| This dissertation is a study of the contemporary Tibetan Buddhist revival in the Tibetan regions of Sichuan and Qinghai Province of the PRC. It interprets the intricate entanglements of this Buddhist revival with cultural identity, ideology, and popular imagination of Buddhist spirituality. By using the languages of consciousness studies and psychology of religion, this dissertation discusses five dimensions of this religious revival, namely, the soteriological, the ideological, the imaginative, the commercial, the nostalgic, and the global. These five dimensions are intended to demonstrate that the revival of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China is intricately bound with both the affirming and negating forces of globalization, modernity, politics of religion, indigenous identity reclamation, and market economy. The analyses in this dissertation point to the multidimensionality of Tibetan Buddhism as it is understood by different religious, cultural, and political constituencies of the PRC. By recognizing the greater contexts of China's politics of religion and of the global status of Tibetan Buddhism, this dissertation argues that Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China is simultaneously undergoing multi-level representations due to its ever intimate contact with both supportive and subversive forces of local and global origins. |
