Life of the Sixteenth Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje

Meng Wang is a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at SOAS, University of London.

• AcknowledgmentsPart I: A Cross-Cultural ApproachChapter 1: The Tibetan PerspectiveChapter 2: Western ContextPart II: Reception: Perceiving the KarmapaChapter 3: Faithful TranslationChapter 4: The Emergence of New NarrativesPart III: Transmission (I): PreservationChapter 5: Politics and PatronageChapter 6: Preservation InitiativePart IV: Transmission (II): ExpansionChapter 7: Preparing the GroundChapter 8: Strategies on TourConclusionAppendix A: Rangjung Rigpe Dorje’s rangnam: A Brief AutobiographyAppendix B: Rangjung Rigpe Dorje’s namthar Composed by Thrangu Rinpoche: The Life Story of the Victorious One, the Great Sixteenth [Karmapa]BibliographyAbout the Author

The sixteenth in the lineage of Karmapas of Tibet—also known as the ‘Black Hat Lamas’— was one of the major spiritual figureheads in the twentieth century. From the cataclysm of being a refugee to India in 1959 to the time of his death, in 1981, he had instigated and enabled the spread of Tibetan Buddhism from the highlands of remote Tibet to be pervasive in Western culture. He was an inspiration to many people worldwide. Meng Wang traces and analyses this journey, in terms of the work done firstly in preservation of the precious Vajrayana tradition and then the strategy in spreading Buddhist teaching and practice to the West. The Life of the Sixteenth Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje is a valuable and timely contribution to our understanding of the phenomenal spread of Tibetan Buddhism to the West in the late twentieth century.