COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 31 Renunciation is a very old Buddhist idea; in fact, it goes back about 2,500 years to the eponymous Buddha himself, Siddhartha Gautama. According to Buddhist sources, Gautama was born to royal parents but renounced the privileges and pleasures of his home life to live as a wandering ascetic before famously attaining enlightenment. “One of the things I talk about in the book is how Tibetan authors describe renunciation as potentially taking many forms. There are important figures in Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist literature who left everything behind to go meditate in a cave for 20 years,” Pitkin says. “But there have also been people who continue to live in the world, and maybe even play a very active role, politically, socially, or economically, who are said to have an inner attitude of renunciation.” In her book, that ideal of renunciation, external or internal, is the lens through which Pitkin examines themes of loss and continuity. Tibetan and Himalayan authors describe renunciation as shaping teacher-student relationships, potentially imposing painful separations that are in turn overcome by practices of devotion, memory, and narrative. Pitkin’s book argues for the importance of this intellectual tradition in understanding times of great political, social, or cultural upheaval—such as the experiences of Tibet and the Himalayan region during the 20th century. “That’s where the intervention of the book lies, looking at this Tibetan and Himalayan intellectual “That interdisciplinary approach, plus my immersion in Tibetan sources and training in Buddhist philosophy really opened up the research avenues that came together in [my recent] book.” Pitkin, who is also director of the Asian studies program, spent a significant amount of time during her undergraduate years studying political philosophy. “But as I started to get interested in applying to graduate school,” Pitkin says. “I felt like the study of religion offered the widest array of ways to investigate how communities make meaning, respond to trauma, and navigate social change. That was what ultimately resulted in my applying to graduate school in religion at Columbia.” Discovering Khunu Lama At Columbia, Pitkin focused on Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist traditions. Her dissertation adviser, Robert Thurman, suggested that she investigate the life of Khunu Lama, a Buddhist scholar-meditator born in 1894 in the Himalayan region, who journeyed across Tibet and India during the early 20th century and taught a generation of leading Tibetan Buddhist figures, including the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. “My adviser made this suggestion,” Pitkin says, “and then a wonderful piece of Buddhist coincidence occurred. I was in a bookstore with my mother when she pulled a book off the shelf that turned out to be a translation of Khunu Lama’s poems. As I began to read, I realized that Khunu Lama’s own poetry, and the stories people told about him, all centered on the themes I’d been trying to approach for several years.” That’s when Pitkin decided to pursue the project that would ultimately become her book Renunciation and Longing: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Himalayan Buddhist Saint, published last May. The book is in part a biography. But it is also a thematic reflection on questions of relationship, separation, and connection, and how Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhists have used stories of renunciation and devotion to maintain cultural continuity during a period of unprecedented loss. “What I embarked on, as I learned more about Khunu Lama’s life, was a study of his practice of renunciation. I came to appreciate the Buddhist ideal of renunciation—perhaps counterintuitively—as a core aspect of imagining Buddhist relationships across space and time,” Pitkin says. ISTOCKPHOTO.COM, CHRISTINE KRESCHOLLEK Annabella Pitkin in her office.
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