:24:53,750 --> 00:25:02,120 In addition, marriage means the beginning of taking the responsibility of a new household, which can include up to four generations and many members. 254 00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:06,380 For most women, marriage marks the beginning of a life of labour and the dawning nunnery. 255 00:25:06,380 --> 00:25:09,980 Nuns are grateful to be excused from that form of labour. 256 00:25:09,980 --> 00:25:14,750 Nevertheless, the nuns aversion to marriage was not just a foil for praising their own lifestyle. 257 00:25:14,750 --> 00:25:17,780 When I expressed to them why it would be difficult for me to become a nun, 258 00:25:17,780 --> 00:25:21,830 they responded very quickly and adamantly that the restrictions placed on them as nuns were 259 00:25:21,830 --> 00:25:27,770 prohibitive in many ways and that my position as a childless laywoman was actually preferrable. 260 00:25:27,770 --> 00:25:33,050 So this was a topic that we discussed frequently. Many cited travel restrictions placed on them by the government, 261 00:25:33,050 --> 00:25:41,720 as well as monetary restrictions that prevented them from working and saving money in Tibet independently, as well as this kind of cultivated. 262 00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:45,620 But at the same time, loathed shyness, 263 00:25:45,620 --> 00:25:53,420 all those forces that prevented them from seeking out educational opportunities or attending teachings from Lomez and other Buddhist institutions, 264 00:25:53,420 --> 00:26:00,810 or from maybe doing spiritual retreats in foreign places, places far from home. 265 00:26:00,810 --> 00:26:03,840 I mention this because I think it's important to note that the nuns did not have 266 00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:08,130 a romantic vision of being a nun in opposition to the suffering of married life. 267 00:26:08,130 --> 00:26:16,340 They recognised the ways in which all life passed, have restrictions and that their nun Hood, does not shield them from the burden of duty. 268 00:26:16,340 --> 00:26:21,530 Joe Plumber is also a delinquent nun who wears robes and maintains her vow. 269 00:26:21,530 --> 00:26:26,060 But she lives at home in a nomadic settlement in Utah. She's. 270 00:26:26,060 --> 00:26:32,490 I don't know how to point on this. Can you see my my. My little. 271 00:26:32,490 --> 00:26:40,490 It's this one. If you can't see me, I'm trying to point to her with my pointer, but I'm not sure if you guys can see she's like. 272 00:26:40,490 --> 00:26:47,090 Yeah, you can see this right here. The daughter in law of her household. 273 00:26:47,090 --> 00:26:55,310 So her brother's wife got fed up with nomadic life and demanded that she and one of the brothers moved to the town centre. 274 00:26:55,310 --> 00:26:59,060 They took a few of the children with them, but left too behind, 275 00:26:59,060 --> 00:27:03,290 feeling that the two grandparents and one son were not equipped to take care of the two children 276 00:27:03,290 --> 00:27:08,720 settlement and the herds and their own control from a what's called home from the nunnery. 277 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,520 Whenever I visit, she said, she has her prayer book propped open on the table, 278 00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:17,150 which she references once in a while as she recites her prayers while adding yakked onto the stove. 279 00:27:17,150 --> 00:27:20,980 She also cooks all the household meals, bathes and entertains the two small children, 280 00:27:20,980 --> 00:27:25,670 fetches water, milks the herds, collects and dries the down, etc. One afternoon. 281 00:27:25,670 --> 00:27:29,550 Could you come on? I were sitting by the fire cleaning dirt and debris from the caterpillars. 282 00:27:29,550 --> 00:27:34,610 So nuns are not allowed to pick the other global caterpillar fungus, 283 00:27:34,610 --> 00:27:38,540 but they're illogically in them cleaning the dirt and debris from the caterpillars. 284 00:27:38,540 --> 00:27:45,430 And she talks about her life. She would prefer to stay at the nunnery, she says, because there's less work there. 285 00:27:45,430 --> 00:27:51,370 There's less work is not simply about having more free time, but about having more mental space, 286 00:27:51,370 --> 00:27:56,540 although there is still a lot of work to do to maintain life in the nunnery. It is quieter. 287 00:27:56,540 --> 00:27:59,450 The kids don't scream. Guests don't come by demanding attention. 288 00:27:59,450 --> 00:28:04,790 The family dramas that occupy a central part of any household, they're kind of dulled by distance. 289 00:28:04,790 --> 00:28:09,560 But the decision is not hers to make. When her parents agree that she can leave again, she'll leave. 290 00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:15,320 If they decide she must stay. She will stay. Her brother is a monk studying in a monastic college nearby. 291 00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:21,520 But it would be unthinkable to call him home to care for the family. It is not a discussion nable point. 292 00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:27,190 Laywomen like none's often talk about marriage and domestic life as a heavy burden on their religious practise. 293 00:28:27,190 --> 00:28:31,000 When women talk about their religious practises, they would do if only they had more time. 294 00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:37,000 It might be simply rhetorical, a way of simultaneously showing domestic dedication and a virtuous aspiration. 295 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:44,770 Maybe the same way that we talk about future exercise goals or charitable donations to be given in a kind of fictional future. 296 00:28:44,770 --> 00:28:47,800 So they might be kind of rhetorical device. In some ways. 297 00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:56,050 But there are also instances where women's labour practises directly impede their ability to attend religious activities poky to the woman. 298 00:28:56,050 --> 00:29:00,730 And then Red is an extremely tall and buxom woman. 299 00:29:00,730 --> 00:29:05,500 She's married for the second time and lives near a monastery where her oldest child lives as a monk. 300 00:29:05,500 --> 00:29:09,370 I visit her home one morning and her husband suggests we go circumambulation, 301 00:29:09,370 --> 00:29:13,750 monastery and climb the mountain to the retreat complex up on its hillside. 302 00:29:13,750 --> 00:29:19,750 I ask Pilkey to join us, but her husband interrupts to say she cannot leave the house or the fire will go out. 303 00:29:19,750 --> 00:29:25,090 Later in the year, Pookie and I worked together in the monastery kitchen during the annual festival. 304 00:29:25,090 --> 00:29:30,930 She calls me to go with them every time there's a blessing to be received. So we can go into the assembly hall together. 305 00:29:30,930 --> 00:29:34,960 I ask her each time what empowerment is being given and what blessing we are receiving. 306 00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:39,100 And she says again and again, how am I supposed to know? We're all in the kitchen together. 307 00:29:39,100 --> 00:29:42,850 But she asks the monk for me each time and reports back her answer. 308 00:29:42,850 --> 00:29:49,650 We hide away during our break so she can sing nomadic songs and complain about her varicose veins. 309 00:29:49,650 --> 00:29:55,590 So the second way that women describe their relationship with Labour is as deliberative tool. 310 00:29:55,590 --> 00:29:59,700 I bring Nundle back to the nunnery this morning and the way we chat about why it seems 311 00:29:59,700 --> 00:30:04,080 that so many nuns are performing retreats while so few monks are doing the same. 312 00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:09,680 She says that many lamas, including monasteries, own organ doget and Party and Kimpo to download. 313 00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:14,310 You have repeated many times that nuns are better practitioners than monks. 314 00:30:14,310 --> 00:30:21,430 They know how to work hard and have a strong motivation for practise. Whereas monks like to play and joke around. 315 00:30:21,430 --> 00:30:25,870 So this idea of deliberative tool menace manifests itself in two ways. 316 00:30:25,870 --> 00:30:32,110 One, that women have more difficult lives and therefore more easily develop aversion to the material world. 317 00:30:32,110 --> 00:30:40,540 And to that, women are trained from a young age to work diligently and have strict discipline, which are necessary traits for their religious life. 318 00:30:40,540 --> 00:30:46,760 For a religious life. One of the main catalysts for practise is a. 319 00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:56,240 An aversion to the Somsak world in order to turn away from samsara, a practitioner must realise the inherent suffering of Somsak existence. 320 00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:59,040 This realisation, of course, can come about through various avenues, 321 00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:04,220 like seeing the suffering of others or intellectually understanding the impermanence and suffering. 322 00:31:04,220 --> 00:31:08,360 The kind of cycle of life and death, etc. There's a lot of pathways to it. 323 00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,660 But women claim that their own experiences with suffering make them realise 324 00:31:11,660 --> 00:31:16,580 more quickly and more urgently that the world contains boundless suffering. 325 00:31:16,580 --> 00:31:20,900 This manifests itself in the pain of leaving home to become a bride in a strange household, 326 00:31:20,900 --> 00:31:25,550 of marrying into a large family, of taking on the responsibility of fetching water, lighting the fire, 327 00:31:25,550 --> 00:31:30,530 rising first, sleeping last, cooking all meals, cleaning all dishes, kneading the dough, baking the bread, 328 00:31:30,530 --> 00:31:35,450 bearing the children, breastfeeding the children, cleaning urine and excrement off those children, 329 00:31:35,450 --> 00:31:38,360 performing the milking, collecting fresh dung and spreading it to dry, 330 00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:45,350 collecting more water sometimes from a stream covered in ice more than a kilometres walk away, taking care of ageing parents in law, 331 00:31:45,350 --> 00:31:50,150 satisfying the needs of all male brothers of the household, all without the ability to read, write, 332 00:31:50,150 --> 00:31:56,710 drive a car, open a bank account, or leave the confines of home without permission or a chaperone. 333 00:31:56,710 --> 00:32:02,140 When discussing with women whether or not their lives are more difficult than those of their male counterparts or their male relatives, 334 00:32:02,140 --> 00:32:08,520 I'm almost always met with laughter. It is laughable to even question out loud whose lives are more difficult. 335 00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:15,030 Not only are women more experienced in the painful nature of some sorrow, but their lives of labour cultivated from a very early age. 336 00:32:15,030 --> 00:32:18,110 Prepare them mentally and physically for a life of religious labour. 337 00:32:18,110 --> 00:32:24,990 But as liberation is often framed as a difficult, tedious and vicious process, one that requires extreme dedication, 338 00:32:24,990 --> 00:32:30,030 devotion, faith and perseverance, liberation through Vajrayana is not for the faint of heart. 339 00:32:30,030 --> 00:32:35,530 And women have cultivated that knowledge in their lived experiences from a very young age. 340 00:32:35,530 --> 00:32:41,610 At the end of the prostration accumulation portion of one's preliminary practises can be a bit anticlimactic. 341 00:32:41,610 --> 00:32:46,890 After days or months of work, practitioners prostrate for the last time, not really knowing how to stop. 342 00:32:46,890 --> 00:32:53,250 They sit down. They move forward to the new accumulations. Their muscles trained to always move in the same way. 343 00:32:53,250 --> 00:32:59,250 Frustration after frustration. Hour after hour, day after day, the body has been broken down. 344 00:32:59,250 --> 00:33:04,900 The ego new ball demolished, ready to begin the next step in their preliminary practises. 345 00:33:04,900 --> 00:33:13,570 It's tempting to imagine that because Labour is transformative. It is also inherently good for women that these toils are romantic and value positive. 346 00:33:13,570 --> 00:33:17,680 Far from shifting the paradigm, we would just be squat swapping in variables. 347 00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:23,170 The philosophic and literary avenues of Budish study are less pure Buddhism than the bodily labours of the masses. 348 00:33:23,170 --> 00:33:29,980 But that's not what I hope to achieve. And I don't think that's really the argument that any women themselves are making. 349 00:33:29,980 --> 00:33:36,340 First of all, the women of boomer member themselves maintain an ambivalent attitude toward the productive power of Labour. 350 00:33:36,340 --> 00:33:44,430 On the one hand, domestic and child labour can be a distraction from and a catalyst toward religious practise. 351 00:33:44,430 --> 00:33:49,840 So labour of the body within the home can build the necessary skills of perseverance, patience and endurance needed. 352 00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:51,970 First, a strong spiritual practise. 353 00:33:51,970 --> 00:33:58,000 On the other hand, the women, the work that women perform in the household can hold them back from having the time, 354 00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:03,360 energy and resources needed to devote to something like their preliminary practises. 355 00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:10,600 The very physically demanding entry into religious practise presented in the preliminary practises is a form of labour productive, 356 00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:14,830 an inevitable aspect of religious life that produces real results. 357 00:34:14,830 --> 00:34:19,480 Something happens to these women when they perform a hundred thousand prostrations. 358 00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:26,320 The calluses and wounds and aching joints are an external manifestation of an internal process of submission. 359 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,050 But submission is not inactive. 360 00:34:29,050 --> 00:34:35,170 Women take time out of their labour, fill days to turn their minds and bodies toward the object object of their refuge. 361 00:34:35,170 --> 00:34:43,620 They do so not out of convenience, but out of devotion and faith for Allama, for the teachings and for the promise that this labour will change them. 362 00:34:43,620 --> 00:34:53,110 And that transform transformation, I argue, is at the heart of tantric practise in contemporary Tibet. 363 00:34:53,110 --> 00:35:09,022 So I didn't.