Repkong Tantric Practitioners and Their Environment: Observing the vow of not taking life

This paper is based on my fieldwork in a Tibetan farming and semi-pastoralvillage located in the Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai) Repkong area. The villagersresemble ordinary rural Tibetan householders: farming, herding, and raisingtheir children. For extra income, they collect caterpillar fungus, a medicinalmushroom endemic to the Tibetan Plateau. They are not ordinary householders,however. They observe daily and periodical commitments to tantric Buddhistpractices and rituals. Their supervising teacher, the present lineage-holder at alocal hillside monastery, has given as prerequisites to both his male and femaledisciples at least two of the five Buddhist lay precepts. The most salient of theseprecepts is not taking life. The majority of the sources of livelihood practiced bythe villagers, however, involve the killing of insects at least. Based on my interviewsand observations, I will first describe the living environment of the tantricpractitioners, concentrating mostly on the women, and their religious practices.Then I will discuss the caterpillar fungus trade and other local sources of livelihood.Finally I will describe how these religious practitioners seek to overcomethe apparent contradiction of maintaining a vow of not taking life, given theirliving circumstances