Embodying Enlightenment: Exploring Care as Pedagogy Among Buddhist Nuns at Jamyang Choling Institute Restricted; Files Only
Scanlon, Paige (Spring 2025)
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore how nuns practicing Tibetan Buddhism at Jamyang Choling Institute (JCI) in Dharamsala, India demonstrate care as a pedagogical function of their religion. The experiences of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist nuns in the Tibetan diaspora have recently gained more scholarly attention. Lay and monastic scholars have called for an increased attention and growth in nunnery education, in which many nuns experience fewer educational resources than monks. These calls for equality parallel bell hooks’ framing of education as a practice of freedom. I argue that nuns, through caring for themselves and others, achieve an embodied knowledge of Buddhist tenets of compassion and loving-kindness: They do this by leveraging the interdependence of the nunnery culture to understand more about the nature of their mind, and therefore the reality of the world. I situate my claim within Saba Mahmood’s warning that scholars must avoid placing “liberal feminist discourses” onto populations frequently overemphasized as oppressed in scholarship: The nuns at JCI can both submit to the hierarchies of the nunnery and experience immense freedom as monastics. They see ultimate freedom not as a complete subversion of gendered norms, but rather as the pursuit of the liberation of their mind on the path of enlightenment. Care provides an avenue for these women to do just that.
I locate my research within fieldwork I conducted from May-July 2024 while living and traveling alongside the JCI nuns in their nunnery and homes in north India (Manali, Lahaul, and Zangskar). There, I conducted participant observation and interviews among the JCI nuns, outside monastics, and administrators at local nunneries and organizations, such as the Tibetan Nuns Project. I combine this primary source data with existing literature on monastic culture, Buddhist nuns, care, and pedagogy. I find that the nuns’ “culture of care” at JCI, as displayed through daily basic activities and tasks, elucidates how care is embodied, relational, and pedagogical. One example of this daily activity—Tibetan Buddhist debate—further highlights the relationship between caring and learning, as debate pedagogy serves as a form of self-care.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Home is Where the Heart Is
So What?
Timeline and Methods
My Bias Toward Care
The Path Ahead
Chapter One: Situating the Nuns of Jamyang Choling Institute
The Socio- and Geopolitical Context of Tibetan Buddhism in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh
Nuns at the Margins
Attention and Access to Female Monastic Education
Theorizing Agency in a Gendered Domain
Mothering as an Imperfect but Helpful Model for Care
Defining an Interdependent Care
Setting the Scene
Chapter Two: Daily Care, Daily Clarity
The Interdependence of Transmitting Knowledge
Thrifting Interdependence: Trying on Care for Size
Caretakers and Teachers
Zookeeping and Transgressing
Invisible Care
The Mind: The Inner Sanctum of Care
Chapter Three: Debate as an Embodied Pedagogy of Care
Debate as Self-Care
The Embodied Relationality of Tibetan Buddhist Debate: An Engaged Pedagogy
The Chaos and Cohesion of Debate
My Debate on Debate
Debate as Meditation
Caretaking the Mind
Conclusion
Mangoes and Mutual Care
Limits and Nuances
Future Work
In Another Life
The End: Back Home
Appendix
Bibliography
About this Honors Thesis
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File download under embargo until 22 May 2027 | 2025-04-14 11:20:37 -0400 | File download under embargo until 22 May 2027 |
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