David Seyfort Ruegg is a prominent scholar of Mahāyāna Buddhism and, though born in America, has taught in France, the Netherlands, and England. The “Great Debate of Samyé” is one of the most famous events in early Tibetan intellectual history. Two Buddhist masters, one from China, one from India, pit their skills against each other in a battle to win the favor of the Tibetan emperor, Tri Songdetsen. The reward is no less than the right to propagate their own Buddhist tradition in this newly emerging Buddhist culture. The moment is characterized as a turning point at which all the major issues treated by subsequent Buddhist philosophers were decided upon. In this moment, Tibet elected to favor a gradual approach to enlightenment over a sudden approach, to turn away from China and toward India in order to develop its Buddhist tradition.
Of course the history of the event and the issues symbolized by it are more complex than this. Since the middle of the twentieth century, European scholars have argued that the debate narrative is a synthetic account of the broad changes that Tibetan culture underwent in the eighth century. Tibetan literati also debated the historical details and cultural significance of the Great Debate. In this essay Ruegg provides an overview of contemporary Euro-American historiography on the event, as well as Tibetan historical writing about it. He shows that the dominant version in Tibetan histories is in great measure a polemic by the new schools of Buddhism against the Nyingma school. He also suggests that, whatever the facts may be, the location of Samyé became through the tale of the debate a “locus of memory” for Tibetan writers attempting to reconstruct the early history of their tradition.
I
Towards the end of the eighth century C.E., during the reign of Tri Songdetsen (r. c. 755–794/7), there took place an event of the greatest significance for Tibetan history and culture which had an enduring influence on later religious and philosophical development in Tibet and was to shape important areas of it. This event was the famous encounter, the so-called “Great Debate of Samyé,” between the Chinese heshang [Chin., monk] Moheyan (hashang Mahāyāna/ Mahāyan) and disciples of Śāntarakṣita including the Indian Kamalaśīla and members of the great Tibetan Ba (Sba, Dba’, Dba’s) clan such as Yeshé Wangpo and Pelwang.
Since the late 1930s this event, which is now somewhat wrapped in the mists of time, has rightly attracted the attention of European scholars such as Marcelle Lalou, Paul Demiéville, Giuseppe Tucci and Rolf Stein. More recently it has been investigated also by scholars in America and above all in Japan. This work has been of immense importance for our understanding of this eighth century event, although it must be said that much of the more recent research has generally tended to allow the significance of the “Great Debate” for Tibetan civilization and thought to be eclipsed by problems in the history and doctrines of Chinese Chan. (A noteworthy exception to this tendency is the thesis on Dzokchen just published by Samten Gyaltsen Karmay: The Great Perfection [Leiden, 1988].)
This paper will be concerned with aspects of this encounter as either a historical event or a more or less dehistoricized topos, and with its significance in Tibetan historiography and doxography and for the history of Tibetan religion and philosophy.
II
Several thorny questions arise as to what the exact nature of this event was. Indeed, was the encounter between Moheyan and Kamalaśīla a real event having historical authenticity? For the very existence of their reported debate as a historical occurrence has come to be questioned.1 And one might well ask how a Chinese monk evidently unfamiliar with any Indian language could have actually discussed, much less debated, important questions of Buddhist theory and practice with an Indian pandit who had only recently arrived in Tibet and could scarcely have been fluent in Tibetan, let alone Chinese.2
Let us begin with the name given to this encounter by modern scholars. Since Paul Demiéville’s path-breaking and masterly Le concile de Lhasa (Paris, 1952), it has frequently been called the Council of Lhasa. Now it has to be said that, as depicted in the ancient Tibetan and Chinese documents from Dunhuang as well as in the later Tibetan historical and philosophical literature, this event was no council in the proper ecclesiastical sense of the term, nor was it even a local Buddhist synod. Sometimes the relevant materials take the form of aphorisms or logia uttered by Moheyan (and other Heshangs), e.g., in several Tibetan documents from Dunhuang. Alternatively, in Wang Xi’s Dunwu Dacheng zhengli jue translated by Demiéville, we have a series of more or less polemical questions put by a “Brahman monk” to Moheyan with the latter’s replies. And sometimes the materials are set out as a discussion or debate between Moheyan and (mainly) Kamalaśīla’s disciples.
In the Tibetan historical literature starting with the various versions of the Bazhé and the Chöjung Metok Nyingpo of Nyang Nyima Özer, the event is in fact depicted as a debate (rtsod pa, [g]shags), with Tri Songdetsen in the middle acting as “witness” and presiding over the assembly. To the monarch’s right were the “Simultaneists” led by Moheyan (who seemingly, according to a Tibetan tradition, wished because of his monastic seniority in Tibet to figure as the proponent). And to his left were the “Gradualists” led by Kamalaśīla but represented in the proceedings of the debate mainly by members of the Ba family—Yeshé Wangpo, Pelwang and/or Sangshi(ta)—figuring as the opponents. In other words, the setting is that of a classical debate with proponent (vādin = snga rgol), opponent (prativādin = phyi rgol) and witness or arbiter (sākṣin = dpang po) as described in the Vāda-manuals belonging to the Indo-Tibetan tradition. Although this scenario might perhaps seem out of place at the court of the Tibetan ruler as early as the end of the eighth century, this need not be so. Let us recall that Kamalaśīla’s master Śāntarakṣita had commented on Dharmakīrti’s Vādanyāya where procedures in debate are described. And it should be carefully noted that according to the Vādanyāya the procedure of debate is employed not just out of a desire for victory at any price since it is not just vijigīṣuvāda, and that it concerns reflexion on what is true (tattvacintā) and its proclamation (khyāpana), serves the preservation of truth (tattvarakṣaṇa) and is engaged in for the purpose of assisting an other (parānugraha).3 It is quite possible that all this was very well known to Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla’s Tibetan disciples towards the end of the eighth century, and that a debate was arranged by the Tibetans and their Indian teacher with just such an end in view.
As for the site of the Great Debate, in the Tibetan sources it is often said to have been the Jangchupling temple at Samyé, the first Tibetan monastic center founded by Śāntarakṣita. Tucci accordingly preferred the name of “Council of Samyé” to Demiéville’s “Council of Lhasa.”4 But more recently the appellation “Council of Tibet” has been extensively used by scholars, including Demiéville himself.5 As has been suggested by Ueyama and Demiéville, it may well be that meetings between participants took place at more than one single place, and in more than a single session.
No cogent reason is however known to me for thinking that Samyé (and perhaps in particular the Jangchupling Temple which Tibetan sources have presented as the site of the encounter) was not, in the technical and legal sense, the venue and in any case the focal point for what was a debate rather than a council in the proper sense. At all events, the appellation “Council of Lhasa” is certainly a misnomer; and the name “Council of Tibet” may be more general and imprecise than need be.
Even though Kamalaśīla’s three Bhāvanākramas do not report in an historical fashion on any specific debate at an identifiable place with identifiable participants, they do reflect a discussion or debate in a quite dehistoricized form. As for Wang Xi’s account in the Zhengli jue, it refers only to a Brahman monk (pho lo men seng, folio 127a) and not specifically to Kamalaśīla as Moheyan’s opponent.
The account found in the Ba Records (Bazhé) has not only been questioned as to its historical accuracy and veracity, but it has been ascribed to the fourteenth century; and the classical Tibetan historical tradition on the subject has been described as late.6 Despite the many problems these Ba Records undoubtedly pose, such a dating would seem to be unduly late. For the account in question is found, in somewhat differing forms it is true, not only in the Supplemented Bazhé (that is, the Zhap takma version)—which may well have something to do with Atiśa’s school since it concludes with his mission in Tibet and which must, moreover, be quite late in its extant version since it refers (p. 54 in Stein’s ed.) to the Sungrap rinpoché [wang] dzö, i.e., apparently to the Chöjung of c. 1323 by Butön (1290–1364), who however himself cites a Bazhé (Rba bzhed)—but in the presumably earlier “Pure” Bazhé (that is, the Tsangma version) which itself includes the “Alternative Tradition” on the Great Debate used not only by Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (1504–1566) but evidently also in the works of Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251, who cites a Pazhé [Dpa’ bzhed] apparently in the version of the “Alternative Tradition”), Butön, and much of the Tibetan historical literature. Furthermore, and most importantly, a closely related (if somewhat divergent) account of the “Great Debate” is found in the history of Nyang Nyima Özer (1124/1136–1192/1204). Now, provided of course that it is authentic, this account in the Chöjung Metok Nyingpo goes back to a time before Sakya Paṇḍita. Moreover, and very significantly, it is found in the work of a master of the Dzokchen/ Nyingma school; and this fact militates against the supposition that the account in question of the Samyé Debate was simply a fabrication of the sarmapas intended somehow to discredit the Dzokchenpas (several of whose teachings were compared by Sakya Paṇḍita and other Tibetan authorities with the teachings of the Hashang Mahāyāna).
As for the main participants in the Great Debate, although according to the Tibetan sources Kamalaśīla was the leader of the Gradualists the actual speakers on their side were mainly members of the Ba family (Yeshé Wangpo, Pelwang and/or Ba Sangshi[ta]). Hence the question as to what language Kamalaśīla and Moheyan had in common loses much of its relevance, at least from the point of view of the Tibetan sources. (It is true that in Wang Xi’s Zhengli jue Moheyan and the unnamed “Brahman monk” are represented as speaking to each other; but this may have to do with the literary presentation adopted by Wang Xi. Kamalaśīla’s remarks to Moheyan could in any case have been translated into Tibetan, or even into Chinese.) It seems likely, then, that the language used in the discussions would have been mainly Tibetan, with which Moheyan was presumably familiar after his residence in Tibetan-speaking areas. Chinese may have been employed in addition between some Tibetans and Moheyan and his Chinese associates; and an Indian language might have been in use between certain Tibetans and Kamalaśīla.
By Demiéville and other scholars the “Great Debate” has been characterized as a Sino-Indian or an Indo-Chinese controversy. This description could however lead to a misapprehension as to its nature and purpose, for the discussions were evidently set in train by the Tibetans themselves in order to clarify acute problems of theory and practice that had urgently come to their attention. The Tibetans in fact were then a major power in central Asia; and in view of their intellectual achievements by the beginning of the ninth century (as attested for example in the works of Yeshé Dé), it would seem to be quite unsatisfactory to regard them as nullities only a short time earlier at the time of the “Great Debate,” or as nothing but an intellectual tabula rasa waiting to be used by others and lacking any philosophical or religious rôle of their own in organizing and carrying through the discussions. As already suggested, it may well have been organized in the way best known to Yeshé Wangpo and his colleagues, namely in the above-mentioned classical Indo-Tibetan form of a debate devoted to reflecting on, proclaiming and preserving what is true (tattva).
If this is indeed so, it will also be far from the mark—and quite anachronistic—to regard the “Great Debate” as a more or less politically motivated confrontation between the Indians and Chinese as rival great powers in Central Asia. To the extent that political factors were involved, it would appear that they would have been connected rather less with any possible conflicts between Chinese and Indians than with rivalries between Tibetan clans and the regions with which the clans were linked. Such clannishness may have opposed members of the Ba clan as disciples or supporters of Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla to members of the Nyang (Myang, Nyang) and Nya (Mnya’, Snya) clans as supporters of the heshangs; the sources in fact report that Tingngedzin Zangpo of Nyang and Bima (Bi ma, Bye ma, etc.) of Nya (Mnya’) were in opposition to Yeshé Wangpo of Ba (Sba). But because of the nature of our documentation it is hard to pin this down. It has indeed to be borne in mind that a member of this Ba (Sba) clan had also earlier been closely connected with heshangs, while members of the Nyang as well as of the Ba (Dba’) clan are stated in a Dunhuang document to have been disciples of Śāntarakṣita;7 and in the twelfth century Nyang (Nyang) Nima Özer gave an account of the Great Debate, including the defeat of the Hashang Mahāyāna, that is closely related to (if not completely identical with) what we find in the Ba Records.
III
It would of course be unrealistic to pretend that the Tibetan historical and doxographical sources at our disposal have given us a full and a perfectly accurate and balanced account of exactly what took place at the “Great Debate” of Samyé. The relevant Dunhuang documents in Tibetan, although fairly numerous, are both fragmentary and episodic. (In this respect they differ for example from Wang Xi’s Zhengli jue, also recovered from Dunhuang.) And the accounts in the classical Tibetan historical literature starting with the Bazhé and the other sources more or less closely related to the Ba Records, although reasonably long, are no doubt somewhat formalized and stereotyped to the extent that their authors relate what had become, in part at least, a somewhat dehistoricized topos.
It could nevertheless be that these Ba records go back at least in their core to a time soon after the Great Debate, and in any case to the time of the Yarlung dynasty in the early ninth century. (The Tsangma version of the Bazhé concludes with the accession of Muné Tsenpo.) Nevertheless, if this is indeed so, this would of course apply to their contents only and not to the language of the extant versions of the Bazhé (which is scarcely the Old Tibetan of the eighth century even though it contains a number of archaisms).
The later Tibetan historical tradition would appear to have no longer had an entirely clear picture of just what had happened at the encounter between Moheyan and Kamalaśīla’s disciples. There was even some uncertainty for Tsewang Norbu (1698/9–1755) as to whether this event took place in the reign of Tri Songdetsen or earlier in that of his father Mé Aktsom (Tri Detsuktsen). After the break caused by the downfall of the Yarlung dynasty and the end of the period of the Early Propagation of Buddhism in the middle of the ninth century, Tibetan historians evidently had as much difficulty in reconstituting their ancient history as the modern Tibetologist does. Accounts found in the Tibetan historical literature in fact seem to reflect the Tibetans’ attempts either to rediscover their early history or to constitute tradition, or even to do both of these things at the same time. As a consequence, the “Great Debate” of Samyé often appears in this literature more as a semi-historical topos than as an historical event, and the Hashang Mahāyāna as a more or less dehistoricized and emblematic figure standing as it were for a certain typological variety of Buddhism. In connection with the “Great Debate,” Samyé itself became so to say a “locus of memory” (lieu de mémoire).8
Even if we must conclude that our sources on the “Great Debate” of Samyé are neither complete nor perfectly accurate and balanced as histoire événementielle, are we then to regard them merely as essentially the fabrications of anti-Nyingma sarmapas, as the interpolation of later logic-choppers (phyis kyi rtog ge pa),9 as tendentious tracts, or as polemic directed against the Chakgya chenpo (at least in one of its forms) with its teaching described as a karpo chiktup, that is, as a unique and perfectly self-sufficient Sovereign Remedy? In other words, if the Great Debate and along with it Samyé both became a “locus of memory,” of what nature was this memory?
As reported in our historical and doxographical sources, the religious-philosophical problems that arose in eighth-century Tibet in a form evidently acute and urgent enough to make a discussion/debate and, if possible, a decision about them both timely and necessary appear to be old ones that were in no way simply the product of the particular historical juncture in question, i.e., the simultaneous presence in eighth-century Tibet of both Chinese and Indian Buddhist masters and the resulting encounter and confrontation between their doctrines.
The two traditions of Buddhism facing each other in the accounts of the Great Debate have usually been described as “Gradualism” (rim gyi jukpa, etc.) and “Simultaneism” (chik char gyi jukpa, etc.) or, as the latter current is often termed by Sinologues, Suddenness or “Subitism.” This terminology is parallel to the distinction in Chinese between jian and dun, reflected in the Tibetan terms tsé mun/min (pa) and tön mun/min (pa).
Now, this Gradualism is a method of spiritual training and development that is familiar from a very large number of Buddhist texts available in Sanskrit and Pali or in translations from these languages. The term describes a course of sequential and progressive (krameṇa) cultivation on the Path of the factors conducive to liberation and Awakening through the mediacy of practice and means. As for its opposite, Simultaneism, it too is far from being absent in some form from the classical sources of Buddhism. The corresponding Tibetan term chik charwa (etc.)—derived from Tib. chik char = Skt. yugapad (or sakṛt)—describes the immediacy and innate spontaneity of Awakening in and to the pure, original and real nature of Mind. Such simultaneity, or spontaneous and holistic immediacy, is mentioned in a number of classical Sūtras and Śāstras. And typologically (if not genetically) related notions are known from both Sūtras and Śāstras under the names of Buddha-nature (sangs rgyas kyi rang bzhin), tathāgatagarbha, prakṛtistha-gotra, and natural luminosity (prakṛtiprabhāsvaratā) of Mind. In the literature of the Vajrayāna related or comparable notions became especially frequent.
Simultaneism and Gradualism as two currents in Buddhism can be described in other words as immediacy in contrast to mediacy, innateness over and against reinforcement, spontaneity over and against effort, and even nature over and against nurture. To use a medical metaphor (a procedure not infrequently used in our sources in this connection), whilst Gradualism can be described as allopathic, employing counteragents (pratipakṣa) as remedies against the afflictions/impurities (kleśa) that are the impediments (vipakṣa) to liberation and Awakening, holistic Simultaneism represents a sort of nature-cure consisting in face-to-face encounter with and recognition of innate and ever-present Mind. As for the Vajrayāna, using as it does the kleśas to subdue the kleśas, it may be described as homoeopathic. Even though it is sometimes possible to observe a tendency for these last two currents to converge—e.g., in Dzokchen where, however, the Simultaneist tradition of the Hashang Mahāyāna is normally differentiated from Mahāyoga and Atiyoga—it would seem necessary in general to distinguish between the pure naturalness and spontaneous immediacy of Simultaneism and the progressively cultivated effort required in Vajrayāna traditions to achieve liberation and Buddhahood in this very life and body.
Another way of looking at the matter has been in terms of the balance between Tranquility or Quiet (śamatha = zhi gnas) and Insight (vipaśyanā = lhag mthong). An extreme version of simultaneist immediacy and innateness may emphasize Quiet by rejecting vipaśyanā as analytical, ratiocinative prajñā, i.e., pratyaveksā involving mentation (masas[i]kāra = yid la byed pa). Conversely, an extreme version of gradualist cultivation of analysis may emphasize correct mentation (yoniśomanasikāra) and analysis (vicāra = dpyad pa) at the expense of Quiet.10 In general, at all events, the out-and-out “Simultaneist” (chik charwa) would tend to reject the need for the progressive and alternating cultivation of Quiet and Insight which finally leads to their total integration in a syzygy (yuganaddha = zung du ’brel par ’jug pa) as taught in so much of classical Buddhism. The Hashang’s simultaneist method is described in Tibetan sources on the one side as an extremely etherealized spirituality associated with a quietistic abandonment of all activity (karman, caryā), wholesome as well as unwholesome, as being an obstacle to realization, in the same way as white clouds and dark clouds both obscure the sun; and on the other side the Hashang’s method is associated with delectation in emptiness (stong pa nyid la dga’ ba), which is regarded as impurity of theory (dṛṣṭikasaya = lta ba’i snyigs ma)
This is to say that two genuine components of the Buddhist Path such as Quiet and Insight could if carried to excess, and when Ground and Fruit are so to say collapsed by suppressing the stages of the Path, become opposed and be regarded as antithetical extremes rather than as alternating and mutually reinforcing aspects which finally are to be integrated. The “Simultaneist” (chik charwa) and the “Gradualist” (rim gyi pa) will then appear as irreconcilable. But the co-ordination and final integration of these two currents has been amply set out both in the Śrāvakiyānist and Mahāyānist canonical traditions and in Śāstras. An example of the latter is to be found in the eminently “gradualist” Abhisamayālaṃkāra, where the progressive anupūrvābhisamaya (Chapter vi) is followed by the single-moment abhisamaya of the ekakṣaṇābhisambodha (Chapter vii), which leads on in a second and final moment to the realization of the dharmakāya (Chapter viii).
Both these currents are moreover well attested in Chinese Buddhism itself. And there can therefore be no more question of characterizing all of Chinese Buddhism as “subitist” than there is of characterizing Indian Buddhism as exclusively gradualist. Kamalaśīla for one was evidently well aware of both currents. Not only did he comment on the Avikalpapraveśadhāraṇī for example, but in the sources he cited in his Bhāvanākramas they are mentioned, and their extreme or one-sided versions are rejected. But it is not clear how familiar Moheyan was with the gradualist tradition in Chinese Buddhism–a tradition which was represented for example by his (elder?) contemporary Tankuang who (like Moheyan himself) was in contact with Tri Songdetsen. Thus the encounter in Tibet at the end of the eighth century between the gradualist and simultaneist currents of Buddhism was certainly not between two homogeneous and monolithic national traditions standing in opposition to each other as Indian vs. Chinese Buddhism, but rather between two transmission-traditions: that of Moheyan traced back to Bodhidharma (and further to Kāśyapa) and that of Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla (traced back to Nāgārjuna).
It appears that already at that time the Tibetans decided in favor of traditions the authentic transmission of which they considered they could clearly and confidently trace from reliable Indian sources, either written or living. But this did not involve the automatic anathematization of all Chinese traditions, as has been made clear by more than one Tibetan doxographer. Indeed, canonical texts translated from Chinese such as the Suvarṇabhāsa and the Mahāparinirvāṇa were received into the Kangyur; and an originally Chinese Śāstra such as the great commentary on the Saṃdhinirmocana by Wŏnch’uk (Yuanze, 613–696) translated from Chinese by Gö Chödrup/Fa cheng was included in the Tengyur.
Concerning the forms of Dzokchen that became known in Tibet, what was especially open to criticism from Tibetan scholars such as Sakya Paṇḍita (Sapaṇ) and some of his successors was perhaps not any and every form of Great Perfection (though the origins of Dzokchen were unclear and therefore controversial), but specifically what Sapaṇ termed in his Domsum ropyé the “Chinese style” Dzokchen (rgya nag lugs kyi rdzogs chen) that he linked with the Hashang Mahāyāna. As for Mahāmudrā, it was certainly not all forms of this teaching, some of which Sapaṇ explicitly accepted, that were the object of his criticism, but what he describes as “latter-day” Neo-Mahāmudrā (da lta’i phyag chen) with its doctrine of the “Sovereign Remedy” (karpo chiktup) which was also linked with the Hashang. For, as already noted, in the “Alternative Tradition” of the Bazhé evidently used by Sapaṇ as well as in the Chöjung Metok Nyingpo of Nyang Nyima Özer, the karpo chiktup is said to have been taught by the Hashang Mahāyāna. It is perhaps not quite certain whether under this name of Neo-Mahāmudrā Sakya Paṇḍita was criticizing a teaching of Gampopa (1079–1153), or whether it was the more extremely “simultaneist” formulation of the Mahāmudrā and karpo chiktup doctrine found with Zhang Tselpa (1123–1193) that he was attacking.
V
To suppose that Sakya Paṇḍita’s use of the term karpo chiktup and his juxtaposition of what he has termed Chinese-style Dzokchen and Neo-Mahāmudrā with the Hashang’s teaching was mainly motivated by tendentious sectarianism and by polemics would seem to be excessive. In this matter, beside the problems of historiography mentioned above which arise in respect to the extant accounts of the “Great Debate” of Samyé, we are confronted by a problem in comparative religion and philosophy, and in particular by a question of typological affinity as distinct from direct genetic dependence.
As already noted, the expression karpo chiktup—which properly designates a unique and self-sufficient Sovereign Remedy—has been used metaphorically in several Tibetan sources to describe an “all-at-once” face-to-face encounter with and recognitive identification of innate and pure Mind (sems ngo phrod pa, sems rtogs pa) which restores one to one’s true natural state by “curing” all afflictions and impurities. By Gampopa it was employed to describe an aspect of his Mahāmudrā teaching, and soon afterwards it was used by Zhang Tselpa in a strongly “simultaneist” sense.
It is, as we know, found also in the “Alternative Tradition” of the Bazhé, in the Chöjung of Nyang Nyima Özer, and in that of Pawo Tsuklak Trengwa (following the “Alternative Tradition”) in addition to the works of Sakya Paṇḍita and some of his followers, where the expression is used to characterize simultaneist understanding and recognitive identification of mind in the Hashang Mahāyāna’s teaching.
Now, from a typological point of view, the doctrines in question do appear to be connected in a complex lattice of criss-crossing links. And they are furthermore connected with very much older doctrines, problems and even controversies that are known from the Indian sources, some of them cited in Kamalaśīla’s Bhāvanākramas. The opposition between, e.g., the mystical and enstatic on the one side and the intellectual and analytical on the other, and that between Fixation-Bhāvanā (’jog sgom) and Inspection-Bhāvanā (dpyad sgom), which arise in some Tibetan discussions of the Great Debate, recall a tension between the mystical and the analytical currents in old canonical sources.
Doctrines that are typologically and structurally related are of course very often linked through direct historical derivation and branching. But, clearly, a pair of doctrines may, in addition, be connected with each other typologically without one having to be directly dependent historically on the other. The question then is: Are the links existing between the teachings ascribed to the Hashang Mahāyāna and certain currents in Dzokchen and Chakchen not only typological and structural but also historical in the sense of direct genetic derivation? Or are these links typological without any direct historical dependence having to be postulated?
This is not an easy question to answer. Briefly stated, Sakya Paṇḍita may have assumed not only typological and structural similarity but also historical dependence and continuity, and several of his successors appear to have made the same assumption. Longchenpa (1308–1363), the great Dzokchen master, on the other hand was evidently prepared to accept a certain typological and structural similarity between Dzokchen and the teaching of the Hashang without, apparently, positing any sort of genetic dependence; this is natural for him since, as already noted, his Dzokchen school has differentiated between its Atiyoga tradition and the chik charwa tradition of the Hashang (see also the Samten mik drön). But other Dzokchenpas/Nyingmapas have emphasized the differences more clearly, just as many Kagyüpas have differentiated between Chakchen and the teachings of the Hashang.
VI
In the present state of our knowledge, the conclusion seems indicated that when the “theory of the Hashang” was rebutted by masters of the Sakyapa, Kagyüpa and Gandenpa schools, and when some Dzokchenpa masters also distanced themselves from it and did not accept it unreservedly, their target was a somewhat dehistoricized position involving ethical and karmic quietism as well as an “ideoclasm” that tended toward intellectual nihilism and that form of impurity of theory (dṛṣṭikaṣāya) described as delectation in the empty (stong pa nyid la dga’ ba). And the theory of the Hashang was identified with the ethical quietism and “ideoclasm” combatted in texts cited by Kamalaśīla. In other words, the teachings of Moheyan, as known in Tibet chiefly through versions of the Ba Records and related sources, have been taken as an instance of a type of theory and practice already rejected in classical Sūtras and Śāstras.
The existence of typological and structural affinities, and of “family resemblances,” between the doctrines in question taught in Tibet and some much older doctrines found in the Śrāvakayānist and Māhāyanist canons—and in particular with the tathāgatagarbha doctrine (even though the latter doctrine is only sometimes explicitly evoked in the available sources on the teaching of the Hashang Mahāyāna and on Simultaneism)—suggests that the acute and urgent problems that arose at the “Great Debate” of Samyé extend far beyond the specific frame of a particular eighth-century historical juncture when Indian and Chinese doctrines and masters met in Tibet. Clarification of the problems involved requires both religious and philosophical comparison bearing on the history of Buddhism in India since early times and the study of the ideas and modes of Tibetan historiography and doxography.
Important though each is, focusing exclusively on the problematic triad formed by the Hashang, (Chinese-style) Dzokchen and (Neo-)Mahāmudrā, on the “Great Debate” of Samyé as an occurrence in eighth-century Tibetan histoire événementielle, or on the Sino-Indian and Sino-Tibetan dimensions could have the undesirable effect of obscuring the question of typological affinity and the problem of the relationship between currents that are in fact very old in Buddhism.
To sum up: There exist certain typological affinities and “family resemblances” between the views ascribed to the Hashang Mahāyāna and certain features in both Mahāmudrā and Dzokchen, especially in what has been described as “Neo-Mahāmudrā” and “Chinese-style Dzokchen.” But links of direct genetic dependence are more difficult to establish clearly. The full significance of such similarities can only be revealed by historical and doxographical investigation combined with comparative typological and structural analysis. The Tibetologist has then to concern himself not only with trying to reconstruct what actually occurred at the so-called “Great Debate” of Samyé but with what the Tibetan historiographical and doxographical traditions considered to be the importance of this event and topos, that is, with its meaning for Tibetan civilization.11
NOTES
1. See recently Yoshiro Imaeda, “Documents Tibétains de Touen-Houang concernant le concile du Tibet” [Tibetan Documents from Dunhuang Concerning the Tibetan Council], Journal Asiatique (1975):125–146; H. V. Guenther, “‘Meditation’ in Early Tibet,” in Early Chan in China and Tibet, ed. W. Lai and L. Lancaster (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1983), 351 and “Review: Mahāmudrā. Lobsang P. Lhalungpa,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109, no. 1 (1989): 151.
2. See for example Daishun Ueyama, “Donkō to Tonkō no bukkyō” [Donkō and Buddhist Teaching in Dunhuang]. Tōhō Gakuhō [Journal of Oriental Studies] 35 (1985): 169. Paul Demiéville, “Récents travaux sur Touen-houang” [Recent Work on Dunhuang], T’oung Pao vol. 56, Livr.1/3 (1970): 42. Imaeda, “Tibetan Documents from Dunhuang Concerning the Tibetan Council,” 129.
3. Vādanyāya, ed., Svāmī Dvārikādās Sāstri (Varanasi, 1972), 68–71.
4. G. Tucci, Minor Buddhist Texts, Part II (Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958), 32, 285–287.
5. Paul Wheatley, “Langkasuka,” in T’oung Pao 44 (1956): 404–408; Demiéville, “Recent Work on Tunhuang,” T’oung Pao 56 (1970): 42. See also P. Demiéville, “Deux documents de Touen-houang sur le Dhyana chinois” [Two Dunhuang Documents on Chinese Dhyana], in Essays on the History of Buddhism Presented to Professor Zenryu Tsukamoto (Kyoto: Nagai Shuppansha, 1961), 14, 24.
6. See Imaeda, “Tibetan Documents from Dunhuang Concerning the Tibetan Council,” 129.
7. See F. W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1951), 2:85.
8. For this concept see Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire [Places of Memory] (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
9. See Gtsug lag phreng ba, Dpa’ bo, Chos ’byung Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston [Feast for Scholars], ja, f. 122a–b.
10. Incorrect mentation (ayoniśomanas[i]kārd) on the contrary is of course recognized as dichotomizing conceptualization (vikalpa), and as the source of karman and kleśa. See for example Ratnagotravibhaga i. 56, and Ratnagotravibhāga-Commentary, i. 12 and 64.
11. For details see the present writer’s 1987 Jordan Lectures published as Buddha-nature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism, in a Comparative Perspective (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1989).