ABSTRACT
This chapter follows in the footsteps of Geertz's famous work on 'Person, Time and Conduct in Bali', where he argued that Balinese social interaction was not comprised of individual personalities within durational time, but rather of 'generalized contemporaries' performing socially sanctioned offices. Since the early first millennium, Buddhist communities throughout Asia have used extensive and complex calendars to organize ritual and economic life. Within Tibetan Buddhist areas such as Ladakh, there is a tendency to use combined astrological (skar-tsis) and elemental (jung-tsis) systems, which link together celestial cycles with geomantic influences, often producing highly localized variants. For Tibetan Buddhists of all traditions, the diametric opposite of blessing and auspiciousness is ritual pollution (dip), a concept distinct from, but linked to that of negative karma. In Buddhist communities in Ladakh, broadly similar rationales exist for the processes of purifying dip as for purifying uncleanness in Leviticus.
