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Accepted Paper:

Experience of embodiment through Tibetan offerings and bodily practices among the tourists to India: A thrive for ultimate pleasure  
Nupur Pathak (Fellow, Royal Anthropological Institute)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Tibetan offerings (embodied, inseparable from bodily senses) and bodily practices generate embodiment among the tourists who seek to explore its meaning and travel to India. This paper argues that this perception reveals the needs of the place and travel.

Paper long abstract:

This paper attests the meanings of offerings, bodily practices in Tibetan Tantric rituals as performed by the immigrants in Dharamsala (India), are conducive for igniting a sense of embodiment amongst the tourists who seek to unravel its meaning and its relevance in contemporary scenario.

This paper argues that the act of offerings (preparation and offerings to the divinities), bodily practices in devotional rituals generates a sense of embodiment which directs a practitioner to grasp divine power relieving the beings from sufferings leading to ultimate pleasure.

This tradition is transmitted from a spiritual practitioner to a disciple and its legacy can be traced back to 8th century in Tibet. As a quest for spiritual pleasure tourists travel to Dharamsala and search for meaning of this tradition.

The study explores how the above mentioned practices enable a tourist to generate a mode of embodiment as well as to reveal the concept of compassion through beneficial activities for the Tibetans which provides ultimate bliss. The tourists also realise that bodily senses need to be purified through the act of offerings and bodily practices to attain ultimate truth.

My paper challenges that experience gathered by the tourists from various offerings, bodily practices in Tibetan devotional rituals is revealed through the acts of welfare for the migrant Tibetans. This realisation and its revelation through their devotional service can be represented as an expression of embodiment which unfolds a state of tranquility among the tourists who thrive for it.

Panel G18
Anthropology of tourism, embodiment and the senses
  Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -