2018 Khyentse Lecture - Buddhism and Divination in Tibet

Brandon Dotson Ph.D, Khyentse Lecture 2018, UC Berkeley

February 8, 2018

In Tibet, various forms of divination persist both within and alongside the Buddhist and Bon religions. Excavated divination texts from Dunhuang and from other Silk Road sites furnish us with traces of the dynamic processes by which Buddhism absorbed various divination techniques practiced in 8th to 10th centuries. This lecture will introduce an early form of Tibetan dice divination involving intimate exchanges with gods and with goddesses (sman), and will consider how Buddhism variously transformed, absorbed, and transmitted such divination practices up to the present day.

Brandon Dotson is an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University. He did his graduate training at Oxford University (2007), and has worked and taught at Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. His most recent books are Kingship, Ritual, and Narrative in Tibet and the Surrounding Cultural Area (edited volume, 2015) and Codicology, Paleography, and Orthography of Early Tibetan Documents (co-authored with Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, 2016).