Passion Book - A Tibetan Guide to Love and Sex

The PassionBook is the most famous work of erotica in the vast literature of Tibetan Buddhism, written by the legendary scholar and poet Gendun Chopel (1903-1951). Soon after arriving in India in 1934, he discovered the Kama Sutra. Realizing that this genre of the erotic was unknown in Tibet, he set out to correct the situation. His sources were two: classical Sanskrit works and his own experiences with his lovers. Completed in 1939, his "treatise on passion" circulated in manuscript form in Tibet, scandalizing and arousing its readers. Gendun Chopel here condemns the hypocrisy of both society and church, portraying sexual pleasure as a force of nature and a human right for all. On page after page, we find the exuberance of someone discovering the joys of sex, made all the more intense because they had been forbidden to him for so long: he had taken the monastic vow of celibacy in his youth and had only recently renounced it. He describes in ecstatic and graphic detail the wonders he discovered. In these poems, written in beautiful Tibetan verse, we hear a voice with tints of irony, self-deprecating wit, and a love of women not merely as sources of male pleasure but as full partners in the play of passion.

About the author

Gendun Chopel (1903-51) was born in northeast Tibet as British troops were preparing to invade his homeland. Identified at any early age as the incarnation of a famous lama, he became a Buddhist monk, excelling in the debating courtyards of the great monasteries of Tibet. At the age of thirty-one, he gave up his monk's vows and set off for India, where he would wander, often alone and impoverished, for over a decade. Returning to Tibet, he was arrested by the government of the young Dalai Lama on trumped-up charges of treason, emerging from prison three years later a broken man. He died in 1951 as troops of the People's Liberation Army marched into Lhasa.

Summary

The Passion Book is the most famous work of erotica in the vast literature of Tibetan Buddhism, written by the legendary scholar and poet Gendun Chopel (19031951).

Product details

• Authors: Gendun Chopel, Gendun/ Lopez Jr. Chopel, Chopel Gendun, Dge-Dun-Chos-Ph
• Assisted by: Thupten Jinpa (Translation), Donald S Lopez Jr (Translation), Donald S. Lopez Jr (Translation)
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2018
• EAN: 9780226520179
• ISBN: 978-0-226-52017-9
• No. of pages: 160
• Series: Buddhism and Modernity; Buddhism and Modernity; Buddhism and Modernity (CHUP)
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Non-fiction book > Psychology, esoterics, spirituality, anthroposophy > Applied psychology; HEALTH & FITNESS / Sexuality, SELF-HELP / Sexual Instruction, PSYCHOLOGY / Human Sexuality, RELIGION / Buddhism / Tibetan, RELIGION / Psychology of Religion, Sex & sexuality, sex manuals, Psychology: sexual behaviour, Sexual Behaviour, Sex and sexuality: advice and issues, Tibetan Buddhism