Dr. Catherine Hardie (Hong Kong Baptist University)

During the first half of the twentieth century, all but a handful of intrepid Han Chinese practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism undertook the long and difficult journey to the Tibetan plateau. In the contemporary era, however, massively improved transport infrastructures mean that Tibetan sacred landscapes, monastery spaces and ritual gatherings are now important settings for contemporary Han Chinese involvement in Tibetan Buddhism. This talk explores a participatory infrastructure that has played an outsize role in facilitating, focusing, and fostering the visits of Han Chinese Buddhists to Tibetan monastic contexts in the past three decades: namely, the “Dharma assembly.” Drawing on fieldwork findings from the 2010s, I will discuss how Dharma assemblies – largescale multi-day ritual events – have been creatively and flexibly deployed to meet and mediate the needs of Tibetan lamas, their monasteries, and Chinese followers in a period of burgeoning cross-cultural religious encounter.