In 1859 the tantric yogi Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé finished drafting his autobiography. He titled his completed work Advice of the Ḍākinī (མཁའ་འགྲོའི་ཞལ་ལུང་།), signaling one of the most important themes in his life as a charismatic tertön (གཏེར་སྟོན། “treasure revealer”): visionary encounters with Buddhist deities who encouraged him on his path. This paper offers a close reading of the opening chapter of Advice of the Ḍākinī, in which Do Khyentsé inaugurates his life story by situating himself within two intertwined inheritances: a transregional Buddhist lineage stretching from Vajrapāṇi through Jigmé Lingpa, and a local, autochthonous Golok lineage rooted in land, tribe, and Indigenous mountain deities. Do Khyentsé’s story of conception, birth, and recognition layer Buddhist soteriological demands onto Indigenous expectations, casting his life as a convergence of worldly masculine obligations and transcendent tantric destiny. Reading these narratives through a critical masculinity hermeneutic reveals how Do Khyentsé conceptualizes his own subjectivity at the intersection of these overlapping lifeworlds. In this lecture Brallier argues that attending to masculinity—specifically what he calls "bandit masculinity"—provides a new lens for understanding both Do Khyentsé’s early life and the broader entanglement of Buddhist and Indigenous Tibetan traditions.
Joshua Brallier is a doctoral candidate in Buddhist Studies and a Presidential Fellow at Northwestern University. His dissertation focuses on the historical life and autobiographical portrait of the Nyingma luminary Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé, a gun-wielding, beer-drinking, deer-hunting tantric yogi from the Golok region of eastern Tibet. Informed by two years of fieldwork at Namdroling Monastery in south India supported by a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Joshua’s dissertation deploys textual ethnography as a method for showcasing how attention to masculinity uniquely illuminates the conditions by which a controversial figure like Do Khyentsé could earn lasting veneration. He has an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, an M.Div. in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism from Naropa University, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Georgetown. He is advised by Sarah Jacoby.
Joshua Brallier
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