Troy University Associate Professor of Philosophy & Religion Dr. Jay Holt Valentine traveled over the summer with a research team to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) of China to gather information on the history of the Jangter tradition, also known as the Northern Treasures Tradition, a branch of the Order of Ancients of Tibetan Buddhism.
During the trip the team focused on the tradition’s sacred geography, taking photos, making contacts at locations in the TAR and searching for additional literature.
“We were aware of the names and general locations of many different sites in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China that are important for the study of the Northern Treasures Tradition, but most of the information was not precise enough to find them on satellite maps,” Valentine said. “Similarly, there were very few photos of these locations as some had not been photographed at all, while others were only photographed decades ago.”
Valentine is one of the founding members of the Paris-based research team, which is the first to commit to a long-term study of the tradition. The team includes five members: Valentine; Stéphane Arguillère and Coralie Dordone, both of the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in France; Alexander Schiller, of the Buddhist Dictionary Project in Germany; and Alexandra Sukhanova, a Ph.D. student in Vienna.
In 2015, a 63-volume set of the tradition’s literature was released, allowing the team to publish three special editions of the journal Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines (Journal of Tibetan Studies), which includes articles from global scholars, along with three research volumes highlighting the team’s own work. The team also keeps a blog.
Valentine teaches non-Western philosophies and World Religions at the university. He said the trip gave him a new perspective to bring into the classroom.
“This trip gave me first-hand experience interacting with Buddhists as well as folks from a range of Chinese religious traditions that are among my teaching duties,” he said. “It is always better to study Asian religions with a professor who has actually been there rather than someone who has only studied books.”
Over the course of the 19-day trip, the team covered about two thousand miles, waking up early most days to travel to remote locations in the TAR with their official guide and driver.
“We were welcomed warmly everywhere we went, and the people we talked to about our research were very supportive,” said Valentine. “We stayed in hotels and visited many monasteries. The main monastery we visited, the site where the Northern Treasures were revealed from a cave, had not been visited by Westerners since the 1990s.”
One of the challenges Valentine faced was adjusting to the altitude in the mountainous region.
“I was very dizzy for the first week at 12,000 feet, but then we went higher and higher as the trip went on,” said Valentine. “The mountain passes and some of the monasteries were also very difficult to visit. The driver and guide provided oxygen cans to help with the high altitude. I did not make it to the top of one of the most important sites because it was too high. Luckily, two of my colleagues made it to the top.”
That important site, Mt. Trazang, is the birthplace of the tradition’s founder, Rigdzin Gödem. Valentine plans to publish a book this fall about Gödem and include pictures from the trip.
Valentine expressed his gratitude to Troy University and the Faculty Development Committee, who provided some of the funding for the trip.
“This is the type of activity that distinguishes serious research in my field from more straight-forward textual analysis,” he said.
