ISBN 0.8076.1406.8
June Campbell
George Braziller, 1996.
Hardcover, 225 pages
A Very Personal Agenda
Those, like myself, who expect(ed) this book to be a sort of companion volume to Passionate Enlightenment by Miranda Shaw will most likely be disappointed.
Although the book as a whole is not without merits, and although it does present an interesting new look at some aspects of the male/female dynamics in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, the author has far too personal an agenda - even "an axe to grind" - for the book to be a scholarly one and her arguments to be trustworthy.
When Campbell writes about female identity, it seems most often her own identity she is concerned with; when she speaks of patriarchal domination (although that certainly does exist in this culture), she mainly refers to her personal experience.
In chapter 6, as well as in interviews not part of the book, she has much to complain about her secret relationship with a high lama, the late Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989). Reading her words carefully, she is less concerned with the sexual encounters as such, but deeply resents the secrecy of it - and the fact that she is not officially ‘credited’ for it; for example in the lama's biography.
Review: RCC
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