Ethnicity, utopia and globalization in the reinvention of Tibetan Buddhism. The case of the Dzogchen International Community

Abstract

The article investigates the place of ethnicity and religious imagination in the origin and growth of the Dzogchen International Community, a Tibetan Buddhist center with global projection. In order to contextualize the problem addressed, the first part of the paper reviews the origin of Buddhism and its expansion in the West, while the second part examines the biographical journey of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, the founder of the International Dzogchen Community. The third part analyzes the way in which this organization transcended the original territorial borders based on a utopian-imagined project and explores the universalist narratives that point to the de-ethnicization of their knowledge and practices. Finally, the fourth part explores the way in which this denial of ethnicity is complemented by an opposite and complementary movement in which a territorially located Tibetan ethnic-cultural complex is transmitted or reinvented.