Landscapes

Chapter 4 looks at the relationship between space and the reincarnation tradition. It explains the cultural geography of Tibet and how Tibet’s sited traditions were pressed into service to aid the Karmapa lineage. It explores the importance of place and environmental imagery to Rangjung Dorje’s poetry, his songs, and his praises. It then outlines Tibet’s cultural geography: its indigenous traditions of autochthonous deities and spirits, and the way Buddhism was said to have “tamed” them. It also describes Rangjung Dorje’s non-Tibetan, lineal forebears, the Indian mahāsiddhas whose mahāmudrā tradition approached environments with a mixture of skepticism and transformation. Following in their footsteps, Rangjung Dorje’s Tibetan forebears like Milarepa had begun to reimagine the Tibetan landscape as maṇḍalas and created a series of sacred sites. The early Karmapas’ monasteries also came to be seen as their maṇḍalas and, therefore, a place to which they should return life after life.