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 It will not be published in the proceedings of that conference.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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Padampa's Animal Kingdom — Part Two

As promised in the previous blog, here at last I present to you the only source known to me that goes anywhere near to explaining Padampa's animal metaphors.  

It may be the case that Buddhism has a lot to say or suggest about animal rights or human ecological responsibilities.Certainly all Buddhists agree that animals are 'sentient,' capable of thought, aware of their surroundings, and that their pain must make a difference to us as sentient beings. Animals fall under the umbrella of the compassion Buddhists seek to cultivate. But I'm not sure why Padampa's metaphors would be all that interesting from a modern ecological thinker's point of view. Do you have any idea? I won't even go in this direction.  Not today.

Taken in its entirety, "Padampa's Animal Kingdom" does appear to much resemble the medieval bestiary. (I admit that this was in some part my own doing, since I selected out the animal metaphors and arranged them in this way.) The accounts of animals in medieval bestiaries, too, may tell real or unreal stories involving animals and their observed or even unobservable behavior, but they are hardly ever in fact about the animals themselves. They were intended to tell us something about humans and the moral life of humanity.  

Chances are you've heard this bit of Solomonic wisdom, "Look to the ant thou sluggard, consider his ways and be wise!" Solomon tells us to work hard. IF he's also telling us that ants work hard, it isn't actually anything that requires discussion in the way our laziness does. I hope this point will be well taken, and that readers will not spend too much of their time finding meanings that Padampa never intended to be found.  

(Still, I have to confess that I personally am *very* curious to know more about actual animal behavior. Do newly hatched sea turtles really find their way to the sea during the full moon? Some recent research suggests this old folks' tale has real truth to it; see the Salmon article listed below.)

The metaphors from Padampa's Root Text, Great Sealing Symbol Song, are interpreted in a work by an anonymous Tibetan author some time during the 12th century.  This text, entitled Unravelling Symbolic Expressions of the Supreme Lineage,* does not give glosses for every single one of the animal metaphors, but I carefully traced and did my best to translate all the ones that are there.  I have no proof to offer right now, but I believe the most likely author of this text is Patsab (Pa-tshab), one of the main figures in the transmission of the Zhijé teachings.  His dates were 1077-1158 CE. I do not propose to justify this hunch or hypothesis at the moment, although in some other place I may investigate what is known of his life and try to make the case for or against Patsab's authorship.  

If you are like me, you will not always be satisfied with the commentator's comments. It may be well to consider that the author was a Tibetan, and as such shouldn't be expected to have complete knowledge of Indian animals and their metaphors that form part of Indian culture.  (And of course he was writing for an audience that could not always be expected to have such knowledge.)  I think, too, that the commentator didn't always want to give flatly prosaic explanations. He felt that 'A word to the wise should be sufficient.' Sometimes he might have been unable to resist sending our minds reeling in hope of explanations just one more time.  Sometimes we just get a hint.  Nothing is offered up on a silver platter.  Much is left to the imagination, assuming we have one.  Well, I for one assume we do.

*Mchog brgyud kyi brda' 'grol, This front title is not to be seen in the published version of the text, only in the microfilm of the original manuscript done by the Nepalese-German Manuscript Preservation Project. It also has a very brief title in the colophon, Brda' lan, "Symbolic Answers," or "Responses to the Symbols."

This title is totally unique to the Peacemaking Collection.  No other version of it is known to exist. It uses outdated vocabulary and highly irregular spellings (just like the manuscript as a whole). In cases where it could not be translated with a reasonable degree of confidence, a hack translation has sometimes been pushed forward, but in this case it ought to be enclosed in curly brackets { }. Occasionally my own comments or additions are enclosed in square brackets [ ].

The particular metaphorical usages are not restricted to these two texts, but are found scattered throughout the five (reprint) or four (original manuscript) volumes of the collection. Perhaps for some people of more significance is the fact many of them are found with close or identical meaning in the anthologies of single verses by Phadampa's 54 Indian teachers. Sometimes they make more sense in these other contexts, and I have made an attempt to search out these parallel materials in a less than systematic way. It's simply too much work. Those that I have so far managed to locate are translated in the footnotes.

I personally find it most remarkable that some of the most interesting parallels occur in the central portions of a set of meditation precepts, the Zheldam (zhal-gdams) of Zurchungpa (1014-1074 CE), a very significant figure in the transmission of certain Nyingmapa teachings at the time.  At the moment I am inclined to see the explanation for this common language lying in an Indian context rather than inside Tibet.  These parallels have also been mentioned in the footnotes.

As I think I said before, I am unable to offer a total explanation of Padampa's words. Making use of this Tibetan commentary by a member of his lineage will help illuminate them in part.  In an upcoming installment, I will pass on a somewhat technical, but I hope still readable, paper that goes into somewhat greater depth on the questions evoked by Padampa's animal metaphors, both singly and as a group. Perhaps I will go on to present the entire text in translation when I feel more confident that it is ready.**

**While working together with Dr. Penpa Dorjee of the CIHTS in Sarnath on a fresh translation of the Tingri Hundreds, I also consulted with him about some of the more difficult parts of the Root Text and its commentary, and we read through some of it together.  In the process the translations of these parts were thoroughly revised.  So he most certainly deserves a share of the merits from whatever is good about these efforts of ours.

If you printed out the Root Text (=Part 1) a few weeks ago, try to rediscover it in the pile of papers on your desk so you can glance back and forth between it and the commentary.

Click on these words to get started

Fine links, good reading, worthwhile hearing & significant seeing:

David Holler, The Ritual of Freeing Lives, contained in: Henk Blezer & Abel Zadoks, eds., Religion and Secular Culture in Tibet: Tibetan Studies II, Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 207-226.  The meritorious act of freeing animals that would otherwise be doomed to die is one of those practices found all over Buddhist Asia, and not just in Tibet. David Holler completed a master's thesis on this subject at the Humboldt University in Berlin several years ago.

Khenpo Karthar, Padampa Sangye's 80 Verses of Advice.  I would not under ordinary circumstances be making commercial links (and that includes advertising of any kind, whether for books or any other salable object) on Tibeto-logic blog.  And I'm dreading the day when Google will catch up with me and put advertising up on Tibetological website,  as is their right, apparently.  But this particular product, which I haven't yet seen, is certain to be interesting.  The advertising blurb for this DVD/CD/MP3 unfortunately contains a regrettable historical mistake.  Padampa did not, I repeat not, return to India after giving these words of advice.  After all, the title usually contains the word Zhalchem (zhal chems), meaning 'Last will and testament' and we know from all early sources that he died at Tingri in Tibet, until then remaining there for about 20 years straight without ever physically returning to India.  The teachings recorded here were given in Connecticut in August 2008.

Michael Salmon & Blair E. Witherington, Artificial Lighting and Seafinding by Loggerhead Hatchlings: Evidence for Lunar Modulation, Copeia: A Publication of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, no. 4 (December 21, 1995), pp. 931-938.  Try finding it at JSTOR if you are lucky enough to have access.  Or just schmoogle for sea turtle hatchlings and see what you come up with.

Lambert Schmithausen, Buddhism and Nature: The Lecture Delivered on the Occasion of the Expo 1990, an Enlarged Version with Notes, Studia Philological Buddhica, Occasional Paper Series, vol. VII, The International Institute for Buddhist Studies (Tokyo 1991).

Lambert Schmithausen, Buddhism and the Ethics of Nature, Some Remarks, The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. vol. 32, no. 2 (2000), pp. 26-78.  I warmly recommend these two articles by Dr. Schmithausen, Professor Emeritus of Uni Hamburg, especially if you spend a lot of time thinking about ecological ethics, sentience of plants, and animal rights.

Francis Story, The Place of Animals in Buddhism. Available here.

Ivette Vargas, Snake-Kings, Boars' Heads, Deer Parks, and Monkey Talk: Animals as Transmitters and Transformers in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Narratives, contained in: Paul Waldau & Kimberley Patton, eds., A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, Columbia University Press (NYC 2006).  I haven't seen this book, but it sure looks interesting.  Here is a brief review.

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Comments on Padampa's iconography, his name, its spelling, and the Tibetan words for animal:

For one of the most wonderfully evocative portraits of Padampa (his legs crouched up in his Zhijé form, not his Chö form with bone trumpet), kept at the LACMA, go to Himalayan Art website. (The quality of the scan is not so wonderful, which is really unfortunate.  So better if you go here and use the zoom.  Still, there is a mistake in the LACMA's description. "Nagpopa" is not among the names of Padampa.  There were several historic Indian Buddhists with the Tibetan name Nag-po-pa, which corresponds to Indic Kṛṣṇa[pāda], quite a common Indian name today.  For more on the most famous Mahāsiddha with this name, see Tāranātha's Life of Kṛṣṇācārya/ Kāṇha, tr. by David Templeman, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives [Dharamsala 1989]).

For Padampa's iconography, see the essay in Rob Linrothe, ed., Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas, Rubin Museum of Art (New York 2006), pp. 108-123. And if you still feel inclined to know more, read about and admire some Ladakhi portraits of Padampa in Rob Linrothe's  article Strengthening the Roots: An Indian Yogi in Early Drigung Paintings of Ladakh and Zangskar, Orientations (May 2007), pp. 65-71.

A note on pronunciation & spelling & internet searches:  I spell the complete Tibetan title or name in phonetic form as Padampa Sanggyé.  The correctly transliterated Tibetan is Pha Dam-pa Sangs-rgyas. I phoneticize as "Pa" rather than "Pha" in order to prevent the pronunciation "Fa" (and there is no reason to use the 'h' to represent the aspiration, since most people who are not from Tibet or India will aspirate initial 'p' automatically).  If you want to do an internet search, you will have to try both Padampa and Phadampa.  Try also "pha dam pa," "pha dampa," etc. etc.  Your efforts to locate Padampa ought to be met with success one way or another.

There are at least four Tibetan words that correspond to the concept of 'animal' in the broader senses, but they are not equal in their semantic coverage.

[1] The word drowa ('gro-ba — 'goer,' or perhaps 'transmigrator,' in Sanskrit gamana) we might translate as 'creature' (ignoring the 'creation' etymology of the word, which isn't relevant here). There are 5 or 6 kinds in traditional Buddhist cosmology: the lower rebirths are the animals, hungry ghosts (pretas), and hell beings; the higher rebirths — humans, titans (asuras) and gods (devas).

[2] The word semchan (sems-can) that you can see in Tibetan script floating in the middle of Part One, includes all animals including humans in the Buddhist texts (in Sanskrit, sattva). In translations of Buddhist texts it is rather routinely translated as 'sentient being.' It might be used to cover all beings that undergo mental events, that are able to suffer. The beings in hells, for example. This is true of the Buddhist texts, so it is seeming odd that nowadays it's commonly used in Tibetan to cover livestock in general. If you want to ask a nomad how many are in her or his herd, you ask 'em, How many semchan?

[3] The other word for 'animal' is rather peculiar because, although it can be used to include all animals, it does not seem to include human beings, at least not normally. This word, sogchag (srog-chags), meaning 'life[-force] loving,' was used to translate Sanskrit prāṇaka. This prāṇaka has a slight difference in meaning, something like '[those who] possess life-force,' but like the Tibetan word, it sometimes is intended in an even narrower sense to mean 'insects' (the whole range of bugs and worm-like creatures) instead of the broader class of animals.

[4] The word düdro (dud-'gro) is understood primarily as describing a mode of locomotion in a 'bent over' or prone position. Those who walk in this way are distinguished from the 'two legged' ones.  Two-legged primarily means humans and I suppose also chickens. Like all but one of the other words that we might translate as 'animal,' this one is a clear translation from a Sanskrit word, in this case tiryañc, which has the same meaning. The only word for animal where the Tibetan doesn't correspond quite closely to the [Buddhist] Sanskrit is semchan. It is not a literal translation of sattva, a Sanskrit word derived from the verb of being that means 'being.'

My only point in bringing all this up is just to stress that categorical concepts like 'animal' or 'feelings' or 'emotions' or 'blue' don't always translate well or simply, but it is also quite important to understand how they are routinely used in differing contexts with different meanings, even within the same language.  What DO we mean by 'animal'?

If you only had the time to spare you could spend many fascinating hours (with considerable edification and profit) at this marvelous site:  The Medieval Bestiary.