Apparitions of the Self: The secret autobiographies of a Tibetan visionary : a translation and study of Jigme Lingpa's Dancing moon in the water and Dakki's grand secret-talk

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. Hardcover. Very good(+) copy in very good dust jacket./very good. Octavo in black boards in purple dust jacket; illus., map; 360 pp., 24 cm.; jacket is lightly worn and rubbed around the edges (no tears); light shelfwear; length long vertical crease to front jacket flap; diagonal crease to rear flap; cloth very lightly rubbed to parts of cloth, corners; boards are very lightly bumped at the spine corners; sparse, very light pencil to fewer than 10 pages; o/w pages are clean, crisp, bright and free of marks and creases; edges of leaves are clean; binding is tight and square; a gently used copy. In English. || Abstract: "Apparitions of the Self is an investigation into what is known in Tibet as "secret autobiography," an exceptional, rarely studied literary genre that presents a personal exploration of intimate religious experiences. In this volume, Janet Gyatso focuses on the outstanding pair of secret autobiographies by the famed Tibetan Buddhist visionary, Jigme Lingpa (1730-1798), whose poetic and self-conscious writings are as much about the nature of his own identity, memory, and the undecidabilities of autobiographical truth as they are narrations of the actual content of his experiences." "Gyatso is among the first to consider Tibetan literature from a comparative perspective, examining the surprising fit - as well as the misfit - of Western literary theory with Tibetan autobiography. She examines the intriguing questions of why Tibetan Buddhists produced so many autobiographies (far more than other Asian Buddhists), and how autobiographical self-assertion is possible even while Buddhists believe that the self is ultimately an illusion. Also explored are Jigme Lingpa's historical milieu, his revelatory visions of the ancient Tibetan dynasty, and his meditative practices of personal cultivation. The book concludes with a study of the subversive female figure of the dakini in Jigme Lingpa's writings, and the implications of her gender, her sexuality, and her unsettling discourse for the autobiographical subject in Tibet."--Jacket.