Tantra, Desire, and Homo economicus in the Tibetan Frontiers of Global Capital

How does desire spatialize capital’s large-scale motion into Asia? Working in the Tibetan margins of global capital, this paper turns to the work of a Buddhist monk named Shérab Tendar (Shes rabs bstan dar, b. 1968). A prolific and controversial public intellectual from Qinghai in the PRC, Shérab Tendar relentlessly critiques rationalist desire (Tib. chags pa) at the heart of “Western economics” (nub pa’i dpal ‘byor rig pa) and the social scientific theorizing of the human more generally. He does so under the umbrella of an elaborate “Buddhist economics” (nang pa’i dpal ‘byor rig pa) rooted in a plethora of Buddhist scriptural sources and the alchemical logics of tantric transmutation and purity. Thinking with Shérab Tendar and his economy of tantric desire, this paper reconsiders the putative transparency of the secular and the exceptional neutrality of capitalism as independently articulated projects of modernity.