Tāre Lhamo (1938–2002) was a female Tibetan Buddhist tantric master, one of only a handful of Tibetan female religious leaders whose life and work receive substantial attention in Tibetan literary sources. With her husband, the tantric master Ngawang Jigme (1944–2011), she was a leading figure in the post-1980 revitalization of Buddhism in the eastern Tibetan region of Golok. Together, Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme are at the heart of Holly Gayley's new book, Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet. Gayley's study articulates how contemporary Tibetan figures use Buddhist repertoires of literature, visionary activity, and interpersonal relationships to address the social and cultural traumas of the past seventy years, as well as the present-day exigencies faced by Tibetan communities within the People's Republic of China.

Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme were leaders within the Treasure (gter ma) tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Visionaries within the Treasure tradition discover and reveal esoteric religious texts and relics often associated with the authorship of the eighth-century tantric Buddhist figure Padmasambhava, who is credited with establishing Buddhism in Tibet during the period of the Tibetan empire. Gayley argues that Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme drew on the literary and prophetic tools of the Treasure tradition to literally shift the discourse within their communities—to, in Gayley's words, “performatively speak into existence a dramatic historical shift” from trauma to revitalization (p. 170).

Building on Charlene Makley's description of the revitalization of Tibetan culture since the 1980s as a “mandalization” process, in which stories about Buddhist masters play a central role in reconstituting Tibetan social worlds,Footnote ¹ Gayley analyzes Tibetan Buddhist conventions of hagiography in the Treasure tradition to offer a detailed exploration of the role of religion in healing communal trauma. Among Gayley's most important interventions in this context is the way she highlights Tibetan forms of agency through Buddhist means, via her careful attention to the words of Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme themselves. In particular, Gayley highlights their uses of the concept of karma to center Tibetans as historical agents, and to “encompass the devastating events of the Maoist period within Buddhist systems of meaning” (p. 19). By directly engaging Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme's own assertions of “interpretive control over events” (p. 171) through their visionary activities and in their own writings, Gayley makes visible the epistemic stakes of their project, both as a work of recovery and as a mode of resistance to narratives imposed by the state.

Gayley's focus on the efficacy of Tibetan hagiographical and epistolary literature for narrating cultural trauma allows her to contrast that tradition with what she sees as the narrower scopes of two other major modes of addressing the trauma of the Maoist period in Tibet, namely Chinese “scar” literature about the Cultural Revolution and Tibetan “exile testimonials” about the Chinese Communist destruction of Tibetan culture. By contrast, Gayley suggests that the Tibetan Buddhist religious life story genre of namtar (rnam thar) offers wider capacities for contesting state histories, often through the use of miracle narratives that suggest the ongoing efficacy of Buddhism and its relevance for living communities of the present.

For instance, Tāre Lhamo's namtar describes her rescuing people from starvation during a famine in Golok in 1960, because “each measure of rice that she cooked multiplied to be more than enough to feed eighteen people” (p. 90). Gayley also recounts oral descriptions of Tāre Lhamo miraculously surviving harrowing abuse during struggle sessions through the power of her meditation on the “far greater sufferings of beings in the hell realms” (p. 41).

Ranging across Tibetan literary genres, oral histories, and ethnographic contexts, Gayley's argument is informed by her insightful, often beautiful translations of Tibetan literary works, including hagiographical writings about her protagonists, and their own poetic compositions. In particular, she offers a detailed and riveting translation and discussion of Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme's courtship letters to each other, written in Tibetan verse styles that range from the playfully amorous to the humorous, to the prophetic and heroic modes. As a book centered on the collaborative work of a woman and man in a tantric Buddhist relationship, Love Letters from Golok offers a rare and important glimpse of a tantric couple whose teaching activities, Treasure revelation, literary works, and projects of community renewal unfolded in tandem.

This book thus makes a significant contribution to contemporary discussions around gender and the role of women in tantric Buddhism. The past ten years have seen multiple new works published on Tibetan women, and Gayley's work joins this conversation.Footnote ² By centering the female master Tāre Lhamo and attending to her prominent role within her tantric partnership with her husband, Gayley expands our understanding of the roles women play in such couples, and offers new insight into the collaborative nature of the visionary process in the Tibetan Treasure tradition specifically.

Love Letters from Golok is a major intervention in the fields of Tibetan and Buddhist studies. In addition, Gayley's engagement with questions of subaltern history, affect, and agency means that scholars of gender, intellectual history, and religious studies more broadly will find this essential reading. The book's clear writing and often dramatic subject matter make it an engaging choice for upper-level undergraduate courses as well. Tāre Lhamo and Ngawang Jigme's own compositions enrich this study throughout. This book offers a welcome chance to encounter their creative and incisive words.