Abstract
After years of travelling as a Buddhist scholar and pilgrim throughout Asia, Alexandra David-Neel and her adopted son, Yongden, found themselves crossing a remote series of mountain passes in the Tibetan region of Po on their way to Lhasa. The year was 1922; they had all but run out of food, their clothing was melting from their bodies in tattered decay, and deep snow was obscuring their path. The tramping was arduous: Alexandra’s feet were a mess of sores where the frozen snow had seeped through her worn soles, and Yongden had sprained his ankle in a fall down a ravine. This was not the first or the last time that death would creep into view. This chapter is a further conversation with the frontier of mortality, through the pilgrimages and experiences of the lady-lama, Alexandra David-Neel. In it, I probe at the threshold of death from a safer distance. From corpse-eating and inviting flesh-eating demons to feast, to zombie reanimation and magical possessed daggers, we discover that Alexandra’s concept of the mortal frontier was mediated by encounters with materialities that taunted the extremes of affective experience. The possibility of extinction and the certainty of impermanence are foundational realizations for spiritual development. Truly appreciating what it is to die, navigating those fears, and succumbing to a type of confident acceptance and calm resignation come with practising mortality. By this I mean that Tibetan Buddhism nudges the adherent towards experiences that elicit both a sensorial contemplation of, and an embodied confrontation with, their own transience.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Affective Geographies of Transformation, Exploration and Adventure: Rethinking Frontiers |
Editors | Hayley Saul, Emma Waterton |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 102-116 |
Number of pages | 15 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781315204246 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781138701120 |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- David-Néel, Alexandra, 1868-1969
- adventure and adventurers
- human ecology
- mortality
- ethics