Book cover of "Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas". On the image are pots with paint in different colours.

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Brox, Trine: The afterlives of Tibetan Buddhist material objects, 收入 Martin, Emma, Brox, Trine 和 Lange, Diana (编): Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, 页 93–112. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522.c23981

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https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522
ISBN 978-3-98887-015-5 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-016-2 (Hardcover)

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10/28/2025

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Trine Brox

The afterlives of Tibetan Buddhist material objects

How does the wear of materials affect the status, life trajectories and post-consumption destinies of Buddhist material objects? Based upon ethnographies of waste in India, Nepal and China, this chapter investigates the consumption of Buddhist material objects and their post-consumption afterlives. Its main argument is that the wear (the gradual physical deterioration of materials due to repeated use, time and environmental impact) that accompanies the consumption of religious objects is not only destructive, corroding their materials and utility value, but can also be productive. Taking the Tibetan prayer wheel and its component parts as an example, I show that the end of consumption is not always waste. The sacred does not necessarily expire with consumption. Wear can even give apparently mundane components, such as a worn-out washer, a new life, status and potency after their ‘death’ by transforming them into sacred objects or apotropaic and auspicious tools. 

Keywords Afterlife, Buddhist materiality, consumption, object biography, prayer wheel, waste

Trine Brox, Ph.D. (2009), University of Copenhagen, is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Studies at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies. She has written extensively about Tibetan worlds and specializes in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism with topics such as aesthetics, materials and materiality, consumption and waste.