Tibschol Downloadable

This is just a brief message to announce Tibschol (Tibetan Scholarship Bibliography) has today been made available to the public for the first time ever. This is a bibliography of works (primarily journal articles, but also books, etc.) about Tibet primarily in English (and Western European languages). What that means is that it will probably be of use to a larger number of persons than the more specialized Tibskrit, which I circulated once again not so very long ago.

 (I should add that the 2009 version is available HERE and HERE).  [Sorry, these links have expired as of Sept. 2014; try doing an internet search for "Tibskrit" and it should be findable)

Some people might think that the power of internet searches has done away with the usefulness of bibliographies such as this. I don't agree. If you think it's true, I recommend that you download Tibschol and make use of it along with your internet searches and let me know the outcome of your experiment.

I will first wish you all happy holidays, safe travel, tolerable weather, good health, and happy times with people you like to be with and who feel great having you around!

Here is a long quote from the introduction followed by the download links (which should be active for the forseeable future).

This bibliography covers primarily Tibetan studies, and only secondarily Nepalese/Himalayan and general Buddhist studies. To anticipate your next question, No, this isn't a proper bibliography in the sense that I have personally inspected every single item listed here. In fact, one of the motivations, in the beginning at least, was to keep references to articles and books that I would have liked very much, but hadn't so far been able, to see. Still, the overwhelming majority of entries do indeed result from my direct perception of the publications in question.

A few, but not many, general anthropological articles, or otherwise not especially relevant items, are included. I hope this won't irritate anyone.

Articles in non-Tibetan languages are the main emphasis, although I have included Tibetan language articles that have appeared in the proceedings of the IATS (International Association of Tibetan Studies).

I include as well Euro-American books that would very likely not be readily available in local libraries, which means in particular older and less-known travel literature, books by members of the Younghusband Expedition and the like.

There is some, but not very much, missionary, mountaineering and specialized geological literature (these have never been at the center of my personal research interests). If these are your main interests you will proably find better bibliographies elsewhere.

The word 'scholarship' in the title is used loosely, with the intention that the emphasis should be on articles in specialized periodicals and collective publications of some degree of scholarly repute; the secondary emphasis is on works that, regardless of (or because of) the metaphysical/materialist assumptions or the methodologies employed, ought to be interesting to serious researchers and academics. (Inclusion here does not mean I approve of or otherwise endorse the content. Sometimes the very badness of a publication is enough to make it interesting or remarkable.)

As far as general Buddhist studies are concerned, the emphasis is on published texts and translations of individual Kanjur and Tanjur works (although a separate bibliography, with diacritic marks, which supplies greater coverage for these has been made, entitled "Tibskrit Philology." It has already been available for free download on the internet, the link given above).

There is less emphasis on East and Southeast Asian and Sri Lankan Buddhism, and on general Indological works (a bit stronger on Central Asian and Indian Buddhism).

References to literature in Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian and Russian languages are all given at second hand. Be warned.

American master's theses and doctoral dissertations are usually, but not always, accompanied with their UMI (University Microfilms International) purchasing numbers.

I estimate that there are at present at least 17,000 entries. Hence it would seem to be larger than Halvard K. Kuløy & Yoshiro Imaeda, Bibliography of Tibetan Studies, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1986), which contains 11,822 entries. (There is, however, much in the Kuløy/Imaeda bibliography that is not included here, and vice versa; I have only on occasion made use of the Kuløy bibliography while making my own, so one ought to consult both bibliographies.)

Unfortunately, the bibliographical database "Karma dgon Tibetan Bibliography: by Erwan Temple has according to my latest information been "deactivated." It was once available at this website: http://www.bibliographietibet.org/. Although it was only possible to search through keywords or author names (and impossible to see the entire bibliography all at once), it was (and probably is) a quite extensive listing (one source estimated it had about 40,000 records!). If it were still available, or if it eventually becomes available again, I would certainly suggest using it as an alternative place to turn in order to find things that are not to be found here, or as a way of verifying or filling out bibliographic details.

I am aware of a few other major bibliographic resources, but since these are only supplied in return for payment, I will not advertise them here. I have neither purchased nor made use of any of them.

If you are fortunate to have a good research library nearby, it is likely it will have the otherwise quite expensive book by Julie G. Marshall, Britain and Tibet, 1765-1947: A Select Annotated Bibliography of British Relations with Tibet and the Himalayan States including Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan, Routledge/Curzon (New York 2004). As may be known from the subtitle, this is a specialized bibliography. I sometimes wish I owned a copy.

For more bibliographical resources for Tibetan studies, see this link.

Diacritics: Please note that certain diacritical marks in common use for Sanskrit transcriptions have simply been omitted (for typographical reasons going back to the time the bibliography was first started, but also because these may not translate into different software environments unless they are equipped for Unicode fonts). Hence, both ´s ('s' with slash mark above, in case it doesn't display properly) and .s ('s' with dot below) are represented by simple 's' (except where the original title in fact uses the 'sh' spelling). Dots above or below 'h,' 'n' or 'm' are omitted. For an example: Astamangalakamâla, in which the 2nd & 3rd letters ought to have dots beneath, and the 7th letter a dot above. Length-marks are represented by "ˆ" above the lower-case vowel, but omitted above capitalized vowels (example: Acârya, in which the initial letter ought to have a length-mark, but does not).

In order to make word searches more effective, Tibetan-language proper names & book titles have been repeated in my own preferred way of transcribing them (employing Wylie system with dashes), and "keywords" (which may include proper names) have often been added (especially when the title is in a language other than English).

So if you are ready for it, go to Tibschol by pressing HERE and following he links you will find there.  In any case, have fun with it. It is free and will continue to be free forever.

TIBSCHOL is unfortunately unavailable at the moment (September 2010), but I will try to have a working link up again soon.   

The Tingri Hundred

√

Padampa in his Zhijé form (and not the 'Cutting' or Chö form) is, in recent times, mainly depicted with the very interesting gesture shown above. It seems to be unique to him, and I've never been able to locate a reasonable explanation for it that carries with it much conviction. If it was made with the right hand alone it would be the ubiquitous Teaching Gesture. (I think the gesture actually works well for many non-Buddhist Euro-types, too, since it looks like 'putting a fine point' on something, or just making a particular point [a 'micro-grip' for holding tiny objects]. It's not just an 'OK,' even if it does look similar, and even if we might find connections here, too, if we reflect awhile. I don't think it an accident that Europe somehow and somewhat shares this understanding with Tibet... Perhaps another time. Meanwhile, see and compare the picture down below.)

I imagine, although I have no proof for it, that the left hand exactly mirroring the right doubles the emphasis on his role as a teacher. But not only that, it seems to be saying that you receive double the teachings from him. At first you have a superficial understanding, and only later on and gradually, if at all, it hits you that he taught with something deeper in mind than you at first imagined. So to speak, the 'inner guru' kicks in. That is just my thought at the moment, and I may come up with a different explanation tomorrow.

The most famous literary piece by far among all the works associated with Padampa is the one known to every Tibetan as The Tingri Hundred. It exists in quite a few recensions, as often happens with extremely popular works, and not just in Tibet. It was written in verse in the form of couplets, about a hundred of them in this case (there is an obviously somewhat shorter version of this set of couplets called The Tingri Eighty). Each couplet ends with the same three syllables, the exclamatory Tingriwa (Ding-ri-ba). Since I need a term for these, I'll just call them Tingriwa couplets.

One way among others to divide the different recensions is to look at this verse (no. E16) to see if it has the word for 'monkey' (spre'u) or the rather similar, but only in its written form, word for 'rhinoceros' (bse'u, which I take to intend bse-ru) I think the monkey version makes better sense, but that's rather beside the point here.

In the forest fastness the monkey [or rhino] thinks it's happy,

but the edge of the forest is ringed with fire, my Tingrians.

We'll call those the monkey and rhino versions.  I only give this as one example among many others, just so nobody will imagine that the text was ever set in stone for all eternity.  Like texts throughout Eurasia in earlier centuries, the manuscripts were alive and evolving beings.

The earliest English translation of this work has helped to promote a rather unfortunate misconception.  The Evans-Wentz publication has Tingriwa translated as "Tingri folk."  This lends the impression that Padampa's words were addressed to the peasant villagers in Tingri. Actually, if they were spoken by Padampa at all, they were spoken to his meditation disciples at Tingri Langkhor, then and now a hermitage located an uncomfortable distance away from the main town.  They were not spoken to the 'folk' and do not belong in the category of folklore.  Another thing to observe about Evans-Wentz's version is that it attempts to use rather archaic English of the King James Biblical variety, making Padampa sound like the proverbial but eccentric prophet crying in the wilderness.  Well, in a way and to some degree I suppose he was.

I imagine you might have been a little surprised when I suggested, just now, that they might not be by Padampa.  Let me rephrase that.  All the versions that we have today were most definitely inspired by Padampa, who was the first to pronounce verses in the just-described form. Padampa spoke the original Tingriwa couplets. The second person to compose them was Padampa's immediate disciple Kunga, who pronounced no fewer than 118 of them just before his own death only 7 years after Padampa's. The odd and interesting fact is that only a very few of the Tingriwa couplets in the popular collections available today are actually found in the sets pronounced by Padampa and Kunga (these two latter preserved only in the Zhijé Collection). The simple solution to this problem is just to say that it's very likely that the collections we have today were not in fact by Padampa, but appeared at a later date in Tibetan literary history.  This idea might be supported with the information that, to the best of my knowledge, the very first Tibetan-authored work to quote any of the verses from the Tingri Hundred is one by the author of the most famous Tibetan history book, The Blue Annals.  That means Gö Lotsawa, in his commentary on the Ratnagotravibhaga.  You can find the verse Gö Lotsawa quotes at no. E20 in our text of The Tingri Hundred.

Escorted by your Lama you will arrive where you want to go.

As your fee, pay your trust and veneration, my Tingrians.

What that means is that the earliest citation of a couplet resembling any of those we have in our Tingri Eighty or Tingri Hundred collections (both of them include this verse, but the sets of Tingriwa couplets in the Zhijé Collection do not have it) is in a composition dated to 1473 CE.  The other known verse citations date between the 18th century and the present.  There are quite a few of these, testifying to the popularity of our collection in the last three centuries.

When we look at the end of the work, we find a colophon in the form of a stanza which would seem to tell us that some unnamed person 'compiled' or 'arranged' it (if that is the right understanding for the verb bkod in this context, since sometimes it can mean 'composed').

Many verses gently encourage ethical behavior, but some of them are just so blatantly moralizing (particularly some of the verses near the end, which anyway are missing from some of the published versions), I can't believe Padampa actually taught them in Tingri (see couplets E95 through E98). It just wasn't his style. And his students, all serious Buddhist meditators, didn't need to be told to try and be good people.  Or to shun evil companions.  Really not.

The irony is that Padampa's best-known legacy is not our best guide to his actual teachings.  That guide would be the Zhijé Collection itself.  (If it weren't for some other Zhijé collections of comparable age and quality that lie unpublished and inaccessible in Lhasa libraries, we might say with justice that the Zhijé Collection is the only thing there is.)

It shouldn't be cause for any wonder that a recurring theme of the verses is death. It is a Last Will and Testament, after all. I hope that hearing that word won't scare you off. That would be unfortunate.

A flower one moment fine, the next moment all dried out,
there’s no relying on the body, my Tingrians.

– Couplet E30 of The Tingri Hundred.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

  Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

 Tomorrow will be dying.

The message of this verse that opens Robert Herrick's famous poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" — the same verse makes a cameo appearance in that 1989 Robin Williams movie, The Dead Poets Society — is that young people had better hurry up and get laid while they still have it in them. Padampa's verse uses the death imagery of the faded flower to encourage renunciation of worldly life. Herrick equips his verse with the same imagery to encourage young people to dive headlong into it. Same medium, same poetic flower imagery... opposite messages. Which I suppose is one reason Padampa, with his strong-minded advocacy of the life of renunciation, of meditation in solitude, is not likely to find multitudes of ready listeners in our day. My position is that even an imagined renunciation can do much to promote ethical reflection by people who find themselves, willingly or not, caught up in the flow (and of course the ebb) of life. In that spirit, I think anyone can appreciate at least some parts of The Tingri Hundred. I'm not alone here thinking we simply must think more about what we're doing and why. Am I?

And before sending you off to read the translation, assuming you're prepared to do that, I'd like to say that these critical reflections of mine about authorship have no bearing whatsoever on the Buddhist truth and/or spiritual authority of the text itself. It is great Tibetan poetry, a monument to the Tibetan language, a source of wisdom regardless of your ideas about religion, and a trigger for reflection on life, no matter who wrote it when. Feel free to think as you like.

The message as well as the language of this Last Will is naturally a little solemn, and rather unconsciously I have preserved a degree of solemnity in the translation, using words like savor and imbibe instead of taste and drink.  But on occasion there is a breath of lightness and ease, a bit of almost-casual colloquial expression. I've tried to supply some of these moments, too, to the best of my ability, not always in the same places though. Nothing in these translations is final. Like everything else, it's a continuing process.

Perhaps for a later blog I'll try to finish up my translation of Padampa's original set of a dozen or so Tingriwa couplets and give more evidence for, and develop further, the ideas I've put forward here.  Don't neglect to breathe.  I've got a few other things to do meanwhile.

Click on the peacock eyes to enter

READ MORE...

Carpe Diem: Poems for Making the Most of Time. Posted at the official website of the Academy of American Poets, here.

'Gos Lo-tsâ-ba Gzhon-nu-dpal, Theg pa chen po rgyud bla ma'i bstan bcos kyi 'grel bshad de kho na nyid rab tu gsal ba'i me long, Commentary on the Ratnagotravibhâgavyâkhyâ, ed. by Klaus-Dieter Mathes, Franz Steiner (Stuttgart 2003), at p. 53 is the quote of Padampa's verse. K-D Mathes' translation of couplet E20 has just been published in his monumental translation of that just-mentioned work under the title A Direct Path to the Buddha Within: Go Lotsawa's Mahamudra Interpretation of the Ratnagotravibhaga, Wisdom (Boston 2008), p. 262:

If you commend yourself to the lama, you reach wherever you like.
People of Dingri, show devotion and respect to the lama [who is like your] feet.

Chapter 17, "The Gesture of Thought, the Sign of Logos," contained in: H.P. L'Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World, Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning (Oslo 1953), pp. 171-197.  

"The scroll [or book] in the left hand contains the written speech; the gesture of the right one expresses the realization of the written in the living word."

Portrait of L. Gernier, 
a professor of theology from Basel, 
painted by J.R. Werenfels.

Leeches & Prapañcas

Yes, I know, it's not a leech.  It's a centipede.  Wondering why?  OK, keep wondering.

In the comments section there was a discussion on the subject of metaphor no. 2 of Padampa's Root Text.  I have now changed my translation, following Early Tibet's correction, to read as follows:

The leech, satiated with blood, doesn't go after meat that is in the water.

The Commentary on no. 2 reads (also changed slightly, adding the words in blue):

Leech — The worm known as the leech is found in narrow places in swamps all over Mon and India. It drinks the blood it sucks from the feet of humans. Until it has had its fill, even if you pull on it you can't remove it. Then it's exhausted, and won't even go after meat that's [been placed] in the water. Likewise when you have ceased the outflows (prapañca) of a mind that has cultivated learning, reflection and meditation, a sense of ease appears.

I believe this is a good instance of how the Tibetan commentator sometimes doesn't exactly give a straightforward interpretation of Padampa's intended meanings.  In his last sentence he does at least supply what looks like it would be an essential clue.  It has to do with those things that I hastily (and, I admit it, badly) translated as 'outflows,' the prapañcas (Tibetan spros-pa).

Perhaps the most popular way to English prapañca is 'conceptual diffusion,' although I don't suppose this will provoke much resonance in most people's minds.  Perhaps that's why I've always been scouting for another way to render it.  I once asked a good Shaivite friend in Nepal what it meant, and was surprised to hear an explanation that generally jibed with what I had largely intuited from Tibetan Buddhist sources.  I don't remember his exact wording, but he told me that it's a function of the mind that ventures out into the world and pushes one thing this way, tucks another thing that way, until the 'world' (or more to the point the individual's perception of the same) better conforms to the person's mentality.

I hope no one will take my word alone for what prapañca means.*** There are basically two writings in existence that I believe cast a significant amount of light on this perplexing Indian idea as it is used in Buddhist sources. One is a 4-page essay by P. D. Premasiri,* which is limited to Pâli sources. The other is an article by Karen Lang.** She ranges over all kinds of Indian sources, including Vedic scriptures, Jain texts, and particularly Pâli scriptures and commentaries (Vedântic treatises and Madhyamaka classics surface only briefly at the end). Like the Tibetan commentator, I don't mean to force upon anyone a particular understanding of how the leech (or the things the leech does) & the prapañca might be analogous, but I imagine that if you were to read these two articles carefully some sense might just pop up like all of a sudden. I'll just hand you a couple of quotes that might hint at what it's about.

Lang nicely summarizes in her introduction the practical meditation concerns within which the term prapañca operates:

"Several Indian religious works... use the expression prapañca (Pâli papañca) to refer to the world perceived and constructed as the result of disturbed mental states.  In order to calm this unquiet world, these works advocate meditative practices that staunch the flow of normal sensory experience."

Even more nicely, Lang says:

"[T]he Buddha, when asked how to realize nibbâna, responded that one must cut off the root of what is called conceptual proliferation, namely the thought "I am" and by remaining mindful control whatever internal desires he has.  In this way, one achieves the goal of inner calm."

And if I may quote from the summary at the end of Premasiri's essay:

"[I]t [papañca] may be interpreted as a psychological term that signifies the internal sub-vocal chatter that goes on in the mind using the prolific conceptual constructions based on sense perception.  This internal chatter feeds and is fed by unwholesome emotions such as craving, conceit and dogmatism and produces the tensions, anxieties and dogmatism that produce the tensions, anxieties and sorrows of the individual. The overt expression of this psychological condition is witnessed in the conflicts and disputes that manifest in society.**** Papañca may be understood as the psychological turmoil to which a person becomes a victim due to the lack of awareness and insight into the realities of the sensory process to which all beings constituted of a psychophysical organism are exposed."

Prapañcas are closely intertangled with conceptual thinking (vitarka, rtog-pa) — both are also intertangled with sense perceptions — but, unlike conceptual thinking, they have an apparently 'outward' interfering function (mind you, they don't really go anywhere). They are driven by irrational cravings, selfish conceit and inflexible views. They in turn result in both individual mental disturbances and social miseries, the latter particularly including conflicts with other people.  Clear?  Hmm. Let me give it one final shot, if you will permit me.

Narcissism as a world-distorting mechanism?

Imagine a big ball of fluffy white cotton appears right there in front of you on your desk. I'm not sure it really is cotton, or anything else for that matter, but it sure looks like it is. It just sits there and you're not sure what to do with it, but somehow it must be dealt with, so you start poking it with a finger from one side and then the other. Getting impatient with this game you take it in both hands. You do your best to stuff the whole thing inside a desk divider or it gets compacted into one big block inside your pencil box. Then you pull it out of the square or round pencil box and it seems to keep the shape of the box, but you pull at it from one side and then the other and it starts to fluff out, but you keep going until little wisps of cotton are decorating your whole room. You pull some of the wisps back together and make little balls and try to bounce them around. Perhaps you try to restore the complete ball, but this ends in frustration.

Now it's necessary to partly deconstruct the analogy.  Just think to yourself that it wasn't your fingers doing all that stuff to the cotton ball. It was your mind in its usual self-cherishing (or egocentric, or narcissistic) condition. And the cotton ball was the world as you perceive it. And you're not normally the least bit aware of it, let alone in control. There you go. I tried. Now you have a mental image — perhaps a useful one, I'm not sure of it — of prapañcas.  But bear in mind that I just made it up to suit myself...  Doing what I do best, making a mess of things.  Confabulating.

†  †  †

The Tibetan text of the commentary (there is only one witness, the one in the Zhijé Collection, vol. 1, p. 432) reads like this:

pad pas zhes bya ba ni / srin bu pad pas bya ba mon nam rgya gar kun na 'dam rdzab kyi gseb na yod par 'dug / /  de myi'i [r]kang pa la khrag 'jib pa'i 'thung bar byed de / ma ngoms par [~bar] du then kyang myi thon pa yin par 'dug / kho rang kho dag chad pa dang chu'i nang nas [~na] sha'i phyi[r] myi 'breng gsung / de bzhin du thos bsam sgom gsum gyi[s?] blo'i spros pa chod nas dal ba'i nyams 'char ro gsung.

**Karen Lang, Meditation as a Tool for Deconstructing the Phenomenal World, contained in: Tadeusz Skorupski & Ulrich Pagel, eds., The Buddhist Forum, Volume III, 1991-1993: Papers in Honour and Appreciation of Professor David Seyfort Ruegg's Contribution to Indological, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (London 1994), pp. 143-159.

*P.D. Premasiri, Papañca, contained in: W.G. Weeraratne, ed., Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 7, Fascicle 2, Government of Sri Lanka (Colombo 2004), pp. 299-303. This important reference work, decades in the making, unfortunately may be hard to locate.  The most likely place is the reference section of a large research library.

****"I heard David Chase [the director] say one time that it's about people who lie to themselves, as we all do. Lying to ourselves on a daily basis and the mess it creates."

— James Gandolfini, the actor who plays Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, interviewed in Rolling Stone in March 2001. Watch this television series with care and you might see and reflect how people can be both true to [what they regard as] themselves and constantly telling lies. (Tony even exploits his sessions with his analyst in order to justify and rationalize to himself doing the [evil] things he would have done anyway, making her complicit in his criminality rather than bettering himself as a human being.) An interesting example of art as metaphor for life, for how art works, and for how art works on us. For this quote and more, look here.

***If you would like to know other ways of defining prapañca, try this short one at Wikipedia or this longer one at Buddhist Door.  You might also want to try here and scroll down to part "a" of section "3."  

For an introduction to the problem of the relationship between psychology and Buddhism (an essential therapy for those who think their concerns are identical written by someone with excellent background in their two cultures), see Luis O. Gómez, Psychology, contained in: Robert E. Buswell Jr., ed., Encyclopedia of Buddhism, MacMillan Reference USA (NY 2004), pp. 678-692.

If you're into comparative linguistics and you actually do give a fig about how to say 'leech' in other Tibeto-Burman languages, link this PDF article by James Matisoff, and then scroll down to page 150.  You'll see that the Monpa for 'leech' is pat-pa, which is closest to the Written Tibetan form pad-pa (and I see this as evidence that the sometimes encountered WT form padma [Skt. 'lotus'] is an ignorant 'correction'... Or should I say an unnecessary correction?  An incorrect correction?  Umm. You know what I mean).

"The Sanskrit term prapañca has a root that connotes multiplicity, variation, etc. As it is used in Buddhist psychology and philosophy of mind, it denotes the mind’s tendency to create ideas and experiences that have nothing to do with reality, to spin out of control, to fantasize, to superimpose its own fantasies on reality. We have chosen to translate this as fabrication, which does a good job of capturing the core idea of creating a falsehood, of making things up."

— Jay Garfield

phyi yi spros pa rang gi sems la bsdus ||

'khyag rom chu ru zhu'o ding ri ba ||

The conceptual elaboration of your external world is subsumed in your own mind.

Frozen blocks of ice melt into water, my Tingrians.

— Padampa Sanggyé

The Question of Indianness

Photo taken by Aryeh Sorek, at Kushinagara, India, 2008

Today's blog entry exists for no other purpose than to direct you to another website where you can download a copy of a paper originally written for the 11th International Association of Tibetan Studies held in August of 2006 at Königswinter, Germany, where a more primitive version of it was delivered aloud. The title of this paper is, "Padampa's Animal Metaphors and the Question of Indian-ness (Theirs and His)." It will not be published in the proceedings of that conference. It is being published here instead. For free. After you click on the following link, go way down to the bottom of the page that will open for you to try and locate a tiny "icon." Click on that "icon" once or twice once you find it. A PDF file should open for you. Save a copy to your hard disk if you want. Send the link to friends if you think they will find it interesting.  Cite it to your heart's content, just as if it were a published paper as, in a sense, it is.

Or, if you are one of those rare and unusual persons who would prefer to read "online," you can just read it without downloading the paper (personally, I recommend downloading the PDF file and printing it out before beginning to read... I think that you, like me, are probably spending enough time staring at screens).

I ask readers to have patience if they should happen to notice that I've repeated myself a little bit here and there.  I invite discussion.  As always.  And if something doesn't make sense, I can try to do better.  No guarantees.

Click here to get started

Padampa said to Menyag Köndrag,

If you have a heartfelt idea to practice Dharma, your better refuge is taking a Lama. The chief object of virtuous practice is benefitting others. The chief object of the precepts is arousing certainty. The chief object of learning and reflection is to tame your own mind. The chief object of realization is to dissolve reifications. In so far as these things are grasped upon for other reasons, they are causes for (falling further into) the vicious circles of sangsara.

— Conch Shell Fragments

me nyag dkon grags la dam pa'i zhal nas |

snying nas chos bya bsam yod na skyabs gnas kyi dam par bla ma zung | dge sbyor gyi gtso' bor gzhan don gyis | gdams pa'i gtso' bor nges shes bskyed | thos bsam gyi gtso' bor rang rgyud thul | rtogs pa'i gtso' bor bden 'dzin shig | ched du bzung tshad 'khor ba'i rgyu yin no gsung ||  ||

མེ་ཉག་དཀོན་གྲགས་ལ་དམ་པའི་ཞལ་ནས། སྙིང་ནས་ཆོས་བྱ་བསམ་ཡོད་ན་སྐྱབས་གནས་ཀྱི་དམ་པར་བླ་མ་ཟུང་། དགེ་སྦྱོར་གྱི་གཙོའ་བོར་གཞན་དོན་གྱིས། གདམས་པའི་གཙོའ་བོར་ངེས་ཤེས་བསྐྱེད། ཐོས་བསམ་གྱི་གཙོའ་བོར་རང་རྒྱུད་ཐུལ། རྟོགས་པའི་གཙོའ་བོར་བདེན་འཛིན་ཤིག ཆེད་དུ་བཟུང་ཚད་འཁོར་བའི་རྒྱུ་ཡིན་ནོ་གསུང་།།  །།

Dkar po dung gi cho lu.   Zhijé Collection, vol. 2, pp. 424-5. 

Unpacking a Few Animal Metaphors

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

— William Blake

I’ve been keeping J. Bronowski’s published lectures, The Visionary Eye, next to my bed and taking it in a chapter at a time or until my eyelids get too heavy. After approaching it with much good will, I have to say that I don’t find very much inspiring in his ideas. Mind you this is not to say that I don’t find it interesting to see how a theoretical mathematician and scientist can come to claim the arts as part of his vision of the universe. Even if his book does nicely promote the necessity of visual imagination for the sciences, at least in their more creative aspects, he scarcely succeeds in healing the divide between what C.P. Snow called The Two Cultures. That’s the problem Bronowski proposed to solve, and apparently believed he did solve.

Laying that aside, I do commend him for what he says about the just-quoted words of Blake. North Americans, as Bronowski points out, have to be aware that Blake intended a different bird than the one they know as the robin. More to the point, he says Blake is telling us “that to cage a [wild and] living creature is a fundamental outrage” against nature. But further, that as much as it may be about animal welfare, or the level of freedom experienced by tenured academics, it is also and more bluntly about man's inhumanity to man. This is even more clear in the couplets that come immediately afterward in Auguries of Innocence:

A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons

Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.

A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate,

Predicts the ruin of the State.

The doves here are the poor pigeon-holed functionaries under the control of their superiors. They are made to live lives that are not their own, and are constantly made to feel it. “White collar workers,” as they are now known. The dogs are people who are as mistreated as dogs — factory workers, farm workers, household help and the like. I don't know about you, but I've been there. So take no offense when I call them the "dog collar workers." (There are those who think this last term applies only to priests, but they are mistaken.)

It is not very difficult to detect strains of social protest in some of the words of Padampa. For example, he protested women's typical social roles, telling women to "stop slaving for their husbands." This critical attitude of Padampa has been argued for, supplying evidence, in another place.

I would not suggest that Padampa's use of animal imagery is exactly the same as Blake's. And surely Padampa had no experience of those “dark satanic mills” that came with the industrial revolution. We do have our modernists with their exaggerated tendency to draw lines in the sands of times across which meaning is not permitted to cross.

I think for example of modernist theologians who want to do away with the pastoral imagery in Christianity since, they say, it can no longer speak to us. As if when the shepherds have been replaced in our liturgies by union bosses we would get the same message all the more effectively! And then who might the sheep correspond to today? I think the real sheep are the ones who are incapable of imagining why all that pastoral imagery was used in the first place.

 Jesus - Orpheus - Good Shepherd - David.

3rd century CE, Domatilla catacomb

And speaking of shepherds and the like, What sense do you make of no. 6 in the metaphors?

The Root Text: "Consider the actions of this sea captain of a small boat in the mouth of the makara."

The Commentary: "Stuffed into the mouth of the makara — Inexperienced sea captains who haven't first prepared well and who haven't done the checking of the signs get stuffed into the mouth of the makara, this being the very emblem of regret."

(I know it's about sea captains, not shepherds, but Hey, bear with me a moment.)

If we follow the advice of the Root Text and consider what sort of actions this sea captain might be performing, I suppose the answer would be this: Frantically trying every possible method of getting out of the makara's mouth — all those efforts ineffectual, too little too late.

From a Stupa Railing at Bharhut,
1st Cent. BCE

Of course some of you won't have the least idea what a makara is, but it is enough to know that it is a huge and dangerous aquatic creature that threatens ship-borne merchants. You could think of it as a composite of elephant, squid, whale and crocodile. If that is too difficult to visualize, just think of it as a monster of the deep. The oceans hold out to us the prospect of unimaginable wealth. But the makara prevents us from getting it, or from getting it home.

Miniature of a whale and a sailing boat, from a Bestiary, England, 13th century, British Library, Harley MS 4751, fol. 69r. Source: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/ You might not ever stop to think it might not be land until it starts sinking and taking you down with it.

But who is the sea captain? We know that Padampa's own father was a sea captain who brought spices and jewels from distant islands. And we know that sea trade was starting to really take off between south China and eastern Indian ports, and the ports in between, already in the 4th century CE. In Padampa's metaphors he is not being so crass as to talk about his own dad. That said, the fact that his father was a sea captain could help explain why he makes such frequent reference to the sea. It could explain the unusually high proportion of sea turtle metaphors (more on that in another place.)

Here is a nice quote from another text of Padampa's, the Symbolic Speech, the 2nd of a trilogy called The Three Cycles of Symbolic Responses. 

As a symbolic way of saying that for the actual practice, if you don't carry through with it, putting on the armor of the preparatory practice is unnecessary, [Padampa] said,

— “There is no reason to go along with a sea captain who will not be bringing back the precious substances.” *

*You can check another English translation, if you like, in the new David Molk book, p. 186, which is really quite different. 'Precious substances' translates rinpoché (rin-po-che), which means the really top ticket items — the five most precious kinds of gemstones plus silver and gold.

Later on in the same work,

As a symbolic way of saying that without the guidance of the Lama, you will not find understanding through letters

— Lama Char (Phyar) was making some letters when Dampa said, “When a sea captain relies on the written record about going to the Gold Isle, he doesn't recognize the desired course. You need to travel with the experience of a great sea captain familiar with the seaways.”*

*Compare Molk, p. 187. Even the ordinary sand and stones of the Gold Isle are made of gold according to the legends. Self-help books can be no real help either in seafaring or in meditation.

There is a single word in Tibetan that we can translate both as 'caravan leader' and 'sea captain,' depending on whether the context is land or ocean. That word is depön (ded-dpon), which means 'leader' (a chief who is followed). It is used to translate Sanskrit sārthavāha, which means 'bearer of things of value.' The Tibetan emphasizes the idea of leader, while the Sanskrit leans more toward the meaning of 'merchant' (and not necessarily the merchants' leader!) but it doesn't really matter very much right now, since the whole range of possible meanings is useful to bear in mind.

Not to multipy examples unduly, let's review what I think we know. First of all the caravan or ship leader is an ad hoc leader of a group (typically or archetypically 500) of merchants. He must know the way. She must know about the dangers and how to avoid them. He has to be able to bring home the gold. She becomes leader precisely because of these qualities. And his leadership role comes to an end when the venture or adventure is over. (Yes, I slipped the 'she's in there just to keep that possibility explicitly open, though I haven't yet run across any examples of female sea captains in the Buddhist tales...)

Is it all that surprising, then, that the caravan or sea trading venture leader could be a symbol of the Buddha or the Bodhisattva? Dien (article cited below) quotes from the Ten Grounds Sūtra:

"The wise merchant-chief is like the Bodhisattvas, for he leads and protects great merchants and others so as to pass through a dangerous and difficult road."

In Spiritual Precepts of the All-Good Lama, the chapter on how to follow a spiritual friend starts out:

"No-one can bring back jewels from a treasure island without relying on an experienced navigator. Likewise, a spiritual friend is our true guide to liberation and omniscience, and we must follow him with respect."

We rely on experts in many fields for many different purposes. If there is a leaking faucet we look for a good plumber. And everyone knows it doesn't take long before people start to look a lot like their friends in everything they do. Ethics and the absence of ethics are both contagious. It's true, too, that being near a master of meditation can make meditation so much easier. Like they say, In the sandalwood forests of the Malaya Mountains, every tree has the scent of sandalwood.

The tradition knows all about false teachers, about narrow-minded 'gurus' with exaggerated ideas about their own highly advanced levels of Enlightenment, about mad 'gurus' who merely imitate the behavior of the Siddhas, and sightless guides who in fact do not have qualities that make them any better than their students.

And the tradition is much more aware of the dangers of committing before the investigations have been completed. This verse attributed to Guru Rinpoché (or Padmasambhava) is often quoted from memory:

If the teacher is not examined by the student,

It's like drinking poison.

If the student is not examined by the teacher,

It's like jumping off a cliff.

People in the 21st century have no grounds for feeling superior to people in the past. They still require help in learning meditation, avoiding psychological pitfalls and so forth, and they still often seek such help in the wrong places.

I have sometimes wondered when and where the following three-fold concept emerged exactly, and didn't come to any conclusion. There is an idea about three types of Bodhicitta (the 'thought of Enlightenment' that defines the Bodhisattva's aspiration), the shepherd, the sea captain and the king. (About the only decent discussion to be found on the web is this one here.)

We may seem to wander aimlessly, so let's turn back to metaphor no. 6, I just hope it starts to make better sense now. If you understand the sea captain to be a Bodhisattva or the kind of spiritual mentor Tibetans know as the Lama — used to translate Sanskrit Guru — that will do just fine. There are those who shudder at the very word 'guru' even though it gets used more and more — and I would add more and more inappropriately — these days. (As in "Wall Street guru," not to mention "repeating the mantra of economic growth.") 

Padampa was a very old man meditating in solitude at Tingri Langkor, living off roots and dandelion greens, when people started coming to stay near him. He never intended to found anything, and had no idea while he lived that he would ever be considered the founder of anything. And even though he sometimes used methods that could be considered somewhat shockingly counterintuitive then as now, he always acted out of a motive to help his students on their way to Enlightenment. That's why they came to him. He never promoted psychological dependencies on his person, or even if he did it was a temporary phase instrumental in promoting their freedom.

Look at metaphor no. 29:

The Root Text: When the armor has formed on the chick's body, then injury from the peacock is far off.

The Commentary: 'The chick' and 'formed armor on its body' — At first without any feathers or down, it appears rather blue. For so long as it has grown no down its mother keeps it covered. This is called moulting (nesting?). After its down has grown, it is okay if it isn't covered. Likewise until the student gains independence, the guru's protection is necessary. When able to act independently, it is as if the time of moulting has arrived, and the student is sent off freely.

So that's what I wanted to put forward for now. One thing shouldn't even be necessary to say, but here it is anyway: If you are frightened of charismatic "guru" figures, stay away from them. If you are committed to a spiritual path and feel the need for assistance and guidance, take your time and choose very carefully before making commitments. As with any friendly relationship, you find out if a person is trustworthy by getting to know them gradually. Make sure they're prepared for it. And if you keep a close watch, confidence games will almost inevitably betray themselves before long. That's the "checking of the signs." It has to take place on both sides. This could hold regardless of which religious brand name you follow. And it doesn't matter whether you are comfortable using the Sanskrit word guru for this mentoring relationship or not.

† † †

I was thinking I would try and try again to illuminate the religious and culture-based blind spots for each of the metaphors, starting at the beginning, to try and supply the best help I am able to give that might result in better insights. Overly ambitious, Yes. But I thought I would dig this one out of the comment section and place it here instead.

Well, let me give metaphor no. 1 a try again, in an attempt to answer one of the deceptively small questions from Small Person. The Root Text reads: "Fooled by [its] name and hearing the digging, at that very time the pe-ta abandons its dear life."

A few years ago the word pe-ta sent me running to the most obscure Sanskrit dictionaries to search for any animal name even remotely similar to it. I was thinking that pe-ta is a Tibetanized form of an already Prakritized form of Sanskrit bhadra ('good'), which would have been the 'original' [?] name of the creature.

(In Prakrit, which is supposed to be more like 'common' or colloquial language, I believe you would lose the 'r' when it follows another consonant... Some think that literary Prakrit is not a real colloquial language at all, but just a facsimile of one made by dampening or dumbing down the Sanskrit... Today I won't judge either way...)

(It's also interesting to note that Milarepa's sister was named Pe-ta, even if I'm not sure how knowing that can help us, since I know of no explanation of her name even once being proposed. Well, I guess it looks as if it could be a humorous nickname or childhood 'pet' name (such names in Tibetan do sometimes include animal names). One biographer of Milarepa (or a scribe) fixed her name to the more familiar Pre-ta (Sanskrit preta, the hungry ghost). There is a general philological principle that says that the odd or unusual form, the difficult reading, is usually the older and more correct one... It's called by this Latin phrase: Lectio difficilior potior. The more difficult reading is more powerful. Right! We'll bear that in mind.)

(And if PETA is also the acronym of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, we'll take that as a nearly complete coincidence.)

But I have to admit, too, that this understanding of mine came very largely from Padampa and his commentator. I didn't really have a source to verify it. But then eventually, when I was excited to find (thanks to a reference in a marvelous study by Klaus Karttunen) the evidence of The Small Clay Cart by Śūdraka, I started to change my mind, thinking that bhadra and the word behind pe-ta are two parts of a single name for the moth (not the worm) that occurs in the play: bhadrapīṭha. I may still be changing my mind.

(In The Small Clay Cart this moth is sent in by a burglar through a hole he made in the wall so it will put out the night lamp before he goes inside to steal all the valuables...

"Sharvilaka_. One may not disregard the sacred wish of a cow and the wish of a Brahman. I will take it. But look! There burns the candle. I keep about me a moth for the express purpose of extinguishing candles. I will let him enter the flame. This is his place and hour. May this moth which I here release, depart to flutter above the flame in varying circles. The breeze from the insect's wings has translated the flame into accursèd darkness."

(It's a play with a fascinating plot, but let's run through it somewhere else some other time.)

With either explanation, though, I don't think our ways of understanding the meaning of Padampa's metaphor would be very much altered.

Instead of 'fooled' in Padampa's statement, try translating 'enticed' (it works just as well as a translation of the Tibetan, which could also mean misled, led astray, etc.).

But to try and move closer to that valid and expectable question about what it really means... I think the key lies in the commentary's phye-gtor, 'flour scattering.' This is the Tibetan equivalent of the ticker-tape parade, confetti and fireworks.

(Although this is a derivative or secondary meaning, phye-gtor can sometimes be simply translated as 'praise' or 'flattery'.)

I think Padampa's point is that if you have people around you praising you to the sky - 'celebrating' you - for your good qualities, the good qualities will come out and die like the woodworms (the name of the poor creature in fact being bhadra, 'good'). If you have admirers telling you how good you are, you contract spiritual pride and all the spirituality gets tipped into the bin. (Or gets drowned to death in the sweetened milk of their praise.)

I say toss it over one or two more times and see if anything falls into place. I'm not sure anything does, really. The human mind has such a strong tendency to keep searching for meaning in things until some kind of meaning is found. I could be susceptible. And so could you.

Imagine yourself stepping out of a limo onto a red carpet runway, with lots of people calling out your name, throwing confetti, saying how great you are and offering you sweet smelling stuff.

Sound good? There’s a beautiful Great Vehicle practice called ‘equalization,’ in which you are asked to imagine something just like that. But during the same meditation session you also imagine its opposite, a huge monstrous figure holding an axe and saying terrible things about you. Then you bring up the two images together, testing your reactions to one and the other by turns, in the process equalizing them.

One general point that comes out in my own reading of Padampa's no. 1 is this simple recipe, which you can try yourself if you get a chance. Take one spiritual teacher with long years of meditative experience. Surround her with a circle of admiring disciples all singing her praises, eager to take over the mantle of their guru some day. Wait a very short while. What comes out of the oven? Remaining good qualities of the teacher = zero. Spiritual progress of the students = zero. Sum total? Zero or one big minus.

If past experience is a guide, Padampa is never nonsensical, no matter how obscure his expressions. For things that still don't make sense to me, I keep faith that they one day will. Or if they already make some sense, I imagine that someday they will make more.

I tried, and will keep on trying. You might want to do the same.

More to read if you have the time or the inclination:

Aśvaghoṣa, Life of the Buddha, tr. Patrick Olivelle, Clay Sanskrit Library, New York University Press (New York 2008). This is a bilingual edition, including only the parts that are preserved in Sanskrit with an English translation (the remainder, surviving only in Tibetan and Chinese, is very briefly summarized near the end of the volume). The Clay Sanskrit Library produces uniformly beautiful books. See this review by Prof. David Shulman from The New Republic.

J. Bronowski, The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature & Science, MIT Press (Cambridge 1989), reprint of 1978 edition.

Albert E. Dien, “The Sa-pao Problem Re-Examined,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 3 (July 1962), pp. 335-46. This has a rather technical discussion about words for 'merchant' and 'merchant leader' in various languages where Buddhism spread. It’s in JSTOR if you can get to it.

Michel Foucault, Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of Political Reason, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at Stanford University, October 10 and 16, 1979. No matter what you may think about the author and his influences, there is an intriguing argument here about the no not Roman, no not Greek, but Middle Eastern origins of the 'shepherding' model of leadership and its continuing influences. (Did he never hear of Orpheus? And what was this brainiac's problem with the Middle East exactly?)

Klaus Karttunen, “Śalabha, Pataṅga, etc. Locusts, Crickets, and Moths in Sanskrit Literature,” Cracow Indological Studies, vols. 4-5 (2003), pp. 303-316.

Peter Khoroche, Once the Buddha Was a Monkey: Ārya Śūra's Jātakamālā, University of Chicago Press (Chicago 1989). Read story number 14, on Supāraga. The English translation is beautifully done (write to UCP and ask them to reprint it if they haven't already), but if you prefer you can read it in Sanskrit or Tibetan (the Chinese is not recommended).

Jamgön Kongtrul the Great [Kong-sprul Blo-gros-mtha'-yas, 1813-1899 CE], The Teacher-Student Relationship, tr. by Ron Garry, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1999).

Johan van Manen, “An Occult Law: The Pupil is Apt to Exaggerate the Teacher's Greatness,” Adyar Bulletin, vol. 6 (1913), pp. 102-110. I haven't seen this piece by the well-known Dutch Theosophist Tibetologist, but it would seem to be somehow relevant. There is a brief tribute to the "now largely forgotten" van Manen by Yang Enhong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences located here. 

D. Martin, “The Woman Illusion?” contained in: J. Gyatso & H. Havnevik, eds., Women in Tibet, Hurst (London 2005), pp. 49-82, but especially p. 74 ff., on Padampa's demand that women break free of their normally oppressive social roles by renouncing worldly preoccupations (not quite the same as most modern feminisms, of course — feminists agree about the oppression and the need to break free from it, but most are primarily preoccupied with furthering women's accomplishment of worldly aims).

Andy Rotman, Divine Stories: Divyāvadāna, Wisdom (Boston 2008), Part 1, story no. 8, on Supriya. Supriya was a former existence of the Buddha who led his life as a caravan leader.

Śāntideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, trs. by Vesna A. Wallace and B. Alan Wallace, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1997). There are several nicely done translations of this classic text. I favor this one, partly because it makes good and careful use of both the Sanskrit and the Tibetan versions and partly because it reads well.

Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2002), chapter 12: The Role of the Spiritual Master, pp. 205-221. The author, a London-born Buddhist nun, spent many years in meditation retreat in Lahul. Several months ago she underwent an enthronement ceremony at the hand of the Drugchen Rinpoché, and is now known as Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo.

† † †

Given the centrality of the spiritual teacher or Lama in Tibetan Buddhism, it's a wonder more hasn't been written on the subject. There is an old article by Herbert Guenther, The Spiritual Teacher in Tibet, contained in: Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective (Emeryville 1977), pp. 178-195. There is another article by Alex Wayman, reprinted in Untying the Knots in Buddhism, Motilal (Delhi 1997), pp. 205-222. There have been several studies and translations of the Gurupañcāśikā (Sanskrit text here) attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, most recently Tsongkhapa, The Fulfillment of All Hopes: Guru Devotion in Tibetan Buddhism, tr. by Gareth Sparham, Wisdom (Boston 1999). One of the most interesting writings in English on the subject, if you can find it, is the very traditional yet concise presentation by Thubten Chodrak Yuthok, The Excellent Method for Cultivating Guru Devotion, Written for the Faithful Youth, The Tibet Journal, vol. 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1982), pp. 35-45. For a more detailed but equally traditional discussion see Chapter 6 of Patrul Rinpoche (Dpal-sprul Rin-po-che), Kunzang Lama'i Shelung: The Words of My Perfect Teacher, tr. by the Padmakara Translation Group, Harper Collins (San Francisco 1994), pp. 137-166. Notice also the chapter in the book by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, listed above. This, too, is a traditional approach, but with an additional effort to communicate with seekers in the West. Also eminently worthy of notice is an entire book on the subject by Alex Berzin. Hmm. That seems like quite a lot. I still wonder why more hasn't been written on the subject.

† † †

If you haven't heard much about makaras before, have a look at Khandro Net. And if you have never heard of William Blake, here is the perfect place to get started. Read slowly. If you've read much of him already, you'll be amazed & craz'd by the Blake Digital Archives. The robin photo is from Rampant Scotland. There is a bit on Padampa at Wikipedia, but it needs work. You can get The Little Clay Cart for free. The sea-going vessel you see here is on a building in Venice.

Venezia

For my part, may I be a protector for the unprotected,
A caravan leader for those who have set out on the road,
A boat, a ship and a bridge
For all who wish to cross to the other side.

bdag ni mgon med rnams kyi mgon | |
lam zhugs rnams kyi ded dpon dang | |
brgal 'dod rnams kyi gru dang ni | |
gzings dang zam pa nyid du gyur | |

• Śāntideva's Engaging in the Career of a Bodhisattva, chapter 3, verse 18.

When the world is swept along crooked paths,

he toils in search of the right path.

So, it's no more right to harass that guide

than to harrass a skilled navigator

while the caravan is lost...

Seeing the world plunged in the great flood of samsara

and unable to find the other shore,

This man is working to ferry that world across;

What gentleman would entertain

wicked thoughts against him?

• Aśvaghoṣa, Life of the Buddha, tr. Patrick Olivelle, p. 395.

Another Makara and Merchant Ship Scene,
This One from Borobudur