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The Sa Skya Pandita, The White Panacea, And Clerical Buddhism's Current Credibility Crisis
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Transcript of The Sa Skya Pandita, The White Panacea, And Clerical Buddhism's Current Credibility Crisis
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“The Sa-skya Pandita, the White Panacea, and Clerical Buddhism's Current Credibility Crisis” by Robert Mayer. Tibet Journal 22(3): 79-105, 1997
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Review Articles
The Sa-skya
Pa-/:uJita
the White Panacea, and Clerical
Buddhism's Current Credibility Crisis
obert Mayer
Enlightenment y a Single Means: Tibetan Controversies on the
Self-Sufficient White Remedy (dkar po chig thub) y David
Jack
son,
Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften,
Vienna, 1994. 220pp.
This excellent book comprises a
study
of one of the more notorious dis
putes
within
Tibetan
Buddhist
history, namely the fierce criticisms level
led
by the
Sa-skya
Pandita
Kun-dga rgyal-mtshan (1182-1251) against
certain bKa
brgyud pa
teachings, especially those formulated
by
Mi-Ia ras
pa s spiritual successor sCam-po-pa bsod-nams rin-chen (1079-1153). This
dispute was one of
the
more significant wrangles within Tibetan eccle
siastical history, and even now can occasionally arise as a cause of mental
anguish and turmoil for bKa brgyud pa and Sa-skya-pa devotees alike.
What distinguishes David Jackson s treatment of this sensitive subject is
the meticulous precision and accuracy of his scholarship, which succeeds
in yielding a superb economy and clarity of presentation
even
while
marshalling a
great
number
of different primary sources. Consistent
with
his previous published offerings, Jackson s ethos is always to inform his
readers of important issues
within
Tibetan Buddhism, never merely
to
impress
and
overawe them with
any
magisterial displays of his
own
schol
arly virtuosity.
s
before, Jackson succeeds impressively in his genuinely
scholarly purpose.
The structure and layout of the book is characteristically well-planned.
The very useful and comprehensive table of contents at the front of the
book is reminiscent of a traditional Tibetan
sa-bead
in
the
exactness of its
tabulation. The actual subject matter is initially approached with Jackson S
introduction to the book (pp.1-8); this is followed by seven chapters of
Jackson s analysis, each
chapter
being
subdivided
into a number of short
sub-sections (pp.9-146); finally, Jackson S analysis is followed
by
extensive
presentations of primary texts and translations representing both sides of
the dispute (pp.147-188). The bibliography
and
indexes make up the re
mainder of
the book
(pp.190-220). There are also five full-page line draw
ings and a
number
of smaller illustrations.
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THE QUESTIO:\, OF REFLEXIVITY
In his introduction to the book, Jackson explains
that
his
purpose
is
to
expand on the partial
knowledge
of this issue already presented
by
previ
ous
recent studies, through a systematic presentation of all the relevant
primary sources from three of the main protagonists, namely sGam-po-pa,
the bKa'-brgyud-pa master Zhang Tshal-pa (1123-1193),
and
the Sa-skya
Pandita himself. These
important
primary sources have
never
before been
systematically presented. Laudably, Jackson also comments at the outset
(p.6) that since his own attention has for so
many
years now been devot
ed to
the
person of the Sa-skya Pandita Kun-dga' rgyal-mtshan, despite
his best efforts he cannot confidently claim to have done full justice to the
position of
the
Sa-skya
Pandita s
bKa'-brgyud-pa opponents. Thus
Jack-
son gives discreet but unambiguous
warning
to his readers
that
he main
tains particular affiliations
and
loyalties to the figure of Sa-pan, and that
his readers
should
take heed of this fact as
they study
his book. SUch
reflexivity is
very
much in line
with
general methodological developments
within
the
broader
contemporary academic world. To such contemporary
thinking,
the
claim to a completely objective
standpoint on
such pre
dominantly
ideological matters is
highly
problematic; a methodologically
sounder
and intellectually more honest strategy is to
know
one's own
ideological predispositions, and build a general awareness of them into
one s analysis. In my view, this more contemporary approach constitutes
a
great improvement
on the sometimes implausible claims to a totally
detached
objectivity still implicitly or
even
explicitly made
by
some other
Buddhological authors, whose ideological biases (whether Buddhist,
Christian or whatever) are nonetheless quite
transparent
to their
more
learned readers
at
least,
even
if
not
to
the
general public (who might
therefore be deceived). Perhaps in this context the reviewer should. also
warn
his readers
that
while, like David Jackson, he has affiliations to the
Sa-skya-pa school, he also has
an
interest in the other schools of Tibetan
Buddhism, particularly
the
rNying-ma-pa
and
the Ris-med movement,
thus including
also the bKa' -brgyud-pa.
SA-PAN'S CRITIQUE
In
Chapter One,
Jackson sets
out
some of the key offending items
from
sGam-po-pa's writings, most
notably
from the chapter
on
Perfect Wisdom
(Ch.17) in his
Thar-pa rin-po-che i
rgyan (translated
into
English
by
H V
Guenther
as The Jewel rnament of
Liberation).
This famous text comprises
a systematic stages of
the
path (lam-rim) type of presentation of the basic
Mahayana Buddhist teachings drawn mainly from the old bKa'-gdams-pa
tradition of Atisa, most of it quite uncontroversial; it is only one sub
section
within
its Ch.17
that
contains some ideas
which
were castigated
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by Sa-pan as heretical. In fact, Sa-pan not only believed these ideas
were
wrong
in
themselves: he also thought they represented the views of the
Chinese
Buddhist
master Ho-shang Mo-ho-yen, and for Sa-pan any
Buddhist doctrine of Chinese origin
must
be heretical by definition. In
other contexts, Sa-pan also accused sCam-po-pa of introducing substantial
doctrinal innovations: again, for Sa-pan, all substantial doctrinal inno
vations
were
heresy by definition. In general, Sa-pan
thought that
sCam
po-pa had
repeatedly
transgressed boundaries
between
the distinctive
methods appropriate to the causal vehicle
rgyu mtshan-nyidlphyi i
theg-pa)
of
sutra and those appropriate to the fruitional vehicle Cbras-bu
theg-pa)
of
tantra
d.
Bentor 1992 . These
boundaries
and distinctions were held to
be
inviolable
within
Sa-pan s particular scholastic system.
In Chapter
2,
Jackson illustrates how sCam-po-pa and his school of meditators main
tained a somewhat rhetorical critique of any purely intellectual path to
enlightenment, and how this critique was sometimes
prone
to err into a
vulgar and provocative disparagement of Buddhist scholarship as a whole.
In Chapter 3, Jackson describes the figure of
Zhang
Tshal-pa, a more
controversial bKa
-brgyud-pa
master
who
is often seen as a particular
target of Sa-pan s criticisms.
TH
BKA -GOAMS-PA QUESTION
The arguments given in the context of sCam-po-pa s treatment of Perfect
Wisdom
in
his Thar-rgyan are
important
for the entire dispute, and Jack
son describes them in detail. On the one hand Sa-pan has no quibble
with sCam-po-pa s main presentat ion on how to cultivate Perfect Wisdom,
where sCam-po-pa follows the
standard
Mahayana causal vehicle me
thods. The subsection Sa-pan objects
to
is
the
one concerned
with
rjes-thob
or post-meditation, i.e., the one
which
gives instruction on how the bKa
brgyud-pa
meditator who
has already achieved some direct
insight
into
reality should sustain
that
realisation after
or
in
between
periods of formal
practice. An
interesting
aspect of this dispute
which
(quite
understand
ably falls outside Jackson s remit is the
question
of the possible signi
ficance of
bKa -gdams-pa ideas
within
this controversy. So,
although
Jackson had no need to deal with this topic in his book, and although I
am
a non-specialist in this field, I
would
like to raise the issue
here
in a
highly preliminary fashion (even if
with
such little erudition), because I
suspect it might in due course transpire to be an issue of some interest
that will eventually need to be addressed comprehensively.
In his treatment of rjes-thob in Ch.17 of the Thar-rgyan,sCam-po-pa seems
on the face of it to give a
somewhat
similar instruction to those
found
in
surviving traditions descending from the old bKa -gdams-pa tradition,
such as
the
Seven Points of
Mind
Training
blo-sbyong
don-bdun).
However,
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sGam-po-pa seems
to
add
something
that I have not
found
in
the
Seven
Points of
Mind
Training (although, in
the
face of conflicting evidence and
with
poor library facilities, I am not yet clear if it occured in other bKa _
gdams-pa teachings
or
not). sGam-po-pa advises,
...
[between sessions],
by
seeing
all things as
enchantment,
merits such as liberality are accumulated
to the best of our power, compared
with
the Seven Point Mind Training,
which reads, more simply, In
between
sessions, consider yourself a child
of illusion. l Of course, it is
the
additional gloss expressed in
the
second
part
of sGam-po-pa's sentence which Sa-pan finds particularly dangerous.
Sa-pan is aware that sGam-po-pa evidently sees this context of rjes-thob
as
one
in which his students could or should move entirely
beyond
the
causal vehicle point of view, in
which
deliberate efforts are made to cul-
tivate virtue. Rather, sGam-po-pa implies that during
rjes-thob,
they should
take up a truitional vehicle point of view, in
which
no such deliberate
efforts
at
cultivating virtue are made, but in
which
such virtues will arise
spontaneously as epiphenomena of absorption in the absolute. In keeping
with this view,
then,
sGam-po-pa quite explicitly identifies the meditation
on emptiness to be
done
during
rjes-thob
as meditation
on the
true nature
of
mind
(sems-nyid),
which
for
him
signifies the
highest
reality, or, more
importantly, which he sees as synonymous
with
the absolute bodhicitta.
Later on, this standpoint of avoiding deliberate efforts in the cultivation
of virtue during rjes-thob
became
even
more
vehemently supported
by
later commentators of sGam-po-pa's school, such as Dwags-po bKra-shis
rnam-rgyal (1512-1587) (Lhalungpa 1986: 252).
So here we can discern
the
crux of the doctrinal dispute: in line with
the Tibetan yogic or meditational traditions in general (sgrub-brgyud), but
in
sharp
contrast to many of the more scholarly traditions
such
as Sa-
pan's, sGam-po-pa believes that relative bodhicitta and absolute bodhicitta
(i.e., compassion and wisdom) are, from the fruitional
point
of view at
least, to be considered aspects or parts of a single undivided reality, an in
herently
indivisible union of wisdom and means, primordially
united
and
impossible
to
separate.
Hence it
is that sGam-po-pa concludes that from
direct absorption within emptiness in this fruitional context, which he sees
as identical to
dwelling
in the
absolute bodhicitta
or
the nature
of mind
(sems-nyid), all the virtues of
the
relative bodhicitta, such as generosity
etc., will emerge spontaneously. This is of course a view similar to that
of
the tathagatagarbha
doctrine, which sGam-po-pa strongly emphasises in the
opening
chapter
of his book. Thus sGam-po-pa believes
that
this absorp
tion within emptiness from a strictly fruitional point of view (which is of
course made possible only in the context of the post-meditation experience
already
having
arisen), can become a self-sufficient practice
within
that
context (and that context alone):
by
maintaining this single practice
of
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83
continually dwelling within
the
absolute bodhicitta during rjes-thob all
necessary spiritual developments for that phase of practice will spon
taneously arise. Presumably, however, sCam-po-pa does not
hold
this to
be
true
when
meditation on emptiness is done at other times, and es
pecially
when
it
is
done
from
the
causal
point
of
view
(i.e., for those
minds that
have not yet attained the
ability to dwell
continuously and
directly upon or
within
non-conceptual absolute bodhicitta
through
the
power of yogic practices but
which
still rely on conceptual analyses of
emptiness), d. his
own
previous analysis of Perfect Wisdom earlier on
in
Chapter
17 that
Sa-pan accepts.
To my mind,
one
can easily see how Sa-pan came to see sCam-po-pa's
statements as potentially dangerous. Sa-pan did
not
share sCam-po-pa's
view of tathagatagarbha (which, as far as I know, was broadly in accord
with
the
later gzhan stong interpretation), nor sCam-po-pa's closely related
view that
wisdom
and compassion are inherently inseparable. On
the
contrary, like
many
other later Mahayana commentators of more scholarly
and less yogic outlook, Sa-pan favoured a much more apophatic descrip
tion of emptiness. Because it placed little emphasis on the
notion
of an
immanent absolute, this apophatic stream of thought within later Maha
yana
had
inevitably become
highly
sensitive to
the notion
that
the
sixth
paramita of
wisdom
was self-sufficient, and
that
the
other
five perfections
need not
be
deliberately cultivated, since they would all follow spontan
eously from
the
practice of
wisdom
(Williams 1989: 44 . Moreover, such
apophatic
thinkers
usually favoured
the
Perfection of Wisdom literature
as paradigmatic
within
Buddhism; and
while
there are indeed some pas
sages in the voluminous Prajntiptiramita slltras
and
in Nagarjuna s writings
that can
be construed
as describing meditation
on
emptiness alone as a
completely self-sufficient practice,2 nevertheless
the broader thrust
of
the
Prtijntiparamitti
tradition is more usually seen as perfecting the first five
paramitas with the
sixth (i.e.,
the view
of emptiness),
and
this process
clearly implies that definite efforts
must be made
in generosity, patience,
morality etc., which are
then
to
be
joined
with
Wisdom.
Civen such
doc
trinal presuppositions, then, Sa-pan presumably feared that to advocate
taking meditation on
the
Perfection of Wisdom alone as a single self
sufficient spiritual panacea,
might
undermine the
very
foundations
of
the
altruistic
bodhisattva path
so fundamental to the teachings of the Prtijnti
paramita literature itself.
But was sCam-po-pa really advocating
any
such abandonment of altru
ism? Manifestly not: his description of meditation on emptiness
was
made
within a
very
specific context of rjes-thob and the entirety of his Thar
rgyan is
devoted
precisely to a most exhaustive exposition of
the bodhi
sattva's altruism, explaining
how
one
can
and must
make supreme,
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deliberate efforts in love, compassion, generosity, patience, morality etc
Does that imply Sa-pan's critique was merely quixotic or worse? Although
I feel that his different doctrinal presuppositions
put
Sa-pan at cross
purposes to
sCam-po-pa
in important respects, nevertheless, like Jackson,
I believe his critique
was
not
futile: precisely
by
making his critique
so
forceful, Sa-pan effectively closed the door to any later misunderstandings
of sCam-po-pa's teachings that might seek to extend them and apply them
out of the context of rjes-thob (it is a fact that to this day, bKa' -brgyud-pa
masters still invariably find themselves compelled to respond to Sa-pan's
criticisms ).
To better understand the deeper significance of Sa-pan's polemics, one
can look at a historical example: the marriage of the military arts in Japan
(such as
swordsmanship)
with the Zen cultivation of Mahayana emptiness
alone,
unaccompanied
by
any
deliberate cultivation of compassion, or
Tantric transmission. In medieval Japan, the purpose of Zen swordsman
ship
and the
other Zen martial arts for
their
samurai exponents
was
gen
erally little more than
an attempt
to maximise the fighting
man's
effective
ness, to train a
warrior
through
Zen
meditative techniques to become a
fearless, unthinking and spontaneously effective killing machine. In this
training, compassion
was apparently
not
a central value;
on
the
contrary,
its predominant feature was that the Japanese warrior ethos of blood and
honour
bushido)
comprehensively clothed itself in the language of Buddh
ist Emptiness (Hoover 1978: 57-67).
To
my mind, this seems to afford an
illustration of how,
under
extreme duress, teachings
on
emptiness as a
self-sufficient panacea are probably more easily prone to a misconstrual
that can subvert the compassionate ethos central to the
Prajnaparamita
tradition.
3
In this context, it is also noteworthy that Jackson follows several later
Tibetan sources which suggest that the actual occasion of Sa-pan's critique
was his personal encounter
with
the thriving spiritual heritage of Curu
Zhang, founder of the Tshal-pa tradition, an allegedly eccentric bKa'
brgyud-pa
siddha
who had
led his followers
in
military battles
and
skir
mishes
with
nearby princes, bandits
and
brigands, in his attempts to bring
order
to the lawless
lands around
sKyid-chu.
Zhang is
said to have fur
ther
developed
and
extended
sCam-po-pa's self-sufficient panacea teach
ings,
and was
also (in)famous for teaching
the
battlefield
situation
as a
meditation. The saintly Karma-pa Dus-gsum mKhyen-pa (1110-1193) is said
to
have
eventually
persuaded Zhang
to
adopt
a more peaceful style.
sCam-po-pa
presents
his views
on rjes-thob
with a
long
string of quota
tions from a variety of sources including both sutras
and
tantras, but gives
the
last word to Atisa: And Atisa declared, 'When the mind is composed
and
centred
on
the one, there
is
no
need
to
work
for
the good
with
body
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85
or
~ p e e c h '
(trans.
Guenther 1971: 224).
5
It is interesting
how
sGam-po-pa's
interpretation of Atisa seems to be so normative
within the
sgrub-brgyud
traditions of Tibetan
Buddhism
although
r
am
not
clear if dGe-Iugs-pa
sources accept this. For example, a more modern author such as dPal-sprul
(1808-1887), in
his
Kun-bzang bla-ma'i zhal-Iung,
reports a
question-and
ansv,;er session between Atisa
and
his
leading
Tibetan disciple, 'Brom-ston
(1005-1064), which
likewise
puts the dkar-po chig-thub
position expounded
by sCam-po-pa directly into the
mouth
of Atisa himself.
The context is
dPal-sprul's discussion of the perfection of wisdom,
but
specifically
within
the rubric of training in the bodhicitta of application (which traditionally
implies training in the six paramitas:
bodhiprasthanacitta, d. Sik asamuccaya
8.15
and
Bodhicaryavattira
1.15;
Dayal
1978: 62).
Note
also
that
sCam-po-pa's
own sa-bead to the
Thar-rgyan
likewise places his own dkar-po
chig-thub
passages within the practice of perfect wisdom as a subsection of
bodhi
prasthtinacitta.
In his book, dPal-sprul categorises training in perfect wis
dom according to the three standard types of hearing, reflection and
meditating (srutamayf, cinttimayf, bhtivanamayf). The relevant passages attri
buted to Atisa occur in dPal-sprul's section on bhtivanamayf.
t
is worth
quoting
in
full because it
underlines
how
the
Tibetan
sgrub-brgyud
tradi
tions, who of course in key contexts tend to interpret emptiness as a
synonym for
the
absolute bodhicitta, will thereby often tend to
link
the
emptiness as a
dkar-po chig-thub
discourse with
their
often bKa'-gdams
pa-derived teachings
on bodhicitta
in general.
Now, what
Jackson does
not mention (this is
not
a fault, it falls beyond
the
scope of his under
taking) is that a characterisation of the
bodhicitta
in more general terms
as
a universal panacea is manifestly
not
limited to these Tibetan
sgrub
brgyud
traditions
alone: Santideva's
Bodhicaryavatara
1.10
& 26)
and
the
Muhayanusutralanzkara (16),
for example, also liken bodhicitta to a universal
panacea (Dayal
1978: 62;
Williams
1989: 198)?
while passages from the
Ak$ayamatinirdesa
said to be cited by Atisa give paeans of praise to bodhi
dtta
that
might easily be interpreted as amounting to the same thing.
8
Unsurprisingly, dGe-lugs-pa teachings
on
bodhicitta pick
up
this theme,
for example the present Dalai Lama writes of the bodhidtta that indeed
it
is
the
sale universal panacea (Tenzin Gyatso
1979:
112),9
here in appar
ent disagreement
with S a - p a l ~
who rejected any sort of Sole Universal
Panacea.
From a historical point of view, then, the question arises, did some of
the sgrub-brgyud traditions in general, or at least sGam-po-pa's, first adopt
or
adapt
by extension
the
single self-sufficient
remedy
imagery from the
bKa' -gdams-pa teachings
on the
cultivation of bodhicitta?
Might
it still
be
the case that meditations
on
emptiness are in general only secondarily
called a self-sufficient remedy, i.e.,
when
they are subsumed within a
prior
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86 THE TIBET JOURNAL
rubric of meditation on bodhicitta, or, perhaps, where meditation on
emptiness
might
be analysed as
the highest
phase of the
training in
ap
plication
bodhicitta involving
direct meditation upon
sems nyid?
Thus the
underlying
logic of
the
sgrub brgyud
position
might
be as follows:
1 Scriptural sources describe bodhicitta as a self-sufficient remedy;
2 Meditation on emptiness as sems nyid [from a strictly resultant
point of view] is identical to dwelling
within
absolute bodhicitta
[and absolute bodhicitta inherently subsumes relative bodhi
citta];
3
therefore such meditation on emptiness is a self-sufficient
remedy.
But let us return to dPal-sprul's citation of Atisa,
within
dPal-sprul's
presentation of meditating on emptiness of which compassion is
the
very
essence as
the
quintessence of
the
practice of application bodhicitta:
Drom
Tonpa
once asked Atisha what was the ultimate of all teachings.
Of
all
teachings, the ultimate is emptiness of
which
compassion is the very essence,
replied the Master. Realization of the
truth
of emptiness, the
nature
of reality,
is like a very powerful medicine, a panacea
which
can cure every disease in
the world. t is the
remedy
for all the different negative emotions.
Why is it then, Drom Tonpa went on,
that
so
many
people who claim
to have realized emptiness have no less attachment and hatred?
Because their realization is only words, Atisha replied. Had they really
grasped
the true meaning
of emptiness, their thoughts, words and deeds
would be
as soft as
cotton wool or tsampa soup
laced
with
butter. The Master
Aryadeva
said
that even
to wonder whether
or not
all things
were empty by
nature would
make samsara fall apart.
True
realization of emptiness, therefore,
is the ultimate panacea
which
includes all the elements of the path.
How
can every
element of the path be included within the realization of
emptiness? Drom Tonpa asked.
All the elements of the path are
contained in
the six transcendent perfec
tion. Now, if you
truly
realize emptiness, you become free from attachment.
As you feel no craving, grasping or desire for anything
within or
without, you
always have transcendent generosity. Being free from grasping and attach
ment,
you
are
never
defiled
by
negative actions, so
you
always
have
tran
scendent
discipline.
Without
any concepts of and
'mine'
you
have no
an
ger, so you always
have transcendent
patience. Your
mind
made
truly
joyful
by
the realization of emptiness,
you
always have transcendent diligence. Being
free from distraction,
which
comes from
grasping at
things as solid, you al
ways
have
transcendent concentration.
As
you
do not
conceptualize anything
whatsoever in
terms of subject, object and action,
you
always
have
transcend
ent wisdom.
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87
"Do
those who
have realized the
truth
become Buddhas simply by medita
ting
on
the view of emptiness?" Drom Tonpa asked.
Of
all
that
we perceive as forms and sounds there
is
nothing
that
does not
arise from
the
mind. To realize that the
mind
is awareness indivisible from
emptiness
is
the
view.
Keeping
this realization
in mind at
all times,
and
never
being distracted from
it,
is meditation. To practice the two accumulations as a
magical illusion from within that state is action.
f you
make a living experience
of this practice, it will continue in
your
dreams. f it comes in the dream state,
it will come at the
moment
of death. And if it comes at the moment of death
it will
ome
in the intermediate state. f it is present in the
intermediate
state
you may
be certain
of
attaining
supreme accomplishment" (PatruI1994: 255-6).
Summing
up
this
long quote
from Atisa, dPal-sprul concludes
that
all
84,000
doors to
the
dharma
taught
by the
Buddha
are all skilful means
to cause the bodhicitta-emptiness of which compassion is the very
essence-to
arise in us." (Patrul
1994: 256 .
Obviously, the
nub
of dPal
sprul's (and sGam-po-pa's) position is that wisdom
and
compassion are,
from
the
resultant perspective indivisibly inseparable.
Within the generality
of Buddhist
doctrine, to see
bodhicitta
as having
the nature of
both
emptiness and compassion is
not
unusual,
but
the
sgrub-brgyud
tradition
of emphasising
the
absolutely inalienable
and
in
divisible inseparability of wisdom and compassion within absolute bodhi
citta might historically derive less from the earlier Prajnaparamita scriptures
than from tathtigatagarbha doctrine, or else from texts such as the Samdhi
nirmocana Satra the original source of the distinction between ultimate
and relative bodhicittas, which defined ultimate bodhicitta as the radiant
mind of an
enlightened
being possessed of compassion. As the Yoga carin
Sthiramati saw it (following
the
Samdhinirmocana
SIUra),
"bodhicitta is
equal to
the
dharmakaya
as it manifests itself
in the human
heart" (Williams
1989: 203 . Later, the understanding of absolute bodhicitta as the ultimate
nature of
mind
primordially complete
with
all enlightened qualities,
became one of the fundamental metaphors of early rDzogs-chen writings;
for example, the
Sems-sde
series is precisely
named
after such meditation
on bodhicitta as
the
absolute (sems
byang-chub
sems);10 and of course,
the similarities of
such
Sems-sde doctrines to sGam-po-pa's teachings
on
sems-nyid
was
not
lost
upon
Sa-pan,
who
held
the
rDzogs-chen
tradition
as
deeply suspect in lacking
an
Indic pedigree.
The belief in the absolute indivisible unity
of
wisdom
and
means from
the point
of
view of ultimate truth, then, is what
underpins the
belief of
the sJs fub-brgyud traditions that when yogins have developed through
intensive meditation enough realisation to actually practise from the frui
tional point of view, then they are best advised to simply dwell continu
ously within sems-nyid (the absolute bodhicitta) during rjes-thob; this is
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understood
to
be
the
true nature of
mind,
which
is emptiness. From this
single practice of
dwelling within
absolute bodhicitta, it is believed all
other
qualities of
the
relative
bodhicitta
will arise spontaneously. They
often
add that
the best way to meditate
on
sems-nyid
or
the
absolute
bodhicitta
is
through merging one's mind
with
the guru, because
the
enlightened
mind of
the
guru is absolute
bodhicitta,
a belief apparently
espoused
also
by Tsongkhapa
(Williams 1989: 203 .
That
a scholarly figure
like
Sa-pan objected
to these meditator's
views
is
entirely
predictable:
what we have here is one more instance of the perennial
Buddhist
con
versation between
yogins
and scholars, between what Geoffrey Samuel
has termed the clerical" and "shamanic" currents within Buddhism, bet
ween
those who
think in
terms of
an immanent
absolute
and those who
think
in terms of a
more
apophatic understanding of emptiness; in short,
a
conversation
which is usually friendly, but
which
can, under certain
historical circumstances, become quite abusive.
Now,
it
is clear that the above views attributed
by
dPal-sprul to Atisa
are identical to those views of
sGam-po-pa attacked
by Sa-pan. My ques
tion
is, in criticising
the
bKa'-brgyud-pas, to what extent
was
Sa-pan also
implicitly
attacking the
bKa' -gdams-pas,
or
their
teachings
on
bodhicitta?
Of
course, I cannot say if dPal-sprul's attribution of these views to Atisa
and 'Brom-ston is historically accurate, alth.ough
there
is some
independ
ent evidence that Atisa accepted an indivisible
continuity
of absolute and
relative bodhicitta, in this
perhaps
following some
of the
Yogacara tradi
tions.
However,
it
is fascinating to see that, as Jackson
reports
(p.1l8,
n.275 and p.87, n.215), Sa-pan
did undoubtedly
reject
the
bKa'-gdams-pa
tradition
as
inauthentic (along
with
the
rDzogs-chen,
the
gCod-yul
etc.),
because it
had
no
proper Indian
pedigree, being merely a tradition in
vented by the
"[Tibetan) old-timers"
rgan-po),
or elders of Tibet" bod
bgres-po).12 To
hold such inauthentic
non-Indic traditions as supreme, Sa
paJ) wrote, "is
the conduct of the
ignorant, as foolish as
being
a follower
of
the
non-Buddhist Indian sectarians" (p.1l8). Perhaps
this
is one area
where more research is still required: we need
to know
to what extent Sa
pan's attack on
sGam-po-pa
was in part founded on his disapproval of the
old
bKa'
-gdams-pa
tradition.1
3
We
also
need
to ascertain,
of
course,
whether Atisa's views,
or those of the
later bKa'-gdams-pa tradition,
were
indeed as dPal-sprul and
sGam-po-pa suggest,
especially since other
sources (such as
the
dGe-Iugs-pa)
might
attribute
quite
different (i.e., less
gzhan-stong-congruent
views to
him and to 'Brom-ston-pa
SG/\M-PO-PA AND MO-HO-YEN
Be that as
it
may, Sa-pan
apparently saw
sGam-po-pa's move into such
fruitional contemplative
methods
within chapter 17 of
the
Thar-rman as
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a heresy based on the proscribed views of
the
Chinese master MO-ho-yen.
For Sa-pan, it seems
that
fruitional meditations like this had little or no
place at all in a stltrayana context: as I understand it, he seems to have felt
that once
one
admits a fruitional-vehicle method into a stltrayana context,
the basic distinction
between
stltrayana and
tantrayana
becomes
eroded
(p.88-90) (again, d Bentor 1992). From Sa-pan's perspective, then, it was
surely little wonder
that
sGam-po-pa
ended
up making
two
innovative
developments that Sa-pan most vehemently condemned, not only because
Sa-pan
disapproved
all doctrinal
innovations
whatsoever, but also because
these
two developments
so flagrantly transgressed what Sa-pan saw as
the
proper boundaries between
Stltra and Tantra: sCam-po-pa first started
talking
about
a Stltra
Mahamudra
as
opposed
to
the
Tantra
Mahamudra
inherited from the Indian siddhas,
and
then even of
an
Essence Maha
mudra beyond
any
yana
1
shall turn to Sa-pan's views on innovation
presently).
Jackson suggests some interesting justifications for Sa-pan's charge that
sGam-po-pa was reviving Mo-ho-yen's "heresy." Jackson uses
modern
philological research to argue that sCam-po-pa is
indeed
in Ch.17 of the
Thar rgyan quoting (inter alia, it has to be admitted, among many
other
Indic materials), from Mahayana stltra texts which, while already listed in
the state-approved IOan kar rna catalogue of the early translation period,
and which
were
also in due course to be accepted
by the
Tibetan Kanjur
makers,
(who
of course
only
finalised their work much later), nevertheless
had
entered
Tibet from Chinese sources. Not
only
that, but these texts
were indeed
used by the very Ch an
traditions (such as Mo-ho-yen's) once
active
in
Tibet (p.22-23). Since sCam-po-pa's
quotations
formed a
coherent
sequential list of
pre-prepared quotes taken
from a
group
of these sources,
Jackson
argues that
sGam-po-pa could
only have got
such a list of quota
tions from
what
Sa-pan saw as "heretical" textual sources, either from
"illicit" literature left
behind by
Chinese masters such as Mo-ho-yen
in the
8th century that had somehow survived being purged, or (as I believe
more likely), from what Sa-pan
saw
as equally "heretical" writings
such
as those of the early rNying ma-pa master gNubs Sangs-rgyas ye-shes
p.24).
Jackson's
argument
is philologically reasonable:
one
might question
if
sGam-po-pa put
the
list together himself by browsing through
the
Sutra pitaka
even
granted that proto-canonical collections were probably
available to him.
Later (p.140), Jackson
supports
Sa-pan once more when
he
concludes
that the mere existence of these
quotations
from Chinese-originated texts
within the Thar rgyan must create difficulties even for sGam-po-pa's
own
followers, i.e., that this
must render
sGam-po-pa unsound even
by
the
criteria of his
own
followers. This might
be true
for some of sGam·po-pa's
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followers, but
it
certainly need not be for all of them: not only
were
these
texts included in the
Kanjur but, as several
authors including
David
Snellgrove
1987: 436) and
David Seyfort Ruegg
1989: 137)
have pointed
out, not all Tibetan traditions
have adopted
such a uniformly hostile
attitude to Chinese Buddhism or even to Mo-ho-yen as Jackson's reason
ing presupposes. On the contrary, writes Seyfort Ruegg, some "adopted
a noticeably more conciliatory stance toward the teachings they connected
with the Hva san." Could it not be that in
using
a
token
percentage of
Chinese-originated Buddhist sources in his Thar rgyan (albeit sources
widely accepted in Tibet especially
by
rDzogs-chen-pas), sGam-po-pa was
consciously seeking both to associate himself
with
rNying-ma-pa col
leagues,
and
to
distance himself from
what
he
saw as
vulgar
religious
bigotry? Certainly, several rNying-ma-pa masters have taken quite tolerant
positions towards Chinese Buddhism: while
proudly
identifying them
selves as
the
heirs of Santaraksita
and
Kamalaslla,l'
they
nevertheless
found
the courage to defy
the
belligerence of
popular
prejudice
by
re
presenting
the
Chinese Buddhist traditions as a partial virtue
rather
than
an absolute evil. Such a stand was for them a consciously adopted ideo
logical position. Perhaps sGam-po-pa thus saw
important
spiritual reasons
to align himself
with
his rDzogs-chen-pa spiritual friends, who probably
regarded the traditions of Mo-ho-yen as possessing some definite worth,
even
if much less than those of their own Indian masters, and who prob
ably deplored as the sin of slandering bodhisattvas the unthinking and
unmitigated
contempt widely
levelled
at
Chinese
Buddhism
as a whole
and Mo-ho-yen
in
particular.
MEDITATORS AND SCHOLARS
Some of the most useful sections of this excellent book are Chapters Four
and
Five, where Jackson sets out Sa-pan's precise criticisms of
the
bKa'- '
brgyud-pa, and what he calls Sa-pan's "principles of critical doctrinal
scholarship." Here we find a fascinating manifesto for Tibetan (or even
Buddhist) clericalism as a whole. As one might expect, the contrast
with
sGam-po-pa's practice lineage is stark. While Sa-pan the statesman and
logician applies the law of the excluded middle to construct an invariable
set of rules
about Buddhist
doctrine
which
he
aspires
to
see applied
globally, sGam-po-pa
the
hermit
and
spiritual physician is a pragmatist
who cares little for logical inconsistencies
or
academic categories, so long
as his remedies
work
for his
own
disciples locally.
Once
again,
we
have
a classic
confrontation
of
the
contrasting value systems of "respectability"
and reputation
d. Wilson 1973),
which
Geoffrey Samuel has so convin
cingly
linked
to what
he
terms
the
"clerical"
and
"shamanic" currents that
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pervade all of Buddhism (Samuel 993: 215-217). In this case, the con
frontation was rendered more acute by historical factors: Sa-pan and
sCam-po-pa are widely seen as culture-heroes around
whom
were formed
(to a
substantial
extent)
the
clerical
and
shamanic poles of
subsequent
Buddhism in Tibet. As prime exemplars for their currents, a degree of
polarisation in their self-representations was predictable,
and
(arguably)
even historically useful for Buddhism as a whole. Yet it is significant how
quickly the contradictory elements between the Sa-skya-pa and bKa'
brgyud-pa
paths
(as expressed by these founding figures), were subsumed
within the much greater complimentarities which they offered each other:
unsurprisingly, it was not very long before most lamas following these
traditions
transmitted
teachings from
both
sides. Jackson graphically
alludes to such
underlying
complimentarities with his postscript, in
which
he describes the
interconnected
legends of two Indian siddhas, the mat
tock-man Kotali and the
great
scholar Santipa.
A
COr\TEMPORII..RY CRISIS FOR CLERICAL
BUDDHISM
jackson's discussion of Sa-pan's underlying principles are admirably lucid.
However,
by setting out
Sa-pan's concerns so clearly, Jackson's
book
also
exposes, perhaps ominously, how the whole edifice of Buddhist clericalism
is
currently facing a crisis of credibility
that
does
not
currently threaten
the
sgrub brgyud
traditions
such
as sCam-po-pa's to the same extent. I feel
this crisis is
of more than
localised importance,
and
will comprehensively
affect the way in
which
figures such as Sa-pan and Tsong-kha-pa will
come to be seen in future years.
There are several aspects to this crisis,
but
here I shall focus solely on
the issue of canonicity.
In
general terms, Tibetan clericalism is so
highly
rationalised, so deeply committed to logic, that it cannot easily defy the
dictates of evidence and
sound
reasoning and still survive with its pres
tige and self-confidence intact. Not only that, but the Tibetan clerical
tradition, for so long cocooned in its pre-modern world-view, has never
sensed any
dangers
in founding itself
upon
a set of fundamental axioms
or metanarratives that quite frequently take the form of empirically
falsifiable propositions.
Now,
precisely
such
falsifiable propositions
have
been employed as the basis upon which to establish and maintain the
criteria of a universal and normative
Buddhist
canonical orthodoxy; this
was
an undertaking
which clerical
Buddhism
has consistently
seen
as
one
of its most important functions
and
responsibilities, and which
was
so
overwhelmingly important to Sa-pan.
The problem is, however, that many of these key logical underpinnings
for
the
clerical interpretation of canonical orthodoxy
now
appear to
have
been irrevocably falsified
by
modern
learning. To make matters worse,
the
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centralising aspirations of Buddhist clericalism, its very wish to impose
universally its views of canonical orthodoxy, are nowadays all too easily
interpretable
as a morally dubious religious hegemonism
or
intolerance.
This negative interpretation is particularly exacerbated
when
the hege
monistic aspirations of clerical Buddhism are seen to
be based on
mani
festly untrue axioms, i.e., upon criteria of canonical orthodoxy that now
appear to have been merely ideological rather than based
on
empirical
fact,
d. Foucault and
his analysis of "discourses of power").
Conversely, the practice lineages have usually taken lightly or even
explicitly repudiated these clerical concerns
with
canonical purity, instead
taking a view (perhaps fortuitously?) much closer to that of modern text
ual historians. Above all,
in basing
themselves mainly
on
more pragmatic,
flexible (and unfalsifiable ) principles of spiritual efficacy, they are cur
rently
gaining
in relative prestige. Not
only
is their intense, direct version
of spirituality feeding a modern spiritual
hunger,
but
they can also in
creasingly claim the
contemporary
moral high-ground,
appearing
as Bud
dhism's
unjustly maligned, non-political mystics
in
contrast to the hector
ing, political clerics.
To illustrate, let us
look at three
specific key points
in
Sa-pan's writings:
1 firstly, there is the strongly held notion that the complete
buddh v c n in
its
entirety
had already been
expounded in
India
by
the
historical
Buddha in
person,
who
had
taught
his
doctrine both well and completely; and that moreover, the
various ramifications of this
buddh v c n
had already been
comprehensively
expounded by
the great masters of India
through
the
different Indic commentarial traditions (p.99ff);
2
consequently,
Sa-pan rejected all fresh canonical revelation
and
doctrinal
innovation;
rather, he believed it
was of
overwhelming
importance
that
each valid tradition inherited from India should
remain
intact, carefully preserved as in aspic
without
any
innovations
or changes being made to it in Tibet;
3 thirdly, he held that the legitimacy of any disputed doctrine
must be established in debate by sound reasoning grounded in
objective fact" (p.92ff).
Now,
it was precisely by
applying
these three principles
that
Sa-pan
rejected sGam-po-pa's two main innovations,
the
Sutra Mahamudra and
the
Mahamudra
beyond any yana.,,15 Sa-pan argued against sGam-po-pa
that:
1 it was
an
incontrovertible, objective fact
that
the historical
Buddha
himself
had taught
the
MahamuClra
tradition inherited
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by sGam-po-pa solely and exclusively within the canonical
tantras, in
this case,
those
of
the
Cakrasamvara cycle; (i.e.,
Mahamudra had never
been
taught
in
the sutras ;
2
ergo
it
can be inferred by valid
reasoning that
sGam-po-pa
contradicted
his
own
authentic
received canonical tradition of
the Buddha's teachings, when he introduced the innovation of
divorcing Mahamudra from the tantric context and introducing
a Sfltra
Mahamudra.
But modern scholarship turns Sa-pan's world inside
out and
upside
down in ways he could never have expected. Far from being taught y
the historical Buddha as Sa-pan believed, we now perceive the "incontro
vertible, objective fact"
to be that the
Cakrasamvara tantras in question
were produced 12 centuries or more after the
Buddha's
passing; not only
that,
but
we also believe that they comprised predominantly Saiva materi
als, adapted
to
its own use by Buddhism.
16
Moreover, we also know that
virtually none of the multitude of other scriptures so revered as authenti-
cally canonical"
by
Sa-pan could ever have been
uttered
y the historical
Buddha at all, as
he thought:
on
the
contrary,
they were
all later "innova
tions."
Nor were they
necessarily even Indic: recent research (Jan Nattier,
JIABS
15: 2, 1992) suggests
that
even the
Heart
Sutra, arguably
the
most
heavily-commentated
upon
of all
Mahayana
scriptures
in
India,
was
prob
ably redacted
in
China.
Thus
it is quite clear
that
virtually
the entirety of
Sa-pan's zealously established canon of valid scripture
in
truth fell well
outside of Sa-pan's own criteria of "canonical authenticity,"
and
for
exactly the same reasons as the gter-ma and Chinese-originated texts he so
deplored So if we take Sa-pan seriously, (rather than patronising him as
a quaint medieval for whom we have to make allowances), and examine
his own canon according to his own criteria, n the light of modern know-
ledge it is
now
the
entire edifice of his own construction of canonical
scriptural orthodoxy which is utterly
and
totally shattered.
Yet ironically the same is not true of
the
sgrub-brgyud traditions he cri
ticised: here, modern scholarship vindicates their position after alL A great
many or
even
most voices
within the
rNying-ma-pa tradit ion have consist
ently
maintained
(often
in the
face
of
fierce criticism from the likes of Sa
pan
that the Mahayana
and Vajrayana scriptures arose out of ongoing
revelation and
innovation
after
the death
of the historical Buddha (Dud
jom 1991: 441, 456; Gyatso 1994; Mayer 1996:
51-55 .
These rNying-ma-pa
voices have
maintained that
systematic methods of ongoing revelation
and
innovation
were
taught as an inalienable aspect
of the Mahayana
dis
pensation
in
the earliest
Mahayana
sutras such as
the
Pratyutpannabuddha
samukhtivasthita-sutra,
that
these systems were historically practised in
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India, Central Asia and China, and that the rNying-ma-pa uphold these
traditions within Tibet into the
present
day
gter-ma
and
dag-snang). In
general, the rNying-ma-pa found
support
and protection
among
the bKa'
brgyud-pas.
Now,
modern philology powerfully
supports
their claims
as
well.
17
Far from
being the
unreasonable
and
inauthentic
Buddhist
fringe
that Sa-pan portrays, to the
modern
sensibility
they
might increasingly
appear as Buddhism s still, small voice of truth
about
the real origins of
its own canonical scriptures, that somehow
withstood
centuries of propa
ganda
and
even
occasional persecution from the more powerful
and
polit
ical clerics such as Sa_pan.
18
So the question
must
be addressed: if
so
many
rNying-ma-pa authors (including Sa-pan's contemporaries) correctly
understood
the
later, revealed
nature
of
the
Mahayana
and
Vajrayana
scriptures, by what special
pleading
must
we
make allowances for Sa-
pan s error in attributing
these texts to
the mouth
of the historical
Buddha, and moreover
using
this false claim as the main basis of his
attack
upon the
hapless but more correct rNying-ma-pa?
As well as putting an entirely different perspective on the principle of
ongoing
scriptural revelation that Sa-pan rejected in the name of cano
nical orthodoxy, modern
knowledge
can also put a different colouration
on
sGam-po-pa's specific doctrinal innovations
that
Sa-pan
had
singled
out for criticism. We cannot, of course, be certain if sGam-po-pa was
aware of the intertextuality of the scriptures he inherited from India with
particular Saiva traditions}9 but his introduction of Slltra and Essence
Mahamudra
systems can nevertheless be seen as historically appropriate,
in
that it completed the Mahayanisation and Buddhicisation of the Saiva
materials which in some respects remained as yet
somewhat
ill-digested
in the
Indic Cakrasamvara source texts. The Essence
Mahamudra
in par
ticular comprises a simple synopsis of basic
Buddhist
teachings, drawing
together the
central doctrines of Hinayana, Yogacara
and
Madhyamaka in
a simple
and
uncontroversial way;20 by establishing this Essence Maha
mudra fair
and
square
at
the
heart or
apex of
the
otherwise uncomfortably
Saiva-derived set of tantric methods taught in the Cakrasamvara cycle
(such as gtum-mo), sGam-po-pa and his followers can be seen as having
reinforced
and
completed the final historical
Mahayana
Buddhist over
coding of this otherwise potentially ambivalent Indic Tantric tradition cf.
taming, dul-ba). Especially for a sgrub-brgyud lineage that did not envis
age years of
training
in Mahayana tenets before approaching tantric prac
tice, such further Buddhicisation can be seen as a praiseworthy historical
achievement by sGam-po-pa's tradition.
Do
the above observations mean that the central clerical Buddhist con
cern so
ardently pursued
over so many centuries
by
so
many
great figures
such
as Sa-pan
and
Tsong-kha-pa, namely the
quest
to establish correct
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parameters for a
Buddhist
canonical
and
doctrinal orthodoxy,
must
now
be discarded as
an outmoded
absurdity because it is based on fallacious
historical understandings? I
hope and
believe not: hope, because I strong
ly suspect
that without
a healthy clerical current to act as a stabilising
force, the Buddhist
dispensation
will tend
towards
a quite unbeneficial
disintegration;21 believe, because I fully expect
that the
clerical Buddhism
(of Tibet at least) will increasingly manage to reassert itself
in
new and
historically more
appropriate
ways.
Perhaps
what clerical
Buddhism
must
do to adequately
meet contemporary
conditions, however, is to dig deep
and rediscover its underlying first principles, to enter into a self-reflexive
re-appraisal
of what
its
fundamental
concerns actually are, to begin a fresh
analysis
that
looks (as
did
Sa-pan) more historically, more globally, more
wholistically, than has been customary at less critical times. Perhaps con
troversially, my
own
view (and here I seem to differ diametrically from
the major academic apologists for
Buddhist
clericalism such as David
Seyfort Ruegg and David Jackson), is that such a regeneration of clerical
Buddhism can
only
be achieved if clerical Buddhism is to come out
and
frankly
admit
that its role is (in part at least)
inherently
a politic l one,
albeit in
the
most
virtuous
sense of
that
much-misunderstood
and
complex
term. To illustrate: clerical Buddhism does
and should
aspire (inter alia)
to put
intelligent
and
reasoned
restraints on doctrinal and canonical
innovations,
but there
is no point in trying to deny that the exercise of
restraint on such a broad scale is necessarily a political enterprise,
that
is,
within the full sociological meaning of
the
term political, rather than
in
its naive
popular
usage.
To my mind, the genius of Tibetan Buddhism s
great
clerical figures has
usually
been distinguished
by
precisely
such an
appreciation of a political
aspect to their task: to be a major clerical figure implies a role in Buddhist
social leadership, which in turn implies an acceptance of the responsibility
to engage virtuously in religious politics. Historically, such responsible
Buddhist leadership has above all been concerned
with
maintaining a cor
rect balance between
what
Geoffrey Samuel has called
the
clerical
and
shamanic currents within the
Buddhist
dispensation, making sure that
the
pendulum
of Buddhist
culture avoids
swinging
too far
in one
direc
tion or the other.
Thus
Sa-pan, faced simultaneously
with the
catastrophic
destruction of the
Buddhist
tradition in India
on
the one
hand and
the
proliferation of shamanic doctrinal innovation in Tibet
on the other
hand, valiantly struggled to preserve what little was left of the Indic
clerical heritage in his time, to the immense benefit of
subsequent
generations. Likewise, Tsong-kha-pa achieved a refocusing on central
BUddhist values and ethics
much
needed in his time,
while
more recently
mKhyen-brtse
dbang-po and
'Jam-mgon Kong-sprul (the
great
clerical
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figures of Ris-med) achieved the successful regeneration of the shamanic
current
and a dissolving of clerical ossification
and
sectarianism that was
so
urgently
required in their time. Most recently, we have the contempo_
rary figure of the 14th Dalai Lama,
whose
(to my mind entirely virtuous)
religious-political
purpose
has been two-fold: internally,
within
Tibetan
Buddhism, he has achieved a reconciliation
between
the dGe-Iugs-pa and
Ris-med-pa
traditions
(which has
required
a politically
fraught
repudiation
of rDo-rje Shugs-Idan), while externally,
on the world
stage,
he
has
sought to establish the universally comprehensible
and
attractive doctrines
of compassion and the Bodhisattva conduct
as
the contemporary para
meters of Buddhist orthodoxy, in place of any remote
and
abstruse formu
lations of
the
doctrine of emptiness.
Thus many of the seminal clerical figures of the past have expounded
different or
even
conflicting doctrines and tenets and have pursued differ
ing agendas, but all alike have been motivated with the same, central,
unavoidably political concern of the clerical Buddhist leader: to steer the
Buddhist culture of their time away from potentially dangerous
or
ex-
treme trajectories, and to help it retain a stable balance. In
that
respect,
their views are to some degree historically contingent,
uttered
for a
cer-
tain time to achieve certain results
in
the
context of specific conditions,
and
might
therefore eventually become anachronistic, for example, as I
believe, some of Sa-pan's ideas on canonicity have become. On the other
hand,
their
deeper,
underlying
inspiration remains the same: to employ
skilful means
upaya)
to sustain
the
well-being of
the Buddhist sasana
through the vicissitudes of history.
As
with all skilful means, however,
one
must
know when the time has come to relinquish them
and
take up
a different upaya.
Notes
1. Neither sGam-po-pa's Chapter
17, nor
the various surviving versions of the
Seven Point Mind
Training
available to me, give any additional instruction
for the rjes-thob other than these. Unfortunately, Jackson does not
quote
the
Tibetan text of sGam-po-pa's opening
keynote
phrase that sums up and
introduces
this sub-section on rjes-thob, nor do I currently have the Tibetan
text available;
hence
I
can
only
quote Guenther s
translation
above
(Guenther
1971: 218).
The equivalent phrase from the only Tibetan version of the Seven Points
of
Mind
Training available to
me
is:
thun mtshams s yu ma i
skyes
bur bya I, In
between
sessions, consider yourself a child of illusion. dGe- dun
grub
(Dalai
Lama
I 1391-1474), glosses this as follows: In those times when you have
arisen from
your
meditation cushion,
and consciousness and its objects seem
to truly exist, meditate on the thought, They seem to exist, yet they are like
an
illusion
and
like
things
seen in
a dream'. (trans.
Mullin
1993: 134).
Geshe
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Rabten
and
Ceshe Ngawang Dhargyey
give
the
same advice,
adding that
to
meditate on all
phenomena
as
empty
during the
rje-thob phase
protects
the
mind against
emotional afflictions (Rabten
& Dhargyey 1977: 45-46).
It seems,
then, that these
dCe-Iugs-pa sources agree
with
sCam-po-pa
that
meditation
on
emptiness
is sufficient for
rje-thob,
while
they do
not
say, as does sCam-po
pa,
that generosity
etc.
are
thereby spontaneously accomplished.
2.
For example,
Ratnagunasamcayagiitha 3.7-8; 4.5-7; 25.4-5; Astasahasrika. 3.4; 25.
3;
Conze s The Large
Sutra
on
Perfect Wisdom, Chapter 59,
page
470,
here
quoting the
Cilgit ms.
of the
Astadasasahasrika-prajr1aparamita
(=Abhisamaya
laqlkara V 5 .
3.
There is,
however,
a certain historical irony here: it
is
widely believed
that
the
long-lasting marriage of
Zen with
the
samurai
military arts
might never have
happened,
but
for
the
extreme national
trauma
occasioned
by
the Mongol
attempts
to
invade Japan
(Hoover 1978: 60). Yet at the very time of
the
Mongol
attempts
on
Japan (between
1268
and
1281), it seems to have
been
none other than
Sa-pan's direct successor
and nephew
Phags-pa
(1235-1280)
who held the
role of Qubilai's
main
tantric
siddha
or
priest;
and,
as Sperling
has shown,
a central
part
of this position lay in the propitiation of Mahakala
to assist
the purposes
of
the
state
or
monarch,
be they
military
or
otherwise
This role had
been taken
over
by
the Sa-pan and
Phags-pa
from the
bKa'
-brgyud-pas,
in
this specific instance
quite
possibly from
the
Tshal-pa
subsect
(see
next
note;
d.
Sperling
1990: 147-148). The changeover was
prob
ably
not
entirely without acrimony, since
there
exists literary evidence indica
ting
that
some bKa -brgyud-pas saw
it as
an unwelcome
usurpation
of
an
important position
that
was to some degree the possession of the bKa'
brgyud-pas by right
(Sperling 1994: 806). The position of imperial priest
had
originally
been
held
by
a succession of bKa'
-brgyud-pa
siddhas, at first on
behalf of
the Buddhist Tangut
empire,
and then
on behalf of its more warlike
Mongol
successor state
under
Kaden
(Sperling
1994),
from
where
Qubilai
later
adopted the
institution into Chinese
court
circles too.
Be
that
as it may, we
know beyond
doubt that
one
of
Phags-pa s
official
dulies was
to propitiate Mahakala
in
support
of Mongol military
and
political
objectives (Sperling
1994: 805). t
is
therefore
highly
possible
that Phags-pa
was requested by
Qubilai to
do
Mahakala
sadhanas
to assist his invasion of
Japan,
although Phags-pa had presumably
already
died
before
the
catas
trophic
destruction
of
the
Mongol fleet
by the legendary kamikaze typhoon
in the
early
summer
of
1281.
Nevertheless it
was
this invasion
which
possibly
contributed to precisely
the kind
of distortion
within
Japanese
Buddhism that
Sa-pan
had
apparently sought to prevent in Tibet.
4. Seyfort Ruegg,
however, mentions
sources
that
suggest the 'Bri-gung-pa's
dGongs-gcig
teachings as well as
Guru
Zhang s
tradition as
being the
target
of
Sa-pan s
critique
(Ruegg 1989: 109),
while
Dan
Martin sees
the sDom-gsum
as more
concerned
to refute bKa'-gdams-pa doctrines
than bKa -brgyud-pa
(personal
communication,
30/9/96. There
is
a little external evidence suggest
ing
that
the Bri-gung connection might
be more significant
than
Jackson in
dicates. While the notorious revolt gling-log) of Bri-gung against Sa-skya-pa
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rule leading
to
the
sack of
'Bri-gung
in 1290
came four decades after Sa-pan's
time, nevertheless, according to a recent
communication
from Elliot Sperling,
there is one
historical tradition indicative of earlier tensions
or
conflicts
between
Sa-pan
in
person and some individual 'Bri-gung-pas. Sperling has
told
me
that
there
survives
a
somewhat convoluted
narrative of 'Bri-gung-pa
yogins
en route
for Kailash,
who angered
Sa-pan
by
being, as
he
thought,
arrogant towards him. The narrative
is
problematic
in that
it involves definite
historical
anachronisms, but
it does
seem
to
speak
of tensions
between
'Bri
gung and
Sa-skya
at the
time
of
Sa-pan. The narrative
is
reported in the
Tibetan version
of Shakabpa's
political history (pp.304-305),
but
does not
appear
in
the
English version
although
a translation
appears
in
Dan
Martin
1992: 185.
It is also
very
noteworthy in
this context
that
a division of Mongol
patronage
between various bKa'-brgyud-pa
groups and the Sa-skya-pas was
already well in place by the 1250's, i.e.,
quite
shortly after Sa-pan's
death
in
1251
(personal communication, Elliot Sperling, 8/8/96). There was an in
herently
political
dimension
to these alignments:
they functioned
as the
Mongol method
of
administering
Tibet
in such
a
way that
allowed each
Mongol
prince to
enjoy
a
share
of
the
spoils. Sperling explains: These were
not
nominal alignments . Each [Mongol] prince
is
said to have become the
overlord of certain territories
in
Tibet as a result of a
common
agreement
between
all
of
them. By extension these lands fell
under the
sway
of the
subsects
they
patronized (Sperling 1990: 147 .
Thus
a highly reliable source,
Ta'i Situ
Byang-chub rgyal-mtshan
(1302-1364), relates in his
bKa -chems
that
in
the period
following
the enthronement
of
Mangke
in
1251,
Kaden
took his
priest from
the
Sa-skya-pa,
Mangke
took his priest from
the
'Bri-gung-pa,
Hulegu took his priest from
the Phag-mo gru-pa,
Arig Bake took his priest
from
the
Stag-Iung-pa and, most significantly, Qubilai, who
was
to emerge
supreme
from
the
dynastic competitions
and
rule his
great
empire from
China
from 1260-1294, took his priest from the Tshal-pa, i.e., the lineage of
Guru Zhang (Sperling
1990: 148 .
Ta'i Situ
adds that
each Mongol prince
sent
a
lieutenant
yul-bsrungs) to live at
the monastery
of
the
subsect
through
whom
they administered their share
of Tibet.
The
Fifth Dalai Lama's history
of Tibet
apparently drew
upon Ta'i Situ's,
and thus
gives the same set of
alignments between
princes and subsects (Sperling
1990: 147 .
But
these
arrangements were short-lived: after the Mongol dynastic
succession
was
resolved
in favour
of Qubilai (who, according to Tibetan
sources, was backed by Kaden), the
consequence
was
that
all the other
Mongol princes (save Qubilai's
other
more distant ally Hulegu, 1215-1265)
had
to
withdraw
their
lieutenants
or
representatives from Tibet,
with
Qubilai
taking
effective control of the
whole country through
his client Tibetan
subsect.
Thus
it followed
that whichever
Tibetan subsect was serving
as
Qubilai's priests,
was thereby
due to take
over
rulership of virtually all of
Tibet (save those areas
which
Hulegu administered
through
his clients, the
Phag-mo gru-pa and 'Bri-gung-pa of later gling-Iog fame). So,
if
we are to
believe Ta'i Situ Byang-chub rgyal-mtshan and the Fifth Dalai Lama, the
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Tshal-pa tradition
founded by
Guru Zhang might at
one
stage have
had
a
very real
chance
of
inheriting the
coveted
r61e
of
supreme
patronage by
virtue
of
their
association
with
Qubilai
However,
this
was
not
to be. Kaden,
who had
a key r61e in placing Qubilai on
the throne,
seems also to
have sent
Phags-pa
to live
at
Qubilai's
court even
before Qubilai's reign actually
began
(Sperling
1994: 805);
could the Tshal-pa
have been
displaced as Qubilai's main
priests at this
juncture?
Or
were they
displaced
even
earlier? I
am
unclear of
the chronology. Nevertheless, it follows
that
if Jackson is correct
that
Guru
Zhang s
tradition
was the
specific target of Sa-pan's polemic, an interesting
political
dimension
emerges:
the
Sa-skya-pas of
that
period,
with the
help
of
Kaden (Sperling
1994: 80S),
seem to
have
succeeded in ensuring that Phags
pa was
able to take
over the
incomparably politically desirable job as
Qubi
lai's chief priest,
with
all
the
privilege
and patronage
it implied, precisely from
the followers of
Guru Zhang, the
principal target of Sa-pan's polemic,
written
so shortly before
Perhaps
it is also
worth
mentioning
that
it seems to me (at first glance at
least)
that
if
one
looks at Sa-pan's polemic from a strictly Chinese
point
of
view,
one
sees
that
the
gist of his critique coincides
very
closely
with
the
stringent
bibliographic criteria of
Buddhist heresy
(i.e., non-Indic origins)
that
had become increasingly well established and normative
within the
succes
sive
Chinese
states from
the
time of
Emperor
Liang Wu-ti
(502-549)
(Strick
mann 1990,
Buswell
1990:
1;
Mayer 1996: 12-14). Of
course, I
am not
at all
suggesting
that
Sa-pan
inherited these
criteria from China: rather,
that
the
criteria coincided for doctrinally similar reasons
inherent
to a certain strand
of
Mahayana
Buddhist thinking. Nevertheless such reasons might
have
looked
even more persuasive
from a
Chinese
perspective
than they did
in
Tibet, and this
might
have reinforced Sa-skya-pa prestige at Qubilai's court.
In
other
words,
Sa-pan's critique
of the bKa -brgyud-pa and rNying-ma-pa
alike as non-Indic
was one eminently
comprehensible to
the
official
Chinese
Buddhist
establishment. This
might have made
difficulties for figures
such
as
Karma Pakshi,
depending
as
they
did in almost
equal measure
on the tradi
tions of
both
sGam-po-pa and of
the
rNying-ma-pa.
Thus, while I
have
no doubt at all
that
Sa-pan's motives in
writing
his
polemics
were
religiously sincere, I nevertheless feel
that
the
important
and
complex political dimensions to his struggles
with
the Tshal-pa (and
other
subsects)
do need
investigation
and
clarification.
5
Once again, I regret
not having
the' Tibetan text available,
and
so I
must
rely
on
Guenther s
translation.
6
These
statements attributed
to Atisa are here
introduced
by
dPal-sprul to
enlarge upon briefer previous
quotations
of similar
sentiment attributed
to
a g a ~ u n a
and Saraha (Patrul
1994: 255).
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7.
For example, Williams quotes Santideva
on
bodhicilla thus: How can I
fathom the depths
of the goodness of this jewel of the mind,
the
panacea that
relieves the world of pain?
8.
I regret
that
I
do not have any
primary materials for this
sutra
available to
me
at
the moment;
see
Sherburne
1983: 46-49. Despite this
usage
of quotations
from the
s .ltra,
it nevertheless seems
that
the
main
gist of this famous scrip_
ture is
in
reality very much more
in
accord with the conventional Perfection
of Wisdom doctrines,
in which
compassion and
wisdom
are cultivated sep
arately.
9. However, I am
not
aware of these latter types of sources (which might be
intended
as more literary than literal) further transferring the panacea im
agery onto
meditation on
emptiness because they categorise emptiness as
identical to
the
absolute bodhicitta. For Sa-pan,
on the
other hand, it was
quite
axiomatic
that
in the final analysis there could
be
no sole universal
panacea
at all, not even bodhicitta, and let alone emptiness (Jackson p.72).
10.
See, for example, the Byang-chub-kyi
sems
bsgom-pa, often called the rDo-la gser
zhun, attributed to Manjusrlmitra and found
in
the Tenjur, studied in Norbu
Lipman 1987.
11
The
Byang-c/wb lam-gyi sgron-ma i dka - grel, Ch.2, (which is traditionally held
to be Atisa's own autocommentary
on
the Bodhipathapradfpa, although I have
no idea if it
is
really by Atisa), generally recognises
the
plurality of the Bud
dhist traditions on such matters (d.
Sherburne
1983: 44),
and
tends to prefer
a remarkably undogmatic and non-committal stance. However, it does ap
parently make the following point: The
Thought
of Enlightenment
itself,
both at the time of its cause and at the time of its result, is altogether
one
and
the same reality (as translated in
Sherburne
1983: 61; I regret I have no
primary sources available). The text continues with a description of differing
analyses of bodhicitta according to
the
triad of Ground, Path and Fruit, all in
the form of exegeses upon the Abhisamaylilamklira s famous 22 similes
of
bodhicitta (earth, gold,
moon,
fire, treasury, etc.,
which
list, of course,
is
the
one that
famously likens
the
sixth
pliramitti.,
i.e. Perfect Wisdom, to a remedy).
According to
Sherburne
(p.63, n.34), the
Mahliylinasiltrlilamklira,
its
Bhlisya
by
Asari.ga, and a
short
work
by
]fi.anaklrti are the exegetical texts
being
alluded
to here.
12. In this context, these terms seem to be derogatory. Dan Martin observes that
other authors of the period such as Chag Lo-tsa-ba
and
Shes-rab 'byung-gnas
use these terms in the
same
way. Personal communication, 30/9/96.
13.
Yael Bentor (1992)
has
made
an
excellent start,
examining
Sa-paD's critique
of
bKa'
-gdams-pa
consecration rites. In this context, it
might be worth
bearing
in
mind
that
while the rNying-ma-pa, bKa'-brgyud-pa
and
dGe-Iugs-pa
schools alike all rely on the bKa' -gdams-pa mind-training (blo-sbyong) tradi
tions deriving from AtisLl, the Sa-skya-pas alone rely
upon
their own: the
Zhen-pa-bzhi bral, revealed
by
the Bodhisattva Mat1.jusri
to
the 12 year-old Sa
chen Kun-dga' snying-po in
the
first decade of
the
12th century.
14.
Conventionally, the I'Nying-ma-pa refer to themselves as
the
tradition of
mkhan-slob-chos-gsum:
the
mkhan-po
(abbot) Santarai
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