94261991 Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the Siddha Tradition in India by D Templeman

7/31/2019 94261991 Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the Siddha Tradition in India by D Templeman

1/17

Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival ofthe Siddha Tradition in IndiaD Templeman

Posted on May 7, 2009

I came across this refreshing articlefrom David Templeman

on http://www.ordinarymind.net/ ( which is well worth a thorough look

through and thought this might interest many of us

David Templeman is a well respected historian who has translated many

spiritual biographies. He has presented papers at a number of

international Tibetan Studies conferences and has published a number

of works. Davids current interest is in focussing on early relationships

between Tibet and its neighbors and early Feng-shui concepts in Tibet.

He is also translating a book about an Indian Buddhist siddha (yogi) who

lived in Tibet in the 16th-17th century.

Taranatha was one of the most accomplished scholars of the

unorthodox Jo-nan sect, around the 16th and 17th century

Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the

Siddha Tradition in India

by David Templeman
http://undumbara.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/buddhaguptanatha-and-the-late-survival-of-the-siddha-tradition-in-india-d-templeman/http://www.ordinarymind.net/http://www.ordinarymind.net/http://undumbara.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/buddhaguptanatha-and-the-late-survival-of-the-siddha-tradition-in-india-d-templeman/


2/17

from a talk given at the Buddhist Summer School, Melbourne, 2002

The late survival of the siddha tradition in India might come as a

surprise to some. It is commonly believed that Buddhism was totally

eradicated by the end of the 12th century and that nothing of its

religious traditions survived in the Indian sub-continent. However, there

is an increasing body of evidence to show that this was not the case. In

certain areas, Buddhism survived, in fact, at least into the 17th century.

This article focuses on the life of one such survivor, Buddhaguptanatha,

a siddha-yogi who wandered widely and eventually taught Taranatha,

Tibets greatest historian.

In terms of his wanderings Buddhaguptanatha was remarkable. He

travelled on foot to Iran, Balkh in the north of Afghanistan, Kashgar in

Central Asia, Multan, Kabul, Khorasan, Badakshan, Qusht and the lands

of the Mughals. He travelled by boat to south-east Asia, particularly

Indonesia, parts of Burma and possibly Thailand. It is even believed that

he reached Madagascar off the coast of east Africa.

In terms of late Indian siddhas such as Buddhaguptanatha, there is very

little extant literature or surviving knowledge. The text that I am basing

this article on is by the Tibetan historian Taranatha (1575-?), who wrote

one of the few existing biographies of such people. Buddhaguptanatha

earned more renown as a siddha than anyone else in his era, precisely


3/17

because of his relationship with Taranatha. He transmitted the dense

details about Buddhist history and recent tantric developments that

enrich so much of Taranathas texts.

Buddhaguptanatha demands our attention for several reasons. His

observations are vital in the work of reconstructing the late Buddhist

geography of India and its neighbor. It is equally valuable for the data it

gives on the types of Buddhist practice that flourished in parts of the

Indian world to the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

The genre into which this work fits is known as hagiography.

Hagiography is a kind of spiritual biography that celebrates the inner

journey of the guru. Throughout his other written texts, which dealt with

India, yogic practices, other siddhas lives, Taranatha always says, My

guru told me my guru said this my gurus view is at variance with

the previous teacher. Taranatha is often at odds with Buton Rinpoche,

the 14th century scholar of Tibet who is referred to by the title kun

khyen (kun-mkhyen) or omniscient. Taranatha frequently dismisses

Butons views with the phrase, my teacher said differently and I believe

him. Clearly Buddhaguptanatha is a seminal figure in the reconstruction

of late Indian Buddhism and his influence on the course of Tibetan

understanding of it is unique.


4/17

He could equally well have been noted as a geographer. Taranathas

work could have been categorised as one of the wonderful Tibetan

works that springs up very late as geographical curiosities or

curiosities of the outer world. By this stage the early 17th century

Tibetans were beginning to return to India for the first time since the

great cultural transmigration of 8th to 9th and then 12th to 13th

centuries. When the Tibetans did start returning to India, they were

absolutely astounded by what they saw, and recorded their impressions

in a kind of literature of wonder and amazement.

Unlike other writers who travelled to British India, such as Jigme Lingpa

who actually describes quite accurately the secular world and its

wonders such as a barrel organ or a twenty-five gun sailing vessel

moored in Calcutta Buddhaguptanatha is impressed at only the

Buddhist things in India. He records them with amazement and gives us

very Buddhistic descriptions of what he saw. In his description of Mt

Potalaka, for example, Buddhaguptanatha describes in which part of

India it is located and which river you might go up to get there. He then

drops all pretense to facts and becomes poetically vague:

And when I was there it was amazing, as if I were in a dream. I saw

streams flowing from the top of Mt Potalaka and I saw Manjushri seated

amidst clouds on the very peak


5/17


6/17

His guru, Tirthanatha, had hair which grew to thirty feet in length and

his beard grew to ten feet in length due to his inherent powers. Beings

who met him lived in absolute amazement. The king Ramraj had doubts

about the genuineness of Tirthanatha, but after he had thoroughly

inspected the situation he came to believe that this was indeed a true

yogi. He ornamented each one of Tirthanathas hairs with a pearl, and

the acharya, that is my [Taranatha's] teacher, said that when each of

the pearls was then taken out of his hair and they were heaped up into a

huge pile, anyone who passed by was free to remove one of those

pearls. Then the guru wandered off to a place where he would be

happier by being less bothered by people.

For the first thirty years of Buddhaguptanathas life, he was apprenticed

to this guru, Tirthanatha. Then in his thirtieth year, while he was

meditating at the Nath pilgrimage site of Rathor in Rajasthan, he had a

strange vision, a vision of the Buddhist goddess Vajrayogini. This key

incident is recorded very briefly in Taranathas biography of his master.

It is almost like it is a non-conversion. One might expect that someone

who is converting from being a Nath to a Buddhist would make it some

kind of focal point, but it is really not presented that way in Taranathas

writings:

At that time, when he was in Rathor in the land of Maru, after one of the

kings men had presented him with gifts, he erected a small, grass kuti

hut and he set himself in one-pointed meditation. While he was in a


7/17

dream the form of Vajrayogini repeatedly appeared before him and

levels of super-knowledge arose in him.

Then a few lines later:

At other times, again and again, Vajrayogini came to him in dreams in

the guise of a barmaid and she overcame all his impediments, time and

time again.

From then on Buddhaguptanatha seems to abandon his allegiance to

Nath practice, and becomes a Buddhist. He goes to shared pilgrimage

spots revered by both Buddhists and Hindus and rarely goes to

exclusively Nathi pilgrimage spots. He does not castigate his previous

belief system and he does not set out to dismantle it in any way. He

really seems to see it as a natural stepping stone into Buddhism.

Why would the process of conversion be so gentle, so apparently

smooth? It could have been because there existed a lineage within the

Nath sect called the Natheshvari, which combined Buddhist and Hindu

teachings. These Natheshvaris held Buddhist lineages of instruction

within their own Hindu teaching milieu and yet they remained Nath

siddhas.


8/17

All of Buddhaguptanathas three main gurus, Tirthanatha, Brahmanatha

and Krishnanatha belonged to this dissident group known as the

Natheshvari. These three masters taught within a recognised Buddhist

tradition, a fact which might make us redefine some of our

presuppositions about religious exclusivity in India.

In a sense, Buddhist and Nath yogis might have felt they were sharing,

to a great extent, a common path. Perhaps it is even true to say that the

community of yogis in the 17th century was more grounded in a sense

of cooperation than on more specious distinctions, such as those

between Buddhism and Hinduism or, even more abstrusely, into

Anuttara (highest yoga) practitioner or lower-level practitioner.

Certainly, right until the end of his life, Buddhaguptanatha continued to

travel to the recognised pilgrimage places that were sacred to the

Kanphata sect of Nath yogins. Even when he was a mature-age siddha

and had practised all the major Buddhist tantras, he continued to visit

pilgrimage sites of two quite clearly distinct types:

Those that were specifically Buddhist, such as Sarnath, Bodhgaya,

Rajagriha, et cetera.

Those of dual-occupancy where the sacred spots themselves were

sacred within both the Buddhist tradition and the Kanphata tradition.


9/17

It is of interest that many of these dual-occupancy sites tend to crop up

again and again in the lives of other mahasiddhas and great yogis, such

as Tilopa.

We could suggest from the biography, that Buddhaguptanatha spent a

lot more time visiting pithas or pilgrimage places, which were simply

meeting places for yogis, than he did going to exclusively sacred

places of worship. Most of what he appears to do in such places is to talk

and chat with other yogis; so much so that he seems to have been

somewhat disinterested in philosophic discussions. Indeed, the only time

Buddhaguptanatha seems to have shown any sense of exclusivity and

really resented mixing with other people was when he had to mix with

other Buddhists! When his travels took him to Indonesia, he makes it

clear that he intensely disliked the fact that there were Hinayanists, or

Theravadins, there. The text says:

He went northwards and came to the land of Javadvipa, which is known

in Tibetan as the land of Bali. In that land there were many shravakas

belonging to the Sendhapa order of monks. In the midst of a lake there

was a small island

In that place, the acharya, Padmavajra gave his blessings. Outside was a

rocky cavern, inside of which there was a square-shaped temple. In the


10/17

middle of this sat a self-created stone image of the two-armed form of

Hevajra. In another cave were kept many sacred tantric volumes, five

hundred thousand verse tantras If one looked at them carefully they

were not in such a state of disorder as he had heard they were said to

be

Clearly the monks held a sense of disrespect for the tantric teachings

here and the Sendhapas once sacristans at Bodhgaya itself had long

been antagonistic, even to the Mahayana. Buddhaguptanatha then, set

out to put these texts in order. In Java, there was a tantric heritage that

had been relegated to caves while the monastic order ruled the rest of

the island. I believe that this led Buddhaguptanatha to feel some

residual resentment towards the Sendhapas. He felt very uncomfortable

staying with them in their monasteries and obeying the many rules by

which monks were bound. As a siddha, he possibly felt more at ease

with the life of the wanderer sharing friendship and a sense of direct

practical experience with yogis of any and all traditions rather than

with the more measured and controlled life of a monk.

Taranatha gives us a wonderful description of Dumasthira (the smoky

place), which was the capital city of Urgyan. Urgyan has taken on an

almost mythical quality over the centuries since yogi-siddhas first

colonised it in the 4th and 5th centuries. It is the site par excellence in

siddha biographies. Here, we have a wanderer visiting it in about 1580

and still discovering its magical qualities! Buddhaguptanatha locates


11/17

Urgyan in Ghazni, in modern Afghanistan, which is in contrast with the

traditional location of Urgyan in the Swat area. Here, Taranatha gives a

detailed description of the country and Dumasthira, the focal location of

the magic dakini women:

[Dumasthira] is surrounded by mountains, valleys and dense forests

and it sits in the midst of all of them. Going from east to west directly, it

measures about two days journey and from south to north is about four

days. Dumasthira is the only city in Urgyan. Its the size of a small Indian

city.

There are four ways that lead out of the central area and the outer lands

of Urgyan are also very extensive. It is in Muslim control, and even

today, in the central part, there is not the slightest vestige of the order

of Buddhist monks any longer. There are, however, groups of fully

renunciate yogis, upasakas [lay people] and tirthikas [Jainas], as well as

the Muslims there.

It appears that most of the women of this town are of the dakini family

and that they are fully accomplished in their spiritual practice. They are

powerful in their exercise of mantras and they know how to both help

and hinder with them. They are skilled in adopting various physical

forms and they have the ability to work with the mystic gaze.


12/17

They displayed various magical abilities involving birds and my master,

Buddhaguptanatha, saw these miracles with his very own eyes and he

told me of them. He said that previously when he was in Upper Hor

[Muslim territories] he was fully protected by the mantras that he had

received from those dakinis in Urgyan, as well as by his own physical

powers. Urgyan is surrounded to the east, the south and the west by

three large lakes. When he crossed over the pass he came into the

Hor Mleccha land of Balkh [northern central area of modern

Afghanistan].

We also have a lovely description of another of Buddhaguptanathas

wandering adventures:

He wandered elsewhere as he was doing so a certain prostitute who

was washing herself inside an empty house splashed water on his head

and said the words, Vijnanajnanam Avarjitavivarjitam, which means,

seek after the elements of consciousness and forsake ignorance, now

and in the future. Thereafter, he gained great confidence in this

instruction which he had been vouchsafed. And he said to me

[Taranatha] that this woman might not have been a prostitute but a

jnana dakini, a wisdom-holding goddess.


13/17

As mentioned above, there are suggestions that Buddhaguptanatha

reached Madagascar. In the language of the people around that area it

was called Samloranzo. I suggest this is in fact San Lorenzo, or Sao

Lorenco, which is the name Pedro Alvarez Cabral, commander of the

Portugese fleet, gave to Madagascar in 1500. Taranatha records his

teacher as saying that:

In that place of Samloranzo, the tantric teachings have spread very

widely. He heard there the empowerments for Samvara, Hevajra and the

full range of teachings on Hevajra Tantra from a teacher called Sumati.

Then Taranatha goes on to talk about what Buddhaguptanatha learned,

and describes the monks of that area. He says many of the teachings

emanating from the renowned Padmasambhava are to be discovered

there in Samloranzo, but his description of them is somewhat

perplexing:

Although there are many monks there, they dont seem to obey the

basic Vinaya rules of Buddhism in a full or complete manner. They dress

in black and they drink alcohol among other things. He stayed there for

about a year. At that time his guru Sumati passed away and then he had

to go elsewhere.


14/17

Could his description of them and their practices be one of the earliest

records of Catholic missionary activity in Madagascar in the early 17th

century? He could well be referring to Jesuits he saw there, but he

describes them as some sort of bizarre semi-Buddhist sect. Possibly the

alcohol is a reference to the inclusion of wine at the Mass.

When Buddhaguptanatha was seventy-six years old, he met the young,

nearly sixteen-year-old Tibetan monk Taranatha, on one of his travels

into Tibet. The story goes that Taranatha had dreams preceding this

event, on the second day of the eighth Hor month (1590). Already

something of a prodigy, he dreamed while in meditation retreat at

Mahabodhi near Narthang, that he was encouraged to eat a piece of

human flesh and that he was suffused with bliss as a consequence. He

also dreamed that he was able to fly in the sky and had become a

vidyadhara. The following day, the south Indian Buddhaguptanatha

arrived at Mahabodhi, semi-naked and with his hair bedecked with

yellow flowers. Buddhaguptanatha described his journey into Tibet to

Taranatha, and the young acolyte was especially impressed with the

account of all Tibets local spirits coming to meet the siddha and of the

mountains along the way bowing their peaks towards him.

Buddhaguptanatha commenced, at Taranathas request, to teach him all

he knew. Thus began the transmission of the vast knowledge that

Taranatha was to use throughout the rest of his life. After forty-six years

of peregrination around India, central Asia and south-east Asia,


15/17

Buddhaguptanatha brought with him to Tibet a huge awareness of the

geography and history of the places he had visited in person and those

that he had heard about from fellow ascetics. It is precisely these

aspects that stand out in Taranathas writings as the cornerstones of the

factual validity for which his writings are renowned. Taranatha is hailed

by Tibetan and Indian scholars as the most accurate of all those who

recorded the history of Buddhism in India.

According to Taranatha himself, he did not simply rely on his memory to

recall the facts. He wrote notes and comments on all the data that he

received orally, and it is presumably from these notes and jottings that

he was able to so accurately compile his later works. Works that

depended completely on that very sense of detail for much of their

validity. He used lists as an aid to memory, most of them apparently

based on alphabetical lists and mnemonic devices. As Taranatha writes:

I wrote notes, I wrote addenda lists to my notes and I ensured that these

were not fragmentary or careless. Whatever teachings he gave me I

wrote them all down on paper.

On one memorable occasion, just before a Tara initiation, Taranatha

dreamed about just how important these teachings were to him. He saw

his skin peeled and stitched together to act as paper, his lifes blood


16/17

becoming ink, his ribs becoming quills and his entrails and bones being

used as bindings and thongs for the volumes.

After a few months in Tibet, Buddhaguptanatha would not promise to

stay any longer, despite Taranathas entreaties. There is no clear reason

given for the rift between them, but there are clues to be found in

Taranathas Secret Biography. In a dream Taranatha had at Samding, he

saw a complex mandala of pandits including Aryadeva, and siddhas

including Matangi. Taranatha felt that he had now joined that lineage,

at which thought a young maiden appeared from out of the mandala

and told him that he still possessed a huge amount of dualistic thought

and pride and thereby insulted the yogic tradition. In Taranathas

biography of Buddhaguptanatha, it is simply said that Taranatha was

told that he had too much dualistic thought and that no more teachings

were to be made available to him. Even Buddhaguptas students

Nirvanasripada and Purnavajrapada, who visited some years later,

refused to complete Buddhaguptanathas teachings. When Taranatha

requested that they do so, they left hurriedly!

Another reason for Buddhaguptanathas eventual departure could have

been simply his difficulty in remaining too close to a monastic situation,

the confining nature of which he had experienced previously in

Indonesia. For Buddhaguptanatha, monasticism and yogic practice did

not sit well together.


17/17

94261991 Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the Siddha Tradition in India by D Templeman

Documents

Transcript of 94261991 Buddhaguptanatha and the Late Survival of the Siddha Tradition in India by D Templeman