Echoes of Enlightenment

Echoes of Enlightenment: The Life and Legacy of Sönam Peldren explores the issues of gender and sainthood raised by the discovery of a previously unpublished "liberation story" of the fourteenth-century Tibetan female Buddhist practitioner Sönam Peldren. Born in 1328, Peldren spent most of her adult life living and traveling as a nomad in eastern Tibet until her death in 1372. Existing scholarship suggests that she was illiterate, lacking religious education, and unconnected to established religious institutions. That, and the fact that as a woman her claims of religious authority would have been constantly questioned, makes Sönam Peldren's overall success in legitimizing her claims of divine identity all the more remarkable. Today thesite of her death is recognized as sacred by local residents. In this study, Suzanne Bessenger draws on the newly discovered biography of the saint, approaching it through several different lenses. Bessenger seeks to understand how the written record of the saint's life is shaped both by the specific hagiographical agendas of its multiple authors and by the dictates of the genres of Tibetan religious literature, including biography and poetry. She considers Peldren's enduring historical legacy as a fascinating piece of Tibetan history that reveals muchabout the social and textual machinations of saint production. Finally, she identifies Peldren as one of the earliest recorded instances of a historical Tibetan woman successfully using the uniquely Tibetan hermeneutic of deity emanation to achieve religious authority.

"Echoes of Enlightenment traces the once lost life and works of a contemplative woman in pre-modern Tibet. Through Bessenger's fine writing we have the chance to hear an important Buddhist voice, one that was clearly prominent and influential in its day, yet rarely carries through history's censored record. Sönam Peldren will become a well-regarded member of what is still a small group: Tibetan women whose stories, whose songs, whose brilliance were preserved for future appreciation."-Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia "Bessenger contributes to the field of gender and religion, not only in bringing to light another female Buddhist saint from the Tibetan literary record, but also by capably analyzing complex representational strategies, ever cautious about what can and cannot be surmised from hagiographic sources in the absence of other contextualizing information."--Reading Religion

Suzanne M. Bessenger is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Randolph College. She received her PhD in History of Religions from the University of Virginia, and has lived and traveled extensively in China, India, and Nepal. Her research explores Tibetan Buddhist biographies, cults of saints, and conceptions of gender. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her family.