Week 6

Comparative Study of Death

Collective Construction of Make-shift Tangka

Overview. Your assignment is to collectively construct a make-shift Tibetan tangka for another dying member of your team. Each team is responsible for identifying a familiar embodiment of mild and/or fierce deities in the life of one team member, representing them in a tangka, rewriting a two to three paragraph (about one page) selection from the text (Fremantle and Trungpa) to reflect concerns about these deities, reading it aloud to the class, and explaining the tangka and revision to the class. The tangka and class presentation is due on Wednesday, August 8.

Role Playing. Like the Egyptian and Mayan projects this one is dependent upon the equitable division of tasks among team members. While we will engage in role playing again, the roles should not be taken so literally as to prevent the balanced distribution of tasks between this and other assignments. Each group should select a group member who will serve as the dying person. In the interest of revolving roles, each group should select someone other than the one selected for the Egyptian assignment. Another (or the same) person might take primary responsibility for creating the tangka, another for rewriting the selection from the text, and (if possible) another for reading and explaining the text to the class.

Selecting a mild or fierce deity or deities

Creating a make-shift tangka

Art of Tibet

syllabus

slide show of make-shift Tangkas

bhavachakra (The Wheel of Existence)

Rewriting a selection from the text: You should select a few paragraphs from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to rewrite in a manner that will aid the deceased person in achieving liberation by recognizing this deity as a natural exercise of one's own awareness, as an object of the mind's own vision, an image of the deceased's own awareness, or as having emerged from within one's own brain. You should feel free to adapt the text as you feel appropriate or to create something even more original than any single selection. The rewritten passage, though, should work within the Tibetan philosophy of achieving liberation through the recognition of deities as creations of our own minds (even if one or more members of the group may personally disagree with this philosophy--remember we're role playing in the interest of participant observation).

Showing, Reading and Explaining: In class on Wednesday, August 8 team members should display the tangka, read the revised passage, and explain the tangka and revision to the class. I encourage and reward creativity and performance in this aspect of the assignment.

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