The book is the result of field research conducted by five postgraduate students from the University of Zadar, Croatia in McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh, which is the official residence of the Dalai Lama where he set up the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in 1960, while also being home to thousands of Buddhist monks and refugees from Tibet, who have formed a large diasporic community in India. The title of the book, Tibet Dislocated, with its subtitle Tibetan Cultural and Intercultural Imagery, points to the theoretical framework used by the researchers in the field.  

The goal of the project was to investigate whether and how the culture, i.e. Tibetan Buddhist monks’ and laypeople’s ways of life have changed outside of Tibet or whether they have remained intact showing a tendency towards being “musealized”. 

The guest author is Cornelia Haas from the University of Erfurt in Germany, and Ph.D. students Iva Bulić and Josip Zanki. The contribution of Dr. Haas thematizes Bardo Thödol, Theosophy and Therapy connecting the initial edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Evans-Wentz, influenced by the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky with their psychoanalytical reception in the commentaries of C.G. Jung. 

Tereza Kaurinović describes Tibetan Medicine as the Bodhisattva Path, while emphasizing the avoidance of suffering as its main objective. 

Nora Kuluz writes about the Intercultural Encounter between Bön und Buddhism, which we had the opportunity to study in the Bön Monastery in Menri. From the very beginning, these two traditions have been communicating and exchanging their various specific ideas and practices. Their transformation in exile is a continuation of this historical fact.

Marin Borzić’s topic is the heterotopy of the dislocated Tibetan community, while Igor Ivko writes about the exotification of Tibet in the West.

Iva Bulić conducted her research in the Shechen Buddhist Society in Croatia, where she also received her initiation into the Ngöndro practice by a Tibetan Lama. While being an “insider” and an “outsider” at the same time, she mainly focuses on the relationship between teacher and student.

In his paper Reached Utopias, Josip Zanki – as an artist first and as an anthropologist second – delves into the various artistic productions of thangka paintings in Norbulingka Institute, Palampur. He also describes experiences of the artistic process in which individual freedom of the artist and the necessity to follow traditional Buddhist rules clash with one another.

Apart from the Introduction, which explains the context of the idea of Tibetan cultural and intercultural imageries, Snježana Zorić in her paper This is not an Initiation – Permeability of Ritual Borders Between Truth and Illusion thematizes and problematizes the Kalachakra initiation ritual performed by the Dalai Lama in September 2010, which she participated in together with her students. In her paper, she raises doubts about whether it is possible to be initiated into Kalachakra without thorough preparation and deeper previous knowledge of the subject. Has the initiation, although it was performatively carried out, left the participants in the position of merely curious observers and/or researchers of the ritual? Did it have any existential meaning like most participants agreed or did life not change at all after they had returned home? While showing various possible interpretations, Zorić then finally questions the cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic range of intercultural encounters.