“I Prayed Fiercely to Never Be Separated from You in All My Future Lives”: Masculine Intimacy Across Lifetimes in the Rang rNam of the Tibetan Buddhist Adept Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé

This paper offers the first-ever translation and close reading of two poignant scenes of joy and grief in the autobiography (rang rnam) of the nineteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist master Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé. These scenes stage the dramatic reunion and inevitable separation between Do Khyentsé and his root guru Dodrupchen. By tending closely to Do Khyentsé’s description of the karmic connection these men share—one that continually draws them into the intense closeness of guru and disciple lifetime after lifetime—this paper offers a larger provocation to the field of Buddhist Studies, suggesting that scholarship on Buddhist men’s lives must account for them as men. By tending to the emotionally charged cycles of (re)union and parting, death and rebirth, this paper argues for broadening our understanding of religious masculinity beyond the Euro-American horizon of Abrahamic traditions by looking to religiously saturated relationships between men that propel emotional encounters across space and time.