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INTRODUCTION BUDDHISM IS THE ONE INDIGENOUS RELIGION IN ASIA WITH A LONG AND continuous record of successful migration, an impressive two and half millennia history from its northern Indian origins to the furthest reaches of Asia in every direction. This process has been marked as much by transformation and diversity as by continuity and unity, whether we look to its literatures, doctrines, practices, or institutions. Yet within this diversity, there is a persistent and even defining concern with the figure of the Buddha (s), whether serene or horrific, celibate or sexual, historical or cosmic, iconographic or doctrinal, ritual or contemplative, objects of emulation or objects of negation. These figures proliferated in the shimmering pure lands, dense mandalas, and alternative cosmologies of later forms of Buddhism , while the simple historicity of a north Indian founder of a religion underwent similar transformations to the point of including primordial figures whose defining identity was their lack of historicity and temporal development, massive cosmological Buddhas who create and host entire galaxies, and intimate interior Buddhas pervading the body’s interior. And yet within this diversity and divinity, there has remained a consistent humanist association stemming from the human origins of Buddhas, and the rejection of a creator deity who sits outside of interdependence, even when this rejection sits side by side with rhetoric that celebrates “Buddha” or “bodhicitta” in terms that seem all but indistinguishable from such a divine, creative force. With this humanism, there comes an equally persistent problem of presence and absence, of how a discrete, specific Buddha is present in this 51 CHAPTER THREE LIVING RELICS OF THE BUDDHA(S) IN TIBET David Germano ordinary world of samsara when his/her self-transfiguration by definition involves extrication from that world. It is thus not surprising that wherever we find Buddhism, we also find a concern for what could only be termed “relics”—bits and pieces of the Buddha, or Buddha-like historical figures, which have retained a material presence in the world even when the Buddha has departed or is only accessible in brief glimpses of visionary experience or ritual evocation. Relics have been one of the most omnipresent and sought after phenomena of Buddhist material culture, often presented in recent scholarship as a way to mediate the Buddha’s historical absence following death. Relics and statues of the Buddha are in many ways considered as the living Buddha, that is, as radically active agents, rather than a mere remainder from, or image of, a distant past. This quality of personhood or agency has been demonstrated through examination of concrete social practices surrounding relics and statues, including the attribution of such classic characteristics of ownership of property, the ability to be murdered, and so forth. In Mahayana traditions, this persistent agency of the Buddhas in material form has been further formalized in the theology of the “three Bodies” of a Buddha: a Buddha’s innermost recesses become coterminous, in some sense, with reality (dharmata\), and out of this matrix a vast array of material forms both animate and nonanimate are emanated. We might thus speak of relics and emanations, which are unified in their divine agency and derivation, but different in being perceived as persistent forces that are a legacy of the past in contrast to newly emergent manifestations that are a direct outflow of the present. In practice, however, these distinctions are far from clear. Relics can be pieces of the material body—a tooth, a bone, dried up flesh, odd crystalline derivates of the cremated body, or material items associated with a Buddha—clothing, ritual items, or other possessions. They can also be verbal, as encapsulated in the Buddhist scriptures, believed to have persisted orally in the hearts and minds of disciples before being committed to written, canonical form. Indeed it has been argued that stupas, images, and a wide spectrum of other items believed to derive from, emulate, represent, or incarnate a Buddha’s presence should be considered relics.1 “Relics” also extend from the historical Buddha to other Buddhas, divine figures, and historical personages in a given tradition’s lineages. In the present volume, such relics are analyzed across a variety of situational contexts and functions—intellectual, ritual, social, literary, and political—and across an equally diverse array of cultural contexts—India, Japan, Thailand, and China. In this chapter I will turn to yet another cultural context, namely, Tibet, and to yet another sitDAVID GERMANO 52 [3.146.255.127] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15:30...

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