Research Focus Group Talk: Saving the Dead: Conceptions of Agency in Tibetan Buddhist Funerary Rituals

In this talk, Rory Lindsay will share with us insights from his forthcoming book, Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra (2022). He will discuss the history of one of the first Buddhist funerary traditions to be adopted in Tibet and the intersecting forms of agency—human, nonhuman, and material—that are described in this tradition’s ritual manuals. He will also examine polemical exchanges about these practices and Tibetan innovations concerning how the dead are conceptualized and assisted in this ritual framework.

Rory Lindsay is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He is also a research editor at 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha and a visiting scholar at the Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include Tibetan Buddhist ritual, dream literature, biography, and Buddhist canons.

Sponsored by the IHC’s South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group and Buddhist Studies