Chapter 3 examined the adoption of Buddhism as the religion of the Tibetan court during the reign of Tri Songdetsen (755–c. 797) and its continued expansion under his successors. The depth of Tri Songdetsen’s own commitment to the Indian religion and its traditions of learning was seen as well in the selections from his
Criteria of the Authentic Scriptures given in
chapter 4. Despite this royal endorsement, important factions among the nobles—and no doubt the common people too—remained loyal to their ancestral beliefs and practices. They were supported by the priests of the indigenous Tibetan cults, who were sometimes titled
bön or
bönpo, and in time this designation came to apply to pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion overall.
The Bön religion as it has existed from about the tenth century to the present is not, however, a simple continuation of ancient tradition, but reflects the profound impact of Buddhism on Tibetan culture from the eighth century on. As will be considered in greater detail in
chapter 8, Bön came to be organized as a system of faith with Buddhist-like monasteries and monks, elaborate collections of scriptures, and a complete philosophical curriculum modeled on that of Indian Buddhism. Moreover, the adherents of Bön came to believe that their religion, like Buddhism, was originally foreign to Tibet, having been introduced from Zhangzhung, which had in turn received it in ancient times from a legendary land in Central Asia called Ölmolungring. As Bönpo sources often specify that this was located in Tazik, i.e., “Tajik” (as in Tajikistan), it has been suggested that Bön may be based in part upon distant recollections of Tibetan connections with Iranian Central Asia, and even perhaps inspired by the Buddhism that was current in those regions before the rise of Islam. However, the post–tenth century Bön religion, while profoundly influenced by Buddhist beliefs, practices, and institutions, also preserved a very considerable body of knowledge in diverse areas including ritual, divination, and medicine, important elements of which plausibly reflect pre-Buddhist Tibetan traditions. The claim of the followers of Bön concerning the antiquity of their faith in Tibet is thus not entirely without foundation, even if there was no organized religion called “Bön” in ancient times. The funerary texts from Dunhuang given in this chapter offer an example of the continuity of Bön in relation to earlier Tibetan ritual practices.
As these circumstances suggest, considerable uncertainty attends the use of the designation “Bön” in writing about Tibet: it may refer to the organized, monastic Bön religion of recent times, to the presumed ancient and autochthonous religion of Tibet, or to the shamanistic, curative rites practiced by spirit mediums in Tibetan villages. (Although such practitioners are indeed sometimes called
bönpo in Tibetan, representatives of the monastic Bön religion tend to deny any association of their faith with such “shamanistic” practices.) In the texts that follow, we shall explore some of the manifestations of the Bön–Buddhist division as evidenced in the earliest sources. The first section of the chapter presents non-Buddhist works on mythology and ritual found at Dunhuang, and the second section a series of extracts from the
Testament of Ba, an early chronicle concerned with Tri Songdetsen’s conversion, the foundation of Samyé monastery, and the role of several members of the Ba clan in these events. The final section offers early documents related to the tantric esotericism that would later become a hallmark of Tibetan religion in both its Buddhist and Bön iterations, as will be seen in
part 2. MTK
In a number of the Tibetan documents from Dunhuang first studied by the pioneering scholar F. W. Thomas are fragments of what appears to be a myth of cosmic time, referring to a past happy age ruled by the gods, followed by times of woe in which humankind falls into the thrall of demonic forces before turning back to the gods, but then falling once more. Although it has been proposed that this may be a myth of the early indigenous Tibetan religion, some caution about this must be exercised. As references to the Chinese and the Turks (called “Druk” or “Drukgu” in Old Tibetan) within the text show, the myth in the form we find it here dates to a period in which the Tibetans had developed extensive foreign contacts; as myths of decline and of cyclical time were very widespread throughout Eurasia, it is impossible to eliminate the transmission of versions of these to Tibet. Rather than insist too much on the autochthonous character of the present narrative, therefore, it is more prudent to regard it as a Tibetan formulation of widespread cosmological themes. In the translation given here, by F. W. Thomas,
italics represent the translator’s suppositions of words to be supplied where the text in the original manuscript is broken. KRS
[The gods] having fled to heaven, the country and region became deserted. Since from time to time to show honor without fail to the land and the religion and for the rest of the time to be honoring what was [now] void was profitable for nothing, in the talk of all humanity it came to be said, “Since the gods are not, as aforetime, stern in command, what harm?” Thereafter, since religion and life had fallen upon evil days, all sorts of harm from demons and fiends arose in hundreds. Wrong-minded men did to men every evil. Ungentle persons became rich and high and in speech overbearing. Good men, men who did no evil to men, became humble-minded, poor and wretched.
After that, as even more than before religion and life had fallen upon evil days, on the approach of the [age of] Debts and Taxes, in place of the one king, with power limited to eight thousand years, the number of kings came to be large. The kings being severally self-confident, disregarded the old good religion and good wisdom: owing to individual self-confidence there grew up for each country its several religions and wisdom.
After that … all humanity, having become sentimental, was incompetent for whatever should be done. Councilors being many, over ten of them … a single councilor would be appointed. The good religious wisdom of earlier generations … all humanity, after doing evil in contempt of it, came to throw [it] over. According to a new religion … among all humanity, injuries being done which could be of no advantage to country and land, misery came to pass.… People who acted uprightly, doing no harm to men, became, as generations succeeded, non-existent.
After that, since even more than before religion and life had fallen upon evil days, as the generations of men succeeded, even if a child was born, in respect of full vigor it was not satisfactory. As to what was called full vigor, it sufficed in the time of Debts and Taxes if a child born from his mother’s womb attained three months: if he reached that point, thirty years, … years … life-time. This saying is thenceforth termed “sign of the bad life and bad time approaching [the age of] Debts and Taxes.”
Observing the sign, some people will say, “Show this to all humanity. Even with the evil time and evil life it is impossible that to men with affection for wisdom there should not be
regret from dissatisfaction with evil. Inscribe this saying in writing and show it one to another. Heeded by the wise, while with the wicked, even if heard in one ear, it passes unheeded out at the other, this saying may be really received by some few wise. Complying, according to the good religion of ancient wisdom with religion and morality both, even in death when the time comes, they may,
while in the realm of Hades,
attain the … country and have bliss free from misery. When, after [the period of] Debts and Taxes, the good age of the gods comes, may all men in general soon live the life of a hundred years.”
Hearing this saying, bad men do not grasp it, while from their later life-time centuries and centuries are subtracted; even when they hear the saying, … they do not hear, when seeing do not see, and men live between good and evil.
After this, as if putting in steps up to heaven, do good once in every three days. Wash the body once every five days. Invite elder and younger brothers, senior kinsmen, dear relatives to beer and give food. Have music and diversion. In your breasts be the thought, “The bad time has come, the bad life has come. Enough of seeking provision for a life of a hundred years. We must seek provision for a hundred thousand years in the kingdom of death.” In your thought thus thinking, and praying that this bad time and bad life may soon wane, pray that [the age of] Debts [and Taxes] may soon come. Elder and younger kinsmen, even of the fifth beer,
1 who are dejected at the thought that we have fallen upon a bad life, invite to beer, washing away their sorrow, and give them food. Having heard this and making laughter and mirth, invite to beer and give food.
After that may we without mistake of time honor the great gods and particular gods in the country. Even if unable to show timely honor, at least on three days in the month let us for health’s sake wash our bodies and, offering homage to the gods, make use of these words: “We are fallen upon a bad time: we are fallen upon a bad life. All men are powerless. In doing homage to the gods also we are not rendering homage and worship to the gods for the sake of one body. It is for the benefit to the life of all humanity under heaven and in earth both that we make gifts and do homage. We pray that the bad time may soon wane. We pray that, with the good time of the gods soon to come, even those who die beforehand may soon be living in the good time. To this end we make gifts to the gods and do homage.” Even to fathers and grandfathers who die beforehand do not omit to say these words. “What is the good of doing so?”—if this is asked, that our own lifetime should be unsatisfactory does not make us wince in the least. In the evil time may our children, being wise, comply. Even in death may they not, in the realm of Hades, take a wrong road. May they pass to a realm of happiness. In the [period of] Debts and Taxes may they soon have a life of a hundred years. May the poor also, so far as our thought goes, do likewise.” These words give one to another. If humanity hear, it is well.
After this, as more than before the evil life-time comes, upon the “Approach of the [period of] Debts and Taxes, how will it be?”—if this is asked in the space between heaven and earth, there was no great king except Bar Shangshé: so it was his state that first declined. After that, as the kings led armies one against another, there was internal strife among kings. All the fiends beheld the spectacle with delight. All the gods were unhappy and, not letting their gaze be attached to men, averted their faces. In that age those kings also who from time to time appeared declined in their state. Sometimes men from the common people and from slaves arrived at kingship and were ruling. After that, leading armies one against another, sometimes one was victorious, sometimes one was vanquished. So the life of this period is the life of Debts and Taxes.
Subsequently, after three hundred and sixty years of the time of Debts and Taxes, there came from the far side of a great lake
2 west of the land and China country a black face king, riding in a black chariot, who flourished during sixty years. The Chinese blackheads
3 did homage to him and were by him enslaved. When of that king’s time sixty years had passed, there came from a hollow in the Chinese swamp-land of the Bukchor
4 one called the Great Druk [Turk]. Having annihilated the black-face king and the king of the Bukchor, both, that king enslaved the people of China and of the Bukchor, both, and they paid taxes. The Great Druk flourished during seventy and two years. When he had flourished during seventy and two years, the Drukgu of the east and the Drukgu of the west fought. At first the Drukgu of the west …
[F. W. Thomas, Ancient Folk Literature from Northeast Tibet (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1957), 48–50.]
A number of documents discovered at Dunhuang describe non-Buddhist mortuary rites that presumably reach back to earlier Tibetan antiquity. In one of these, a sort of manual for the performance of royal funerals, the term bön occurs in the titles of the priests who perform the services. And in the documents from which extracts are given here, the texts show striking affinities with a funerary rite preserved in later Bönpo sources and entitled the Muchö Tromdur, the “Funeral [Rite] Proclaimed by [the Sage] Mucho.” These Dunhuang sources show some analogies with their post–tenth-century Bönpo counterparts.
The Dunhuang manuscript Pelliot tibétain 1194 declares that the power of the deities and spirits called
lha and
sé was very great, and that Durshen (“Funeral Priest”) Mada was the source of all the funerary rites. Unlike the
Muchö Tromdur, the manuscript does not specify the deities’ functions, but they probably were apotropaic and fortune-bestowing in character here as well. It is significant that both the
Muchö Tromdur and Dunhuang funerary manuscripts depict Durshen Mada as an ancestral (father) figure of the distant past, upon whom the funerary system depended. This mythic apparatus is employed to sanction the continued practice of the tradition in the historical settings from which the Dunhuang documents and the
Muchö Tromdur issued. In the latter, the mythic arena for such rites is set in a distant past, long before the Tibetan empire. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it appears that the cognate mythology of the Dunhuang texts was likewise intended to represent a remote period of time. We can take this to mean that such Dunhuang funerary mythology is positioned in a prehistoric temporal framework that formed the precedent for the Bön mythos of later times. At the conclusion of the origin tale of the wing that is a ritual hand tool, Pelliot tibétain 1194 instructs readers to perform the series of funerary traditions, now that their origins have been set forth. The pronouncement of the origins and transmission of a ritual practice before its actual performance remains a hallmark of the archaic ritual traditions conserved by the Bönpo. JVB
The respondent of death, the respondent, was made with what? To say the name of the father, yes, of the vulture, it was the one Göpo Tangyak. To say the name of the mother of the vulture, it was the one Gömo Tangro Demyak. Their son was the one Göpur Mangmomön.
A mischief-making father set up a bird snare, and it was placed underneath (concealed). He placed the decayed corpse of a dog above the bird snare and he set up the trap. The white lammergeyer, the black lammergeyer, and the yellow lammergeyer, these three, were killed there. [The father] took the medial portions of the vultures’ right wings [but] they were not appropriate to be the respondent of death, the respondent’s respondent. [The central portions of the wings] disappeared into the sky, they were no more. The wings were not usable. [The father] took the bottom portions of the vultures’ right wings and said, “Let us make them the respondent of death,” but they were not appropriate to be the respondent of death. They went away as the wings of the lha (deities); they were no more. Afterward he said, “Will these [top] portions of the wings be appropriate for the respondent of death?” [The ritualist replied,] “They may not be appropriate for the respondent of death, but they will be acceptable as the bird horns and khyung (eagle) horns on top of the sé [ritualist?].” These were the wings of the lha and sé.
The medial portions of the vultures’ left wings were made the respondent and messenger between the living and dead humans. A ligature was tied on the wings, the road of the continuous way [of the dead], guiding them on and on. Incense was tied on the wings; incense shows the throughway. A luminous torch was tied on the edge of the wings, blazing brightly. A needle was tied on the wings, the iron stairs, the stairs, towering in the sky. A gögé
jadzung (?) was tied on the wings; it clears up the clouds in the expanse of the sky. Vermilion was tied on the wings. An agate was tied on the wings, the agate path, the path directly through the hole of the agate. A
puk (perhaps a type of precious stone) was tied on the wings; the path of the
puk, the path is meandering. A
zi (talismanic agate) was tied on the wings; the path of the
zi.
The power of the lha and sé was very great. The momanyé (?) respondent and messenger was made with the vultures. The shen (priest) elucidated the history of the throughway [to the heavens]. There is no one who did not have the funeral rites [done] by the father Durshen Mada. Also, there is no one that the lofty birds did not pass over or tread over. Speaking thus, perform the succession of [funerary] traditions.
Another text from Dunhuang, Pelliot tibétain 1134, tells us that in an attempt to aid the deceased man, Durshen Mada beat the precious “chain of the deceased” with his long-handled sword. This appears to have been an exorcistic procedure by which harmful forces afflicting the dead were eradicated by the cutting of a line (binding the corpse?). This ritual is reminiscent of the beating of flayed animal skins, used to defeat meddlesome demons in the Muchö Tromdur. Despite this rite of the “chain of the deceased,” the deceased was left marooned with his ritual supports and could not cross what are called “the three heights of the dead.” Consequently, he could not pass through “the precious land of the dead.” In Pelliot tibétain 1134, and also in the Muchö Tromdur, the deceased must escape from the land of the departed, a hellish realm, if he is to find salvation. The text states, however, that the deceased could not cross the ford of the departed and could not traverse the wide pass of the departed. These geographic obstacles have the river and plains of the Lords of Death (shinjé) as their Muchö Tromdur analogues, which can be bridged only by the correct performance of the Bön funerary rituals. As a result, the wooden sémo and square—which were involved in ritual performances including the tomb—were left behind. This is a metaphor unambiguously showing that the deceased was left stranded in the hellish land of the demons of death when the ritual was not properly performed. JVB
At the end of the sky and the apex of the heavens, the name of the father and patriarch was Dingding Dinggijé. The mother and matriarch was Ge’ngur Ngur’ngur Motsün. The son of their nocturnal union was Dang Dreujé Tsenba. While going to hunt wild yak and deer at Drok Yepna Tengsum, atop the rock formation of Namdrak Dingdrak (Sky Rock Soaring Rock), he became distracted on horseback [and fell down]. Dang Dreujé Tsenba perished in this accident and was no more.
The yellow-orange cast
doma (?), the cherished one, [reappeared]. They (the makers of the funeral) had not listened to the advice of the father Durshen Mada. They had not listened to the words of teaching of the elder. Before the warm spring sun could set, the
semo went over wrongly. The square went over wrongly; the deceased went over wrongly [due to] the living relatives. The lord’s ordered placement did not reach the height. The flesh was not clothed/painted. Although the [deceased] was honored, he was not grateful. [The deceased] was carried on a horse for not a long time. The
semo remained behind between Zharingdung (a place name?). The square did remain behind. Other people watched the spectacle. Other people laughed at the hilarity. The father Durshen Mada showed the precious path of the dead. He beat the precious chain of the deceased with his long-handled sword. In accordance with the three words of the father priest’s speech, he said, “[The deceased] could not cross the three heights of the dead. He could not traverse the precious land of the dead. [The deceased] could not cross the ford, the ford of the dead; and also he could not traverse the wide pass of the dead. The
semo remained behind, it was no more. It could not be made happy like [the
doma] Serganggé. The passing over of the
semo was wrong. The passing over of the square was wrong. The wooden
semo was left behind. The square was left behind.”
A Dunhuang manuscript in the British Library (IOL Tib J 731 verso), an interlinear text written between rows of Chinese characters, begins with an enumeration of the failures of various funerary procedures that is difficult to understand. This first part of the text includes mention of 100 blue divine horses that were “interconnected by a hitching line, like a gathering of pigeons at a rock formation.” Despite this, the shi, a type of funerary rite, of the father could not be made. Other procedures for the shi and drang rituals also failed. These included the offering of 100 white sheep, 100 black sheep, 100 blue sheep, and 100 tan sheep to the hand of the father. They were all, however, unsuitable to be used as the kyipluk or mawa, perhaps to be understood here as the sheep that guides the deceased in certain other mortuary texts from Dunhuang. The text appears to say that even though they were milked, they were not suitable as the mawa. It also appears that the wool of these sheep was offered to the mother Tsangdak (the Mistress of Tsang), who spun yarn, braided strings, strung the warp, and wove a coarse woolen cloth. Despite all these efforts, the father’s funeral still could not be completed.
The text next moves to the harrowing origin tale of the
sin (spelled
srin in literary Tibetan), the demonic agent of violent death. The story is incomplete, however, and it is impossible to know how much further the narrative originally extended. As with many other ritual narrations in the Dunhuang and
Muchö Tromdur sources, the origin tale begins by announcing the names of the protagonists and their parentage. The tale of murder and deceit that follows has a particularly horrific character, even by the standards of other texts of this genre. The dread and fear that the man-eating
sin demons still evoke in Tibetans is thus readily understandable from a historical perspective. After murdering the shepherd patriarch, the
sin Nakpa Guchok goes on to assume physical form in order to take advantage of the shepherd’s wife. Still not satisfied, the
sin dissembles so that he can kill and eat the eldest daughter. Fortunately, humankind is not without divine allies, the one here being Bongbu Takchung (Small Tiger Bumblebee), the exterminator of the
sin known from other Bön funerary texts. Bongbu Takchung tells the middle sister, Tsenggi Bakzhin, that her father and elder sister have been devoured by the lord of the
sin, and warns that he is about to prey on her as well. The middle sister and the bumblebee deity become close friends. The bond they form is illustrated by the girl presenting special ornaments, a bell and crown, to Bongbu Takchung. This underscores the relationship that lies at the heart of exchanges between humanity and divinities in native Tibetan conceptions. As with offerings of incense, edibles, and so forth, humans possess the ability to purify and fulfill the wishes of their deities in a pact of mutual empowerment.
Leaving Bongbu Takchung in charge of her sheep, the middle sister returns home. She explains to her mother the dreadful events that have taken place, but as might be expected, the mother is incredulous. When the mother learns that she has indeed slept with the sin, she leaves for his country. The choice to go into exile appears to have been forced on her, either because she betrayed her husband or because she broke a taboo against consorting with fiends. The text now states that the middle sister’s name is changed, ostensibly to protect her from the sin. This passage seems to account for the common Tibetan custom of changing the name of a small child as part of ritual efforts to save it from the grasp of demons. Further help appears in the form of lammergeyers, those majestic birds of the celestial realm (a mythic association that can be traced at least to the aftermath of the Tibetan empire, as the narrative makes clear). Having reached the edge of the heavens, the middle sister meets the divine grandmother, Namchi Gung Gyelmo (Heavenly Queen of the Outer Space), hoary with age. In the Bön origin tale of Bongbu Takchung, Namchi Gung Gyelmo is one of the deities from which the bumblebee received empowerments. This goddess has remained a prominent member of the Bön pantheon, although she has assumed the form of a tantric divinity.
Our text significantly begins with the phrase “in the language of,” borrowed from Tibetan translations of Buddhist scriptures, which typically open with “in the language of India” (or sometimes “of China”) followed by the original title of the work and its Tibetan translation. This is therefore among the earliest examples of a non-Buddhist adoption of this convention, which in Bönpo canonical scriptures often specifies the language of Zhangzhung. The present text refers instead to the unknown language of Gyelnam, and to that of Pugyel Bö, “Tibet (Bö), of the King of Pu,” using the imperial designation referring to the Tsenpo’s dynastic title, “King of [the land of] Pu.” JVB
In the language of Gyelnam, the name of the father and patriarch was Tongdeu Miku. In the language of Pugyel Bö (Tibet): Longmik Longna Jalonggi Go. He and the noble mother and matriarch with the name Mother Zhukté Ngarjam mated and the children of the season, three daughters, were born. The eldest daughter was Tsenggi Baga. The middle daughter was Tsenggi Bakzhin. The youngest daughter was Tsenggi Baga. The father, divine Tongdeu Miku, went to take care of the sheep. The sin lord Nakpa Guchok from the sin country of Nakpa Gusül, riding the mule horse of the sin, came there. He ate the fresh flesh and drank the fresh blood of the father, Tongdeu Miku, and wore his fresh skin. [The sin] drove the sheep to [Tongdeu’s] dwelling and home and remained there. He slept with Mother Zhuktéi Ngarjam.
Early on the morning of the next day [the
sin] said to the mother, “I cannot watch the sheep, send our daughter Tsenggi Baga to take care of the sheep.” Tsenggi Baga went to take care of the sheep. [The
sin] ate her fresh flesh and drank her fresh blood, and chopped up her organs. [The
sin] returned to Ngarjam and said, “Today, darling, I have bagged a small musk deer. I have brought these organs as Ngarjam’s share of the meat.” The mother asked about the whereabouts of Tsenggi Baga. [The
sin] replied, “I don’t know where she is. The little one spent a long time away. The girl spent a long time on the mountain. I have business to attend to, send Tsenggi Bakzhin (the middle daughter).”
Tsenggi Bakzhin went to take care of the sheep. She met [the one called] Chochi Chokzu in the language of Gyelnampa [and], in the language of Pugyel Bö (Tibet), Bongbu Takchung (Small Tiger Bumblebee) of the meadow. Bongbu Takchung of the meadow said, “Yesterday, the sin lord Nakpa Guchok from the sin country Nakpa Gusül, riding the mule of the sin, ate the fresh flesh and drank the fresh blood of your father, Tongdeu Miku, and [wore] his fresh skin. He [also] ate the fresh flesh of your elder sister, Tsenggi Baga, and drank her fresh blood and wore her fresh skin. You too are about to have your fresh flesh eaten and your fresh skin worn.”
Bongbu Takchung of the meadow and the girl became bosom friends. They entered into a solemn oath. She put the namti gochok (a type of crown) on Bongbu Takchung of the meadow. She hung a “heart of the yak”(-shaped) bell on the neck of Bongbu Takchung. The namti gochok shook. The “heart of the yak” bell rang.
Tsenggi Bakzhin fled to her home. She told her mother, Zhukté Ngarjam, “I, the poor girl, met Bongbu Takchung of the meadow. Our father, Tongdeu Miku, had his fresh flesh eaten and his fresh skin worn by the sin Nakpa Guchok. Also, the fresh flesh of my elder sister Tsenggi Baga was eaten and her fresh skin worn. I, the poor girl, made bosom friends with Bongbu Takchung of the meadow. We took an oath. I suspended a yak-heart bell on Bongbu Takchung, and I, the poor one, put a namti gochog on him. I let him herd the sheep and tend and look after the sheep. I, the poor girl, fled.”
In her motherland, the mother said, “It cannot be like that! Tonight we shall check. You hide in the back.” That night when they looked, everything the daughter had said was true, as the sin was eating the fresh flesh and wearing the fresh skin. The mother said, “I copulated with the sin. I will go to the country of the sin.”
In the language of Gyelnampa: [Kha phya rma bya’i rma li bye’u rma bye’u gi thing tshun]. In the language of Pugyel Bö (Tibet): [The daughter’s] name was changed to Khap Yojé Daptra. She was put inside the cave of the meadow and kept there. So then, at one time, both a white lammergeyer and a black lammergeyer suddenly appeared. [The girl] grasped the tail of the white lammergeyer and went to the edge of the sky and beyond the heavens.
Inside the earthen cave Tirwa was grandmother Namchi Gung Gyelmo (Heavenly Queen of Outer Space). The skin of her eyes covered her nose. The wrinkles of her nose covered her mouth. The wrinkles of her mouth covered her chin.
[Introduction and texts from John Vincent Bellezza, Zhang zhung: Foundations of Civilization in Tibet: A Historical and Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Monuments, Rock Art, Texts, and Oral Tradition of the Ancient Tibetan Upland (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2008). Edited with the author’s permission by MTK.]
A particularly important group of texts dealing with religious change under the Tibetan empire is the Testament of Ba (Bazhé) in its several versions and allied works, all of which turn on events surrounding the establishment of the first Tibetan monastery at Samyé, perhaps in 779. The Testament of Ba derives its title from the clan name of its main protagonists, in particular Ba Selnang, a Tibetan nobleman who became an early supporter of Buddhism and later a monk. Another member of the Ba clan was one of the seven Tibetans whose ordination as Buddhist monks marked the founding of the Tibetan saṇgha. (Later sources sometimes identify this figure, called Ba Lhatsen in our text and Ba Pelyang after he entered the order, with Ba Selnang himself. However, Ba Selnang’s ordination name was Yeshé Wangpo, though he was also referred to as “the precious Ba,” Ba Ratna.)
The known versions of the Testament of Ba were redacted at different times between roughly the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, but all versions include material that is much earlier. The recent identification of a Dunhuang manuscript fragment as corresponding to a passage from the Testament of Ba firmly establishes that elements of the work had begun to be set down no later than the tenth century, and probably even before. In the selections given here, we draw on two versions of the text: the so-called Pure Testament of Ba (Bazhé tsangma), redacted perhaps during the eleventh century, and the Testament of Wa, which may be slightly earlier. (The name Wa in the latter title is an archaic variant of the same clan name that, according to the classical spelling, is pronounced Ba.)
The Testament of Ba, in all its versions, is a tale of conflict. Its framing narrative is the story of Buddhism’s contested introduction into Tibet, particularly its confrontation with indigenous Tibetan religious traditions. However, it also speaks of disputes within Buddhism itself, most notably in its record of the “Samyé debate,” during which partisans of Chinese Chan Buddhism, who proclaimed a radical, sudden approach to Buddhist enlightenment, were supposed to have encountered representatives of Indian Mahāyāna, with its emphasis on the gradual cultivation of the ethical dimensions of the bodhisattva’s path. MTK
Early in the Testament of Ba, during the recounting of events leading up to Tri Songdetsen’s adoption of Buddhism, is a tale concerning a great tragedy in the household of the minister Ba Selnang and its ultimately happy outcome. The text recalls that during the repression of Buddhism that followed the death of Emperor Tri Detsuktsen in 755, when his successor, Tri Songdetsen, was still in his minority, the performance of Buddhist funerary rites was suppressed. These rites had been instituted by the late emperor’s Chinese bride, Princess Jincheng. After her arrival in Tibet, during a visit to the image of Śākyamuni that had been installed in Lhasa by her ancestral relation, Princess Wencheng, she was moved by compassion for the fate of the deceased Tibetan nobility, who died without benefit of the Buddha’s teaching. The rites she instituted, to be performed on a weekly basis for seven weeks following a death, were known as tsé. As the French scholar R. A. Stein has convincingly argued, this is not the familiar Tibetan term tsé, meaning “lifespan.” It is most likely a transcription of the Chinese zhai, defined as “a fast of abstinence” and used in many Chinese Buddhist expressions. The Testament of Ba holds that these rites were specifically banned by ministerial decree.
In the passage given here, the use of this and other Chinese expressions suggests the influence of Chinese Buddhism in Tibet before and during the time of Tri Songdetsen. A Chinese monk represents the Buddhist clergy, and he is referred to using the Chinese word heshang, designating a Buddhist monk. The temple of Ramoché in Lhasa, moreover, is first mentioned as the henkhang, a phrase most likely derived from Chinese fangong, meaning a Buddhist shrine or temple. MTK
After the order was given that, when a subject died, the performance of the virtue called tsé was not to be permitted, Ba Selnang’s two children, brother and sister, both died at the same time at Balam Lak. The lord’s paternal ancestors had all said that the Dharma was true, so [Ba Selnang] thought to ask a Heshang. He then called upon and made a request of an elderly, clairvoyant Heshang from the Henkhang. His question was, “Are there former and future lives? Is the Dharma true?”
The Heshang responded, “There are former and future lives, and the Dharma is true.” He then had him perform Bön at the gateway, but in the interior, with mourning and [rites of] dedication, invite a thousand men and gods to perform the tsé. Having enticed the old Heshang from Ramoché [to come there], he requested the seven weekly rites on behalf of the two children, brother and sister. The Heshang asked, “Would you be pleased if they were born as gods, or once again as your own children?”
The father responded that he would be happy if they were born as gods, but the mother said, “I would be glad if they were born as my children, so that is what I request.”
In response, the Heshang performed a ritual over the son’s remains, at which the corpse turned into relics. He therefore prophesied [the son’s] rebirth as a god. Then he smeared a pea-sized pearl with vermilion to the left and placed it in the mouth of the girl. As a mark of faith, having performed a ritual, he had [the corpse] placed in a clay pot and buried beneath the mother’s bed. He prophesied that she would soon be reborn as her child.
Some time later, a child was born to Selnang’s wife, and from its mouth came a pearl that was red to the left. When they inspected the pot beneath the bed, it was found to be empty. When the child was a year old, [she] recognized, without having been instructed, [her] uncles and aunts, and also knew [their] names. She addressed them as she had done formerly, before her death. These and many [other] such marks and signs appeared. Thus, [Ba Selnang] came to know that there are former and future lives.
Selnang then received a meditation instruction from the Chinese Heshang. He concealed this from others, but always practiced the meditation. Afterward, when, in order to seek the scriptures of the Buddha, he petitioned the lord [i.e., the Tsenpo] so as to go to India and Nepal, the lord judged him to be favorable to the Dharma, and so certain to travel to India. But he declared, “I appoint you as my minister in Mangyül [in southwestern Tibet, near the Indian frontier],” and, so appointed, [Ba Selnang] journeyed to Mangyül.
[Sba bzhed ces bya ba las Sba Gsal gnang gi bzhed pa bzhugs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1980), 10–11. Trans. MTK. See too: Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 3; Sam van Schaik and Lewis Doney, “The Prayer, the Priest and the Tsenpo: An Early Buddhist Narrative from Dunhuang,” Journal of the International Association for Buddhist Studies 30, no. 1–2 (2007): 175–217.]
Ba Selnang’s station in Mangyül placed him in close proximity to Nepal, where he later traveled to invite the great Indian Buddhist philosopher
Śāntarak
ṣita to visit Tibet. This master, whose surviving Sanskrit writings are among the most important available sources for our knowledge of medieval Indian logic and philosophy, accepted the challenge of traveling to Tibet, where, known as “Teacher, or Preceptor (Khenpo), Bodhisattva,” he became the tutor of the Tsenpo and participated in the construction of Samyé, Tibet’s first monastery. (One must take care not to confound the word “bodhisattva,” meaning an individual progressing toward the awakening of a buddha, with the same word used as a respectful name for
Śāntarak
ṣita.) Many of the persons mentioned in the version of the account we find here, from the
Testament of Wa, continued to figure prominently in the later mythology surrounding the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. The text also describes the ritual, geomantic, and magical processes used to select the construction site, design the buildings, and create the appropriate statues and images for the temples. In its emphasis on magic and revelation, it reveals the centrality of these practices for early generations of Tibetan Buddhists. GB/MTK
In the hare year (775) in spring,
Āc
ārya (“teacher”) Bodhisattva (i.e.,
Śāntarak
ṣita) performed the ritual of the foundation of Samyé monastery together with the Nepalese expert,
5 and the auspices were examined. There were propitious signs for the introduction of the holy doctrine into Tibet, such as the emergence of precious stones from the ground, and further good omens for the spread of the holy doctrine in Tibet also appeared generally. As not even the term
gelong (i.e.,
bhikṣu, a fully ordained monk) was known in Tibet, Ba Lhatsen became a monk and was given the name of Ba Pelyang. The statue of
Śākyamuni which had been taken to Nepal was brought back. It was carried by one horseman and placed in the Ramoché again.
6 Then Ba Selnang built the Lak temple instead of the La temple. He made members of the Ba clan abandon the Bön religion and practice Buddhism. Ba Lhazik became the spiritual master of his friend Nyang Rökong. He was thereby taught the doctrine and given the five rules. Rökong, in his turn, became the spiritual master of his brothers and these became followers of the White religion (i.e., Buddhism).
Later, still in the hare year, a decision was made to build Samyé. When the time came for laying the foundations of the temple, Khenpo Bodhisattva, the Tsenpo, Ba Sangshi and Nyer Taktsen Dongzik went together to the top of Drakmar Khepori. As the Master observed the site, he saw a plain white with
gungwa and
kyang kelma.
7 Then Nyer Taktsen Dongzik was ordered to make heaps of grass saying as a pretext that a corral for horses was being built. According to the disposition of the heaps of grass, the outer perimeter wall was constructed. At the time of celebrating the rituals for geomantic divination and blessing, four sons and nephews of the uncle-minister,
8 who had parents alive and living together, joined the Tsenpo, who was wearing a gold
nenti and was holding a golden hoe. He dug several times and then the four sons and nephews of the uncle-minister took turns to dig. When they had dug a square hole to the depth of one cubit, two handfuls of white rice and barley appeared, whereas no pebbles, bones, bricks and charcoal emerged. The following day, the earth was again soft and with
kyanar grass. The Master was delighted. Smearing the earth on the Tsenpo’s forehead, he said, “
siti siti phala phala [= Skt.
siddhi siddhi phala phala, ‘accomplishment, fruition’], the work has been accomplished in an excellent way.”
At first, when Āryapālo Ling was built, the Tsenpo said: “No maker of statues is available.” The Khenpo answered: “Honored divine Tsenpo! Let the instruments be prepared, the maker of statues will come!” Then, a certain Gyatsel Buchen was called. He was staying in Tsongdü Nama and used to claim: “If the Tsenpo of Tibet decides to build a temple, I am expert in making statues.” The Khenpo asked: “Shall we make them according to the Indian or Tibetan style?” The Tsenpo replied: “I hope that by following the Tibetan style, faith in Buddhism will be aroused in all the followers of the Black religion (i.e., Bön).” According to royal order, the model was in the style of the Tibetan uncle-minister and was chosen as follows: in order to have a model, the Tibetan subjects were gathered. Among the men the most handsome were Khu Taktsap, Takzang Taklö and Ma Sekong who acted as models for gods. As models for goddesses, the most beautiful among the women was Chokroza Lhabumen. Upon the completion of statues, paintings and construction, on the morning of the twenty-ninth day the consecration was celebrated. In the afternoon, at dusk, from the top of the temple a light appeared, which became bigger and bigger and illuminated all of upper and lower Drakmar, shining like the moon. The Khenpo said: “This is the light of Amitābha’s coming. Tomorrow a temple of Amitābha shall be built as an upper storey above the Wutsé.” Immediately the small upper storey temple was built and consecrated. At the time of the great consecration of Āryapālo temple, rewards and food were to be offered to Gyatsel Buchen, the maker of statues. After a table and a seat had been prepared for him, an invitation was sent, but nobody knew where he had gone. He was accordingly considered a divine emanation.
The Khenpo said: “Tsenpo! At first it was the goddess T
ār
ā who let the thought of enlightenment be awakened in you. Once upon a time, the Buddha was in Bodhgay
ā[, and] it was the goddess T
ār
ā who induced him to turn the wheel of the doctrine. Now, in order to avoid obstacles and hindrances to your mind, the goddess T
ār
ā shall be worshipped and prayed to!” After the Tsenpo had received authorization from the Khenpo to propitiate Hayagr
īva,
9 he stayed in meditation in the
Āryap
ālo Ling. At that time,
Ārya Hayagr
īva neighed three times during the day and three times during the night, and it was actually heard by the attendants and caretakers of the temple. In the site in which the geomantic divination and the rituals had been performed, the Ütse was built. Upon completion of the building, the Tsenpo was thinking about the appropriate statues that should be made. So, in a dream a white man told him: “King! I will show you [how] to make the form of the Buddha and teach you the relevant skills. There is a place which had been formerly blessed by Bhagavat [Lord Buddha], let us go there.” Upon arrival at Mt. Khepo,
10 the white man let the Tsenpo examine all the rocks and said that this and this were the Tath
āgata [
bde bzhin gshegs pa] with such and such names and the Bodhisattva with such and such names. He also showed all the wrathful deities. As soon as dawn came, the Tsenpo went to Mt. Khepo and saw what he had been shown in his dream. On the rocks were the shapes of gods which roughly corresponded to what he had seen in his dreams, and he rejoiced and called Nepalese stone carvers. As soon as they arrived, they carved all the statues as they were seen in his dreams. When these were placed on a cart, the earth shook. When it arrived at the threshold of the eastern gate, the earth shook once more. When they were taken inside the Dritsang Khang and placed on their seats, the earth shook again. Afterwards, they were clothed, a gold belt was tied around them and they were covered with clay. Then the four continents, the eight subcontinents, Yaksha Tanok and the four st
ūpa were built.
11 The white st
ūpa was built by Shüpu Gyato Rengami, the black one by Ngenlam Takra Lugong, the red one by Nanam Gyeltsa Lhanang and the blue one by Chim Dozhi Trechung. In front of Mt. Khepo carpenters and smiths made the central pole for the azure-blue st
ūpa to the south. When this was to be carried the following day to the place of construction, it had disappeared, but after a search it turned out that it had already been installed in the st
ūpa. When he was told about this, the Son of God (i.e., the Tsenpo) ordered that carpenters and smiths be sent to examine the st
ūpa with the central pole. When checking, they saw that it had already been installed and delightedly reported this to the Tsenpo. The carpenters and smiths were offered great rewards. That night the Nepalese divination expert had dreamt of four men from Nepal, wearing gold suits of armor, who had carried and installed the central pole in front of him. Those men had said: “It will be best if you build this st
ūpa and seven others. As a reward accept this gold suit of armor. By circumambulating this st
ūpa, all wishes will be fulfilled.” At dawn, the men had disappeared, but a suit of armor was really there. When the Nepalese expert reported this to the Tsenpo, he received great rewards and many servants. It is said that this was done by the Four Great Kings and these were depicted on a vase.
12The temple was surrounded by a black perimeter wall with four gates, one in each of the four cardinal directions, and four places for dismounting from horses. The interior of the temple was walled and floored with plaster white like a mirror. A bean could be thrown straight from the southern to the northern gate. All creatures but birds were prevented from entering the perimeter wall, and everyone had to wash his feet before entering. The outer temple Khamsum was established by Tsepongza, Ütsel by Poyongza, Gegyé by Droza. Trizang Yaplhak took care of the whole construction. The main temple, like a turquoise placed on a golden basis, was completed in the year of the sheep (779). At the completion of the three consecrations celebrated by Bodhisattva, all statues gathered at the Ütsé, preached the doctrine and went back to their respective place. So, the Tsenpo was delighted.…
In the year of the sheep, in the second winter month, when the great
pratiṣṭha consecration was celebrated, one hundred subjects including Jomochen Trigyel and Su Tsen Möngyel took their vows and Ba Rinpoché (alias Ba Ratna) acted as Preceptor (Khenpo) for them. A great edict was promulgated: henceforth, among the subjects under the rule of the Tsenpo men might not have their eyes put out, women might not have their noses cut off, and the subjects should be devoted to the doctrine. All subjects, starting from the great ministers adhering to the leading persons, took the oath. The edict of the sacred law was recorded and a pillar was erected. From then on the offerings for the Three Jewels and the food for the sa
ṅgha were provided by the
khapso chenpo.
13 Clothing was completely provided thanks to the wealthy people. Every year each monk had to be offered twelve loads of barley.
[Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger, dBa’ bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 63–73.]
In the later dramatic narrations of the history of imperial Tibet, one of the most colorful events recounted is the great confrontation between Chinese and Indian Buddhism, the debate at Samyé held at the order of the emperor Tri Songdetsen. As every Tibetan schoolchild knows, the Chinese party, headed by the Heshang Moheyan (“monk Mah
āy
āna”), was roundly defeated by
Śāntarak
ṣita’s leading Indian disciple, the brilliant scholastic philosopher Kamala
śīla, and subsequently expelled from Tibet. Indeed, throughout much of the past millennium, the expression “Chinese bonze” (
gyanak hashang) has served as a set phrase with which to disparage virtually all proponents of whatever one holds to be “perverse views,” especially with regard to Buddhist theories of the absolute. Moheyan, who was indeed a prominent teacher of Chan Buddhism (Zen in Japanese) in Dunhuang, was charged with having taught that enlightenment was to be acquired in a sudden flash of insight, moral effort counting for naught. His precise views, as represented in the
Testament of Ba and later Tibetan sources, are certainly being caricatured, and a Chinese account of the controversy, found at Dunhuang and studied by the noted French Sinologist Paul Demiéville, clearly shows that the context of the teaching of sudden insight concerns primarily absorption in meditation; Moheyan was not teaching his followers to act with moral abandon in everyday life.
During the reign of Tri Songdetsen, as Buddhist teachings began to be widely propounded among the Tibetans, translators, scholars, and even the monarch himself wrestled with the difficulties of expressing Buddhist philosophical and religious ideas in the Tibetan language (see
chapters 3 and
4). By the 780s, when the Tibetans conquered Dunhuang, there was already sufficient interest in Chinese Buddhist teachings to warrant a royal invitation to Moheyan to journey to Central Tibet to teach. There is a broad consensus among our sources that, once there, he attracted an extensive following that included some important figures attached to the court. Perhaps for some years there was even something of a Chan craze among well-bred Tibetans. However, Moheyan’s radical variety of Chan, with its emphasis on catalyzing sudden insight, seemed to counter the teaching of gradual cultivation known to Tibetan proponents of more normative scholastic Buddhism. The ensuing tension is said to have come to a head with the monarch’s decision to sponsor a debate between the parties. In the record of the dispute given here, we find what is surely a somewhat fictional account written from the perspective of those who opposed Moheyan’s teaching. The continued presence of chapters on the “sudden entry” into enlightenment in Tibetan manuals on Buddhist practice, down to at least the twelfth century, demonstrates that important factions among Tibetan Buddhists never quite accepted this account, nor even the idea that Moheyan’s teaching of meditation need be taken as contradicting the ideal of the bodhisattva’s progressive path. (Although Moheyan is referred to as Mah
āy
āna in the Tibetan sources, this term, used here as a proper name, should not be confounded with its general use as the designation for the “Great Vehicle” of Buddhist teaching.) MTK
At that time, one Chinese monk called Mahāyāna was at Trakmar. He taught meditation, saying, “You need not undertake the principles of body or speech: by virtues of body and speech you’ll not become a buddha. But by meditating thoughtlessly, without deliberation, you will become a buddha.”
The mass of Tibetan monks generally learned his doctrine, and the continuous rites of worship at Samyé came to a halt. Continuous efforts to learn and virtuous applications of body and speech were cut off. Only a few, including Ba Ratna (Yeshé Wangpo), Vairocana, and Pelyang, learned the Bodhisattva’s [i.e.,
Śāntarak
ṣita’s] doctrine. As their views were not in accord, [the two parties] argued and fought. Because the king asked, “Is this doctrine of the Chinese teacher not a little bit crooked?” [that doctrine] became famed as that “of the non-teacher.”
14The other [party] said, “Though the anchorite called K
ṣānti offered worship by setting fire to his body, [he taught that] it was most important to accumulate the provisions [for advancement on the path] with an attitude of love for sentient beings.” Because the king responded by saying, “Is that love which sets fire to the body also the doctrine or not?” it became renowned as “the loveless.”
15 Having declared that, in general, the gradualists appeared to hold the doctrine that brought together view and conduct, he seems to have punished the proponents of sudden enlightenment. Following that, among the students of Mah
āy
āna, Nyang Shami cut his own flesh, Nya Bimala and Ngok Rinpoché crushed their genitals, and a Chinese monk set fire to his own head and died. The others each brandished a dagger and said, “We’ll kill all the gradualists, and we’ll all return to the womb, to the place of error.”
16The king heard this and, [sitting] between the monks of both sudden and gradual [factions], with them surrounding [his] right and left shoulders, as he did not know what to do about the agitations due to the disharmony of views among all these monks, he asked, “What’s to be done?” Dispatching a message, he ordered that Yeshé Wangpo come to the palace, but though he sent many messengers, he failed to catch him. Then he sent the chamberlain Khampa, with the order, “If you bring in Yeshé Wangpo, I’ll give you a copper cauldron as a reward, but if you don’t bring him in I’ll kill you!” Giving him the letter case, he sent him off.
Khampa went to Kharchu [in southern Tibet] and delivered the case containing the order, sending it to [Yeshé Wangpo’s] cave, with the request, “By all means, let me meet you!” When they met, he said, “As I have come with firm purpose, if you go, [the king] will be very considerate of it, and will also reward me. But if you don’t go, because he’s going to kill me, I’d rather jump from this cliff and kill myself!”
As this accorded with what was given in the royal order, Yeshé Wangpo said, “A great demon has arrived here to interfere with my virtuous practice; but, because the loss of your life is going to come back to me, you’d better bring me a horse.” At that [Khampa] was overjoyed and returned to the palace, where he was immediately given a great copper cauldron and valuable rewards. Sending the horse [named] Guru Sixteen, Yeshé Wangpo was invited and, arriving inside the palace, entered the royal presence and bowed before [the king’s] visage. The king said, “The monks are so agitated,” and related the story in detail, saying, “Now, what’s to be done?”
Yeshé Wangpo offered his response, “For that you need not have sought to bring me here! If I hadn’t come and there had been no interference with my meditation, m’lord’s life and my own life would have endured for a long while. And the divine doctrine would have remained until the coming of Maitreya! But now this is our answer for the poor fortune of Tibet. When the preceptor [Śāntarakṣita] was dying, he said, ‘It comes about that, wherever the teaching of the Buddha emerges, it also so happens that some contentious enemies among the extremists also arrive to contest it. But because the teaching in Tibet has emerged in the last period of five centuries [remaining before the Buddha’s teaching becomes extinct], no contentious extremists will arrive. The Buddhists themselves will be in disagreement about the view and engage in disputation. When that happens, invite my disciple named Kamalaśīla who resides in Nepal, and cause there to be disputation with him. Let the king bring about the decision, and reconcile the dispute on behalf of the doctrine!’ That’s what the preceptor said as he lay dying, so that is what you should do now.”
The king sent a messenger to Nepal to bring back Kamala
śīla, whereupon the teacher of sudden entry and his servants [i.e., students], three hundred in all, took the
Hundred Thousand [Line] Wisdom [Sutra], and, sealing up the entrance to Samten Ling [at Samyé], practiced debate for four months. Saying that the
Sūtra That Sets Free the Intention was heterodox, being tainted by conceptual thinking, they rejected it.
17At the same time, while Kamala
śīla had not yet arrived, Yeshé Wangpo offered discourses summarizing the view of the Heshang (Chinese monk), the view of Bodhisattva (
Śāntarak
ṣita), and the view of the gradualists. Owing to this, the divine son’s thinking was set free and he became most delighted. Bowing his head, he repeatedly said, “Yeshé Wangpo is my
ācārya (teacher)!” After he had bowed before the feet of Yeshé Wangpo and made that declaration, later on, a messenger arrived saying that Kamala
śīla was arriving with the speed of the wind, whereupon the lord and ministers all went to the riverbank to welcome him. The Heshang with his retinue also went to the riverbank. Kamala
śīla, from the opposite bank, said [to his own retinue], “Let’s ask the Chinese pa
ṇḍita for the logic in response to both apprehended object and apprehending subject,” and then revolved his staff over his head three times, thus signifying, “By what does one cycle through the three realms?” The Heshang, on the near side of the river, grasped the hems of his cloak and folded them together. “By both [subject and object]” was understood to be the response. The Heshang said [to those around him], “This one’s fearsome!”
Then Kamalaśīla arrived, and the lion thrones were set up at Jangchup Ling. The king sat in the center and the disputation between sudden and gradual was prepared. The Heshang was seated on the lion throne to [the king’s] right, flanked by many students of the sudden entry. Because there were so many, including Jomo Jangchup, Su Yangdak, and Bandé Langga, they formed a long row. Kamalaśīla was seated on the lion throne to the left. Behind him, among the students of the gradual entry, were not many monks—there were no more than a few, including Ba Pelyang, Vairocana, and Ba Ratna. The emperor offered garlands of white flowers into the hands of both preceptors and of all the monks of the sudden and gradual [factions], following which the emperor, son of the gods, proclaimed, “For the sake of the subjects of my domain, the Tibetans who hanker after evil, I invited from India the Bodhisattva, who was the son of the king of Sauvīra. A few Tibetans were established in the doctrine, and some of the faithful renounced the world. Having constructed a couple of temples, I established the shrines of the Three Precious Jewels, and made [the saṅgha] to instruct all the subjects in the divine doctrine. Owing to that, after a few of the faithful had renounced the world, the Heshang Mahāyāna arrived here, whereupon most of the Tibetan monks studied with the Heshang. Because some were disciples of the Bodhisattva, they were unable to study in the way of the Heshang. Dividing into sudden and gradual [factions], the two disagreed and quarreled. The Heshang’s disciples were displeased with my [earlier] decision, and Nyang Shami cut his own flesh and died, the Chinese Heshang Mego (‘fire head’) set fire to his head and died, and Ngok Rinpoché and Nya Bimala crushed their own testicles and died. Others took up daggers and said, ‘We’ll kill all the gradualists and return to the womb!’ I would not permit this and turned my left shoulder. The Bodhisattva was the preceptor of the gradualists. Because Kamalaśīla is the disciple of the Bodhisattva, you have come here. You and the Heshang must compare your understanding, and whoever’s proofs are worse relative to the more profound proofs must not be arrogant, but in accordance with religious custom offer your garland of flowers [to the victor].”
When he had commanded this, the Heshang asked, “Because I have arrived on the scene first, shall I be questioner or respondent?”
Kamalaśīla answered, “According to your own understanding, either assert your proposition, or offer a rebuttal!”
The Heshang said, “Because everything is created by mind’s conceptual activity, owing to the force of virtue and nonvirtue, by virtuous and nonvirtuous deeds, one comes to experience as results the higher rebirths and evil destinies, and so turns through saṃsāra. Whoever does not turn the mind to anything, does not engage in any intellectual activity, becomes completely free from saṃsara. Therefore, one does not think on anything. Generosity and the practice of the ten religious activities have been taught on behalf of people who have no reserves of virtue, are feeble minded, and have dull faculties. Those who have previously refined their minds and whose faculties are sharp [realize] both virtue and sin to be obscuration, just as white clouds and black clouds both obscure the sun, and therefore think on nothing at all, conceptualize nothing at all, practice nothing at all. Entering nonobjectification all at once, it is like the tenth level [i.e., the highest level of the bodhisattva’s path].”
Āc
ārya Kamala said, “In that case, ‘not thinking on anything’ is the abandonment of discernment involving discrimination. The nature of all principles, the expanse of reality that is free from conceptualization, however, must be realized by discernment that does involve discrimination. As the root of authentic gnosis is discernment involving discrimination, by abandoning that, supramundane gnosis or discernment comes to be abandoned. That being so, without discernment involving discrimination, by what means does the adept come to abide in nonconceptuality? If there is to be no recollection of, no thinking upon, any principle at all, then, without recollection, there can be no thinking upon any experience at all. If one thinks, ‘I am not to recollect, not to think upon, any principle at all,’ that itself is a recollection, a thinking upon. But if you say that what is to be done is just the absence of recollection and thinking upon, then those two must be examined. Absence, indeed, can be no causal basis. For if nonconceptuality comes about by the mere absence of recollection, then even at times of swooning, intoxication, and unconsciousness, because there is no recollection, one would become liberated. Therefore, without correct discrimination, there is no way to enter into nonconceptuality. Even if recollection alone is brought to cessation, without correct discrimination, how can one enter into the insubstantiality of all principles? If one does not realize insubstantiality and emptiness, then it can only be the case that the obscurations are not abandoned. If liberation and freedom were to be achieved by only the absence of recollection, even without realizing emptiness, then all the deities of the higher realms would be liberated.
18 How can a dumbfounded mind, lacking any recollection, become adept at the correct path? For it is similar to a mind in deep sleep, or stupidity. Moreover, one cannot be nonrecollective while recollecting. Without recollection, without thinking upon, how does one come to the recollection of former abodes and to omniscience? And how does one abandon the afflictions?
“Therefore, it is by discernment involving correct discrimination that one removes perverse appearances. By removing and [finally] abandoning them, one ever more clearly realizes the inherently established objective, the appearance that is authentic and free from perversion. The adept who has definitively realized such an objective realizes the three times and all things, external and internal, to be empty, so that all conceptual activity is pacified. As soon as that is secure, if one becomes adept in means and discernment, all obscurations are eliminated by those two, whereupon all the principles of buddhahood, [entailing] perfect renunciation and gnosis, are realized.”
The Tsenpo then gave this order: “All the retinue must declare whether the subitists or the gradualists have been victorious in debate!”
Pelyang said, “According to the affirmations of you Chinese, one enters all at once and trains gradually. Thus, in order that there be no attachment, which [nonattachment] is surpassing perfection, if there is not any attachment, having dispensed objects to which the name ‘donation’ is assigned, then one has practiced donation. If the lust and anger of the three gates [of body, speech, and mind] are brought to cessation, there is moral discipline. If there is no rage, that is the best of forbearance. Getting rid of laziness is given the name ‘perseverence.’ If there is no agitation in the mind, that is meditative absorption. If you know the particular and general characteristics of phenomena, that is discernment. After the passing of the Teacher, for a long time there was no disagreement about views. Later on, the three Madhyamakas disagreed, and came to argue.
19 Now the views of subitist and gradualist disagree. The subitists speak of ‘entrance all at once.’ By not correctly understanding and pondering, so it is. Although the entranceways are different, they are one in holding buddhahood to be attained. Thus, there is a general agreement in their affirmation of the result.”
Yeshé Wangpo said, “The so-called entrance all at once and gradual entrance are the two to be examined. If there be a gradual entrance, I find no basis for dispute, for so I hold. If there be an entrance all at once, what are you to do now? If one is a buddha from the start, what fault is there? Thus, even to ascend a mountain, one must ascend step by step. It being exceedingly difficult to reach the first plateau, so long as one cannot move a single pace, what need be said of the attainment of omniscience! As for becoming a buddha without doing anything, you need a doctrinal source [affirming this possibility].
“Sudden and gradual [approaches] are dissimilar. I have learned all the scriptures among the gradualists. Relying upon the three forms of discernment, involving study, reflection, and cultivation, I know the meaning without error; and it is by learning the ten types of doctrinal practice and meditatively cultivating them, that one attains receptivity on the first stage [of the bodhisattva path] and enters into that which is genuinely flawless. Then, gradually training on the nine stages by means of authentic discernment, one masters the ten surpassing perfections. Having purified the mind continuum and amassed the two accumulations [of merit and gnosis], one attains buddhahood. If that is the case, then, according to you, without amassing the two accumulations or purifying the intellect, and not even knowing worldly activities, how can one attain omniscience and enter into all awareness and knowledge? If one asks, What is the basis for the achievement of buddhahood? the perfection of the purposes of self and other? it is achieved through the two accumulations. If emptiness alone does not even benefit oneself, how can it achieve the purposes of others? Even for preserving bodily life, one must survive depending on efforts to achieve food, drink, clothing, and so forth. Without tasting food, in a week you are dying of hunger. In that case, what need be said of the necessity of performing the ten types of doctrinal practice in order to attain liberation?
“In that way, a doctrine without scriptural foundation, that separates means from discernment, blasphemes the Buddha and deceives. The bodhisattva is one who, having engendered the will for the sake of sentient beings, yields himself up for the sake of others and so amasses the hoard of merit, studies learning in all branches of knowledge, and trains his intellect in the three phases of discernment, thereby amassing the hoard of gnosis. He purifies the two obscurations [of afflicted mental states and of ignorance], and having removed all intellectual taints, perfects his strength. Then, having become awakened as a buddha, through enlightened activity that arrays all sentient beings on the stage of awakening as buddha, he spontaneously continues until saṃsāra is emptied. This is stated in many scriptures.
“To have no thought whatever is to be egglike. Though you take steps without looking, you will trip. So if you proceed in this way, where will you realize the doctrine? Therefore, recite the s
ūtras unto enlightenment. Contemplate tranquility and insight in solitude. When there is realization, experience will arise in the intellect. In order to achieve realization in that way, on amassing the provisions, you may wonder, what is the mind like? With reference to the relative, the apparitionlike, one realizes that absolutely it is unborn. If you realize, without contrivance, that all phenomena are like the [hollow] core of a bamboo, there will be no objectification of the three times. Knowing that there is no self in either phenomena or the individual person, without withdrawal or excitation, you will naturally penetrate the state of union. As for meditation, that is how it is.”
When he had spoken thus, the sudden entry faction did not have the courage to utter a rebuttal. Scattering the flowers, they conceded defeat.
[Sba bzhed ces bya ba las Sba Gsal gnang gi bzhed pa bzhugs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1980), 64–72. Trans. MTK.]
One episode that is found only in the
Testament of Wa, and in none of the other known versions of the saga, is of exceptional significance. This is a unique record of events surrounding the death of Tri Songdetsen, possibly in 802, if we accept the date proposed in the text. At stake was the question of whether the monarch’s funeral should be conducted according to the ancient rites of Tibet, which, in the case of royal entombment, were traced back to the precedents established with the death of the first mortal king, Drigum Tsenpo (
chapter 2). Or should the rites of the Buddhist religion, which Tri Songdetsen himself had favored, be preferred? The fact that Tri Songdetsen, like his ancestors and successors, was furnished with a mausoleum in the dynasty’s ancient domains in Yarlung, together with the emphasis on royal mortuary rites in works such as the
Old Tibetan Annals (
chapter 2), very strongly suggests that this account was inspired by a profound disquiet over the proper roles of religious tradition and innovation. Moreover, the many archaic expressions and points of reference in this passage—for instance, its references to the old royal legends, such as we have seen in some of the Dunhuang documents given in
chapter 2—lend it a general air of authenticity, making clear that Tri Songdetsen’s considerable successes, both worldly and spiritual, by no means laid to rest the tensions that surrounded his promotion of Buddhism in Tibet. MTK
In the horse year (802) in the first spring month, the Tsenpo Tri Songdetsen passed away. As he was very young, [his] son Muné Tsenpo had little interest in the practice of the doctrine. When it was to be decided to perform the funeral for [his] father, the Son of God, the black ministers such as Chim Tsenzher, Nanam Gyeltsa Lhanang, Ngenlam Takra Lugong, in order to annihilate the Buddhist doctrine and in order to let the Bön be honored, they set up a big enclosure at Drakmar Tsomogur. From Chip [there were] many big horses and quick riders and the place was occupied with stables and tents (?). Meanwhile one hundred and twenty-seven Bönpo such as A Shen, Ji Pu, Tsé Chok, Ya Ngel arrived from Phenyül in order to celebrate the funeral [of Tri Songdetsen]. At that time the son [of the king] Muné Tsenpo communicated to the assembly of the great uncle-minister: “In my dream of last night the Lord [Buddha]
Śr
ī Vairocana, [bodhisattva] Vajrap
āṇi, [and bodhisattva] Prince Mañju
śr
ī, together with father Tri Songdetsen were residing in the palace called A
ḍakavat
ī situated in Akani
ṣṭha.
20 Here they preached [authoritative] sources of the s
ūtra and numerous narratives concerning the doctrinal tradition. Thinking about this omen, the funeral of my father, the Son of God, cannot be performed according to the Bönpo. It must be performed according to the white doctrine [of Buddhism]. The chief representative of Buddhism, the translators and the uncle-ministers participating in the great and the restricted assembly must discuss the issue in detail and find an agreement.” Then Khön Lü Wangpo and Khepa Nacha, the two of them, ran day and night to the land of Tsawa Tsashö in order to invite Pagor Vairocana and Gyelmo Yudra Nyingpo.
21[Afterward] the Buddhist monks, Lhalung Lhüngyipel, Lotsawa Chim Sh
ākyaprabha, Atsara
22 Pagor Vairocana, Nanam Yeshé-dé, etc., were to take part in the discussion, [but] the right row of seats was occupied by the Bönpo, the left by the ministers; in the center was the prince [the king’s son, Muné Tsenpo], and as no row of seats was assigned to the monks they felt humiliated. As there were no appropriate seats for the Buddhists, the master Vairocana, wearing a big bamboo hat, holding a long stick, and wearing a golden cloak, paid deep homage to the prince [Muné Tsenpo]. [Then] leaning upon his stick, he stood behind Chim Tsenzher Lekzik, who was seated at the first place of the right row, under [the throne of] the ruler [Muné Tsenpo]. Feeling uneasy, the minister cast a glance behind and saw
trochung nyungkar crawling around in the beard of Vairocana,
23 and got up with a start. He was immediately replaced by Vairocana, and lost the whole right row. After the assembly had adjusted accordingly, the prince [Muné Tsenpo] said that preparations to read the copper plates of action should be made. Then [Chim] Tsenzher Lekzik said: “Hey! Buddhist representatives and Atsara! I won’t speak in detail [but listen]: although links were made at the borders in the four directions and even the secret doors were opened (?), the lord of people and gods, Pugyel Nyatri Tsenpo, became the ruler of the upright Black-Headed Ones, in our domain, the land of Tibet.
24 He had miraculous properties such as the big and the little white conch shell, the
nyenyu rudé dosa [perhaps a type of talismanic turquoise], the Mu helmet, the ornamented Mu suit of armor [called]
zhölmo, the self-shooting bow, the Mu spear called ’good copper,’ the sword ‘Soul-lake of the Shen,’ the multicolored round Mu shield.
25 At that time [the Tsenpo] used to live together with attendants and the Tsé and Chok acted as
kushen (royal priests). The trees used to bow their body, the solid boulders used to jump. There was one standard for magical appearance and great miracles.
“During that time, even if a person died no funeral was performed and no tomb was made. When the son [of the Tsenpo] had reached the age of being able to ride, the father used to pass on to heaven. Then the [custom of] performing funerals began. Lha Totori Nyenshel had taken Gungmen of Dranglung in marriage and Gungmen of Dranglung performed [his] funeral. [When the funeral was celebrated] for the god (i.e., the Tsenpo) it was called
lhadur (divine burial). The tradition of celebrating funerals for the subjects began at that time. Since such rituals began, the castle of Tsentang Gozhi was built and there have been prosperity and auspiciousness. The
kulha (personal tutelary divinity) worshipped [by the Tsenpo] has been Yarlha Shampo. The tombs of the deceased have been erected in Rawatang. Yarlha Shampo is very mighty and has great magic powers. Chiluk Rawatang is auspicious. At those times only a small part of Lower Yoru (the southeast part of Central Tibet) was ruled. Then the lords of petty kingdoms such as Zingpojé Tripangsum and the king of Zhangzhung Nyazhur Lakmik were conquered and the kingdom obtained great majesty and high political authority, and became endowed with the sacred law. The view and practice of Tsé and Chok acting as
kushen seemed good, the funerals of the Pawa (?)
kushen were great and auspicious. If there is some misfortune as a result of reversing all this, letting the monks perform the funeral and following the religion of India, political authority based on the relationship between lord and subjects would certainly decline. All the great monastic representatives of Buddhism and the ministers should agree to perform the funeral according to the Bönpo tradition.”
Then Vairocana replied: “Since with these words no founded decision can be achieved, please have a look at the yé lupo (?).” He continued: “From the lineage of bodhisattvas, emanations of the Lords of the Three Families [i.e., the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara, and Vajrapāṇi], lord of Great Compassion, you are the lord of the people and the descendant of gods, you stay at the top as a precious golden yoke [harnessing the people to the law].
“Many useless words of a subject under your rule shall not be spent; please listen here and there as I shall speak a little: because of this age of bad karma I learnt the language of Lhobel (the ‘southern barbarians’) and I wandered in all countries in the four directions under the sun. I was sent thereby to louse-ridden holes and pits of evil snakes. Thus [my] flesh dried up and [my] senses became dulled. Basing myself upon an extensive learning, I shall say just a few words in general. If one describes how existence proceeds in this whole world of Dzambuling (Jambudv
īpa), for example an indestructible boulder rolling by itself from one place to another in the intermediate space does not change, a man going toward the east crosses passes, rivers, plains until the end of his life but will never arrive at the end of villages and people. With reference to the speech of uncle[-minister] Tsenzher, it is false to say that auspiciousness is due to the palace of residence in Tsentang Gozhi, to the worship of
kulha Yarlha Shampo, to the tombs of the deceased raised in Rabatang. More auspicious than those is Shri Nalentra Tsuklak-khang [the ‘glorious temple of N
āland
ā’] in India. There, thanks to the blessing of great faith in the holy doctrine and devotion toward the white side [of virtuous belief in Buddhism], the son Turé Dzahati and the daughter Palani of the king Danatalo as well as twenty-five
paṇḍitas lived around 1,500 to 1,300 years. Furthermore, to Dharmar
āja the king of India and King Indrabh
ūti of Urgyen (O
ḍḍīy
āna), father and uncles did not die for fourteen generations and the descendants did not interrupt their lineage.
“Besides, at a time in which all good virtue gathered, a further perfect buddha field appeared. On top of Sumeru in the Thirty-Third heaven, the Ganden (Tuṣita) abode of the gods, is the celestial palace of Indra. Here resides the god Indra sitting at the elevated center, the four yakṣa are located at four big chok [perhaps “canopies”]. The thirty-two retinues are in the thirty-two domes. All enjoy happiness. [They] are seated on the precious inconceivable residence (i.e., Sumeru) springily ceding upon pressure and rising if the pressure is relaxed. Furthermore, it is very auspicious that within the Dharmadhātu palace of Okmin (the Akaniṣṭha heaven), in Dewachen (Sukhāvatī) or Pemachen (Padmāvatī), the completely pure land of Buddha, there is no birth and no death, no union and no separation. It was said that Yarlha Shampo is very mighty, but this is false. More mighty and possessed with great magic than him are the Four Great Kings, the Protectors of the Three Families including Vajrapāṇi, who is the lord of magic power, or Buddha Vairocana possessing great compassion and skillful means, who is indefinable and rules over all the elements of existence; [they are] so mighty and endowed with such magic power.
“It was said that the view and practice of the Bön as well as the sacred law are good. This too is false. Tripangsum, the warlord, worshipped the compassionless god Tanglha Yarlha, the two A Shen of Phenyül killed many animals such as yaks, sheep, and horses, the Dridrin (?) and Cho (Chok?)-mi performed many rites for demons desiring burnt offerings and Bön desiring iron.
26 In addition to their previous sins they committed later ones and due to the practice of illusory religion, his [Zingpo’s] three subjects Nyang, Ba, and Nön as well as Tsepongtrin as the fourth, together with the castle Kharkhunglung Gyapbunang, ended under the dominion of Pugyel Bö (Tibet). Is this good for satisfying one’s needs and happiness?
“The king of Zhangzhung, Nyazhur Lakmik, worshipped the compassionless gods Gyedo and Mutur, and Bön funerals were performed in the four systems of the Zhangzhung religion. For this reason the Zhangzhung kingdom was lost and then [its] castles Tseto, Göting, and so on passed under the rule of Pugyel.
“The nephew, king of Azha, worshipped the compassionless god Sipdri Karpo and according to the custom of Lord of Azha, black Bön funerals were performed. Because of this, the kingdom of Azha was lost and passed under the rule of Pugyel.
“The king of Chim Dakpo performed black Bön funerals, and for this reason the kingdom of Chim was lost and somebody like uncle[-minister Chim] Tsenzher became an orthodox subject.
“The Lord of Sippo of Nup worshipped the compassionless Nuplha Töndruk. Forbidden Black Bön funerals were performed and for this reason the kingdom of Nup was lost together with the castle Kyamo and passed under the rule of Bö.
“Because of such major sins it is improper to perform funerals according to the Bön system.
“As far as the holy doctrine is concerned, it is preserved by logical precepts and scriptural authority. By performing virtuous deeds one achieves higher rebirth, and by taking life one falls to a bad rebirth. Like our lord, Tri Songdetsen, though he obtained for a moment a human body as a material appearance, [his] mind is in the state of buddhahood; 108 image-maṇḍala were erected and 108 [volumes] of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitāsūtra) were made, so I beg of you to act in conformity with what is due to the good emanation of virtuous deeds. Being deluded by the evil practice of illusion—to give an example—is like putting a black saddle on a white horse. Like this, it is certain that there would be a return to the earlier obscuration and it would turn into hindrance, and I therefore request that the funeral for the Son of God be performed according to the Buddhist custom.”
Chim Tsenzher Lekzik said: “Monks! The origin of your arguments came from the empty sky. The time is oriented toward the next life. The decisional power belongs to the king. If our advice is not followed, may [the king] decide what is better! May the monks hold the assembly of the palace! May the monks serve the lord! May the monks protect the land as border-guards!” And he shook himself in passion. Nobody dared to answer. Vairocana replied again: “We monks can do it!” So, the Son of God was extremely delighted.
Then, the monks celebrated the funeral in the white religious system according to the
Sūtra of Vimala, Son of the Gods and the
Spell of the Taintless Uṣṇīṣa (
Vimaloṣṇīṣadhāraṇī). At that time the
maṇḍala of the Vajra-realm (Vajradh
ātu) was set up and the funeral of the Son of God was celebrated. Vairocana acted as the master of the
mantra, Yudra Nyingpo celebrated the ritual. Ngenlam Gyelwa Chökyang, Khön Lü Wangpo, Nup Namkha Nnyingpo, and so on read the
Prajñāpāramitāsūtra, mother and sons (i.e., the large and concise versions), at length and celebrated the funeral of the Son of God in a magnificent manner. Then the Lord Muné Tsenpo, Vairocana, and Gyelmo Yudra Nyingpo, those three, translated the precepts and the instructions of the true word [of Buddha] from the language of India to Tibetan. The son Muné Tsenpo transmitted the profound precepts and instructions of the true word [of Buddha] to those who were eager to learn.
Some [of the precepts and instructions] were hidden in a black leather box in the Ütsé Zangkhang (the copper palace at the summit of Samyé). Then Yudra Nyingpo went to the land of Tsawa (i.e., Gyelmorong at the Tibet–Sichuan frontier). Vairocana practiced for a long time in the caves of Magadha in the land of Gyé in the west. Some people said: “Vairocana together with Liza Tsültrimtso, daughter of the Lijé Karpo, from the Liyül Sherkhar Karpo, repaired the northern temple.”
27Henceforth, the funerals were celebrated following the Tantra Purifying All Evil Destinies (Sarvadurgatipariśodhanatantra) and on the basis of the maṇḍala of Buddha Sarvavid Vairocana and the nine-deity maṇḍala of the Uṣṇīṣa buddhas [as taught in that tantra]. In case of death by sword, the funeral was celebrated on the basis of the maṇḍala of Trowo Nyima (the “Wrathful Sun”). [Funerals following death by] teyar (black magic?), death by sword, etc., were performed according to the sūtra. From that time onward all the funerals have been celebrated according to the dharma tradition. It is said that the foolish followers of the Bön tradition hid great wealth as ter (“concealed treaure”). Thinking of the great loss and the minimal benefit [of such customs], it is said that the masters of the Buddhist tradition established this practice of the Zeté (ritual “food offering” for the deceased). The story of the Zeté is finished.
[Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger, dBa’ bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 92–105. Edited by MTK.]
During the last centuries of the first millennium Indian Buddhism was swept by a new trend usually referred to as Tantric, or Esoteric, Buddhism. As a branch of the Mah
āy
āna (“Great Vehicle”), Tantric Buddhism affirmed the way of the bodhisattva, whose goal is to be awakened as a buddha so as to benefit all living beings through the exercise of wisdom and compassion. However, unlike the Mah
āy
āna s
ūtras, which stress the virtues of faith, ethical training, and the cultivation of insight, the tantras sought to bring about the adept’s rapid awakening by means of ritual techniques and methods of yoga. And in their elaboration of these means, the tantras sometimes entered into territory that was considered transgressive, according to the strict codes of monastic Buddhism or the more general ethical guidelines governing the world at large. For example, some tantric rituals involved violations of alimentary rules, by requiring the consumption of forbidden meats or foul substances; others condoned the use of alcohol and other intoxicants; still others were devoted to sex; and some even seemed to promote ritual acts of violence, including live sacrifice and murder by sorcery. In their advocacy of such practices, the tantras themselves were by no means clear as to whether they were to be taken literally or symbolically, though monastic Buddhist communities for obvious reasons encouraged symbolic interpretations of most perceived excesses.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its transgressive nature, and owing to its iconographic richness and the inspiration this gave to the arts, as well as the occult powers attributed to its masters, Tantric Buddhism enjoyed great success and was established as far afield from its Indian home as Japan, Cambodia, and Indonesia, influencing the development of East and Southeast Asian cultures in many ways. It also began to appear in Tibet, though it is clear that the Tibetan court was guarded in its reception of tantric lore. As we have seen in
chapter 3, the Tsenpo Tri Desongtsen, writing in the early ninth century, had this to say about translating esoteric scriptures:
The tantras of secret mantra, according to the texts are to be kept secret. It is also not appropriate to explain and to teach them to the unqualified.… This being so, hereafter, it is not permitted to translate haphazardly the tantras of mantra and the mantra terms except for those dhāraṇīmantras and tantras that have been caused to be translated on order from above.
In other words, the court wished to maintain an exclusive right to control the dissemination of possibly disruptive esoteric teachings in Tibet.
Although some elements of tantric teaching thus entered into restricted circulation under the Tibetan empire, it was after the empire’s fall during the mid ninth century that the tantras became particularly prominent in Tibetan Buddhist circles. Evidence of this is seen in the Tibetan documents from Dunhuang, where the large majority of the numerous tantric texts that are preserved appear to be from the post-imperial age. MTK
The Indian tantric master Padmasambhava is among the most enigmatic figures associated with the Tibetan adoption of Buddhism. According to a widespread and much developed legendary tradition (
chapter 10), he arrived in Tibet at the behest of
Śāntarak
ṣita to assist in the establishment of Samyé monastery, exercising his power to “tame” the indigenous deities of Tibet who obstructed the Buddhist efforts. But, although he is supposed to have become Tsenpo Tri Songdetsen’s personal guru, little is reliably known of his activities in Tibet. Some scholars have even suggested that Padmasambhava was a purely mythical personage; nevertheless, the discovery of a small number of references to him in manuscripts from Dunhuang makes clear that he was a well-known tantric teacher with a following in Nepal and southern Tibet, whatever his role in the foundation of Samyé may have been.
Pelliot tibétain 44, a small and highly interesting text from Dunhuang, contains a series of four very short works (of which just the first is given here) all concerned with the cult of the wrathful deity Dorjé Purba (or Purbu), or Vajrak
īla in Sanskrit, the “Diamond Stake.” This divinity embodies the ritual tent peg or spike (Tib.
purbu or
purba, Skt.
kīla, often referred to in English as a “magic dagger”) through whose power the place of practice is, literally or metaphorically, staked out and so rendered safe from harmful interference and obstacles. For the later Nyingmapa traditions of Tibetan Buddhism (see
chapter 6), including those handed down within the Sakyapa line (
chapter 7), this was one of the most popular and widespread cults, generating an enormous ritual and exegetical literature, together with elaborate rites of dance, exorcism, and yoga that are still widely practiced today. The present text offers little hint of this great destiny, but nevertheless is continuous with later tradition in a number of highly suggestive ways. These include the attribution of the cult to Padmasambhava and the assignment of its inception to the period of his meditation at Yangleshö, near the modern town of Pharping, south of the Kathmandu valley. The association of the cult with the four goddesses named, the tale of the porterage of the principal texts from India, and the marvelous powers attributed to its adepts are among the features of the account that, in one form or another, are preserved in the later traditions as well. MTK
Concerning the origins and proof of the Purbu:
At first, there was the journey from Yangleshö in Nepal to the temple of N
āland
ā in India in order to fetch the
Purbüi Bumdé (
The Hundred-Thousand Part Tantra of Vajrakīla): when the Nepali porters Shakya-pur and I-so were hired and sent off, there was a tetrad of goddesses who, at about nightfall, killed everyone and stole their breath. Padmasambhava became short-tempered, made as if to steal [their] breath, and caught them as they were wondering where to flee. Then he put them in his hat and departed. Arriving at N
āland
ā, he opened his hat and an exceedingly pretty woman appeared in the flesh. When she vowed to be a protectrice of the practice of the
kīla, he empowered her as its protectrice. Because the prognostications were fine, he laughed, offered up a whole handful of gold dust, and then brought forth the
Hundred-Thousand part Tantra of Vajrakīla. After arriving at Yangleshö in Nepal [with it], he performed the practices belonging [to all the classes of yoga] from the general ritual tantra (
kriyā) up through the ultimate yoga (
atiyoga). He proclaimed each and every transmission of the
kīla, for the purposes of all the vehicles, from the
Hundred-Thousand Part Tantra of Vajrakīla, as [is affirmed] in all the secret tantras. In that way, having definitively established the transmissions concerning attainment, and having again escorted the
Hundred-Thousand Part Tantra [back to Nepal],
Āc
ārya [Padma-]Sambhava then performed the rites of attainment in the Asura cave with the Newari Serpo, Indra Shuguta [= Indra
śakta?], Prabesé [= Prabh
āsa?], and others. And thus he performed the rites, impelling the four Sé goddesses [mentioned above], whose embodied forms had not passed away. He named them Great Sorceress of Outer Splendor, Miraculous Nourisher, Great Witch Bestowing Glory, and Life Granting Conjuress. Having performed the great attainment for seven days, he manifestly beheld the visage of Vajrakum
āra, the “Diamond Youth” [an alternative name of Vajrak
īla].
Having acquired the accomplishment of Purbu, concerning [his attainment of] the signs, Padmasambhava, having set a limitless forest ablaze, thrust [the kīla] at the blaze. Shririgugta [= Śrīgupta], having struck it at the rock in the region of the frontier forest of India, broke the rock into four fragments and thus “thrust it at stone.” The Newari Serpo thrust it at water and so reversed the water’s course, thereby establishing Nepal itself as a mercantile center. Such were the miraculous abilities and powers that emerged.
In Tibet Ācārya Sambhava explained it to Pagor Vairocana and Tsé Nyanasiga. Later Dré Tathāgata and Buna Ana heard it and practiced at the cave of the Samyé cliff-face in Drakmar. Dré Tathāgata thrust it at fire. Buna thrust it at the Rock of Mount Hepo. Then the glory of the kīla came to Chim Shakya and Nanam Zhang Dorjé-nyen. Then it was explained to Chin Yeshé-tsek.
The trio of Yeshé-tsek, Nyen Nyiwa Tsenpapel, and Demen Gyeltsen successfully practiced at Nyengong in Lhodrak [southern Tibet]. The preceptor thrust [the purbu], having set the rock of Bumtang [in what is now Bhutan] ablaze. Nyiwa and Demen thrust it into wood and stone. Thrusting it thus, and displaying the signs, they attained it [while] maintaining the appearance of secrecy. Teaching it as a method for those who would follow, they conferred the mantra and transmission together.
[Pelliot tibétain 44, translated in Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 158–59. See too: Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from Dunhuang (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008).]
The Nyingmapa traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, though codified only after the tenth century, present themselves as representing the Buddhism of the old Tibetan empire. As their name, which literally means the “Ancients,” suggests, the school maintains that it uniquely perpetuates the ancient Buddhism of Tibet, introduced during the reigns of the great kings of Tibet’s imperial age, in the seventh to ninth centuries C.E. In contradistinction to the organized Bön religion, it identifies itself as a purely Buddhist school, although, over and against the other Tibetan Buddhist schools and in harmony with the Bön, it insists upon the value of an autochthonous Tibetan religious tradition, expressed and exalted within a unique and continuing revelation of the Buddha’s doctrine in Tibet, often in the form of “treasures” (ter), as will be seen in subsequent chapters. Noteworthy features of Nyingmapa Buddhism that are shared with Bön include the prominence of the primordial Buddha Samantabhadra (Tib. Küntuzangpo, the “Omnibeneficent”), who is iconographically most often depicted as being of a celestial blue color and naked, and is regarded as the supreme embodiment of buddhahood. The highest expression of and vehicle for attaining that buddha’s enlightenment (which is equivalent to the enlightenment of all buddhas) is held to be the teaching of the “Great Perfection.” Padmasambhava, whom we have met above, is honored as the “precious Guru” (Guru Rinpoché) of the Nyingmapa, while most Bönpo, by contrast, consider him to have been instrumental in bringing about the decline of their religion through his promotion of Buddhism.
The origins and nature of the special teaching of the Great Perfection have been much discussed and contested. The contemporary Tibetan scholar Samten G. Karmay, in his monograph
The Great Perfection, has presented several of the most important early documents relating to the Great Perfection systems. The texts he has studied date to the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Great Perfection as presented within them is an extremely spare, often markedly apophatic (i.e., proceeding via negation rather than affirmation) approach to Buddhist meditation. In this respect it has been frequently compared with Chinese Chan meditation, though the Tibetan Great Perfection teaching is generally situated within a distinctively tantric framework of Buddhist teaching overall. Further aspects of the Great Perfection teaching will be introduced in
chapters 8 (on Bön) and
12 (in selections from Longchen Rapjampa) below. The present text is attributed to Nyen Pelyang, who may have been active during the early or mid ninth century. He is not to be confused with several other figures also named Pelyang (notably Ba Pelyang, on whom see earlier selections in this chapter) who were active in the early Tibetan adoption of Buddhism. MTK
The elements of the phenomenal world are the erring of the mind.
Apart from the mind, there is no real substance.
The elements of the phenomenal world that appear to us are the erring of the mind.
Interdependence and illusion have no origination.
But when one says that there is no origination,
It is to divert one from attachment to real substance.
Illusion, from the beginning, has no origination.
Not even the word “non-origination” is to be applied.
If one says that this sky is non-existent,
A stupid fellow is amazed.
(But) the wise does not hold that it (illusion) existed from the beginning.
He does not say he thinks it non-existent.
As there are no existential elements apart from the mind,
There is no object apart to be mediated upon.
If the mind is originally unproduced,
So how can there be a “mediator”?
If the mind which is the basis of verbal concepts,
Is unproduced and essentially unreal,
How can any terminology apply to what can be contemplated and what can not be,
To what thing can this terminology apply?
The life-series of human beings is not twofold,
It is unproduced and it is not self-conceived,
Since mind is otherwise non-existent,
How can one modify it or stabilize it?
So long as it is conditioned by delusion,
If mind thus manifests itself like a mirage,
There is nothing to be modified by one who knows,
And for the ignorant it is like modifying a mirage.
Minds which lack the characteristic of non-discrimination,
Cannot be stabilized in the non-characteristic of non-discrimination.
If it cannot be stabilized as uncharacterized,
How much the less can it be stabilized with characteristics.
It cannot be worked upon; it cannot be stabilized,
Since, like space, it lacks constituents.
Mental concentration which has its source in such constituents is a defect.
It is undefiled by all and everything.
If one asks how (a state of) profound non-discrimination
Becomes manifest in the mental sphere,
It arises as an experience of profound non-discrimination,
And since it is experience, it is (not even) that (viz. non-discrimination).
“The little grain of the view,” (or) “The lamp that removes the darkness of the extremity.” Composed by the paṇḍita of Tibet, Ācārya Nyen Pelyang.
[Samten Gyaltsen Karmay, The Great Perfection, 80–82; translation of the Lta ba rgum chung, or Mtha’i mun sel sgron ma (Bstan ’gyur, Peking Edition, No. 5920).]
In
chapter 3, the Translation Edict of the monarch Tri Desongtsen presented an impressive record of Buddhist translation work as conducted under imperial patronage by officially sanctioned committees. These, in a manner mirroring their official status and bureaucratic constitution, adhered closely to the traditions of normative Buddhism learning. The transmission of Buddhist teaching, however, must have taken place under less formal circumstances as well, and, after the fall of the Tibetan empire, when imperial systems of control no longer applied, free agency became the rule. Evidence of this may be seen in a late tenth-century document from Dunhuang, written by a certain Dro Könchok-pel and containing the record of the travels of an Indian teacher, the otherwise unknown Devaputra (“Son of the God/ King”), and notes on Buddhist doctrine that were presumably inspired by his teaching.
The text, from which selections are given here, is of interest for its many deviations from the norms of the official translation committees and provides clear evidence that during the roughly two centuries between the reign of Tri Songdetsen and the period of the rapid revival of Buddhism during the eleventh century, some of the most characteristic tendencies of what would later be called the Nyingmapa, or “Ancient,” tradition of Tibetan Buddhism had already clearly developed. Indeed, this is one of several documents and references pointing to an ongoing Tibetan Buddhist tradition in and around Dunhuang during the period following the decline of Central Tibetan Buddhism after the mid-ninth century. The text’s use of Sanskrit terms transcribed with numerous errors demonstrates that the Tibetan author had no real knowledge of Sanskrit. (This is evident, for instance, in such transcriptions as Buta for Buddha.) Indeed, vulgar Sanskrit of the sort that we find here became current in Tibetan usage and is widely found in later, popular religious texts.
In the selection that follows, two passages are included. The first provides a brief account of the travels of the teacher Devaputra; the second describes the unpredictable behavior of a tantric adept, a type no doubt represented by Devaputra himself. MTK
THE TRAVELS OF DEVAPUTRA
The son of the Indian king of the doctrine, Devaputra, knew the doctrine by himself, without lessons. He obtained the accomplishment of the sublime Avalokite
śvara. Traveling to Tibet, he explained the doctrine to all the divine Tsenpos of Tibet and he empowered them. He practiced the profound rites of service and attainment at Mt. Kailash, and performed ablutions in Lake Mapang. Then he went to the seat of Samyé. The Transcendent Lord’s Lineage Heir,
28 Wé Gyelwa Yeshé, and many who were learned and dignified greatly honored him with the worship of the two sections of the sa
ṅgha [of monks and laymen]. After providing him with an escort and hospitality, he was accompanied to China. The Chinese emperor and many Chinese ministers greatly honored him with worship. On Mt. Wutai he beheld the visage of sublime Mañju
śr
ī. Later, when he was en route to India, he traveled to the seat at Suzhou [in Gansu], where he was greatly honored with worship from the lord of that land, the two sections of the sa
ṅgha, the company of yogins bearing rosaries, and all the patrons of Suzhou. The master was delighted at heart and discoursed on the doctrine of the Greater Vehicle.
In the year of the ox, during the morning of the twenty-third day of the first spring month, he bestowed the complete empowerment and scriptural transmission of the Vajrarāja upon Bok Dorjé Gyelpo, Kya Püyang Agi, and the company of yogins and teaching masters. The mantras, mudrās and esoteric instructions were definitively established.
ON THE CONDUCT OF THE ADEPT
Sometimes like a school-child,
Sometimes like a brahman,
Sometimes like a monk,
Sometimes a blabbermouth,
Sometimes saying nothing,
Sometimes dwelling in one place, going nowhere,
Sometimes wandering all about,
Sometimes variously smearing the body,
Sometimes bathing in perfume,
Sometimes eating varied foods,
Sometimes eating many delicacies,
Sometimes crying,
Sometimes singing and playing instruments,
Sometimes like the demon lord of death,
Sometimes loving all with compassion,
Sometimes acting as a blindman,
Sometimes with the taintless eye at peace, all three realms clearly manifest,
Sometimes as if dumb,
Sometimes like the lord of speech,
Sometimes one abides as if deaf,
Sometimes as if hearing various languages of the gods:
The conduct of yoga is entirely uncertain;
Sometimes one abides pervading all space.
[Matthew T. Kapstein, “New Light on an Old Friend: PT 849 Reconsidered,” in Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis, ed. Christian Wedemeyer and Ronald Davidson, Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003, vol. 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9–30.]
