Expert: Alex Wilding - 11/22/2011

Question
QUESTION: Greetings,
I am writing a novel set in the late eighteenth century, where a Jesuit priest, Father Antoine is travelling to Xining in Qinghai province in N W China. He meets a group of Buddhist monks from Labrang Monastery heading for the Qinghai Lake. How would the Buddhist monks introduce themselves. For example if his first name was Lobsang, would he call himself Brother Lobsang? Or, forgive my ignorance, could you tell me the correct forms of address.
Thank you

Ray Read

ANSWER: Hi Ray,
Good question, and I can see that it's one that could cost your story a lot of credibility if you got it wrong. One question: what language are these interchanges taking place in? I rather think it would stretch the bounds of belief a bit far to have a monk from that region speaking English, unless you had somehow introduced a special reason for that much earlier in the story. I assume, therefore that the reader will understand the conversations that you present as, implicitly, translations of what was "actually" said.
An important lama might indeed have quite a lot of fancy titles, but while there are words, of course, that do mean "monk", the normal thing I think would be for people just to use their names. Very frequently these are "double": Pema Lobsang, Lobsang Dorje, Karma Lobsang, Lobsang Tenzin and so on, but in ordinary interchange just one of these, such as "Lobsang" would be used. If you do this I think you are unlikely to make anybody go "yecchh, that's not right!". I would strongly advise against the use of anything like "Brother". To my mind, that would run the risk of making you sound as if you were imagining Christian monks but putting a Tibetan gloss on them. Personal taste, again, but it would come across to me as very inauthentic.
Hope that helps a bit.
All the best
Alex Wilding

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Alex,
Thank You. Novels for the Western readership regretfully have to suffer a credability problem. Everyone speaks English !! That's Han Chinese, Mongols, a Dutch sea captain, a French Jesuit priest et al !!
Alex, if I can get this right:
Greetings, I am Father Antoine.
The Buddhist monk would reply
Greetings, my name is Lobsang and this is Sonam and Norbu.

Alex, my second and hopefully last question is - What is the head of a Buddhist monastery called?  Basically equivalent to an Abbot in a Christian abbey. Lobsang will refer to this person at Labrang Monastery.

Ray

Answer
Hi Raymond,
That would sound natural to me, although perhaps, if this is them introducing themselves formally for the first time, you might go for the kind of two-part names I mentioned before - I don't think that's essential, though.
People have used "abbot" (and misused it, too) about important Buddhist figures. The organisation is different, of course. There may be a "Khenpo", although that is a title more of academic than administrative significance. Financial power is often in the hands of a "Secretary" (I can't remember the Tibetan for that at the moment). Then there is the ritual master (the Dorje Loppon), perhaps the retreat master, the head of discipline, there may well be one or more important tulkus....
Unless you want to get involved in details that may or may not fit particular circumstances, I'd suggest either "abbot", on the grounds that it does have wide currency in English descriptions of Tibetan monasteries, or, if it fits your style, why not just call him the "head" of the monastery?
All the best
Alex Wilding