“We Can’t Read That Yet”: Textual Ethnography, Relational Epistemologies, and Textual Authority in Tibetan Studies Fieldwork

This paper presents textual ethnography as a collaborative way of making theory with Tibetan experts. Based on multi-year fieldwork among Tibetan communities in India, I suggest four principles of textual ethnographic work as a decolonial method for producing collaborative knowledge with and about Tibetan religious experts. I elevate Tibetan pedagogies and conceptual categories—such as lung (ལུང་།) reading transmission, samaya (དམ་ཚིག) commitments, and “ways of seeing” (མཐོང་ཚུལ།) as tools in a theoretical kit to be harnessed for religious studies beyond the purview of Buddhist traditions. The paper argues for research conducted in Tibetan and sustained through reciprocity and long-term presence, and it uses those commitments to rethink textual communities, religious authority, and gender in Do Khyentsé’s autobiography. Rather than romanticizing insider perspectives, the paper models multilingual, practice‑attuned partnership in which Tibetan interlocutors are recognized—and engaged—as co‑authors of theory.