Description:

The fourth lecture in the fifth year of the Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series at Northwestern.

In this talk, David Germano will explore how tantric consorts and sexuality is presented in the fourteenth century corpus of Longchenpa (klong chen pa, 1308-1363), one of the greatest authors in the history of Tibetan Buddhism and the fundamental architect of the classical Great Perfection (rdzogs chen)  tradition. Germano will use as a framework Longchenpa's most detailed presentation, which is found in The Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle, where he offers a comprehensive overview of the entire process of a male religious figure’s interaction with a female consort from start to finish in seventeen stages. While the account has details on theory and contemplative practice, it also has a strong social and personal focus that enables it to be a compelling bridge between the more theoretical and idealized accounts found in commentaries and the more personal accounts found in narratives.

David Germano teaches and researches Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies, as well as directs the Tibet Center.  His scholarship has focused on Tibetan esoteric traditions of Buddhist narrative, lives, thought, and practice, particularly in the Great Perfection tradition (rdzogs chen).  He has lived for many years in Tibetan communities in Asia, where he has studied Buddhist philosophy and contemplation, and worked extensively on programs of community engagement and support, participatory knowledge creation, and digital technology adapted for support and preservation of Tibetan forms of knowledge. He is currently focused on supporting Tibetan entrepreneurship and relaunching the Tibetan and Himalayan Library. From 2011-2023 he founded and directed the Contemplative Sciences Center, in which context he worked on educational reform recentering educational institutions on the facilitation and support of the flourishing of students as whole individuals in the face of the current crisis of wellbeing amongst youth. He currently leads the Generative Contemplation Initiative, which is developing a new scholarly model and methodology for understanding Tibetan Buddhist contemplation, exploring microphenomenological research on Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, creating a new contemplative design process and toolkit, and designing new contemplative applications for specific social contexts.