What Does It Mean to “Write Oneself” in Tibetan Autobiographical Tradition: The Amazing Life of Guru Chowang

This talk examines what it means to “write oneself” in the Tibetan autobiographical tradition through the case of the thirteenth-century treasure revealer Guru Chowang (1212–1270). Challenging the view that autobiography is a uniquely Western genre, it shows that Tibetan rang rnam (autobiography) developed as a distinct form of life writing at an early period.

Focusing on Guru Chowang’s corpus, the talk argues that the autobiographical “self” is a multi-layered construct shaped by karmic continuity, visionary experience, institutional lineage, and ongoing contestation. Dream narratives play a central role in this process: through encounters with sacred figures, prophetic validation, and subsequent verification, they function as key mechanisms for legitimizing religious authority.

The talk also highlights the linguistic significance of these materials. Guru Chowang’s dream narratives provide a rich corpus for studying evidentiality in Tibetan—that is, how language encodes sources of information such as direct experience, hearsay, and inference. By combining literary and linguistic analysis, this study offers new perspectives on Tibetan autobiography and contributes to broader cross-cultural discussions of selfhood, authority, and the role of language in representing experience.