The Sixth Dalai Lama as Part of the Folk Song Tradition

• What you see here in today’s blog is basically the text used in a slide presentation in Tawang earlier this month, its original title given above, somewhat revised, together with most of the slides.

I hope you can appreciate how very odd it is to be standing here at 3,000 meters speaking to such an exalted audience of scholars, Geshes, yogis, Rinpoches and Realized Beings. But I would also like to acknowledge the students ornamenting the corners of the room. It is with them that I identify. I have always been a student, and sometimes a researcher, trying to learn more about matters about which I know little.

Most who have written about the songs related to the Sixth Dalai Lama have doubted if the young hierarch actually wrote them all down by his hand or had them transcribed as they emerged from his throat. Especially when it comes to the larger collections of 300 or more, there is a strong tendency to identify which ones are liable to be by him for one reason or another. I have nothing to add to this particular kind of debate. What I believe I do have to offer is a way of approaching them as part of a continuous folksong tradition, a tradition largely but not exclusively concerned with the romantic love experienced by young people everywhere. I justify this in several ways, although I believe the real proof would be in how productive of meaning it proves to be. It holds the promise of finding out about the collections as wholes, not just boxes holding various baubles from which we can pick and choose on the basis of preformed views.

It could be said that I will say today is held together by an underlying geographical theme. Featured in the first part is a pair of secular folk songs expressing homesickness, a longing for home. The second and longer part is about a religio-devotional type of geographical longing, that of pilgrimage. 

I begin with a paired set of songs from those attributed to the Sixth Dalai Lama about missing home, a commonly found theme in folk music everywhere. I published a not so well done translation of these verses over 40 years ago. I typed the Tibetan text on one of the first ever Tibetan typewriters, with a long lever for making carriage returns and lettertype that rises up to strike the paper through an inked ribbon. The translation I give you now is a new one, improved with the generous help of Gendun Rabsal (དགེ་འདུན་རབ་གསལ་). We worked hard to achieve the right sense of the original in English with an attempt to inject a bit of literary color, or at least singability.

If this requires explanation — and I don’t believe it does — it expresses the Dalai Lama’s nostalgia and homesickness for his home right here in Monyul. It is quite effective, I believe, in conveying that emotion making use of a metaphorical identification of the composer with the cuckoo bird.* For my present purposes, it suffices to say that homesickness is a common theme to be found in folk songs worldwide. These two songs are not about the romantic crushes of teenagers. They are not love songs.

(*Although not on the common theme of homesickness, the oldest surviving English folksong dating from the 13th century features the cuckoo and its song in a celebration of spring [here called summer]: “The Summer is a'coming in,” or “Sumer is icumen in.” For homesickness, John Denver's “Country Road” would be a good example even if it was only composed in folk style. "Country Road" was everywhere heard in Lhasa when I visited the city several years ago. A better example, “500 Miles,” is an actual anonymous folksong even if sometimes credited to Hedy West even though she is likely just one of several re-arrangers of the song.)

Before going into the pilgrimage song, I would like to take a brief literary-historical excursion. But first, just to get the matter out of the way, I would like to say that the style of the Sixth Dalai Lama's songs stand in stark contrast to the Tibetan tradition of Daṇḍin-inspired kāvya (snyan-dngags). This is quite obvious if you put them next to Zhangzhungpa’s early 15th-century biographical verses on the Great Translator Rinchenzangpo. Kāvya is a disciplined style of literary composition adapted from Indian sources, mainly the work of Daṇḍin, an elite practice, while Tibetan folksongs (gzhas) are a product of the Tibetan people’s genius that reflects their own particular interests. The two have poetry in the broad sense and singability in common, but they are quite different in their aims, usage and effects. They are distinct genres, something along the lines of how folksongs and opera are distinct genres.

Another aside that may prove profitable to think about is the historical period when the songs emerged: The turn of the 18th century in Tibet produced biographical literature with a new emotional and psychological depth, something we could call confessional candor. We can point to the autobiography of Lelung Zhepaidorjé and the biography of Minling Jetsunma as examples. There is less emphasis on the stock signs and miracles of saint stories and much more about the biographical subjects’ inner thoughts — their motivations, inclinations and feelings. Here we enter into a surprising idea that may or may not be equally appreciated by all, but it could be said that this shift fits with the Fifth Dalai Lama’s creation of a new international cosmopolitanism based in Lhasa. For more thinking along these lines we can point to Janet Gyatso’s work on Jigmelingpa as well as her more recent book on Tibetan medicine. Yet it could also be said that it parallels shifts going on in Europe at approximately that time, with the rise of individualism and autobiography in the 18th century Enlightenment followed by the Romanticism of the 19th. We might consider the Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova, begun in 1790, as perhaps the clearest example of psychological candor about romantic/sexual encounters. But where the Sixth is romantically and sexually suggestive. Casanova is far more explicit, much more worthy of a term like erotic or even pornographic. The point here is that he tells us as much about what he was doing with his inner thoughts as he does about the bodily acts.

We do have an official and very detailed biography of the Sixth Dalai Lama that can prove quite useful in some ways for thinking about the context of creation, especially reports of the young Dalai Lama viewing folk performances of dances and songs in various regions along his travel routes.* I particularly hope to find out more from Ian MacCormack and other specialists in that era on this issue. For the moment it is sufficient to point out this factual basis for arguing in favor the young Dalai Lama’s familiarity with a pre-existing folksong tradition.** But this biography was written by his promoter and caretaker, so for insights into the young Dalai Lama’s thoughts our primary testimony is what we hear in the songs attributed to him.

(*These days, with digital and searchable texts universally available, one has only to search through them for the word gzhas, or the combined term for folk song and dance, bro gzhas, to locate relevant passages. You might even try asking generative artificial intelligence if you haven’t yet learned to distrust it. For specific references in both the official biography and in the autobiography of the Second Panchen Lama, see Martin’s 2004 review essay, at pp. 92 and 98, note 7. On some of these occasions, at least, the folk artists received prizes from the young Dalai Lama’s own hands. **There are indications that the gzhas type of songs were known even earlier than the late 12th century when we do find mentionings of them. See Ibidem, p. 91.)

The theme of homesickness doesn’t necessarily require any argument, just because nostalgia for the childhood home is one of the staple subjects of folk songs worldwide. Right now I won’t go into this further. For the rest of our time I will talk about pilgrimage in the Dalai Lama’s songs, with an argument that — as a popular religious practice engaged in by lay people — this, too, is among the concerns of folksongs.* It also sends us the message that the label love songs should be given up in favor of something more inclusive. I recommend calling them folksongs.

(*A few more examples of folksongs on pilgrimage were given in Martin’s review essay of 2004, pp. 95-96.)

There are many interpretations of the six-lined verse that requires our close analysis. It is often taken as key to understanding all the verses as being, in some allegorical sense, spiritual or mystical or tantric. My point of view on its intentions differ from theirs in one important way. Still, I will not spend time analyzing past views and interpretations that I may disagree with, and instead put forward in a positive way my evidence for a fresh re-reading.

I would like to start with a very early and so far unpublished translation of the songs made for the use of Sir Charles Bell (with thanks to Josayma Tashi Tsering for this information). It was given to me by the late and very much missed Hubert Decleer, who knew of my interest in this particular song. It is in my opinion noticeably more accurate as a translation even if it may not be immediately or abundantly clear what it is about. And interestingly, it omits the final two lines (these might be seen as a later addition, I cannot feel sure of it). If you have one or another of the translations of the songs at hand, it is likely to be numbered between 18 and 20, and it stands out for being one of the few verses in six lines.

I’ve written about it 40 years ago, but today I would like to return to the verse and do what I couldn’t do before and accompany my argument with some nice illustrations that speak volumes. Along the way comes a revelation about the half-millennium continuity of a singular community of herbs in a particular place that I regard as no less than astounding. Are you ready? Let’s go one line at a time, highlighting the particular words and proper names that are key to the whole problem and that, when added together tell us what the verse is about. The first line begins with the name of a famous mountain.

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Line 1:

དག་པ་ཤེལ་རི་གངས་ཆུ། 

Dakpa Shelri gangchu.

Dag-pa-shel-ri Gangs-chu.

Pure Crystal Mountain’s glacial stream.

 

This Pure Crystal Mountain is a very famous holy mountain in the holy land known as Tsari. Most Tibetans agree that Tsari is the holy land of Cāritra named in Buddhist scriptural texts. The mountain at its center was for many centuries circumambulated by innumerable Tibetan pilgrims. Everyone, regardless of sect affiliation knew about it, and everyone hoped to someday visit it, even if there are a few exceptions, like Tsongkhapa who traveled nearby but decided against going there.* It is located in southeastern Tibet on the upper reaches of the Subansiri River that eventually empties itself into the Brahmaputra River in Assam. And there is of course an impressive book devoted to it by Toni Huber that can be heartily recommended to anyone who might want to pursue the subject further. 

(*Tsongkhapa may have eventually visited after expressing some initial doubts, this point requires closer study. See the biblio below, under Thubten Jinpa.)

A splendid black-and-white photograph of “Takpa Siri” may be seen in Harold Fletcher’s book about the botanical expeditions of Frank Ludlow and George Sheriff among still others a century ago, in the 1920’s and ’30’s:

For future interpreters of this poem, the rather sporadic notices of foreign travellers and scholars will naturally be of less interest than Tibetan language sources. We are fortunate to have available to us two lengthy guidebooks to the land of Tsari. One is by the wellknown scholar, historian and tantric adept, the Fourth Drukchen Pemakarpo (1527-1592 A.D.) and another by the Eight Drukchen Kunzigchökyinangwa (1768-1822 A.D.). Since Pemakarpo’s guidebook preceded the love songs by over a hundred years, I believe it may be considered as a most important source of clues for unravelling the song’s intentions. Dag-pa Shel Ri, a name that may be translated Mountain of Crystal Purity, appears several times in Pemakarpo’s guidebook. 

Once it is described in a statement he attributes to the 7th-century Tibetan Emperor Songtsen the Wise:

In its secret aspect, the Glacier Mountain of Crystal Purity naturally takes the shape of a ritual flask. It is as has been said, a great chorten of self-produced and naturally obtained blessing.

Kunzigchökyinangwa wrote:

The heart of hearts of this holy place Cāritra (Tsa-ri-tra) is Crystal Purity Mountain. This great chorten of the Dharmakāya is outwardly a glacier mountain in the shape of the heart. Inwardly, it is in the self-produced and naturally-arrived-at shape of the auspicious many-door type of chorten... 

Kyobpa Rinpoche (title for Jigten Gönpo, initiator of the Drikung Kagyü lineage) said, 

This special object of devotion, Crystal Mountain, is made of precious crystal. Its shape is that of a great chorten. In its upper part the Lama and divine forms of high aspiration live. In its middle part the Buddhas of past, present and future live. To its sides live ḍāka and ḍākinī. Its environs constitute a Divine Mansion.

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Line 2:

ཀླུ་བདུད་རྡོ་རྗེའི་ཟིལ་པ།

Ludüd Dorjéi zilpa.

Klu-bdud-rdo-rje'i zil-pa. 

Dewdrops on the Ludüd Dorjé herb. 

In part of his long description of Chikchar, a small town in the middle of the Tsari valley and at the foot of Pure Crystal Mountain, Pemakarpo describes a white hill made of the rock calcite (cong-zhi). He is here citing the Guidebook of Mitrayogin:

On the eastern side of this hill is a patch [? gle-ma] of black aconite. In the thicket is a substance of paranormal powers [siddhi] called black nāga-demon (klu-bdud nag-po)... Its root is like a turnip. Its leaves are lotus-like. Its flower is like a bell with a crossed vajra inside. Its color is blue with darkish spots. The fruit is three-sided like buckwheat. It grows on rigid stalks. It faces the east glacier. The openings of the flowers follow the sun. In the evenings it gives off sparks. If one touches it with the hands, it itches and burns. If you put it in water there is a kind of sound. Hence it is called water boiling herb. If game animals crush it, its smell comes out and yellow mushrooms appear. It is also known as element disturbing herb. Its vapors alone will tame a horse or camel. The demigods and eight types of spirits and soforth cannot go near it. When the hand covers it a hot sharp pain comes. When snow falls on it, it can melt like snow on a hot rock. All ants and worms pile up around it dead. If cut, a kind of thick yogurt comes out, like the herb thar-nu. When such a substance arrives, black leprosy, even when pustules have developed, is cured by simply ingesting it. As soon as they sense its odor, nāgas run away. The slightest taste of it makes the nāgas faint and by eating it they can die. In the case of any of its four parts — the roots, leaves, flowers or fruits — the body suddenly whitens like a snake changing its skin. It is possible to become a Knowledge Holder of Life; the body whitens like cotton wool and one can fly like a bird in the sky. One does not sink in water, is free from diseases of the four elements and brings everything under ones influence. Various ordinary paranormal powers come and the supreme paranormal power is quickly obtained. The emanation king Songtsen the Wise said, 

As it is the highest of herbs, it is called supreme herb. As no other herb is its superior, it is called superior herb.

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By what may seem an odd coincidence, the Fletcher book illustrates precisely the same plants as Pemakarpo mentions growing together, the Aconite and the Codonopsis, pairing their photographs on the very same page. Oddly, nothing in Fletcher’s book seems to explain why they were illustrated together. (It says on pp. 254-5 that specimens of the Codonopsis were collected in Bhutan at Ha and at places to the north of Bumthang, and that it was then successfully cultivated in Britain, p. 362.)

Kunzangchökyinangwa summarizes this same citation from the Guidebook of Mitrayogin, adding the following very significant observations.

The Guidebook says that the ‘supreme herb’ klu-bdud-rdo-rje, said to have immeasurable virtues such as the power to cure black leprosy even when there are pustules and getting the common supernormal powers, exists in this very place.

On the following page he adds,

When one drinks the dewdrops of the ‘supreme herb,’ blessings come.

In the 1820 edition of his wellknown geographical work, Extensive Exposition on Jambu Island ('Dzam-gling Rgyas Bshad), the Tsenpo Nomonhan says,

There in Tsari is the herb called klu-bdud-rdo-rje; having gone to that part, one will be liberated from samsara and the unfortunate rebirths (durgati).

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Line 3:

བདུད་རྩི་སྨན་གྱི་ཕབ་རྒྱུན།།

düdtsi mengyi pabgyun.

bdud-rtsi sman-gyi phab-rgyun.

barm of medicinal elixir.

By chance the Fletcher book has an illustration showing monks at Chakpori medical college in the process of making medicinal pellets called ril-bu. It might lead to error if we were to too strongly distiguish them, but there are pellets used for their medicinal properties and other pellets used more as sacramental elements. This photo illustrates the former kind, no doubt, while our context demands the latter.

The word phab-rgyun used here does mean a sort of barm, a yeast starter for making beer, although usages of this word in tantric, alchemical and other Tibetan religious contexts are well known. The term is also used in describing the making of relic pills (ril-bu), when a bit of a previous batch is put into the new, as a way of assuring the continuity of blessings.

Let us see also what the Sixth Dalai Lama himself has to say in his history of Orgyanling monastery where he uses this same word phabs-rgyun in a list of relics: “barm of the five meats and five elixirs [bdud-rtsi] combined.” Here there can be no question of simple beer as some would have it. Earlier on, in a sacred geography of the area near the monastery (and also very near to his own birth place) we find mention of “elixir medicine water” — again with no context which would suggest beer. I should note here as well that Tsari is mentioned at least twice in this work by the Sixth Dalai Lama.

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Line 4:

ཆང་མ་ཡེ་ཤེས་མཁའ་འགྲོ།

changma Yeshé Khandro.

chang-ma Ye-shes-mkha'-'gro.

The beer brewer Yeshé Khandro.

The ‘beer server [or beer brewer] Yeshé Khandro’ in line four deserves some attention. This Yeshé Khandro should be understood as an especially high type of ḍākinī, rather than a specific one, unless, that is, a particular ḍākinī is being referred to under the generic term, as I believe to be the case.

Here the particular Yeshé Khandro intended would have to be Dorjé Phagmo, or Vajravārāhī. Why? Because Tsari was famous for temples featuring her image, and particularly the temple with the thicket of medicinal herbs nearby. Vajravārāhī is the consort of Cakrasamvara, and the entire region of Tsari is their divine mansion, their maṇḍala. “Tsari is known to be the holy place of the mind of Cakrasamvara.” Tsari “is not to be distinguished from Sri Cakrasamvara Himself.” “Palace of Sri Cakrasamvara. Court of Vajravārāhī. City of ḍāka and jñāna ḍākinī.” “Music making place of the Dharmakāya jñāna ḍākinī.” Tsari is the place “where Dorje Pagmo [=Vajravārāhī] lives.”

Pemakarpo himself had a Vajravārāhī temple erected at Tsari somewhere between the years 1567 and 1574. Two temples of Vajravārāhī at Tsari were visited by the British agent F.M. Bailey. In the final analysis, it may little matter if the jñāna ḍākinī of the song refers to the general class or to a particular embodiment such as Vajravārāhī. Tsari and all the objects and beings within it are holy and should not be damaged. Why? The Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorjé (1284-1339) said that one should avoid harming any animals or humans at Tsari because one never knows what forms the ḍākinīs will take. Tsari was a nature preserve protected by its total or partial identity with Cakrasamvara, his consort Vajravārāhī, the ḍākinīs, and many other tantric deities and Dharma protectors (Dharmapāla).

In the Tibetan Tenjur is a short work by Abhayākaragupta (early twelfth century) entitled Jñānaḍākinī-Sādhanam. It opens with the following verses:

Homage to Vajrayoginī.

O jñāna ḍākinī, goddess who takes

myriad forms for whatever purpose,

may animate beings be happy as a pond

of water lilies with your elixir feast.

Here, in order to obtain the supreme position

of Vajrayoginī, the inconceivable

form of Vajraholder, the deity to be employed

is Vajravārāhī.

During the sādhana which follows, one conceives of oneself in the form of a jñāna ḍākinī. Clearly, it makes little difference if we take jñāna ḍākinī as a particular deity with many different ḍākinī manifestations or as a general name for a class of ḍākinīs. She may be both and she may be oneself, even, depending on purpose and usage within a particular spiritual or ritual context.

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Lines 5-6:

དམ་ཚིག་གཙང་མས་འཐུང་ན།།

ངན་སོང་མྱོང་དགོས་མི་འདུག།

damtsig tsangme thung-na

ngansong nyong gö mindu.

dam-tshig gtsang-mas 'thung-na

ngan-song myong dgos mi 'dug.

If you drink it with pure commitments,

there will be no need to undergo bad rebirths.

The statement contained in the final two lines is quite characteristic of pilgrimage guidebooks like those already cited. Here is an additional example telling the effects of drinking the water of a particular place in Tsari,

If one were only to drink that elixir water for one evening following the advice [of ones teacher], ones body will obtain Vajra-body and one will attain eternal life.

Pure commitments (dam-tshig gtsang-ma) refers specifically to the tantric vows. Still, commitments (dam-tshig) encompass a much broader domain than the vows (sdom-pa). Dam-tshig means above all the relationship of promises and trust between guru and disciple of which the vows form only a part. Sutric and tantric vows and commitments are extensively discussed by the Sixth Dalai Lama in his guidebook. Quoting the Bengali Buddhist Vanaratna, the Dalai Lama says that if one takes only seven steps for the purpose of building a temple, “one does not go to the durgati and one obtains a divine form,” that insects who die under the feet of the workmen “do not fall into the positions of the three durgati.” This kind of language, common in the guidebook genre as a whole, certainly mirrors what we see in the song.

This ‘love song’ clearly shows that its author/s knew about Tsari, a famous Tibetan pilgrimage site, its holy mountain, its famed medicinal plant, and its close association with the ḍākinīs. Its language is redolent of the Tibetan guidebook (dkar-chag) literature, one example of which has come down to us from the Dalai Lama’s own hand.

Very much as in European Christendom, the cults of holy places and pilgrimage in Tibet have been closely tied to the cults of relics (ring-bsrel or sku-gdung) and consecrated articles (dam-rdzas). Witness the following quote from a guidebook by Kunzigchökyinangwa:

In the upper part of the valley of this place [Tsari] there is known to exist as well the especially sublime paranormal power [producing] substance, the “supreme herb” klu-bdud-rdo-rje. The allknowing lord Pemakarpo and Mipamwangpo (1641-1717), in order that [it] might be directly consumed made [it] the barm-basis* of a consecrated article (dam-rdzas) which liberates by [merely] tasting. It liberates [people] for the benefit of all animate beings.

(*The phab-gtar of the text I have taken to be an eccentric spelling for phab-rta -- literally, barm horse. The horse (rta) in medical contexts, however, refers to the medicinal base (honey, beer, sugar, molasses, etc.) with which the active ingredients are administered. This is called sman-rta or, simply, rta. The word phab-rta is known to be a synonym of phab-rgyun.)

I hope that, finally, it will be admitted that we are dealing here not with beer brewing or consumption, but with a particular item in the class of blessing bestowing articles (byin-rten) one intimately bound up with the cult of the holy place of Tsari in particular, and the Tibetan Buddhist cults of relics and consecrated articles in general. We know that this item had the herb klu-bdud-rdo-rje as an ingredient and that it was, according to a later testimony, first made by Pemakarpo and Mipamwangpo. Is it possible to be more precise about the identity of this item?

We are fortunate to have a third work of the guidebook genre by Kunzigchökyinangwa devoted to the history and ingredients of a particular relic pellet called Rainbow Light Pellet ('Ja'-'od Ril-bu). This globe-shaped pill was composed of a large number of bodily and contact relics of saints as well as other previously made relic pellets, holy water, and so forth. The guidebook begins with a brief general exposition on pellets, not incidentally connecting them with the elixir (bdud-rtsi) spoken of in the tantras. Here is a translation of the relevant portions.

The Buddhas, because of their skillful methods and great compassion, display a multitude of actions--methods of converting animate beings which correspond to their respective merits as well as actions of converting through the various emanation categories of Body, Speech, Mind, Quality and Work. To give examples that occur in the rebirth stories of our Teacher, he gave without any second thoughts his head, limbs, sense organs, flesh and blood; while his compassion, linked to the Bodhisattva aspiration prayers (praṇidhāna), bestowed help and comfort to countless animate beings...

From among these elixir pellets, the present item which has become the supreme consecrated article of the all-knowing Drukpa is known as Rainbow Light Pellet. It was mainly made by both the all-knowing Victorious Power Pemakarpo and the Victorious Power Pagsamwangpo. As its barm-basis (phab-rta) governing the amount of blessing it contains, the main substance is the substance of the ḍākinīs' paranormal powers from the Supreme Place Tsa-ri-tra (=Tsari), the supreme herb klu-bdud-rdo-rje. In the itineraries (lam-yig) by the Dharma King Songtsen the Wise, by the Teacher Padmasambhava and others, its powers and virtues are spoken of in such terms as, 

The potencies of this substance immediately bring the paranormal powers.

In such manner, they unmistakably invoke it. Using it for the main [substance], there were additionally relics of the Perfect Buddha Kāśyapa...[a long list of holy items follows].

Going back to the biographies of the even earlier Drukchen incarnates, I have so far found no direct mention of a Rainbow Light Pellet, although in the Fourth Drukchen Pemakarpo’s autobiography I have noted one occasion in 1554 A.D. in which he made pellets (the substances are not listed) and there were various miraculous signs “including rainbow light.” In the biography of the Sixth Drukchen Mipamwangpo, a frequent visitor to Tsari, we see that he made an extensive tour of the area in 1699. The following passage is extracted from the narrative of that tour, toward the end of the year.

After he had spent three week-long retreats in a spot that had appeared to him in a meditative experience, the Lord [i.e., Mipamwangpo], accompanied only by his secretarial assistant, went to a thicket (?gle-ma, blanket?) of black aconite. He walked swearing to himself, ‘If my being called a reincarnation of the past master means anything, may I obtain the substance of the supreme herb.’

After he found [some] klu-bdud-rdo-rje, which was in the brirta-sa-'dzin stage, it looked like a hailstorm was coming. Later on, I [the author] would have this substance in front of me, and still today it remains among the consecrated articles.

Near the temple of Vajravārāhī [he] performed a communion circle (tshogs-kyi 'khor-lo) with unimagineable and extensive offerings...

These further pieces of information would seem to even further narrow down the relic-and-holy-places associations to a particular relic pellet, the Rainbow Light Pellet. However, assuming that this so-called “love song” was written between 1702 when the Dalai Lama renounced his vows and 1706 when he may or may not have been assassinated, we have not been able so far to find an unambiguously clear prior reference to the Rainbow Light Pellet. At present we may be certain only that the song was written with a clear knowledge of the association of the herb klu-bdud-rdo-rje with the holy place Tsari, its central mountain Mountain of Crystal Purity and its temple, built by Pemakarpo with its image of the jñāna ḍākinī Vajravārāhī. There is every indication that all the main elements in the song point to a the cult of Pure Crystal Mountain and the holy land of Tsari. So it is surely about the popular practice of pilgrimage. However, it is likely that those same elements even more robustly indicate the particular sacramental medicine called Rainbow Light Pellet. Even if we may wish we had more explicit and datable evidence, I would say what we do have is enough.

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Although my conclusions are already stated, I would like to add visual evidence in support of it. This work of art is preserved in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art. It is a biographical thangka illustrating the life of the Fourth Drukchen Pemakarpo.

There is a Praise of Tsari recently reprinted in volume 9 of a collection of the works of the Tibetan author Tāranātha. Eventually I could come to the conclusion that it ought to be regarded as a composition of the Fourth Drukchen Pemakarpo (it was subject of an earlier blog that includes a translation). This Praise makes abundantly clear at the outset that visitors to the holy place may experience very different landscapes. The generality that pilgrimage is exclusively a lay practice for gaining merit and purifying sins is shown to be true and correct, but only in part. After all, when a practice is truly popular, everyone joins in.

The Praise is not only high poetry in the style of India-derived kāvya poetics, it is also heavily weighted with esoteric initiatory imagery. To quote two lines from verse 4, expressing the idea that the holy place is seen differently by different people:

To persons definable as ordinary, medial and supreme, 

this watery moon dances its appropriate marvels as needed.

In verse 6, Pure Crystal Mountain is identified with the Dharmakāya, while in verse 7 he tells how Tsari is

the Place where Pagsamwangpo* went to take the powerful siddhi 

substance,

a vowed substance subsuming them all, an icon of the ḍākinīs. 

 

For the time being I ignore this problem of the Fourth Drukchen describing the deeds of his rebirth, the Fifth Drukchen Pagsamwangpo. We do know that the Fifth and subsequent Drukchen incarnates were important for popularizing the Rainbow Light Pellet in the time of the fifth, sixth and subsequent Dalai Lamas.

Let your eyes go to the top of the just-illustrated thangka and take a closer look at this detail of Pemakarpo standing with a small group of his students in front of a lake marked with taṃ, seed syllable of Tārā. 

The seed syllable tells us it is Tārā Lake in Tsari, with the mountain towering above it being without a doubt Pure Crystal Mountain — the lower parts of the mountain seem to glow from within, as if of some kind of translucent material like crystal. And below the feet of Pemakarpo are some words: four lines in orange that I cannot at this point even partially read, but also a line of black letters I think I can read, and what I see is, “Tārā Lake of Chikchar.” 

You may remember that Chikchar is one of the few places in the wilderness area of Tsari that seems to have had a small human settlement, perhaps even a town. Its name means instantaneous, or simultaneous as in the instantaneous way to Enlightenment, in contrast to the stage-by-stage progression to the same. Chikchar, site of the most famous Vajravārāhī temple, the one founded by Pemakarpo, is also the place where, according to Mitrayogin’s Guidebook, the thicket where bell flowers and aconite grew together. Even if botanical identification may not be possible in the painting, I do see two flowering plants growing there below Pemakarpo’s feet, so perhaps they are meant to be indicated here. You be the judge if you think this might be trying too hard — plainly the colors are not right — I just give it as a possibility that may or may not be clarified when the four lines of orange will be read under a special light.

 

In the end I believe the song is even more about the sacramental medicine than it is about the holy place of pilgrims, yet beyond all doubt it is about both. It is virtually untranslatable due to the heavy burden of religio-cultural information, so it is really no surprise it has been misunderstood. So many have injected imagined understandings seeing, after all, just the women and wine they so badly want to see after all. Besides, non-Tibetans reading it are highly unlikely to have even an initial blush of knowledge about Tibetan sacramental and medicinal pill making practices, let alone the particular one called the Rainbow Light Pellet. I dare say every Tibetan knows exactly what they are doing with these pills and what brings them to do what they do with them. Nobody else does. Any idea what that’s about?

§   §   §

Bibliographical indications

There is by now such a vast literature on the Sixth Dalai Lama’s songs I have not ventured to list very much of it here, only a few things I regard as most relevent to the issues raised here. For a much larger listing, see Sørensen’s book of 1990. If you require exact references to the Tibetan-language texts, you should be able to find them in Martin’s essay of 1988.

I should say that some remarkable new Tibetan language publications about Tsari have appeared recently. Among them is a guidebook by Nyö Lhanangpa Zibji Pel (གཉོས་ལྷ་ནང་པ་གཟི་བརྗིད་དཔལ་), not only direct student of Jigten Gönpo in the Drikung Kagyü (as heir of a wealthy merchant family, he was an important supporter of the earliest generation of Drikung monks), and founder of the Lhapa lineage that was historically influential in Bhutan, he was one of the three persons primarily responsible for ‘opening’ Tsari as a holy place for pilgrimage, and was in fact numbered among the ancestors of the Sixth Dalai Lama. He was the very one who first settled the Nyö family in Monyul. All this adds a little extra steam to the already-cooking idea that the Sixth Dalai Lama’s connection to Tsari may have to do with his paternal ancestry (see Martin’s review article of 2004, p. 101, note 24). It seems the local Mon branch of the Gnyos patriline died out with the Sixth Dalai Lama, while his patriline was progressively deemphasized in favor of his matrilineal, due to the local political importance of the latter. For significant clues, see Lobsang Tenpa’s book, pp. 180-192.

For an earlier blog on Tsari and on the Praise of Tsari, see “Whose Praise of Tsari?” (September 29, 2023).

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H. R. Fletcher, A Quest of Flowers: The Plant Explorations of Frank Ludlow and George Sherriff, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh 1976).

Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, Princeton University Press (Princeton 1998).

——, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet, Columbia University Press (New York 2015). Part One is all relevant to the rise of cosmopolitanism in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Lhasa, but do notice the particular statement on p. 116: “... unprecedented cosmopolitan atmosphere in Lhasa in the seventeenth century and the growing international interaction under the Dalai Lama’s reign.” For more on this theme, see the multiauthored book edited by Pommaret listed below.

Richard J. Kohn, Lord o the Dance: The Mani Rimdu Festival in Tibet and Nepal, State University of New York Press (Albany 2001). Many have heard of the Mani Rimdu and some may have witnessed the ritual dances, but few know that at its core it is about making sacramental pills. See especially pp. 113-115.

Lobsang Tenpa, An Early History of the Mon Region (India) and Its Relationship with Tibet and Bhutan, The Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamshala 2018).

D. Martin, “For Love or Religion? Another Look at a ‘Love Song’ by the Sixth Dalai Lama,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. 138, part 2 (1988), pp. 349-363.

——, “Review” of Sørensen 1990, The Tibet Journal, vol. 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004), pp. 90-103.

——, “Some More Love Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama,” The Tibet Society Bulletin, vol. 16 (October 1985), pp. 15-18.

Françoise Pommaret, Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century: The Capital of the Dalai Lamas, translated by Howard Solverson, Brill (Leiden 2003).

Ernst Sondheimer, “Tsari,” The Himalayan Journal [online], vol. 62 (2006), a fascinating story about a recent botanical visit to the holy place. Look here.

Per K. Sørensen, Divinity Secularized: An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of the Songs Ascribed to the Sixth Dalai Lama, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien (Vienna 1990). The section discussing the relevant folksong is on pp. 113-142.

Mark Tatz, “Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama,” The Tibet Journal, vol. 6, no. 4 (1981), pp. 13-31. I haven’t tried listing all the many translations here, but draw attention to this relatively early one buried in the pages of a journal, since it is one of the more accurate ones and has been too often overlooked.

Thupten Jinpa, Tsongkhapa, a Buddha in the Land of Snows, Shambhala (Boulder 2019). If you haven’t gotten around to reading this definitive biography of Tsongkhapa, it is about time you did. I find the account of Tsongkhapa’s visit to Tsari, at pp. 150-154, convincing historically. He had doubts about going there, but went anyway. Still, he didn’t participate fully in the communion ritual (tshogs-kyi 'khor-lo). As a consequence, he got splinters, or was injured by thorns. Compare the account in Huber’s book, pp. 62-63.

Thutan Tashi (b. 1991), “How the Poems of the 6th Dalai Lama are Reflected in Conventional Mon Region Folk Songs.” The same in Tibetan: ཐུབ་བསྟན་བཀྲ་ཤིས། “མོན་གྱི་སྲོལ་རྒྱུན་དམངས་གཞས་ཁྲོད་རྒྱལ་བ་ཚངས་དབྱངས་རྒྱ་མཚོས་མགུར་གླུར་ལེན་པའི་སྐོར།.”  

This paper delivered at the Tawang conference earlier this month particularly impressed me, first of all because it told of an effort, the first ever, to collect folksongs of the Mon region, and secondly because some of these are locally believed to be compositions of the Sixth Dalai Lama. This speaker unexpectedly sang the songs he quoted in a beautifully clear singing voice that transported all of us who heard it out of this world. My thinking is that this collection, when it is achieved, could be added on to the 8-or-so distinctively different collections of Sixth Dalai Lama “love songs” that are so far known to exist (these featured in the presentation by Josayma Tashi Tsering).

Simon Wickham-Smith, “Ban de skya min ser min: Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho’s Complex, Confused, and Confusing Relationship with Sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho as Portrayed in the Tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho’i mgul glu,” contained in: Bryan Cuevas and Kurtis Schaeffer, eds., Power, Politics, and the Reinvention of Tradition, Brill (Leiden 2006), pp. 203-211. Here in the opening words we find expressed a strong skepticism whether we will ever be able to know which if any of the songs were actually composed by the Sixth Dalai Lama. To quote him, they 

...may not be by him at all, or it may—more likely—be a hotchpotch of poems from his pen and from the pens of those who would be his imitators.

Paul Williams, Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama, I.B. Tauris (London 2004). I list this here for its rather long discussion of the Pure Crystal Mountain folksong, at pp. 136-137, where he attempts to summarize what others have said about it while coming to some conclusions of his own.