Ritual Text Production as Fashioning a Flexible Future: Yamāntaka Practice from Monastic Austerity to Global Lay Practice

Tibetan Buddhist rituals invoking the wrathful deity Yamāntaka are aimed at dispelling both internal and external obstacles. A specific cycle called the Ultra Repelling Blazing Razor, based on the writings of 17th-century Drikung master Rigdzin Chökyi Drakpa (1595–1659), is commonly narrated as secret and dangerous, yet is now available to practitioners worldwide through online media. This paper argues that the ritual’s internal structure, divided into protective and destructive components, provides a mechanism for adapting to a changing landscape of practice, while reserving the most austere elements for adept practitioners. Drawing on textual analysis, digital ethnography, and in-person fieldwork in Lumbini, Nepal, this paper examines the future of Yamāntaka practice through three lenses: shifting discourses of secrecy in the digital age, dystopian narratives of temporal decline embedded in the practice itself, and the material continuity that connects each performance to past and future iterations.