Journal of Global Buddhism 2024, Vol.25 (1)
https://doi.org/10.26034/lu.jgb.2024.3958

Research Article

On a mild mid-afternoon in early December 2022, I sat in a café in Taipei’s Da’an District, discussing practices devoted to the Tibetan Buddhist divinity Parṇaśavarī (རི་ཁྲོད་ལོ་མ་གྱོན་མ། Ri khrod lo ma gyon ma; 葉衣佛母 ye yi fomu) with several members of the Bhumang Nyiöling Buddhist Society (菩曼日光林佛學會 puman riguang lin foxuehui; བུམ་མང་ཉི་འོད་གླིང་། Bum mang nyid ’od gling). The community’s teacher, Bhumang Rinpoché (བུམ་མང་རིན་པོ་ཆེ། Bum mang rin po che; 菩曼仁波切 puman renboqie b. 1983), and head of their lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, Kyabgön Chetsang Rinpoché (༧སྐྱབས་མགོན་ཆེ་ཚང་རིན་པོ་ཆེ། sKyabs mgon che tshang rin po che; 直貢澈贊法王 zhigong chezan fawang b. 1946), introduced Parṇaśavarī to Bhumang Nyiöling’s members at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as a bodhisattva believed to have the ability to protect against pandemic illnesses.

A few minutes into our conversation, one community member, Ms. Lin,¹ set her latté on the table, pointed at a copy of the prayer and mantra to Parṇaśavarī that I had brought along, and said, “This had a pretty big impact after a while, you know?”² She continued, relating how, at the beginning of the pandemic, she had shared a Facebook post by Bhumang Nyiöling with Parṇaśavarī’s image, prayer, and a recording of Bhumang Rinpoché reciting Parṇaśavarī’s mantra. Shortly thereafter, she received a phone call from a friend, who was a devout Buddhist but did not engage with Tibetan Buddhism. Ms. Lin recalled their conversation:

About that time, her mother was sick, so she called me to ask what that [post] was? So I told her, that was for [the pandemic]. Then she asked ‘So, is that mantra effective for all types of illnesses?’ since her mom was sick at that time. I said, ‘Of course it is! But you can’t just dedicate it to your mother, you have to dedicate it to all sentient beings.’ I tried to explain like this, to teach her that all sentient beings possibly have been your mother or father in a past life, right? So, you have to dedicate it to all beings. Then she asked ‘Okay, but will doing this help my mother?’ And I said, ‘Of course it will! Isn’t your mother included in all sentient beings?’³

Ms. Lin continued, describing how her friend

recited and recited and recited [the prayer and mantra]. Then about three months later she sent me a message on Line⁴ saying thank you and that her mom had improved a lot this year. The [praying] had really helped and it was clear the power of her recitations was really strong. So, I think this was really, quite impactful. To my mind, this is one of the most special instances of averting [harm].⁵

Ms. Lin picked up her latté, leaned back and took a sip. It was a good thing, she concluded, that Bhumang Rinpoché had recorded the mantra of Parṇaśavarī and that she had shared it. That her friend’s mother’s health improved, she believed, was confirmation of Parṇaśavarī’s healing power.

The emergence of the Novel Coronavirus in late 2019 and its swift transformation into a global pandemic precipitated diverse responses from Tibetan Buddhist teachers and other religious leaders around the world to the virus and its impacts on their communities. Some Buddhist leaders and communities recommended people ingest medicinal pills or don amulets and other purportedly protective substances (Gerke 2020; Salguero 2020; Tidwell 2020). Others urged people to take advantage of the increased time at home to deepen their personal practice (Obadia 2020: 170–72; Ortega 2021: 202–4), to follow public health guidelines (Ortega 2021: 206–8), to engage in charity (Ye 2021), or to locate alternative means of support for Buddhist institutions (Shmushko 2021). Still, others called for using ritual methods or mantra recitation to pacify the pandemic’s infectious rampage (Bhutia 2021; Salguero 2020; Shmushko 2023: 7; Tseng 2022), or led prayers for the deceased (Ashiwa and Wank 2020).

Contributing to the growing body of literature that considers COVID-19’s impacts on Buddhist communities, this study⁶ illuminates how Tibetan Buddhist responses to the pandemic have further facilitated the transmission of this tradition globally in non-heritage contexts, such as Taiwan.⁷ Specifically, I analyze how Tibetan Buddhist leaders introduced practices associated with the deity Parṇaśavarī to a Tibetan Buddhist community in Taiwan, the Bhumang Nyiöling Buddhist Society. Beginning in March 2020, prayers and mantra accumulations devoted to the pandemic-protectress Parṇaśavarī swiftly became a cornerstone of Bhumang Nyiöling members’ individual and community practices and, as the anecdote above shows, were even recommended to acquaintances outside the community. More than simply new liturgies, however, Tibetan teachers’ recommendations to propitiate Parṇaśavarī and community members’ enthusiastic adoption of practices to her also facilitated processes of deterritorializing this divinity from Tibetan communities and landscapes and reterritorializing her within Taiwan.

Through my examination of the Bhumang Nyiöling community’s Parṇaśavarī practice, I make two arguments about how COVID-19 has impacted the contemporary global transmission of Tibetan Buddhism. First, I argue that periods of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can serve as catalysts for religious change while also spurring the reinvigoration of elements already extant within a tradition. As I demonstrate, in the case of Bhumang Nyiöling, this occurred through the community’s adoption of prayers and mantra recitation practices dedicated to Parṇaśavarī, a deity previously little known in Taiwan. Although these practices were novel in the Taiwanese setting, they were drawn nearly verbatim from texts composed by a twelfth to thirteenth century Tibetan Buddhist saint. Their (re)introduction during the COVID-19 pandemic, I maintain, presents both a moment of revitalization and transformation of Tibetan Buddhist religious praxis induced by this major global crisis.

Second, I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic further precipitated a reterritorialization of elements of the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s geophilosophy (1983), I contend that the global transmission of Tibetan Buddhism involves processes I call spiritual deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Spiritual de- and reterritorialization occur as the territories where divinities are understood to possess intercessory powers expand alongside the human communities who worship them. The introduction of Parṇaśavarī practices to the Bhumang Nyiöling community during the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a particularly vibrant example of the powerful role spiritual de- and reterritorialization play in the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism globally, particularly when catalyzed by moments of collective crisis.

Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization

The terms “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” were coined by Deleuze and Guattari in 1972 in their discussions of capitalism and psychoanalysis (1983). Deleuze and Guattari expanded their application of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in subsequent works analyzing state formation and power, geology, history, linguistics, and biology (1983, 1989, 1994). Although distinct processes, deterritorialization, or the “disembeddedness of cultural phenomena from their ‘natural’ territories” (Casanova 2001: 428), and reterritorialization, or the “process of reinscribing culture in new time-space contexts, of relocating it in specific cultural environments” (Inda and Rosaldo 2002: 12), are deeply intertwined. Deleuze and Guattari note that, “it may be all but impossible to distinguish deterritorialization from reterritorialization, since they are mutually enmeshed, or like opposite faces of one and the same process” (1989: 258).

In other words, the deterritorialization of cultural phenomena leads almost inexorably⁸ to their reterritorialization in different time-space contexts, forming what Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo call “a double movement” (Inda and Rosaldo 2002: 12). Deterritorialization does not lead to a complete severing of ties that connect a cultural phenomenon to a territory. Nor does reterritorialization yield a perfect reproduction of an “original” in a new locale. Rather, the movement from deterritorialization toward reterritorialization involves the reinscribing of cultural phenomena as they move into and take root in other territories. It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari write that what societies “deterritorialize with one hand, they reterritorialize with the other”⁹ (1983: 257).

Recently Lionel Obadia (2012a, 2012b) and Mara Lisa Arizaga (2022) have applied deterritorialization and reterritorialization in analyses of the current global movement of Tibetan religions. Advancing discussions of global Buddhism initiated by Martin Baumann (2001), Obadia and Arizaga’s works are important considerations of territoriality in the contemporary transmission of Buddhism and illuminate Tibetan religions’ material reterritorializations, such as through establishing religious institutions and re-localizing Tibetan materia sacra. However, deterritorialization and reterritorialization are far from limited to the material alone. I contend that we must also consider other spheres or “lines of flight,” to borrow Deleuze and Guattari’s phrase, through which religions are de- and reterritorialized as they move into new temporal and geographical contexts.

While considering the current global transmission of Buddhist traditions, it is not enough to examine the founding of organizations and movement of religious material culture. We must also examine how believers, including Buddhist teachers and communities, unbind agentive, non-human forces in the Buddhist cosmos from specific locales and expand their intercessory powers into new territories. In other words, we must consider the processes of spiritual de- and reterritorialization in the movement or “transplantation” (Baumann 1994: 35–36; 1996: 367–68) of global Buddhist traditions today.

Bhumang Nyiöling Buddhist Society During the Pandemic

Bhumang Nyiöling Buddhist Society is a community of primarily lay Taiwanese Buddhists located in Taipei’s Da’an District and belongs to the Drikung Kagyü (འབྲི་གུང་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད། 'Bri gung bka' brgyud; 直貢噶舉 zhigong gaju) sub-school of Tibetan Buddhism. Founded in 2005, about twenty years after Tibetan Buddhism started to spread widely in Taiwan (Liu 2003: 30), the Bhumang Nyiöling community has about fifty regular congregants. When their teacher is in Taiwan, the community holds weekly group practices (共修 gongxiu) and organizes special events on auspicious days in the Tibetan and Chinese lunar calendars. In Bhumang Rinpoché’s absence, communal practices on special occasions are sporadically held and led by lay community leaders or other Drikung Kagyü monastics.

The founder of Bhumang Nyiöling is the Fourth Bhumang Rinpoché, who became well-known in Taiwan after a media blitz in the late 1980s spotlighted his recognition as the first Tibetan Buddhist reincarnate teacher (སྤྲུལ་སྐུ། sPrul sku; 活佛 huofo) born in Taiwan to Tibetan parents. He was enthroned in 1992 by Chetsang Rinpoché, co-leader of the Drikung Kagyü sub-school of Tibetan Buddhism and a prominent contemporary Tibetan Buddhist teacher with followers around the globe. After more than a decade of extensive training, Bhumang Rinpoché now divides his time between monastic communities in India and Nepal, Bhumang Nyiöling in Taipei, as well as occasionally teaching in Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam.

As with other religious communities across Taiwan and the world, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to Bhumang Nyiöling’s community life. After Taiwan’s border closures in March 2020, Bhumang Rinpoché spent prolonged periods outside of Taiwan. During this period, the Bhumang Nyiöling community stopped most in-person gatherings and individual members devoted themselves mostly to personal practice, similar to other Tibetan Buddhist groups across urban East Asia (Shmushko 2021; 2023: 6–7). On the few occasions the community did meet, practices were livestreamed on their Facebook page or held in online spaces like Zoom.

Among the numerous changes to religious life caused by COVID-19, however, it is the introduction of new religious practices that makes the Bhumang Nyiöling Buddhist Society stand out among Tibetan Buddhist communities in Taiwan. Unlike Tibetans who promoted Tibetan medicine or amulets to protect against COVID-19 (Gerke 2020; McGrath 2020; Tidwell 2020), Bhumang Rinpoché largely advised his disciples to stay home, wear facial coverings, and follow public health guidelines. Additionally, he also recommended they engage in new prayers and mantra recitation practices to the deity Parṇaśavarī.

Parṇaśavarī Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The first announcement came on February 9, 2020. In light of the increasing severity of the coronavirus outbreak, Bhumang Rinpoché urged his disciples on social media to follow the advice of his teacher, Chetsang Rinpoché, and recite prayers to the deity Parṇaśavarī (Bhumang Nyihudling 菩曼日光林佛學會 2020a). He shared a copy of a prayer that Chetsang Rinpoché had recently published (His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon 2020a) and urged his followers to recite it fervently along with Parṇaśavarī’s mantra: Oṃ piśāci Parṇaśavari sarva māri praśa maṇi hūm.¹⁰ The announcement introduced Parṇaśavarī as one of the Twenty-One Tārās (སྒྲོལ་མ་ཉི་ཤུ་རྩ་གཅིག sGrol ma nyi shu rtsa gcig; 二十一度母 ershiyi dumu), female divinities propitiated for protection, and described her as possessing the “great ability to control the rampant outbreak of infectious diseases” (Bhumang Nyihudling 菩曼日光林佛學會 2020a).

While several teachers from other schools of Tibetan Buddhism also recommended prayers to Parṇaśavarī at the onset of the pandemic (Ortega 2021: 205, 208; Tseng 2022: 34), Bhumang Rinpoché and Chetsang Rinpoché promoted prayers with a particular connection to their own Drikung Kagyü lineage. The first prayer they recommended, entitled “Praise in Verses to the Goddess Who Eliminates All Diseases (Parnashavari),”¹¹ was written by the founder of the Drikung Kagyü sub-school of Tibetan Buddhism, Jigten Sumgön (འཇིག་རྟེན་མགོན་པོ་རིན་ཆེན་དཔལ། 'Jig rten mgon po rin chen dpal 1143–1217) (sKyob pa ʼjig rten gsum mgon སྐྱོབ་པ་འཇིག་རྟེན་གསུམ་མགོན། 2001a). During an interview, Chetsang Rinpoché confirmed that he recommended this prayer and mantra because of their appearance in Jigten Sumgön’s Collected Works.¹² It seems that he saw COVID-19 as a public health emergency requiring the divine assistance of a bodhisattva both uniquely capable of countering communicable diseases and who had a close affinity with the Drikung Kagyü.

For many members of Bhumang Nyiöling, this announcement in February 2020 marked their first encounter with Parṇaśavarī. One community member recalled that although he was familiar with the Twenty-One Tārās, this was the first time he had heard the name Parṇaśavarī and saw her image. When the pandemic began, he reflected, “We can say our minds were a little bit like white paper, we knew nothing about Parṇaśavarī.”¹³

On March 12, Bhumang Nyiöling’s leadership shared another statement by Chetsang Rinpoché’s office calling for “all Drikung Kagyü monasteries, centers, and disciples to practice the Dakini Parnashavari [sic] and recite her mantra on a daily basis” (His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon 2020b). The announcement introduced a new full-length sādhana or tantric liturgical practice that Chetsang Rinpoché had compiled from several works also penned by Jigten Sumgön along with a request for “this sādhana to be translated into as many languages as possible so it can be spread far and wide” (Bhumang Nyihudling 菩曼日光林佛學會 2020b). On March 23, Bhumang Nyiöling shared a Chinese translation of the sādhana and reiterated Chetsang Rinpoché’s exhortation to recite this practice and Parṇaśavarī’s mantra daily (International Drikung Kagyu Council Taiwan 2020).

In the colophon to this sādhana, Chetsang Rinpoché notes that this longer liturgical practice is a “compilation of the quintessences from the Parnashavarī [sic] sādhanas written by Drikung Kyobpa Jigten Sumgön” and that he arranged it while making “single-minded supplications to him” (sKyob pa ʼjig rten gsum mgon སྐྱོབ་པ་འཇིག་རྟེན་གསུམ་མགོན།། 2020: 11). The text synthesizes verses from four different prayers to Parṇaśavarī written by Jigten Sumgön (sKyob pa ʼjig rten gsum mgon སྐྱོབ་པ་འཇིག་རྟེན་གསུམ་མགོན། 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2001d). In the colophon of one of these texts, Jigten Sumgön describes how he composed these prayers after propitiating Parṇaśavarī helped him to recover from a great sickness (sKyob pa ʼjig rten gsum mgon སྐྱོབ་པ་འཇིག་རྟེན་གསུམ་མགོན། 2001c: 110–11). A Bhumang Nyiöling community member who works in graphic design published both the shorter prayer and the sādhana, disseminating these texts via Bhumang Nyiöling’s social media page, their community Line group, and physically at the center.

Together, these two texts formed the basis for Parṇaśavarī practices among Drikung communities worldwide and were utilized extensively within Bhumang Nyiöling. Community members most commonly recited the shorter prayer and Parṇaśavarī’s mantra during their private dharma practice (功課 gongke). The longer sādhana, on the other hand, was mostly limited to group practices held online and later in-person. Through this process, the Bhumang Nyiöling community furthered Chetsang Rinpoché’s aspirations to respond to COVID-19 through propitiating Parṇaśavarī. At the same time, this community also engendered the spiritual reterritorialization of a uniquely Drikung Kagyü Parṇaśavarī, embodied in translated prayers from Jigten Sumgön’s works, and carried into a new linguistic, cultural, temporal, and geographic context.

Parṇaśavarī Mantra Accumulation Practice

Similar to other digitally-adept Buddhist teachers’ use of smartphone technologies to communicate with their translocal students (Tarocco 2017: 162–68), Bhumang Rinpoché continued to share spiritual advice with his students in Taiwan during the first months of the pandemic by sending voice messages or asking a senior Taiwanese disciple to make announcements in Bhumang Nyiöling’s community Line group on his behalf. In late March 2020, he posted a recording of Parṇaśavarī’s mantra in the community Line group and urged his followers to recite her prayer and mantra daily. He exhorted them to use the difficult circumstances of the pandemic as an opportunity to further their Buddhist study and practice with the aspiration that “there might be a swift end to this pandemic,”¹⁴ and that all sentient beings might be “separated from suffering and obtain happiness.”¹⁵

Members of the Bhumang Nyiöling community recalled that, in addition to this video message, Bhumang Rinpoché gave only general instructions for the Parṇaśavarī practices. Multiple community members recalled Bhumang Rinpoché’s advice to generate compassion (སྙིང་རྗེ། sNying rje; 慈悲心 cibeixin) and bodhicitta (བྱང་ཆུབ་ཀྱི་སེམས Byang chub kyi sems; 菩提心 putixin) by contemplating the global suffering caused by the pandemic. No one I spoke with, however, reported hearing detailed instructions on the Parṇaśavarī prayer or sādhana. Rather, they were left to interpret and practice these as best as they could.

Bhumang Rinpoché did, however, express a concrete goal for the community in the form of accumulating recitations of Parṇaśavarī’s mantra. An announcement posted along with an audio recording from Bhumang Rinpoché on March 29, 2020, requested the community to collectively accumulate ten million recitations of Parṇaśavarī’s mantra. The announcement explained that everyone should keep a tally of how many recitations of Parṇaśavarī’s mantra they recited and post them in the community Line group each week. The total would then be reported to Bhumang Rinpoché. In this way, members of the community could accumulate good karma by collectively praying that the pandemic might end and everyone suffering might recover swiftly.