Itches & Scratches: Part Two

There is a widely shared attitude in many parts of the Buddhist world, and not only among Tibetan Buddhists, that monks should attend to their monastic business and lay people should generally not involve themselves in it, at least not very closely. Once I was visiting a major printer of Tibetan texts done by using the traditional woodblock printing method. I expressed an interest in the small pile of pecha leaves that was resting on his desk. It had a set of very fascinating woodcut pictures illustrating the monk rules of the Vinaya, rather like the examples you can see here, both above and below. The printery man took the pecha leaves out of my hands and put in their place a tract on the evils of tobacco,* as if to say, 'That is for monks. This is for you.'

(*There are many such "evils of" types of texts called by the genre term nyemig (nyes-dmigs). Most of them are revelations said to originate from the Tibetan imperial period, especially from Guru Rinpoché, or Padmasambhava. Of course tobacco was a New World product and its smoking was introduced into Tibet only somewhere near the end of the 17th century. Like Englishmen several decades earlier, Tibetans didn't smoke tobacco, they drank it. Still, we are lead to believe that Guru Rinpoché could have known the word for 'tobacco,' tha-mag, or tha-ma-ka, already in the 8th century. One reason we know smoking was rather common by the beginning of the 18th century is because officials took the trouble to ban it in the wider Lhasa area when the Sixth Dalai Lama made his first ceremonial entry into the city. The Buddha in the Vinaya permitted the inhalation of burning herbs for medicinal purposes, and in fact never forbade smoking. It's just a fact that some Buddhist countries do let their monks smoke, and Burmese monks may be seen enjoying their cigars in public, but I wager that you will never see Tibetan monks lighting up. Many do take tobacco in the form of snuff, however.)

I beg to differ with this idea of two separate domains. For one thing, lay people ought to learn more about monastic life just because they should want to know as much as possible about where their donations are going. They ought to be assured that they will get quality results from their investments. Of course the monks and nuns make up one of the 'three precious' (könchog sum) in which Buddhists 'take refuge' (chabsu chi). These three are, according to the Tibetan version as it is most commonly heard:

sangs-rgyas chos dang tshogs-kyi mchog-rnams-la //

byang-chub bar-du bdag ni skyabs-su mchi //

bdag-gis sbyin sogs bgyis-pa 'di-dag-gis //

'gro-la phan-phyir sangs-rgyas grub-par shog //

In the Buddha, the Dharma and the best of the Sangha

I go for refuge until my awakening.

Through these things I do such as offerings and so forth

may I achieve Buddhahood in order to help animate beings.

If you like, you can compare other translations.

"Taking refuge" can and does serve as a kind of declaration of faith in Buddhism, which is surely an important part of becoming and being a Buddhist, I'd say. Still, most Buddhist teachers insist that it's inadequate in and of itself. Most would add something about accepting the 'four seals' that mark ideas (and by implication, scriptures) as being Buddhist. This is called the 'four seals that tie views to the Buddha's Word' or, in Tibetan, lta-ba bkar btags-kyi phyag-rgya bzhi.

'dus-byas thams-cad mi-rtag-pa /

zag-bcas thams-cad sdug-bsngal-ba /

chos thams-cad bdag-med-pa /

mya-ngan-las 'das-pa zhi-ba'o //

All compounded things are impermanent.

All things accompanied by defilements are suffering.

All things are characterized by non-self.

Nirvana is peace (quiescence, cessation).

There is really nothing specifically Mahayana about this formulation. It's arguably universal to Buddhists. The first three are the triad of anicca, dukkha and anatta known to us from Pali-language Theravada sources. And number 4 reflects more the views of the Pali Nikayas on Enlightenment than it does specifically Mahayana ideas about Complete Enlightenment that can be placed in neither sangsara nor nirvana... But really, in this specific context in which we try to decide what or who counts as being Buddhist, we ought to be inclusive. Well, shouldn't we?

Buddhists, regardless of what else they may be thinking, would need to at least provisionally accept that these ideas of impermanence, suffering and nonself are headed in a promising direction. There is really no good reason to isolate these 'intellectual' criteria from the criteria of Refuge. They go together as part of the same developmental process.

Others, but not so many others, want to insist on some level of effort or success in following a Buddhist life. There are ethical requirements, of course, but also requirements about engaging in practices like meditation. Here some Tibetan Buddhists have argued that we might be in danger of setting the bar too high. If we demand ethical perfection in tandem with the most advanced meditative accomplishments, there will hardly be anyone left to include in the category of Buddhist. At some point, by pressing too hard on the practice requirements, we would have to lose the distinction between Buddhist and Buddha (as of course at some evidently very far-off point beyond the horizon, or over the rainbow, we are supposed to do just that, but there I go getting ahead of myself again).

As persons embarking on the Path to Buddhahood, faith in the vehicle[s] is required. But like all faiths, there is a tendency to be devotional and turn such things as the Three Precious into icons to worship, attending to them in a formal way without the deeper commitments being much involved. Of course when any religion is viewed from the outside, it's unlikely any deeper commitments will be immediately available for our inspection. We may see someone offering a plate of fruit in front of a Buddha image and leave the temple with the impression that's all there is to Buddhism. It's as if Buddha had once said, 'Feed my image,' and people instead of resisting the odd command unthinkingly comply, feeling satisfied that they've done their duty. Really, no reason for us to become superficial behavioralists (like the 'trivialists' or nyi-tshe-ba, those worshippers of the ephemeral day-moth [or are they philologists?] Buddhists themselves like to trivialize... You could also read the account of Buddhist merit making in the book by Alec Le Sueur mentioned in the last blog, for a good example of trivialization and what I like to call 'the false authority of being there,' not that I want to pick on him in particular since so many of us are guilty).

I really didn't want to go too far off into this Buddhist definition problem. For this I suggest the amazing new book by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoché. What I really wanted to say is that, of the Three Precious in which Buddhists take refuge, the third one is "the best of the Sangha." Despite some new American Buddhists who insist on using it to mean every Tom, Jane and Harry who imagines they merit the title of 'Buddhists,' it is a fact that Sangha means the assemblies of monks and nuns. I don't think I should have to add that monks and nuns are Buddhists, and that they take refuge just like lay people do. And my argument is that Buddhists, both lay and monastic, ought to make an effort to recognize, through their qualities, who among the Sangha, the ordained Buddhists, would be worthy of forming an object of their refuge.

It's completely understandable when people agree to "respect the robe" even when the wearer might be everything but worthy. This seems to me quite common in Tibetan Buddhist communities. It could be another example of what I'm calling icon making, constructing an image of monastics built around ritualistic exchanges while paying little or no attention to who those monastics really are. And the big question: Are those monastics really engaging in learning practices, and practicing learnings, that will eventually lend help to humans and other sentient beings?

Anyway, I'm not an iconoclast. I think the use of images and imagery in religious practices is totally justifiable, or anyway, makes a great deal of sense. Perhaps someday you would like to hear my tough-minded arguments about this? And by talking about how nuns and monks lead their lives, I don't mean to imply any disrespect to the monastic vocation. Far from it. I just want to ask the question, Do monastics not itch? Do they need food? Baths? Exercise? Shelter? All these things occupied the Enlightened One's mind, if we are to believe the Vinaya texts, and even if that were the only reason for Buddhists to find it interesting it would be sufficient.

At first the Buddha just said, "Come forth," and people came forward and became monks — a little later nuns were also admitted — extracting themselves from worldly life. For rules, he said, "Do only good. Don't do any bad." Good advice for anyone. Try it on your children. And then on yourself. But the rules developed something like this: Say, the monks needed to get to the roof. The Buddha said it would be OK to build a stairway. They built stairs, but some monks fell off the side and hurt themselves. Then the Buddha said, It will be fine if you will add a railing. Every new elaboration of the rules was occasioned by a particular practical problem.

There was even a special group of six* particularly rowdy monks who serve, in the narrative at least, to provoke the Buddha to make new rules covering some of the more extreme possibilities for misbehavior. Read some Vinaya for yourself, and I think you will see what I mean.

(*They were called the 'Group of Six Bhikshus' (Dge-slong Drug Sde), which some like to call the Gang of Six Monks. Shayne Clarke has recently told the interesting stories about how they ate monkey meat. Some people did think, or might have (depending on the version) thought, they were cooking human flesh. This appearance of impropriety led the Buddha to forbid the eating of monkey meat by monastics. Were lay people forbidden to eat it? you may be wondering. No, I don't think so.)

I'm sorry, but I should have informed you right away that I didn't locate any pictures of back scratchers in those Vinaya illustrations (there are some nice sets in the Bechert & Gombrich picturebook, and in the brief article by Anonymous). But tell me, can you even guess what is going on in the frontispiece of today's blog? What is that monk doing? You see the monk standing there with left hand holding on to a cyllindrical looking thing that seems to be tied around what looks like a horizontal pole. Give up?

The Tibetan text reads:

spong-ba-pa'i 'chag-sa srid-du khru bco-brgyad-pa'i dpe-ste / mi 'thom-par bya-ba'i phyir phreng-thag de-lta-bu-la bskon-pa'i spu-gu'am de-la btags-pa'i tha-gu-la 'jus-te bcag-par bya'o // zhes dang / spong-ba-pa'i ni bco-brgyad-do // zhes-so //

And the text below the illustration, which is also relevant, although it turns out that it is mainly making reference to the lowest part of the illustration (perhaps you noticed the two dotted lines, one leading from the top of the illustration to the large chunk of text, the other slanting down to the following line of text):

rkang-pa gnyis-la rdul mi-'go-bar bya-ba'i phyir bar-thang gding-bar bya'o // zhes-pa'i dpe /

These pieces may be translated:

An illustration of the eighteen-cubit length of the 'treading spot' of the mendicant.* For the sake of making [the monk] free of mental fuzziness (or mental confusion). Grasping on to a tube fitted to such a rope as this one, or grasping onto a string attached to it (the tube), do the treading.**

(*'chag-sa, in Sanskrit, caṅkramaṇa, or caṅkama in Pali. See Upasaka, p. 85: "A walking terrace. The Buddha recommended it for strolling particularly for the sick monks. A ledge was also recommended to protect it from falling down. It might be covered by a roof." In my Tibetan sources, its use is recommended for overcoming sadness or depression, skyo-sangs. 'Mendicant' translate what ought to be bhaikṣuka in Sanskrit. I'm not sure but I think it is used here as just another epithet for 'monk.' The Sanskrit emphasizes living through begging food, while the Tibetan literally means 'renunciate, abandoner.'

**I realize I left off the last bit. I suggest it only makes sense as a part of the larger architecture of the text, so it shouldn't be missed too much. There are actually two quotations from the Mdo-rtsa [on that text see the end of this blog down below] here, and this is one of them.)

and

So that dust will not adhere to the two feet, one ought to spread out the bartang*** carpet. That's what is illustrated here.

(***This word bar-thang may be spelled several different ways, including par-tang, par-thang and bar-tang. The Sanskrit is ciliminikā or cilimilika. The Pali is cimilikā or cilimikā. To judge from the names, it was probably a woven mat made of a material that made odd cricket-like sounds when stepped on. [Have a look here.] Upasaka says it is "a kind of mat or spread used in order to protect the floor," which would seem the opposite to our text, where it protects the feet. He also says it can be made of rags. Since it is used in the 'treading place,' I'm tempted to say that what we have here is a treadmill. However, there is no indication that the cimilikā moved of its own accord. Perhaps this point will be clarified with further research.)

Later on in this text we see a very familiar scene that provokes a deja vu:

The Tibetan says, kha-bton-pa'i 'chag-sa ni khru bcu-gnyis-so // zhes-pa'i dpe /

This means, "The treading place for scriptural recitation is twelve cubits. This illustrates that."

Why is this one a full six cubits shorter and headed in the opposite direction? Let's see... OK. I have no idea. You figure it out. I fully realize that once again, I didn't make it to the important matter of the back scratcher. So I guess there ought to be a Part Three?

I'll keep you guessing.

Many of the illustrations of monastic requisites have to do with water, and I know that water is a subject that interests a few of you. We have water containers and pitchers, of course, but most importantly various devices used to purify water, or at least remove the larger impurities and living beings from it. Apparently there were four different types of sieves or filters recommended for use. The last I knew the Tibetan monks in Drepung in South India were using ultraviolet (UV) water purification systems. The Buddha might have approved, but then again, maybe not. I understand that these implements end the lives of an enormous number of microorganisms that would, if given a choice or a chance, prefer to survive.

I'll leave you to contemplate the meaning. Don't I always?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Read on and on!

Dalai Lama XIII Thubten Gyatso (1875-1933 CE). This is the source of some of the illustrations here. For a full bibliographical reference, look at this page in TBRC.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, What Makes You Not a Buddhist, Shambhala (Boston 2007).

Vinaya Texts, translated from the Pali by T.W. Rhys Davids & Hermann Oldenberg, ed. by F. Max Muller, Low Price Publications (Delhi 1995), reprint of 1882 "Sacred Books of the East" edition. Also available online. This searchable format is most fun and useful.

Anonymous, An Ordained Person's Possessions, Chö Yang [Dharamsala], issue no. 6 (1994), pp. 64-67. Includes drawings of robes, boots, sieves, water pitchers, staff, etc. Highly recommended. The exercise device is illustrated on p. 67, but no explanation at all is offered for it.

Heinz Bechert & Richard Gombrich, editors, The World of Buddhism, Thames & Hudson (London 1984). The interesting illustrations of monastic equipment may be found on pp. 40, 56-57. 82-83, 90. In order to avoid any possible copyright infringements, I had to find similar woodblock prints elsewhere, and this explains the poor quality of my photographs. There is, incidentally, a very rare photograph of colored disks used in Sri Lanka for kasina meditations on p. 118.

Shayne Clarke, Locating Humour in Indian Buddhist Monastic Law Codes: A Comparative Approach, Journal of Indian Philosophy. This is available at SpringerLink, as a so-called "Online First" publication, but only if you can find a way to connect through a subscribing institution. Sorry for that.

Lcang-lung Paṇḍi-ta Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-bstan-pa'i-rgyal-mtshan (1770-1845 CE), Rgya Dkar Nag Rgya Ser Ka-smi-ra Bal Bod Hor-gyi Yi-ge dang Dpe-ris-rnams Grangs Mang-ba, a Peking blockpring in 30 folios. The illustrations of water containers and filters are from this one. The others are from the work by The Dalai Lama XIII.

Gregory Schopen, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India, University of Hawai'i Press (Honolulu 2004). For a fun look at how a person like G.S. can rattle tempestuous teakettles in moderately Buddhist blogs, look to Homeless Tom. Does "iconoclastic" describe Prof. Schopen? You decide. Don't miss this scene when a Buddhist chaplain leaps up from the trenches to his defense at the Elephant.

Jonathan A. Silk, Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasteries, Oxford University Press (Oxford 2008). I'll let you know more about this when I've finished reading it. At the moment I have longer, even if not as interesting, books to read.

Kate Wheeler, Vinaya Vignettes, or, Why the Buddha Had to Make Some Rules, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, vol. 3, no. 4 (Summer 1994), pp. 84-89. Tells some of the more titillating bits related to sexual activities and abstinence, and has some worthwhile observations on Vinaya as a whole: "The Vinaya is one of those ancient books of sacred law that just doesn't shy away from regulating, point by point, the entire range of human possibilities."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All the monastic rule illustration texts (dpe-ris in Tibetan) were made to illustrate a text (with its many commentaries) Tibetans know in short as the Mdo-rtsa, in longer form the 'Dul-ba Mdo Rtsa-ba, which is to say, the Vinaya Sūtra by Guṇaprabha, a circa-5th-century CE disciple of Vasubandhu. It was translated in late Tibetan imperial times by Jinamitra and his Tibetan collaborator Cogro Lui Gyeltsan (Cog-ro Klu'i-rgyal-mtshan). So, it shouldn't be a huge shock to learn that the passage on the 'treading spot' is there, on folio 56 of the Derge version of this text (as transcribed by ACIP), as follows: mi 'thom-par bya-ba'i phyir phreng-thag lta-bu-la bskon-pa'i sbu-gu 'am de-la btags-pa'i tha-gu-la 'jus-te bcag-par bya'o | | mchil-lham-can gyis bcag-par mi bya'o | | rkang-pa gnyis-la rdul mi gos-par bya-ba'i phyir par-tang gding-bar bya'o | |

It has a small bit dropped from the quotation in our derivative text that says, "Do not do the treading with footgear on." Of course, in India, what footgear meant was sandals. I don't think sports shoes were invented yet. Or needed. You see a lot of footwear in the Vinaya illustrations.

One further detail can be known from Guṇaprabha's autocommentary on his Mdo-rtsa text. There we get a clarification on the tube. It says it can be made of hollow bamboo (smyu-gu'i sbubs).

Thanks to reader J.S. for an email that made me reconsider and fix some things in the translations. Thanks to S.C., too, for sending helpful comments.

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. 

Transmigration and Occupation

Just about everything I know about Kor Nirupa is found in the Blue Annals (written in the last part of the 15th century, it was translated by George Roerich and Gendun Choepel in the 20th). It is a fascinating story that connects rather directly with the subject of an earlier web-log on 'The Transmigration.' And it leads off in an unexpected direction, although I probably shouldn't be warning you of this ahead of time.

He was born in the Water Tiger year of 1062 as son number five. The year of his birth was considered very inauspicious for matters related to relatives. So his father did a magic ritual (to be exact, a 'to' [lto, gto] ritual, which is very likely natively Tibetan and non-Buddhist in origin) to turn away misfortune and sent him away to study with a monk. As he left home his sister tossed dust after him, a clear gesture of exorcism and, of course, ostracism. At Lhasa, he took novice ordination, and gained the nickname Korchungwa, which means 'Small Kor' since Kor was his paternal clan. There he found two students of Atisha, who had died in Tibet in 1054. One was named Vairocana, and the other was a Newar by the name of Anutapagupta. He studied Sanskrit grammar with Anutapagupta for a year. Promising him three ounces of gold as a payment, he went to Penyul ('Phan-yul), where a widow of a translator gave him an Indian book. At age 10 (or, as we would say, 9), he got a job at a gold mine watching out for thieves. Meanwhile a thief stole his own things, so he did a magical rite that was successful. A lot of gold was discovered, so he could fulfill his promise to the Newar. Returning to his home area at age 11, he did funerary rites for his father who had died meanwhile. He dug up a piece of turquoise that his sister had hidden away and took it back with him to central Tibet, where he exchanged it for 13 ounces of gold, a bolt of silk and some musk. Only 13, he set off with two companions to Nepal.

In Nepal a man invited them to his house, saying he was the richest person in the entire valley kingdom. When they got there all they saw was a plain brick house with nothing inside but some shards of pottery, a stone slab with holes in it, a goat horn and a wooden spade. This man told them about a teacher in India who was able to shoot arrows straight through people without harming them. He took them and left them at the edge of the cemetery surrounded by jackals where this teacher lived. Named Dazhuchän, he immediately sent Korchung off to pick flowers to be used in his initiation. From Dazhuchän he studied Sanskrit grammar, while the Vajra Vehicle teachings he received from his servant and (later on it would seem) wife, the woman Kumudara. The ritual implements needed for his final empowerment were not at hand, so he went to Nepal to get them, meeting his two companions there. They also wished to request the empowerment.

At age 19, Korchung returned to Tibet in search of suitably large offerings for his Vajra Master. After collecting 13 (there's that number again, although Tibetans didn't think it was unlucky) ounces of gold, he went back to the Indian cemetery and at last received the highest empowerments.

Now we should break off the story, since the author of the Blue Annals also does so. It isn't said explicitly (in the process of reading we are left guessing), but we have to understand that Dazhuchän was in fact none other than Karopa. Karopa was a teacher of the Great Sealing, which he received from his own teacher Maitripa. Karopa had very many students, but one in particular named Nirupa had attained all the mystical powers called siddhi. Nirupa was already an old man of 74 when Karopa recommended that he go to Tibet to help people there. So he went to a mysterious place of 'Stone Water,' which perhaps ought to be a place in Tibet, we just don't know. It's said that whenever creatures touched that Stone Water they turned to stone, but Nirupa wasn't harmed by it and could reach the island in the center that was inhabited by Dakinis. After hosting him in a feast, they made this prophecy:

"You must go to Nepal. There you will find a fine young Tibetan kid, a monk with spiritual insight. Now the right time has come, so do the drongjug and then go to Tibet. We will accompany you and make sure you do not meet with obstacles."

At the time Korchung was staying in the house his patron Bhahu near the Swayambhu Stupa, just outside of Kathmandu. Korchung died and Nirupa performed drongjug on his body. Nirupa's old body was cremated before he left for Tibet. At first he lived like a beggar. One day while begging in Lhasa a voice came toward him from a sand plot pronouncing the Sanskrit name of the previous inhabitant of his body, "Prajñakirti! Prajñakirti!" It was Kumudara who had come with Karopa to Tibet, not just to pay a visit, but because they knew that someone was planning to kill Nirupa and they wanted to prevent this from happening. Nirupa accompanied his teachers back to the Nepal border dressed up like a pundit from the Copper Island. So when people saw him coming, they would say, "Hey, here comes that Indian from the Copper Island." (We don't know for sure what they meant by Copper Island. It could mean Ceylon, or it could mean a place on the east Indian coast, or even the Malay Peninsula...) Then he changed back into Tibetan costume and for the next 21 years taught his students, including 13 monks, the teachings of secret mantra. He performed empowerments and he did solo translations of Indian texts. He died at age 41 in 1102 CE.

Of course, if we identify him with the consciousness entity that entered his body, he would have been about 94 years old, but the sources don't ever say this. His Great Sealing teachings continued for many generations, although not much is known about this lineage. He was apparently the first of several interesting figures to introduce the Great Sealing to Tibet. In Great Sealing, various methods are used to introduce students directly to the actual nature of their own minds, and by doing so, show the nature of all phenomena. In general it is a teaching only for the most mature in spiritual terms. Other Great Sealing teachers that were his contemporaries or came to Tibet soon after him were the south Indian Padampa Sanggyé, the Newar Asu, and the Indian Vajrapani (called Chagna, or Phyag-na, in Tibetan). It is rather odd that we find literary works associated with all these other figures (they mostly learned Tibetan so well they were able to teach without the help of a Tibetan translator), but not a single text associated with Nirupa. Well, there is something after all, but it's a rather short song preserved in a late-13th-century history composed by Khepa Deu (Mkhas-pa Lde'u). Here it is in translation. I'll put the Tibetan text (in transliteration and in real Tibetan script) immediately after for those who are eager to read it in the original language:

THE SEVEN QUALITIES, by Tulku Niru[pa].

Like a spring of precious gold bursting out upon the ground,
all the learned Indians come to Tibet.

Like camphor-water bursting out from the midst of glaciers,
their listeners are sharp-thinking and skilled in Holy Dharma.

Like the white lions living at the edges of the glaciers,
the leaders too are great in consultation and counsel.

Like the fierce Troublemaker spirits staying on the glacial heights,
the Bandé and Bönpo are great in magical powers and miracles.

Like the wild yaks and horses living in the south and north,
the young men are courageous and reliable like champions.

Like Rhododendrons growing on the sides of the mountains,
the women are fine figured, refined (or wise) and amazing.

Because it is a projected manifestation of Chenrezi,
Tibet is more beautiful than other countries.

And here is the Tibetan:

sa la rin chen gser gyi khron brdol bas //
rgya gar mkhas pa thams cad bod du byon //
gangs kyi klong nas ga bur chu brdol bas //
nyan pa po rnams blo rno dam chos mkhas //
gangs kyi 'dab mar seng ge dkar gnas pas //
gtso bo rnams kyang gros dang mdun ma che //
gangs ri'i mthong na gnod sbyin gnyan chags pas //
ban bon rnams ni mthu dang rdzu 'phrul che //
lho dang byang na 'brong dang rta gnas pas //
shar po rnams ni dpa' brtan gyad dang 'dra //
ri mtha' rnams la stag ma'i sman gnas pas //
bud med rnams ni dbyibs legs mdzangs shing 'phrul //
spyan ras gzigs kyi sprul pa yin pa'i phyir //
rgyal khams gzhan las bod ni snying rje che // zhes so //




I'm afraid you might have read too fast, and perhaps due to the clunkiness of the translation (I'm sorry, I did my best to make a culturally meaningful one) it didn't make much sense. So let me reiterate. There are seven couplets covering seven things that make Tibet special. They are: 1) The Indian teachers who came to Tibet. 2) Their Tibetan students. 3) Tibet's leaders. 4) Tibet's religious leaders and magicians. 5) Tibet's athletic young men. 6) Tibetan women. 7) Tibet's landscape.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, there are three sets of pairs covering the India/Tibet, the secular/religious and male/female divides, culminating in the land of Tibet itself. Oddly as this may seem, resident foreigners are placed at the head of the list, and the greatness of Tibetan people would seem to stem primarily from the Buddhist culture brought from India. But the song does not neglect to mention Bönpos, who believe their tradition is much more ancient and specific to Tibet (Bandé just means the usual Tibetan Buddhist, by way of contrast). There is more to ponder along these lines.

Pay attention, too, to the things used for comparison. In the first pair we find gold coming up from beneath the ground contrasted with fresh glacial water coming from on high. (Think mineral resources, and irrigation for agriculture.) In the second pair we have two types of beings living in the highlands: the legendary but lonely Snow Lion with its turquoise mane and the temperamental mountain spirits here called by a Tibetan word, nödjin, that corresponds to Sanskrit yaksha. In the third pair: the fauna and flora of Tibet.

However this song might be understood — and I have tried my best to guide understanding without dictating my own — it is difficult to read it as anything less than a patriotic song. I would say it has the ring of a national anthem even if there is no indication that it served that purpose in any official way. As a song of national identity, with more than a hint of the superiority complexes that go along with national identities, it is all the more bewildering and amazing (by turns) when we consider Nirupa's own identity problems. Why is this the only discrete set of words by (or even translated by) him that has come down to us? He was rejected by his entire family, already a major identity problem even without delving into psychoanalytical implications. His father and sister surface one time each later on in his life story, his mother not at all. As a young man he learned a foreign language and traveled abroad. He then lived in Tibet as an Indian occupying a Tibetan body, and he part of the time dressed as an Indian, part of the time as a Tibetan. And he was an advocate of the Great Sealing, in which all those 'self' identity strategies get their covers blown away in a quite radical way. I have to confess that I am only beginning to think about the implications of all this. And will go on thinking.

But let's also think a little about the last line, where the very landscape of Tibet is said to be a miraculous manifestation of the compassion of Chenrezi (that's Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit). The connection between the mountain landscape and the Bodhisattva is particularly clear in a song found in Zhuchen's historical preface to the Dergé Tanjur (the collection of Indian treatises in Tibetan translation as woodblock printed in the city of Dergé in eastern Tibet). Here it is very explicitly called a song. Bodhgaya is the place in Bihar where the Buddha sat down and attained Enlightenment. Pugyel Böd is a special name for Tibet that hearkens back to the period of imperial power (7th through mid-9th centuries). A chörten is both a reliquary for the Buddha's (or other saint's) body and the most important symbol of the Buddha's mind. Here is a bit of this long song:

To the north of Bodhgaya
is the land called Pugyel Böd.
Its high mountains are the pillars of the sky.
Its valley lakes are mandala circles of turquoise.

Its white glaciers are like chörtens made of crystal.
Its yellow meadows like heaps of gold,
are filled with the incense of sweet-smelling herbs,
streaked with golden flowers of gold, and in summer flowers of turquoise.

Oh lord of the glacier mountains Chenrezi,
this land is a field for your compassion
and standing in this field we are the objects of your compassion.
Oh lord of the glacier mountains …

And this song is nothing unusual. The Mani Kambum is a huge collection of stories about the origins of the Tibetan people together with ritual practices for developing compassion. It is supposed to come from the time of Songtsen Gampo who ruled in the first half of the 7th century, although it surfaced in the 11th. We could also point to the highly literary Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogy of the 14th century. I ought to translate for you Sakya Pandita's Praise to the Land of Tibet written in or close to the year 1200 CE, if I only had more faith in my ability to turn his highly ornate poetry into readable English. In short, Nirupa's patriotic poem doesn't stand alone. And I for one refuse to resort to the trick of saying it can't really involve nationalism with all the necessary characteristics (evidently worked out somewhere in 18th-century Europe), and it therefore has to be called proto-nationalism. I just call it nationalism.

The Dalai Lama is also believed by Buddhist Tibetans to be a miraculous manifestation of Chenrezi. Even modernizing Tibetans who may not accept the Buddhist ideas in their entirety see Him as Tibet's only hope; and this includes Marxists and party members so long as no one important is watching them. Give them a photo of His Holiness (which is against the law these days in Tibet) and they will reverently place it on the tops of their heads. Indeed, there is no other national symbol that is even remotely this capable of uniting Tibetan hearts.

Every year on March 10, His Holiness makes a statement to the Tibetan people, in which He generally expresses the very pragmatic position that He will not fall back on historical discussions about the past, but is thinking about the future happiness of all the Tibetan people. In recent years He has increasingly said that Tibetans should, disregarding history, find some way to appreciate the benefits of being part of China. The hope is that things will work out in favor of Tibetan survival if they could only be given a degree of self-governance in matters of culture, language, religion and education. (And please don't be misled for a moment by the word 'autonomous' in 'Tibet Autonomous Region.' Like the autonomous okrugs in the former Soviet Union, this 'autonomous' denotes a nearly complete lack of local autonomy with all significant decisions made by the faraway central authorities.) In this year's speech — which, even given the considerable difference of populations, might be compared with the State of the Union Address by the U.S. president — He emphasized the threat to Tibetan cultural survival posed by the massive Chinese immigration made yet more possible, if not inevitable, by the recently opened railway to Lhasa.

And of course every year, in days following on the heels of March 10th, some PRC representative puts out a response for the media. Let's have a look at what Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang had to say this year, as Zee News reported from Beijing on March 13th:

"We hope the Dalai Lama can face up to history and make right judgement according to the times and review his basic political propositions so as to make right actions so as to do more things that are conducive to the Tibetan people in his life," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang said. Gang was responding to comments made by the Dalai Lama on Saturday on the occasion of the 48th anniversary of the Tibetan "uprising" against Chinese rule, where he criticised the railway line to Tibet. "The Dalai Lama [has] been on exile abroad, engaging in activities undermining the unity of the motherland," he said on the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

This is a typical response, not in its relative mildness, but in the sense that it assumes that His Holiness means exactly the opposite of what He actually says. Talk about bad faith! Since the Dalai Lama always says He's not going to talk about history, they demand that He "face up to history," which indeed was never His approach. His Holiness asks for the minimum amount of cultural autonomy that would allow Tibetan survival into the future and the PRC government comes back accusing Him of what is, evidently, supposed to be a cardinal sin: advocating separatism, or advocating "disguised independence."

I won't pretend that what I as a historian of Tibet have to say will make any difference in the maddeningly ongoing impasse in Sino-Tibetan relations. Historians are accustomed to being ignored, since what they say is often inconvenient. I would just like to start by focusing on the word 'motherland' and then take the route His Holiness does not take, and look at history. Nowhere in all of Tibetan-composed historical sources before the 1950's have I ever encountered the term 'motherland' (ma-yul is the Tibetan that appears in official PRC publications since the 1950's). What you do find, but then rarely, is the word 'fatherland' (pha-yul) and when this term does occur it means Tibet (there are instances of it in what may be the oldest Tibetan historical work known as the Bazhed [Sba-bzhed]). Never in all of these historical sources do you find any word at all that brings Chinese and the Tibetans under a single ethnonym or as part of a single state entity. China is called Gyanag (Rgya-nag), while Tibet is called Bö (Bod). Chinese used to be called Gyanagpa, but nowadays Gyami (Rgya-mi) has become standard. Tibetans are called Bödpa. It really is as simple as that.

Of course it is interesting and worthy of note that even though Gyanag was the ordinary word for 'China' for so many centuries, sometime in the 1960's it was, in the PRC only, officially replaced in Tibetan-language publications with Megyal (Mes-rgyal, 'ancestral country'), a neologism intended to find a name that could be made to include Tibet within China. Of course this official attempt at logo-therapy had little if any effect on the way Tibetans still speak among themselves about China and Chinese. It has had an effect on public speaking and on modern writings in Tibetan emanating from the PRC. (For more on this, see the Tsering Shakya history, pp. 296-7.)

There is a lot of discussion in traditional Tibetan sources about the reasons for the Tibetan words for India and China. The name for India is Gyagar (Rgya-gar), which seems to mean 'white expanse' (*Rgya-dkar) while Gyanag means 'black expanse.' There are a lot of opinions, but I believe the most likely one is just that most Indians wear white clothes, while the color of traditional Chinese clothes was predominantly black (white being reserved for funerals). If we look back again at the late 13th-century history by Khepa Deu already mentioned, it has an interesting list of "Thirty Topics," a kind of ethnographic checklist of the countries surrounding Tibet. It would be quite complicated to do a thorough study of each of the items included, and this is not the place for it, so I will just mention a few relevant things about it. The basic geographic scheme of the 'Four Great Kings" was already in place centuries before Khepa Deu, as we may know from a pre-11th-century Dunhuang document (studied by Macdonald). To follow Khepa Deu, who names a still-unidentified earlier history as his source, the four kingdoms are: [1] The kingdom of India in the south, with its king the King of Buddhism, [2] The kingdom of China in the east with its King of Tsuglag (Astro-sciences), [3] Tazig in the west with its King of Property, and [4] Gesar in the north with its King of Warfare. Skipping over all the topics in between (clothing, food, armor, weapons, ornaments, language, origins, etc.) we come to the posture each of these countries takes towards Tibet. The kingdom of India is coiled up like a snake, China is sneaky like the wolf toward the sheep, Tazig is scouting like the gulping hawk, while Gesar is eager as the axe for the tree.

A few decades ago PRC sources would commonly say 'Tibet has always been a part of China,' or what is not quite so baldly propagandistic, that it has been part of China since the Tang Dynasty, when more than one Tibetan Emperor received brides from the Chinese imperial family. A certain amount of noise has been made recently about Hong Kong Professor Ge Jianxiong's article showing that Tibet was not part of China during the Tang Dynasty. The proverbial 'too little too late,' I am thinking he will not get into any trouble over this from the powers-that-be in the PRC. One reason is because Hong Kongers are still allowed a degree of latitude on such matters, but mostly because they have long ago retreated from making this kind of statement. For an English translation of a part of Prof. Ge's article, see here.

On this and other points of Sino-Tibetan historical relations, I would like to quote at length from a letter to the editor of The New York Times by one of the world's top Tibetologists, Matthew Kapstein, published on February 19, 1994:

""Pan Xinliang, managing director of China Travel Service, writes (letter, Feb. 5) that Tibet "became part of China during the Tang Dynasty between A.D. 618 and 907." This is incorrect. Neither the two versions of the official Tang Dynasty history, the "Tangshu," nor available Tibetan histories, nor such surviving documents as the A.D. 821-822 Chinese-Tibetan bilingual treaty refer to relations between the two countries except in terms of mutually recognized independence. Far from becoming part of China, Tibet even invaded the Tang capital, now Xian, in 763. Not even in China do responsible historians repeat this error any longer. The most extensive and up-to-date history of Tibet published under Chinese auspices so far, a three-volume 1989 work from the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, refers to the Tang period China-Tibet connection as "a relation of friendship and equality." Further, it is generally agreed that China had no authority in Tibet during the Song Dynasty (10th to 13th centuries) and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), or between 1912 and 1951. That leaves the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1260-1368) and the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), during most of whose rule, all parties concur, Tibet at least nominally acknowledged the authority of China's rulers.""

The words "nominally acknowledged the authority" were of course chosen with care and ought to be read with equal care. If Chinese ownership of Tibet could be asserted on the basis of the Mongol Empire, then this would also prove that Baghdad and Budapest were, and therefore ought to be, under Chinese ownership. Matters may be different during the Qing Dynasty, but here again it was an ethnically non-Chinese ruling dynasty. Although Manchu interests were asserted rather aggressively within Tibet in the early decades of the 18th century, by the beginning of 19th the Manchus, while they might have had the will, lacked the economic and military clout to force Tibetan compliance. The Ambans who resided in Tibet during these times had influence, no doubt, rather like diplomats of foreign powers may influence any country, but they had no part in the ruling or legislative structures. At best they could recommend. Even during the Qianlong Emperor's reign, sometimes considered the height of Manchu interest in Tibet, we see that 'golden edicts' which, one might think, ought to have carried the force of law (like one commanding that Tibetans follow Chinese burial practices), appear to have gone unnoticed in Lhasa by everyone except the Ambans.

His Holiness will probably go on to leave history out of the discussion even as Beijing will continue insisting on its Sinocentric, political-revisionist, propagandistic versions of the history of Sino-Tibetan relations. And most of the rest of us will continue knowing one thing that we have known all along, which is that the troops of the People's Liberation Army were the ones responsible for Tibet becoming part of China. This happened five decades ago. The occupation continues. Coercion in matters of religion, language, culture and conscience continues. And the threat of population transference is as great as ever. Some call it cultural genocide, and with reason. Just look at what has happened to Manchuria and Inner Mongolia since the collapse of the Willow Palisades. It really is high time to face up to history.



Further reading:

For the unexpurgated story of Korchung & Kor Nirupa read, George Roerich & Gendun Choepel, trs., The Blue Annals, Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi 1949/1976), pp. 849-55. Parts of this story are retold in Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, Princeton University Press (Princeton 1994), pp. 97-99.

On the 'to' rituals like the one performed by Korchung's father, see Lin Shen-Yu, Tibetan Magic for Daily Life: Mi pham's Texts on Gto-Rituals, Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 15 (2005), pp. 107-125.

For the history by Khepa Deu, see Mkhas-pa Lde'u, Rgya Bod-kyi Chos-'byung Rgyas-pa, Bod-ljongs Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lhasa 1987). This history was composed in the years following 1261.

The source of Zhuchen's song is: Zhu-chen Tshul-khrims-rin-chen (1697—1774), Sde-dge'i Bstan-'gyur-gyi Dkar-chag, Trayang & Jamyang Samten (Delhi 1974), vol. 2, p. 12. This is a modern reprinting of a woodblock print that was made in Derge in eastern Tibet.

For an English translation of The Clear Mirror of Royal Genealogy, see Sakyapa Sonam Gyaltsen, The Clear Mirror: A Traditional Account of Tibet's Golden Age, tr. by McComas Taylor and Lama Choedak Yuthok, Snow Lion Publications (Ithaca 1996), and notice especially pp. 144-5, where we find echoes of both an earlier Dunhuang document and the later song of Zhuchen, except that here the verses in praise of Tibet are placed in the mouth of the Chinese Emperor, who is about to send his daughter off to marry Songtsen Gampo.

On PRC attempts to change the Tibetan words for China and Chinese, see Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, Columbia University Press (New York 1999).

For a study of the Tibetan Dunhuang document with its geography of the four kingdoms surrounding Tibet, see Ariane Macdonald, Note sur la diffusion de la "Theorie des quatres fils du ciel" au Tibet, Journal Asiatique, vol. 250 (1962), pp. 531-48.

For an English translation of a part of Fudan University history professor Ge Jianxiong's (b. 1945) article on Sino-Tibetan relations, see this link.

Elliot Sperling, The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics, East-West Center (Washington 2004). This may also be available for internet download.

On the train, see the commentary by Woeser at the Himal website.

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