On translation with Janet Gyatso, Dawa Lokyitsang, & Amy Langenberg, and the importance of Listening

This conversation took place as part of the second Lotsawa Translation Workshop at Northwestern University on Saturday, October 15, 2022. The theme of 2022 was “Celebrating Buddhist Women’s Voices in the Tibetan Tradition.”

The panel discussion “Inclusive/Feminist approaches to Buddhist translation” was hosted by Janet Gyatso (Harvard University), Amy Langenberg (Eckerd College), and myself (University of Colorado Boulder). In the room, there were Tibetan and Western nuns of Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Buddhist studies scholars, professors, translators, practitioners and graduate students from traditions across Asia, Tibetan Studies scholars and translators in religion and anthropology, Tibetan women scholars, writers, poets, translators, and editors from Tibet and across exile-diaspora, and editors of digital resources on Tibetan Buddhism.

The panel began with a short introduction of what Janet, Amy, and I (in this order) mean when we say “Inclusive/feminist approaches to Buddhist translations” and shared a list of questions to generate discussion for the audience.

Here is the audio of the session:

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Some context: You will notice we mention Ani Choeyang a few times (a Tibetan nun who was studying at Emory University). She made an important comment in the previous key note session “Feminist Translation and Translation Studies: in Flux toward the Translational.” You can listen to Ani Choeyang at the 1:17:32 mark (click on the session and the audio will show below).

In her comment, Ani Choeyang says that her Tibetan Buddhist education as a nun is a source of pride but is a bit confused by conversations on sexual violence (primarily in Western Dharma centers of different traditions in the West) taking place at the conference. The topic of “Buddhist sexual violence” was brought up several times at the conference but without specificity as to who, which Dharma center, and what context. Just that it was happening and was wrong.

I spoke to Ani Choeyang afterwards and she said there seems to be a critique of sexual violence but she was confused by the ambiguous and homogenizing ways the terms “Buddhist sexual violence” was being used during different conversations at the conference. The lack of specificity seemed to imply that Buddhism itself was under scrutiny, which did not sit right with Ani Choeyang–hence her comments in defense of Buddhism to emphasize how gaining Tibetan Buddhist knowledge is a source of pride. It was an important critique of how the conversation on sexual violence lacked specificity. Her question to the speaker and the room asking for clarity went unanswered.

In our panel discussion, you can hear Ani Choeyang again at the 53:32 mark sharing two stories: one about blaming her mother for not being able to access Buddhist education in Tibet and realizing later in India that it was not her mother’s fault but due to difficult circumstances (of the political occupation and the securitization of Tibetan Buddhism under the colonial government of China in Tibet) and the lack of schools in her village. And second, a story about doing remote retreat in the mountains in a shed and being harassed by a male heckler, during which she prayed to Buddha she be reborn a man, because if she had a male body she does not need to worry about sexual harassment from strange men, and left alone to do mountain retreat. This too was another insightful comment by Ani Choeyang.

The few who responded to Ani la spoke about the value of being born a woman, valuing girls, and hoping she would change her mind on wanting to be reborn a man. But Ani la’s point about praying to be reborn a man was not actually about desiring to be reborn a man. Instead, she was highlighting how being a woman with a body that is sexualized by the male gaze exposed her to gendered vulnerabilities. Highlighting how its men, not Buddhism, that exposes women to these gendered vulnerabilities. This was an important critique for how the conversation on sexual violence at the conference was being talked about in generalizing ways by non-Tibetan practitioners/translators/scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.

However, her critique and context was barely heard or understood as such, not only by non-Tibetans but also by another Tibetan woman, who told Ani Choeyang after our panel that the others were supportive of what she was saying because they championed women. This surprised a group of us Tibetans who had witnessed the events firsthand. We agreed that Ani Choeyang’s efforts to speak up and be heard were largely ignored, and that the very points she had been trying to raise were later spoken over.

It was precisely because I witnessed Ani Choeyang get misheard and misinterpreted (before geting confirmation from other Tibetans) that I brought up Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? towards the end of our panel (in the audio). Spivak emphasizes that even when women speak, they are often unheard or misinterpreted within male-dominated power structures—including within groups that are themselves targeted and marginalized, such as the male-dominated anti-colonial nationalist movement in India resisting the British Empire in Spivak’s analysis. In Ani Choeyang’s case, she was addressing a predominantly white, female-dominated audience, which added a racialized dimension to how and why she was repeatedly unheard and misinterpreted. One wonders whether her positionality as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, scholar, translator, and practitioner—an unmistakable minority within a white-dominated conference—played a role in why her voice went unacknowledged, even as she was actively speaking. This is precisely why active listening is a vital practice: listening is not just hearing—it is an act of inclusion and recognition.

Nonetheless, the lively discussion we had at the panel was insightful, and spaces that foster such discussions should be encouraged. This was also the first conference I attended that focused on women in Tibetan Buddhism and/or literature, and it had the largest number of Tibetan women participants and presenters to date. This is encouraging, especially compared to the standard one or two participants we’ve often seen. The conference organizers’ efforts to reach out and include Tibetan women in conversations about Tibetan Buddhism should be both recognized and applauded, as it serves as a powerful example of what inclusivity could—and should—look like.

That said, I would suggest we practice active listening and remain mindful of our own, and others’, gendered, racialized, and classed positionalities if we genuinely want Tibetan women to be part of and heard in conversations within white-dominated spaces where the power structures favors them.