Making the Invisible Real: Practices of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage

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Catherine Hartmann (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wyoming)

Making the Invisible Real

Practices of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage

Catherine Hartmann (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wyoming)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
17 October 2025

Oriental & Indian philosophy; Buddhist worship, rites & ceremonies; Tibetan Buddhism

How can a person learn to see a mountain as a divine mandala, especially when, to the ordinary eye, the mountain looks like a pile of rocks and snow? This is the challenge that the Tibetan pilgrimage tradition poses to pilgrims, who are told to overcome their ordinary perception to see the hidden reality of the holy mountain.

Drawing on multiple genres of Tibetan literature from the 13th to 20th centuries--including foundational narratives of holy places, polemical debates about the value of pilgrimage, written guides to holy sites, advice texts, and personal diaries--this book investigates how the pilgrimage tradition tries to transform pilgrims' perception so that they might experience the wondrous sacred landscape as real and materially present. Catherine Anne Hartmann argues that the pilgrimage tradition does not simply assume that pilgrims experience this sacred landscape as real, but instead leads pilgrims to adopt deliberate practices of seeing: ways of looking at and interacting with the world that shape their experience of the holy mountain.

Making the Invisible Real explores two ways of seeing: the pilgrim's ordinary perception of the world, and the fantastic vision believed to lie beyond this ordinary perception. As pilgrims move through the holy place, they move back and forth between these two ways of seeing, weaving the ordinary perceived world and extraordinary imagined world together into a single experience. Hartmann shows us how seemingly fantastical religious worldviews are not simply believed or taken for granted, but actively constructed and reconstructed for new generations of practitioners.

By: Catherine Hartmann (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Assistant Professor of Religious Studies University of Wyoming)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 170mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 490g
ISBN: 9780197791554
ISBN 10: 0197791557
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 17 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgements A Note on Translations and Transliterations Introduction: The Fault Lies with the Blind Man Chapter 1: Pilgrimage in Buddhism Chapter 2: How to See on Pilgrimage Chapter 3: One Thing, Many Appearances: Perception and Reality in the Controversy over Kailash Chapter 4: Opening Doors to Sacred Realms: Chökyi Drakpa's Visionary Transformation Chapter 5: Language and Landscape in Pilgrimage Guides Chapter 6: Khatag Zamyak's Co-Seeing Conclusion: A Glimpse of the Mandala Appendix Bibliography Index

Catherine Anne Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wyoming. She primarily works on the intellectual history of Tibetan pilgrimage, and also writes about karma, Buddhist ethics, and Buddhist approaches to addiction and recovery.