Orality in Tibet

Orality is a significant, multivalent element of Tibetan religious and cultural life. It is profoundly intertwined with the transmission of written texts, the performance of rituals, and esoteric learning. Here I mention only three general categories from the very rich complex of oral practices. These pertain (1) to the teaching of texts, (2) to the pedagogical techniques of debate, and finally (3) to more esoteric understandings of what speech communicates in addition to literal meaning. Textual study is always accompanied by at least one, and often all three, of these oral processes, and by others as well. 1. Texts are not regarded self-explanatory units of information that can be digested outside the community of scholarly or ritual practices. The teacher’s commentary is therefore a crucial element of textual reading. Oral scholarly traditions interpret, organize, compare, critique, expand upon, and make practical suggestions regarding the material in the text. Sometimes these oral discourses are themselves written down and become texts for further oral comment in a subsequent generation. 2. Tibetan pedagogy, as Georges Dreyfus has amply illustrated in his new book, 1 relies on a dialectic of commentary and debate. Debate itself involves a great deal of memorization and oral incantation of texts; debate is an interactive process in which students must defend philosophical positions in the in-your-face give and take of heated debates. These debates are the chief training ground for scholars in many Tibetan traditions; they are also a major spectator sport. Rhetorical strategies involve textual citation, the thrusting of unwanted consequences on the defender, and feinting through chess-like moves that suggest one line of thought when actually headed toward another.