"Others before self" : Tibetan pedagogy and childrearing in a Tibetan children's village in the Indian Himalaya
Abstract
This anthropological study examines ontogeny of ideas about self and others and approaches
human capacity for intersubjectivity as emergent in the course of life, by looking at how it is shaped
through mediation of the world by others and by processes at the group level. The empirical focus
is the ecology of concepts used by Tibetan children and adults in their daily life in a Tibetan
residential school in India, where people’s conduct and children’s upbringing and schooling are
informed by the Tibetan and Buddhist models and theories of self, mind, learning, causation and
history. The aim of this study is to identify - through a close ethnographic description and analysis
- the core aspects of learning as conceptualized and lived experience within contemporary Tibetan
Buddhist education system, derived from one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world and
crystallizing within a modern nation-state Asia. Tibetan Children’s Villages (TCV) was one of the
first Tibetan school networks aiming to provide formal lay education for children that sprang up
in exile following the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959.
Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study and sets forth
the research agenda that shaped the study design and kinds of engagement that were possible with
the study participants and the field. A short description of the geographical and climate conditions
in the field site is complemented by a snapshot of the social topography of the direct
neighbourhood of the school, where fieldwork was conducted over 11 months (February –
December) in 2013 and 3 months (June – September) in 2014. A brief review of debates and
sources from different bodies of anthropological literature bearing on the ethnographic material
has been added to clarify the orientation of the analysis and the research findings.
Chapter 2 explores the phenomenon of Tibetan lay education in exile and the concept of
education that developed as a result of a shift from monastic centres of learning towards
contemporary Tibetan lay schools in India. Through an ethnographic exploration of the theoretical
model of learning and pedagogical devices such as Tibetan debate, the chapter shows the mind as
the locus of schooling practices. It also demonstrates how, through daily ritual practices and debate,
this becomes a lived experience in a contemporary Tibetan school in the Indian Himalaya. The
chapter discusses ethnographic categories of mind, mind stream and mental karmic imprints, based
on interviews focusing on the Tibetan policy document detailing education strategy and goals.
These are shown to be informed by Tibetan Buddhist theory of learning and an understanding of
the inner subjective experience as the source of knowing. To contextualize the understanding of
mind in a contemporary Tibetan school in India, the chapter provides an ethnographic description
and analysis of the Tibetan dialectical debate (riglam) classes in TCV. Riglam is an ancient debating
tradition developed in India and preserved and further developed in Tibet and Tibetan monasteries
and now also in schools in exile.
Chapter 3 is an exploration of the ethnographic category of ‘history’ in the school. ‘History’
is shown to emerge out of the continuum of time – the un-tensed present. Drawing on the notion
of the mind imprints, patterning and habituation, and the imagery of the seed, coming ‘alive’ and
bearing fruit in the right circumstances, the chapter describes how the making of ‘history’ is
inscribed in the bodies of TCV inhabitants through daily bodily practices - bodily discipline, or
conduct (chöpa).
Chapter 4 focuses on TCV as a place and on the embeddedness of TCV within other
places. Through the discussion of the use of space and space-enabled operations, such as e.g.
spatio-temporally co-located sport games, the chapter outlines conceptualisation of a TCV-place
as expressed through the idioms of ‘floating’ and ‘going out of bounds’. This also leads to a
discussion of transgressions involving the use of electronic devices, tattoos and hairstyles, leaving
school, and the discourse and practices around the concept of ‘pure Tibetans’. The ethnographic
material highlighting an ontogenesis of space opens the way to discuss the embodied practice of
interdependence among TCV inhabitants, the practice that challenges the usefulness of analytical
categories of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ for an anthropological analysis of the experience of growing up
and living in TCV.
Chapters 5 and 6 look closely at the idea of others being essential in the ontogenesis of
beings. Chapter 5 is based on examples of teasing and games that involve directing attention of
infants and children to other people, and bringing other people’s ‘gaze’ (seeing you) to bear on the
decisions made for self. In this way it draws an outline of a particular kind of pedagogic effort
directed at infants and toddlers, and traces this pedagogy in other, later stages of the schooling
experience in TCV.
Chapter 6 focuses specifically on grammatical constructions that seemed to be salient in
the interactions between TCV inhabitants (adults and children). These included: 1) addresseebound
verb use, and, specifically, I-for-you inversion in questions; 2) the use of honorific forms
for others (multiplicity and gradation of terms) and its proscription for self-referential statements;
3) evidentiality markers denoting direct or indirect experience and the salience of personal
connection to the subject/object/action. Such ethnographic exploration of the perspective
inversion in everyday language use and everyday interactions leads to the review of some tacit
assumptions about the ‘subject’ in subjectivity and intersubjectivity used as heuristic devices. The
chapter also explores the utility, feasibility and implications of including the dialogical dimension
of being in the anthropological inquiry.
The conclusion of the thesis focuses on the question of intersubjectivity not as given, but
as ‘teased out’ and formed through practices involving both the constitution of self and the
simultaneous and inevitable constitution of others. It also posits the necessity of ethnographic
exploration of different practices that might be involved in bringing forth intersubjectivity, and
questions about the resulting ‘intersubjectivities’. Discussion of different aspects of the experience
of living and growing up in a TCV campus developed in the previous chapters, i.e. the theory of
learning and understanding of “mind”, inner subjective experience and karmic imprints; discipline
and temporal frameworks predicated on the ideas of karmic causation; dependent arising; training
of awareness, attention and ethical judgement and the ideas of self, leads to a particular reading of
the TCV slogan “Others Before Self”. The analysis, which starts with an exploration of the ideology
of education expressed through a policy document building upon particular Buddhist premises, is
thus brought full circle, with lived Buddhist experience animating the ubiquitous TCV formula for
a human being.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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