In the Lap of the Buddha: Intimacy in Tibetan Ritual

Abstract

Following the re-opening of the Rasa Trulnang Tsuklhakhang, the central temple in Lhasa, all of the new images of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and famous lamas were placed behind glass except for those in the sancta sanctorum, the “Jokhang”. When a pilgrim approaches the central figure, the Jowo Śākyamuni, she climbs a ladder on his right side, lays a ceremonial scarf across his lap, and then lays her head there, like a child seeking solace from her mother. A wealthy pilgrim might return in the late afternoon, when the temple is closed to visitors, to sponsor a regilding ceremony, in which the sponsor can spend up to an hour nearly alone with the Jowo watching his whole body be repainted in gold. Based on participant observation, pilgrimage guides, and verses of praise offered to the Jowo, this paper considers how the cult of the Jowo uses moments of private intimacy to bridge the distance, both physically and historically, between a devotee and the Buddha.

1. Introduction

In Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, the main Buddhist shrine since 642 has been the Rasa Trulnang Tsuklhakhang (ra sa sprul snang gtsug lag khang), also known as the “Jokhang” (jo khang) (Warner 2011b). Properly speaking, “Jokhang” refers to the central chapel, which houses the most famous image of the Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, the Jowo Śākyamuni (jo bo shā kya mu ne) also known as the Jowo Rinpoché (jo bo rin po che), meaning the Precious Lord (Warner 2008). Tibetans and other Buddhists have venerated the Jowo for centuries for primarily three reasons. First, mythopoetic Tibetan texts state the first emperor of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo (Srong btsan sgam po) (d. 649/650), arranged for the Jowo to be brought to Tibet by his Chinese bride, Wencheng Gongzhu (Rgya bza’ kong jo) (Warner 2011a). Second, those mythopoetic texts state the historical Buddha ordered the creation of the Jowo to serve as his proxy in Tibet. And lastly, in order to fulfill that function, the Indian divine artisan Viśvakarma constructed the Jowo as a portrait of the Buddha, based upon his appearance at the age of 12 according to the memory of his nursemaid.

Among the many rituals Tibetans perform to venerate the Jowo, two are among the most intimate religious acts performed in Tibet: having an audience with the Jowo through giving him a scarf and having his body regilded (painted with real gold). Despite their centrality in Tibetan ritual life, to my knowledge neither of them has ever been the subject of research. The ritual of offering a scarf to the Jowo is among the most ubiquitous. Every day, hundreds of pilgrims to the Jowo’s temple will line up for their opportunity to offer him a scarf. They will climb a ladder on his right side, lay the scarf on his lap, place their head in his lap while saying a brief prayer, walk behind the Jowo, and perform the ritual again on the other side. The regilding ceremony is much more rare. It is usually performed on the four major Buddhist holidays1 for the few sponsors wealthy enough to pay the cost of the gold and sometimes new brocade silk robes for the Jowo.

In this article, I connect the two rituals through the lens of intimacy. Whereas anthropology has long theorized gift giving, and the study of religion has accounted for material culture’s ability to impact social relations, my primary concern here is on the devotee’s experience of coming into close contact with an image of the Buddha some understand as his actual Body. Therefore, I draw on Georges Bataille’s theory of religion and intimacy to interpret my ethnography of Jowo rituals, which bridges participant observation and a close reading of an under-appreciated genre of Tibetan Buddhist literature. In different ways, both rituals I unveil here reduce the distance between the awe-inspiring Jowo and his devotees through the sensuousness of touch and the privacy of gazing on the beauty of the Buddha.

2. Having an Audience with the Jowo

2.1. Encomia, Panegyrics, Eulogia Written on Scarves

In the collected writings of many famous lamas, one finds a section called tödpa (bstod pa), which in Sanskrit is known as stotra, and could be translated as encomia, panegyrics, eulogia, or simply hymns of praise. As mostly short verses, historians of Tibet have not paid them much attention despite their importance in common rituals. Frequently lamas would write encomia to the Jowo or other kuten (sku rten), literally [Buddhist] Bodies that support [practice] (i.e., statues) (Warner 2023) when making offerings or performing a consecration ceremony. Some of these hymns of praise would be written onto khatas (kha btags) (scarves), to be draped over the Jowo’s lap when the lama was jelwa (mjal ba), “having an audience with” the Jowo. The lama’s closest disciples would collect the tödpa to preserve these thoughts and prayers for posterity. Seemingly inconsequential in their ubiquity, these praise-inscribed scarves open a window onto one of the most prevalent types of Tibetan ritual action, illuminating how aura is created and exchanged (Benjamin 1968; Freedberg 1989; Mauss 1954) in Tibetan religion through the connections established (often through physical contact) between image, text, ritual, and person.

The ceremonial scarves or khatas are long, thin pieces of fabric. They come in a variety of colors but are most commonly white. Until recently, khatas were made out of wool or silk, although most are now made out of derivates of petroleum. Several anthropologists have discussed the material importance of the khatas. Christina Harris (2007), for example, wrote an object biography of khatas with a focus on commodification, inspired by the work of Igor Kopytoff (1986) and Arjun Appadurai (1986), a well-used approach to the study of material culture at the time of her research. According to Harris, in the last thirty years, khatas have tended to be made of silk or rayon in Sichuan primarily and occasionally in Kathmandu or Benares. Harris also described different terms for khatas, which denote their relative quality. In his ethnographic film Khata (Gyal 2023), a Tibetan anthropologist from Amdo, Huatse Gyal, critiques the overuse of petroleum-based khatas and their negative impact on the environment in Tibet when the khatas break down. Onoda Shunzo, in a paper on a silk brocade khata with an inscription and an image of Avalokiteśvara, cited a Tibetan eight-fold khata-typology based on two criteria: quality and style (Onoda 2004). Style differs primarily according to the inscription and or Buddhist symbols woven into the khata. And in Tibetan language scholarship, one should consult Lhasawa Lozang Dondan’s study of khatas, Bod lugs rten rdzas kha btags kyi gleng ba (Lha sa ba Blo bzang don ldan 1997). In Tibetan writing on the Jowo, I often find the following synonyms for khatas: 1. nyendar (snyan dar), 2. lhadzé (lha rdzas), 3. nyenshé (snyan shal), and 4. naza (na bza’). To my knowledge, none of these terms are uniquely used to denote khatas; each has a wide semantic range. However, they all share the common feature of denoting khatas adorning kuten, often appearing like earrings. The semantic range of naza is wide enough to signify any fabric used to adorn a kuten, and therefore, for example, we see its use for fabric relics of the Jowo given to sponsors of the regilding ceremony, which I discuss further below.

The basic ritual of offering a khata to the Jowo is simple, open to all pilgrims, and yet in its own way unique. The pilgrim in question approaches the Jowo with his khata unfolded over his hands, prays, enters the Jowo’s chapel in a clockwise direction, climbs the stairs to the Jowo’s right-hand side, places his khata over the Jowo’s lap, lays his head on the many khatas and silk brocade already covering the Jowo’s right knee like a soft pillow, prays, walks clockwise to the other side, repeats the gesture at the Jowo’s left knee, offers concluding prayers in front of the Jowo, and departs the Jowo’s chapel to visit the rest of the temple. The entire action is surprisingly quick. Almost every day that I have stayed in Lhasa, I have had an audience with the Jowo—hundreds of times in total. I preferred visiting in the early mornings with Tibetan pilgrims who often traveled long distances to see the Jowo. There was usually a long line of eager elderly and rural Tibetans gently pushing me to get closer to the Jowo, as well as shrine attendants who function as traffic cops, keeping one from pausing for too long.

The combination of the mundane and extraordinary, distance and intimacy, are themes throughout the cult of the Jowo and lie at the heart of his significance. Tibetans offer khatas to any kuten of their choosing, but in most cases the khata is thrown at the kuten from afar or laid at the base of a high throne. In all of those cases, the devotee remains at a physical distance from the kuten, often separated by a fence, a glass cabinet, or the height of the shrine itself. What makes the action of offering a khata to the Jowo unique is the opportunity to share an intimate moment with him. Contact relics dominate a wide swath of Tibetan Buddhist practice. For example, when visiting Ganden Monastery (Dga’ ldan) outside Lhasa, pilgrims can elect to be hit over the head with the boot of Tsongkhapa Lozang Drakpa (Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa) (1357–1419) to receive his blessings. Likewise, one might receive a special cord to wear around the neck or wrist after having an audience with a high lama. But I argue that the sensuousness of touching silk combined with the childlike vulnerability of putting one’s head in the Jowo’s lap puts this act of devotion in its own hermeneutical category, especially if we consider that Tibetan adults rarely touch in public. The image of an adult Tibetan laying his head in the lap of another would be striking. But what happens in that moment for the Jowo’s devotees? “I received the Jowo’s jinlap (blessings)”, they would sometimes tell me.

In his now famous study, Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets, Stanley Tambiah proposed that the “power” of a “charismatic” person imbues an amulet through a process of “sedimentation” (Tambiah 1984). However, art historian David Freedberg criticized Tambiah’s notion of “sedimentation” as being vague, mystical, and just an uninformative label no more helpful than the term magic (Freedberg 1989). Tambiah was attempting to understand what he saw as the transfer of charisma to the amulet, yet Freedberg thought attention to contact did not sufficiently answer the question as to how objects are believed to possess power, nor was it sufficient to talk about activation or transmission of charisma alone. Freedberg argued that Tambiah was wrong to completely ignore the actual appearance of the object and the effect that appearance can have, the issue being whether “figuration” makes a difference—for example a statue souvenir, which looks like the god one just visited, versus a piece of cloth taken from a shrine as a contact relic, where in another context the contact relic would appear to be any scrap of old cloth. My approach straddles the divide between Tambiah and Freedberg. I study both the act of offering and receiving relatively simple pieces of cloth, as well as historical examples of cloth relics where their particular figuration seemed to have served as a means of sedimentation of a pilgrim’s experience.

There are historical examples of khatas inscribed with verses of praise known to have been offered to the Jowo. These khata-tödpas can be considered contact relics because of the sedimentation of charisma or aura transferred in one direction from the Buddha Śākyamuni to the Jowo to the khatas to the author and in another direction from the author to the khatas to the author’s devotee who collected the scarf to preserve the words inscribed on it.2 In the absence of the actual fabric, the words recorded preserve that aura. Over time, as each Tibetan master visited the Jowo and offered his own verses of praise, the sedimentation process deepened. Each visitor to the Jowo not only received the Buddha’s aura but also the aura of previous visitors to the shrine.

2.2. An Example of a Xylograph Encomia Offered to the Jowo

During the academic year 2005–2006 while I was conducting fieldwork in Tibet, Nepal, and India, I discovered xylograph encomia to the Jowo preserved on microfiche by the Nepal–German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP). One tödpa preserved at the NGMPP titled, The Prayer for the Precious Lord Who Grants the Fruit of All Desires, Prays for the Object of Desires and Satisfies All Auspicious Straightforward Desires, was an anonymously written 12-folio 20th century woodblock-printed text (with an extra folio inserted) in the private collection of a Karma Dorje from Khangsar, a tiny hamlet in the Manang district of Nepal on the Annapurna hiking circuit.3 Based on the title, the xylograph pictures of the Jowo and his attendants, and the contents of the prayer, I imagine the first owner of The Prayer for the Precious Lord obtained his or her copy on the Barkhor (bar skor) (middle circumambulation route) in Lhasa as a sacred souvenir during a pilgrimage from Nepal to Tibet to meet the Jowo. Unlike other khata-tödpas, this one begins with a type of meditation practice, a tantric visualization, commonly found in sādhana ritual texts used for guiding an initiate’s daily prayer and meditation practices. The visualization of Avalokiteśvara continues onto the verso of the inserted folio with standard features of this kind of ritual description such as light rays and the deity’s six-syllable mantra and ends by attributing the visualization to the blessed speech of Tangtong Gyelpo (Thang stong rgyal po) (1361–1485).

The inserted folio with the ritual from Tangtong Gyelpo of visualizing Avalokiteśvara serves multiple functions here. It connects one’s supplication to the Jowo with Tangtong Gyelpo’s own khata-tödpa, which he addressed to both Avalokiteśvara and the Jowo, for the purpose of ending a famine in Tibet. The invocation of Avalokiteśvara also brings the supplicant back to key moments in the etiology of the Jowo such as his miraculous construction in India during the lifetime of the Buddha, as well as his arrival in Tibet through the machinations of Avalokiteśvara’s emanation, the first Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo. According to the colophon, the text was written during the lifetime of the 13th Dalai Lama Thupten Gyatso (Tā lai’i bla ma Thub bstan rgya mtsho) (1876–1933), who devotees worshipped as a rebirth of Songtsen Gampo and likewise another emanation of Avalokiteśvara. In other words, the visualization connects the present supplication of the Jowo with many other moments in his history and the direct, dependent relationship between the Jowo, Tibet’s patron deity (Avalokiteśvara), and generations of Buddhist rulers. After the inserted visualization, the actual prayer to the Jowo follows. The prayer itself references core Buddhist teachings, such as the three poisons that lead to suffering—anger, ignorance, and greed—or how the belief in an independent self traps beings in bondage to their sins. The xylograph encomium also calls upon another key moment in the biography of the Jowo, his sojourn in the realm of the nāga (serpent deities) and their perpetual threat to steal the Jowo back through flooding Lhasa with the water of the Kyichu river. Many of the other lines echo common phrases in guru-yoga texts that inculcate a dependence on one’s teacher in order to progress on the path to liberation. However, the Jowo here takes the place of the lama who usually serves as one’s guide and refuge in guru-yoga practices.

Following the encomium, the remainder, in fact bulk of the text, consists of a very lengthy series of colophons mixed with a few additional verses of prayer. I have paraphrased that section here for brevity:

The blessed abode of the Exalted Lokeśvara is generally the pure realm of the provinces of Ü and Tsang, but especially for the clergy and the laity, the men and the women who live in the vicinity of the Lhaden Trulpé Tsuklhakhang [the Jowo’s temple], who hold aloft an inconceivable number of ritual implements to be offered into the presence of especially the Jowo Śākyamuni, the self-arisen Mahākāruṇika, and the other gods, etc. Though the goal of my prayer was [attaining] complete Buddhahood, previously in my little writings and meditations on the scriptures, because of what was desirable, because of the happiness brought to the vulgar, I connected the pure realms with the three types of individuals. [7a5] [Based on] the oral instructions of the lineage-holder Bhikṣu Maitripa, which I arranged [here] in verse form, I composed this prayer.

    Each time that I have met the Jowo, especially in the morning, [7b1] before the sun rose in the east, I placed my head onto each of his knees. If this were taught clearly and repeatedly, [7b2] the powerful truth of your prayer of unchanging suchness (chos nyid) would be achieved. The Jowo resembles the real Buddha, the one who possesses compassionate kindness. [7b3] On the right and left of the Body of the Jowo are the two called Norbu Tanadewa and Takshewa, who everyday attend to the needs (lan re ‘khor) of the Body of the Jowo at the time explained above. [7b4] By means of [the prayer] called, “The Gem of the Wrathful: Gathering the Three Prayers of Suchness”, just as one certainly achieves all aspirations by standing on top of the Pipacan stone,4 repeat the prayer directly in front of the Jowo’s heart, directly on top of the footprints (zhabs khong) of Dharmarāja Songtsen Gampo, below the learned, noble and good [8a2] kalyāṇamitras of previous Dharmarājas. [8a3] Due to the arising of all necessities and wealth in the pure realm of Ü and Tsang, the kings of the four directions, placed many precious gem-studded crowns [8a4] hidden inside of a copper amulet case (ga’u) which was ornamented as a treasure [at this spot]. Known as “the [place where] the four prayers were gathered”, prayers are certainly achieved here. In particular, [8a5] three times a day this prayer should be done without attachment for him. Future lives will be born in this particular Buddha-field; by virtue of really grasping onto the Jowo Śākyamuni in an inseparable way, [8b1] there arises inconceivable benefits and advantages. Oṃ Svasti!

[8b2] The Protector of very degenerate beings

Instead of being here in person,

having perfected the four types of enlightened activity,

By virtue of this prayer, may the great Jowo long remain.

[8b3] Due to the superior attitude of Géming Jampal Wangchuk,

who achieved virtue and a change of mind infinite like the sky,

[8b4] and Tenzin Chödrakpa, who generally and specifically,

removed all faults and attained a state of happiness,

In response to a request from Géming Jampal Wangchuk [8b5] from Oḍiyana, these benedictory verses were composed and printed.

According to the first colophon (7a1–8b4), the author arranged verses which were part of an oral tradition from the lineage holder Bhikṣu Maitriba [sic]; the first colophon ends in a two-verse prayer requested by Géming Jampal Wangchuk (Dge ming ‘Jam dpal dbang phyug), a close relative of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. However, the colophon is followed by a long benediction from a Kalka Chaptru Lama Kachen Jampa Kelsang (Khal kha byab khrus Bla ma dka’ chen Byams pa skal bzang)5, who is likely a Mongolian geshe (holder of an advanced academic degree) from Sera Monastery, Sera Je Hardong Jampa Kelsang, who became the abbot of the Gyumé Lower Tantric College in about 1933. He was a famous scholar who earned the geshe lharampa degree and died around 1944. Internal evidence supports this conclusion, since the final colophon states that the blocks were housed at the Lhasa Parcikhang printing house, an appendage of Gyumé. At this point, the font goes back to its original size and continues with seven verses praising the 13th Dalai Lama, before returning to a smaller font, presumably to indicate a return to not only prose, but more standard colophon-like language. This second colophon continues for two folios and references Gyumé Ngakram Geshé6 Lozang Khédrup (Rgyud smad sngags ram dge bshes Blo bzang mkhas grub) and the goddess Margan Dorjé Dolma (Vajratārā). The final colophon, in even smaller font, ends the text with an account of its carving onto wooden printing blocks:

Yeshé Phuntsok, Tashi Tsering, Kelzang Rinchen, Tsering Droma, and Tsering Yangdzom gave this edition as blocks to reside in the [Lhasa] Parci [khang].7 The source of all wellbeing and happiness being the Trulnang [Temple] and the brave goddess who protects [us] from harm by the four elements (earth, water, fire and wind).

The anonymous author used his prayer to emphasize how the Jowo and Avalokiteśvara have a special relationship with Lhasa and Central Tibet. In addition to the two obvious images of Avalokiteśvara in the text, the author praises the site of the temple, its chief icon, the Jowo, and describes a special visualization of Avalokiteśvara that should be performed three times a day directly in front of the Jowo. To convince the reader of the power of supplicating the Jowo, and Avalokiteśvara, he reminds the reader of Tangtong Gyelpo’s earlier prayers to avert famine. He also signaled his knowledge of the Jowo’s biography through requesting him to remain here and not travel to the realm of the nāga, an important feature of the cult of the Jowo in Lhasa, especially during the time of the annual Lhasa Great Prayer Ceremony (Monlam Chenmo).

Written in the first person, the colophon is confessional and prefigures the ideal attitude and ritual action of any reader of the text. It begins with observing how lucky Central Tibetans are who live in close vicinity to the Jowo because it is akin to living in a pure realm. Pure realms are heavenly abodes of tantric Buddhist deities. Many Mahāyāna Buddhist practices are aimed at the goal of being reborn in a pure realm, from which it is easier to attain enlightenment than on earth. Rebirth in a pure realm is then like a plan B for a Buddhist who fears she will fail at attaining complete liberation from suffering in this lifetime. The author himself had the goal of attaining complete Buddhahood, but through his own faults, he and his followers must settle for rebirth in a pure realm.

In the course of my research, I have located three prints from the same set of blocks for this prayer. First, there is the complete print the NGMMP filmed; second, there are the folios that were accidentally mixed in with Ngawang Lodro Gyatso’s text, both of which were preserved at monasteries in Nepal; and last, I have a print that was purchased for me at a stall on the Barkhor in Lhasa in the spring of 2009. Therefore, I conclude that the original blocks survived the violence of socialist reforms and Cultural Revolution in the 1950–70s, and I hypothesize that this text might have been for sale to pilgrims in the early twentieth century as well. It might have served as a mass-produced contact relic for the Jowo in a similar fashion as the naza bags and Jowo votive cards recently distributed to sponsors of the regilding ritual.

In addition to containing verses on the biography of the Jowo and an image of him, the colophon contains a first-hand description of the intimate “ritual” for venerating the Jowo:

Each time that I met the Jowo, especially in the morning, [7b1] before the sun rose in the east, I placed my head onto each of his knees.8

The text also repeatedly emphasizes the need to take refuge in, to be fully dependent upon, and attached to the Jowo. Therefore, in order to understand the cult of the Jowo, to even read prayers written to him, we must pay close attention to the physicality and sensuality of touching him, his silk garments, and receiving pieces of them as relics.

Returning to the khatas themselves, they embody past religious action in a specific form of media, which make possible the communication of ideas but also induce sensorial responses different than paper or cast metal (Meyer 2008). As the prayer moves from the khata to the xylograph, the sensorial experience of the contact relic, of the touch of silk, is lost as well as that individual, personal experience of being in the presence of the Jowo, which the last colophon recommends. David Chidester described this process as the intersection of human subjectivity with social collectivity and “the genesis of religious experiences as a process in which the personal and the social are co-constitutive” (Chidester 2005). By focusing on body contact between a devotee and the Jowo as the genesis of these prayers, we see how sensational forms are naturalized as conveyors of truth. A “carnal approach”, which grounds our studies in bodily practices, recognizes that the authors and readers of these prayers are feeling and seeing subjects, whose experiences of art and the records of those experiences reflect their vision but also the touch of those objects (Sobchak 2004). Through contact with these khata-tödpas, the reader participates in the process of meaning making, which began with the contact between the author’s khata and the Jowo’s knee, which continues through contact to the printed text taken home as a souvenir to be revisited repeatedly.

3. The Regilding Ceremony

Gift exchange, sedimentation, and figuration come together in the most intimate ritual of veneration offered to the Jowo today, the regilding ceremony (ser chab solwa/ser tulwa). Although I had multiple audiences with the Jowo in the summer of 2001, I began intentional fieldwork studying the cult of the Jowo in the summer of 2004. During an interview with the könnyer (dkon gnyer) (caretaker) of the Jowo’s chapel, I enquired about whether the Jowo had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He stated emphatically that the Red Guards had molested the Jowo. They stole his crown, punctured a hole in his knee, and scraped off centuries of accumulated gold paint. He suggested that if I sponsored a regilding ceremony, where the clothing is removed and the Jowo is repainted with paint made from actual gold, I could see for myself. And not just see, I could take as many photographs or videos as I wanted. At the time, this offer shocked me, because photographs and videos in the temple were strictly prohibited. In order to gain as much merit as possible, the könnyer9 advised me to sponsor the ritual on the very auspicious day, July 21st, Chökhor Duchen (chos ‘khor dus chen), the festival celebrating the first time the Buddha taught his “Dharma (teachings)” to his first disciples. In 2004, it cost me the equivalent of USD 200 to sponsor the ceremony and have the entire body of the Jowo repainted. For an hour, the könnyer, two assistants, the photographer Sarah Schorr, and I were alone with the Jowo. When I sponsored the ceremony again over Losar (lo gsar) (Tibetan New Year) in February 2006, USD 300 only covered part of the cost, requiring me to join with a large group of Chinese pilgrims who brought with them seven layers of new clothes for the Jowo. The paint used to regild the Jowo is called drangser (grang gser) (cold gold). It consists of pellets the size of M&M candies, which are then mixed with chemicals to form a paint applied to the Jowo’s face and upper torso after his clothing and earrings have been removed. Gilding Bodies of the Buddha is a widespread practice in Asia, going as far back as at least third-century China and likely earlier (Ch’en 1964).

The könnyer explained the term “cold gold” to be related to the low melting point of the mixture, which allows for it to be painted easily. He also stated that one of the reasons sponsoring the regilding ceremony generates so much merit is because regilding the Jowo ends up protecting all of the gilded images in Lhasa. Due to the low melting point of the cold gold, the butter lamps in front of the Jowo sometimes make him “sweat” the gold, which runs down his arms and collects near his wrists. That gold is then collected from the wrists and reused to regild other images in the Rasa Trulnang Tsuklhakhang or the Ramoché. The könnyer emphasized this point, stating that “venerating the Jowo and protecting his temple, protects other Buddhas and the Buddhadharma itself”.

3.1. A 17th-Century Regilding Ceremony

Tibetan Buddhist authors often frame autobiographical reflections on their own experiences in particular places as visionary reenactments of previous men and women who engaged in similar actions at earlier points in history. These visions confirm the validity of their actions for readers, dismantle any sense of independent selfhood, and heighten the significance of their experience. As I stood in front of the Jowo offering him gold, I could not help but wonder about how I and the Tibetans around me engaged in a similar sense of historical repetition, of karmic fruition. Then and now, these mental images bring to mind the praises that the seventeenth century Sakya master and throne-holder Jamgon Amnyé Zhab Ngawang Kunga Sonam (‘Jam mgon A myes zhabs Ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams) (1597–1659), wrote on a khata when he sponsored the regilding ceremony also on Chökhor Duchen, in 1619. A loose translation of just part of his letter might be something like,

• A Letter Offered to the Lhasa Jowo Rinpoché on a Beautiful Scarf That Hangs Like Earrings
• Oṃ Blessings be upon Him!
• Supreme refuge among all the ten [ritual supports], sentient beings and gods
• The mind of the Lion of the Śākyas is insight itself
• While you are a feast of merit transferred to gods and humans
• from another point of view you are constructed well by Indra
• The Body of the Prince of King Śuddhodana, who was pleased about everything
• The splendor of your blessings is marvelous, blazing with brilliant rays of light
• In the presence of the assembly of the three ten, which are like wish-fulfilling gems,
• you are leader of the great Tsuklhakhang
• The gold paint for your attractive and beautiful visage
• [Interlinear note: Generally speaking, when offering gold for the faces of the large and small Bodies of the Buddha of the Lhasa Dharmacakra, they need four zho of gold each. However one makes the offering twice to the most important Bodies, such as the Jowo Rinpoché, and therefore needs more than one additional zho of gold. In that way, one has enough gold to cover all of the faces easily each time.]
• The uncut, graceful and beautiful white silk khata
• The purifying incense which brings sweet fragances to the mind
• The innumerable sacrificial cakes of a hundred flavors
• The carefully arranged garland of butterlamps
• However many details there are among the infinite offerings
• This intelligent one who took birth in the lineage of the sovereign Sakyapa,
• the perfect Lords of the Teachings,
• the mantradhara Śākya monk,
• known as Jampa Ngawang Kunga Sonam,
• endowed with the splendor which was held by Drakpa Gyeltsen,
• offer with devotion whatever is named as “good”.10

Amnyé Zhab, whose childhood nickname means “Grandfather”, wrote his letter to the Jowo on a khata, which he chose to hang over the Jowo’s crown so that the ends framed the sides of the Jowo’s face like earrings. In this letter, he expresses the sense of awe that I also felt at being in the presence of a figure who both embodies Śākyamuni’s life story and rules over the most sacred temple in Tibetan history. Amnyé Zhab directly connects the ritual environment of offerings to his aspiration that he and his students will have their minds purified by the power of the Jowo’s blessings, which blaze as brilliant rays of light.

In a small interlinear note to Amnyé Zhab’s khata-encomium, someone in the seventeenth century made the same observation about the value and purpose of offering gold paint to the Jowo as the caretaker I met in Lhasa. That writer, possibly Amnyé Zhab himself or his attendant, even calculated how much gold one needed for the Jowo and other images. Converting from Tibetan to metric measurements is difficult, but based on the writings of Desi Sangyé Gyatso (Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho) (1653–1705), who used an estimated 4440 kilograms of gold for the Fifth Dalai Lama’s reliquary shrine, in seventeenth century Lhasa one zho was equivalent to 3.73 grams (Lin 2021). By that estimate, 5 zho of gold for the regilding ceremony in 17th century Lhasa would be equivalent to between USD 1000–1400 in today’s US dollars.

3.2. Relics from Two 21st-Century Regilding Ceremonies

Each time I served as a jindak (sbyin bdag) (sponsor) of the regilding ceremony, the könnyer gave me relics to take home because they carried with them blessings (jinlap) (byin rlabs) from the Jowo. Historian David Seyfort Ruegg analyzed the relationship between the lama as the “priest” and the financial sponsor of a ritual as the “patron” as the central dynamic of everyday religious life, as well as a fundamental political axis that configured Tibetan relations with Mongol, Manchu, and Chinese neighbors (Ruegg 1991, 2014). The jindak or yondak (in the case of a ruler) exists with the jöné/yönné (Skt. dānapati) dyarchic relationship inherited from South Asian Buddhism. However, as Ruegg points out, the terms priest and patron can lead to misapprehension. The “sponsor” is not in a superior position to a “priest” in Tibetan Buddhism, and the sponsor not only donates valuable items such as money, food, or manufactured religious implements; the sponsor also receives blessings. This exchange of commodities for blessing situates the chindak as both benefactor and beneficiary. Dan Martin interpreted Tibetan blessings as a gift received from a saint intended to induce in the receiver some of the saintly qualities possessed by the giver (Martin 1994); Collin Eyre prefers the translation “transformative power” (Eyre 2023). Rolf Stein correlated jinlap with gzi byin and gzi brjid in non-Buddhists sources as equivalents meaning “majesty, prestige, and charisma” (Stein 1983). Holly Gayley contributed to our knowledge of jinlap through a focus on their sensorial nature, their agency and directionality, their dual nature as apotropaic and soteriological (Gayley 2007). Working up from Martin, James Gentry places an emphasis on how blessings can flow from one object to another or bind two objects together (Gentry 2017). The souvenirs given to the sponsor of the regilding ceremony are both a physical manifestation of the immaterial blessings received during the ceremony and a means of passing those blessings onto others through regifting apotropaic and soteriologically powerful souvenirs the Jowo and the jindak intends for them to receive.

Buddhist pilgrims have circulated souvenir relics between pilgrimage sites and through patronage networks across Asia for millennia. For example, Tibetans once traveled to India in search of new Buddhist teachings and great masters to invite back to Tibet. They carried along with them relics from Tibet to exchange for relics from other parts of Asia or to curry favor with kings and teachers. In the thirteenth century, Tselpa Mönlam Dorjé (Tshal pa Smon lam rdo rje) (1284–1347) made a pilgrimage to the Boudhanāth Stūpa in present-day Nepal and Bodh Gaya, India. What is striking is what he did when he got there and what it tells us about the conservative nature of Tibetan material culture and veneration for Bodies of the Buddha.

He went to the Boudhanāth Stūpa, the one in Nepal, with relics from the Buddha Kāśyapa. [He offered] bodily relics (‘phel gdung) of the Bhagavan, [and] old clothing (na bza’ bla gos) from the upper garment of the Jowo Rinpoché, the chief of the teachings.11

When Mönlam Dorjé visited the Boudhanāth Stūpa, he offered some old clothes from the Jowo. This is the earliest reference we have to old clothes from the Jowo being collected as contact relics for his visitors. These contact relics and their jinlap are still distributed today to sponsors of the regilding ceremony.

The jinlap from the Jowo that I received in 2004 consisted of ten palm-sized ziploc-style plastic bags that each contained barley grains dyed in multiple colors and a square piece of worn brocade cloth of gold color, plus ten cards with a picture of the Jowo on the front, and a prayer to him on the back. The prayer on the reverse of the regilding card reads as follows:

• Skillful in means, compassionate, born into the Śākya clan
• The one who conquered a great host of demons unsubduable by others
• The Body [of the Buddha] that shines like golden Mt. Meru
• I pay obseisance to the Lord of the Śākyas
• Oṃ muni muni ma hā muni svā hā!
• Oṃ Āḥ Hūṃ!

The könnyer explained that the bags with grains and cloth were contact relics of the Jowo because the grains are collected from various rituals performed for the Jowo throughout the year and the brocade silk to be pieces of the Jowo’s old clothes (naza). In 2006, the regilding ritual became more commoditized as the jinlap were no longer plain plastic bags but preprinted and sealed yellow envelopes with the classic Indian Buddhist eight auspicious symbols and the titles, “The Clothing Relics of the Jowo Śākyamuni of the Lhaden Tsuklhakhang” in Tibetan and “Lhasa Jokhang Temple: Śākyamuni’s Precious Buddha Clothes” in Chinese. Each time that I sponsored the ceremony, I kept one set of jinlap relics for myself, and gave the others as gifts to lamas and my own teachers for them to use in consecrating new Bodies of the Buddha or sacralizing their own shrines. In that way, the jinlap I received is presumably distributed in the Bodies of Buddhas and across shrines throughout Tibet, Nepal, India, and North America.

Despite the inevitable commodification of the regilding ritual, I found it to be a powerfully charged, intimate experience. Tibetans rarely show their bodies in public. Before the Cultural Revolution, only Tibetans wealthy enough to sponsor the regilding ceremony would ever see the Jowo naked of his layers of silk brocade. I watched with fascination as the könnyer painted the gold onto the Jowo’s face, torso, and legs slowly, lovingly like a sort of caress. From one perspective, I thought the Jowo appeared surprisingly thin without his clothes and a bit haggard given the large hole in his left knee. But he also appeared truly resplendent and fulgent as the gold reflected the light of the many butter lamps and electric lights shining on him. Taking the photographs felt almost as if we were stealing something we did not deserve or have the right to possess. It took time to fully realize the exchange we were making with the Jowo. By sponsoring the regilding, we were caring for the Jowo. He reciprocated by displaying his glory for the cameras and our minds.

4. Conclusions

The texture of the best khatas, soft and sensuous, invites an intimate interpretation of the experience of laying a khata over the Jowo’s lap and laying one’s head on the soft motherly pile (Ohnuma 2012).

Khatas have also served as a surface for prominent lamas to inscribe tödpa—praises to the Jowo. These encomnia are one of the means by which Tibetan lamas reinforce the notion that there is no difference between the Jowo in Tibet and the real Buddha who lived in India. When carved into woodblocks and printed as souvenirs for pilgrims, a panegyric scarf offered to the Jowo centuries ago becomes a relic to take home and a daily ritual practice to perform. For his most fortunate visitors, the regilding ceremony sets the scene for the most intimate moments with the Jowo as one is pierced by rays of light shining off his golden body.

I draw some inspiration from a few lines of Georges Bataille, the French philosopher famous for his study of erotic mysticism (Bataille 1986), and more recently in the Anglophone world for this theories of religion (Bataille 1992). Bataille wrote at length about suffering and destruction, what Buddhists in Tibet know as the perduring conditioned experience of impermanence—the violent spasm of iconoclasm during the Cultural Revolution and the on-going slow grind of colonial occupation. While I agree that Bataille’s famous line, “Religion is the search for lost intimacy”, should not be taken as a general theory, nor should the rest of his writing (Hollywood 2015), some aspects of his theory help to tease out what might be happening in the rituals of having an audience with the Jowo and regilding him.

Bataille’s theory is based on sacrifice, where a victim is destroyed and thereby returned to the sacred world; sacrifice restores to the sacred world what servile use has degraded. Destruction destroys the sacrificed thing’s utility and thereby the utilitarian relationship between the sacrificer and the animal or plant. The sacrificed is returned to the sacred by removing it from the state of alienation to which use logic has rendered it. Bataille makes a distinction between what he terms continuity and discontinuity. Discontinuous beings are distinct individuals and subject to dissolution. Continuous beings are unified and eternal. However, discontinuous beings, such as the sperm and ovum, unite to form a new entity, a continuous being, which then through its experience becomes discontinuous from other beings with which one does not unite. Humanity strives for continuity through intimacy but only achieves unity through death.

Buddhists do not sacrifice. They offer. Although this distinction is crucial to their own self-conception, it is often lost linguistically when their religion is translated into the language of others without the addition of ethnography. For example, in Danish the verb “at ofre” does double work as both “to sacrifice” and “to offer”. It encompasses violent and nonviolent sacred gifts. For Buddhists, “to sacrifice” means the explicit killing of an animal to a non-Buddhist deity, whereas “to offer” means to bestow vegetarian food (butter, rice, oil, cakes), light, incense, water, and flowers to a Buddhist deity. In Tibetan, the distinction is highlighted by the reference to blood, sacrifice being marchö (dmar mchod) (a blood pūjā), an offering by itself being just chö (mchod) (Skt. pūjā). Offerings do not necessarily “destroy” in Bataille’s terms, as offering cakes can be eaten later and the sources of dairy products need not die in the process.

However, I still find salience in Bataille’s sense that sacrifice/offering returns to the sacred what servile use as placed in the profane. For example, when offering gold to the body of the Jowo Śākyamuni, one has first used ore extracted from sacred landscapes. That ore might have been intended for the creation of human ornaments, which encourage a sinful lifestyle based on greed. Offering gold to the Buddha, in the form of regilding the Jowo’s body, returns the gold to a state of sacrality.

Buddhist rituals usually begin with the devotee “taking refuge” in the Buddha. Some tantric rituals envisage the creation of a deity in the emptiness of one’s mind or completely merging with that deity in order to transform oneself into that ideal identity: both deity and person, no longer separate, but neither identical. Bataille’s use of continuous and discontinuous beings helps express that sense of simultaneous unity and particularity. To place one’s head in the lap of the Jowo is a search for intimacy with the Buddha—to merge with the Buddha on the road towards becoming a Buddha oneself. This is the intimacy of the child in the lap of his mother—the soft khatas like a pillow invoking the sense of security leading to a nap. The Jowo, usually distant and awe-inspiring, becomes someone you know well and trust.

Regilding the Jowo is potentially charged with an alternate sense of intimacy.12 Before digital photography, to see him without clothes was not forbidden but restricted to those who could afford moments alone with him. To see his golden body is meant to invoke contemplation of the Buddha’s body, with its 32 excellent signs and 80 exemplary features. Although not explicitly erotic, many of those features, such as the quality of his skin, his teeth, and his stately and well-proportioned body, serve to attract followers in the double sense of the word. If we continue with the image of the Jowo’s lap being like a mother’s lap, then the regilding ceremony is intimate like a parent bathing with a newborn infant. Vulnerability and exclusivity create a sense of closeness, bonding the pilgrim to the Jowo. The regilding ceremony is therefore not just quiet moments away from the crowds of pilgrims but intimate in the sense of removing barriers and opening one’s imagination.