Thursday, March 05, 2009

Do Dampa's Droids Dare Dream of Desire?

Since phenomena are ultimately without essence, distinctions are only conventional and hence contingent. — Georges Dreyfus


In view of Small Person's queries, which I'm afraid I haven't been entirely able to answer to either of our satisfactions, about Padampa's degree of "ruthlessness," I'd like to devote today's longish blog to two particular images used by Padampa. Both images seem on the surface quite cold and unfeeling, even immoral, perhaps. His 'man of wood' and 'man of stone' metaphors initially struck me as both inapt and inept. Perhaps I got this impression because I hadn't given the matter enough thought (not the first time this has happened). Today I will present some of the sources that have been making me change my mind, slowly, in directions I hadn't suspected. This draws me off into some inchoate thoughts about the history of technology in Tibet and elsewhere, and a little musing on the changing significance of mechanisms in the lives of we living, loving and emotional human beings. I hope you will be patient with me. Perhaps you could also help me think through these problems some more. I'd be especially delighted to hear the cyborg point of view if any of you are out there.

I'll limit myself to the 'man of wood' (shing-gi mi), and leave the 'man of stone' (rdo-yi mi) alone for now.

I suppose it's possible, assuming you are a regular reader of Tibeto-logic (I know there are two or three of you), you might recall a particular passage in the root text that formed the basis for our set of Padampa's animal metaphors. "Ruthless" is an adjective I might have used, "cold" certainly, years ago when I first encountered it:

91. The wooden man cut off the elephant's head (variant: cut off the elephant's life). In what will the sin of it ripen?

The commentary would seem, whether accidentally or by design, to throw us off track... Or does it?

91. The wooden man kills an elephant. Similarly the full knowledge (jñāna) that comes from realization kills ignorance. (Zhijé Collection I 452)

We can consult a few other instances of the 'man of wood' or the 'person of wood' in other parts of the Zhijé Collection. In some of these we find a significant association with a yantra, in Tibetan trungkhor ('khrul-'khor), but before discussing that let's see the examples:

  Explaining the phrase 'If you don't focus on the result you obtain it' —

One's own benefit (as distinguished from benefit for others) is something the person of wood performed without having the idea [to obtain it]. 
In it [the person of wood] there is no idea it did something, or that there is something to do. 
It has no need to distinguish between what is and is not Dharma, or what practices to take up and [which others] to renounce. 
One who recognizes this is living the intentions of the Buddha.

  To explain this [verse Tenné says]:
For example, even though that man of wood may have performed actions by means of its yantra, actions like getting fruit (or, achieving results),* however much its actions have taken hold (?), it doesn't have the least idea that this thing or the other is what needs to be done. Taking up good Dharma practices and giving up what isn't Dharma... Overcoming this dualistic vision and becoming free of prapañcas, the individual suited for the Path is liberated from dualistic perceptions, and [it is] in knowing this that they are living in the intentions of the Buddha. That is what the words [of the verse] are ultimately aiming at.

*The Tibetan at this point reads: dper na shing gi myi de 'khrul 'khor gyis 'bras sgrub la stsogs pa'i bya ba byas kyang... 

This last bit (at Zhijé Collection IV 173) is part of a commentarial work by Tenné, which means it dates about a century later than the words of Padampa. The same goes for the following, from yet another of his commentaries (at Zhijé Collection V 414). This section of the commentary comes right after a section that argues there is no possibility for illustrating or making comparisons with the intentions of the Buddha. But then Tenné goes ahead and does just that.

"But in order to make this easy to comprehend, there is this analogy: A person of wood is devoid of I-&-mine in its actions, they say. You might then say, Well, how can it be, then, that there is no object of comparison for the Buddha's intentions? Wouldn't this analogy with the person of wood, for being without I-&-mine, contradict it? No, there is no contradiction. These two are in different realms. It's being beyond comparables is like this: On the one hand you have the intentions of the Buddha, [and on the other] you take this person of wood as an analogy, showing the manner in which Buddha activity is performed. 

"The person of wood, using the power that comes from its yantra, performs such appearances of activities like those of humans: threshing grain, pressing sesame (for oil) and chopping grass. It's not something it thinks about in terms of "Well, I've done such a thing." There is no I and mine. Similarly, like the wooden yantra, it may be that the intentions of Buddha are devoid of thought, yet its deeds that originate from the yantra are unimpeded, and here (in this life) the force of prior aspirations appears in the forms of all kinds of activities. Like the deeds done by a man of wood, the two Form Bodies are performing deeds that benefit sentient beings, but you wouldn't think, 'It's the wood that thrashes the grain.' Similarly you wouldn't say that it is the Form Bodies that perform the deeds that benefit sentient beings." 

The two Form Bodies are the Nirmanakaya (Tulpai Ku) and Sambhogakaya (Longchö Dzogpai Ku). The non-form Dharmakaya (Chökyi Ku) is their source, in the sense that the Form Bodies appear because of the compassion and the prior aspirations of the Enlightened One. The Sambhogakaya is compared to the yantra, the Nirmanakaya to the man of wood.

By now I think the passages, despite some obscurities that admittedly remain, have at the very least made it clear how we have to understand the 'man of wood' and the 'yantra.' Indeed, I recommend that you right away go back and reread the passages. Wherever you see the 'person of wood' or 'man of wood' (I don't distinguish between these two expressions... Should I?), replace it with the word 'puppet.' And wherever you see the Sanskrit word 'yantra,' replace it with the word 'contraption,' or better, 'device' or (I guess) 'mechanism.'

But we have still more sources, sources which ought to predate Padampa. Let's look at them and see if they support our interpretations. My first example comes from verse anthologies that either predate Padampa, and were brought with him — either on paper or in memory — from India, or represent texts delivered to him by visionary means.


From the text entitled Song of Glorious Vajraḍākinī (Dpal rdo rje mkha' 'gro ma'i mgur; Dergé Tanjur no. 2441, folio 63):

hūṃ skyi ser rlung gi pha yul gad ||
lag bskor mig gis ma lus bcom ||
bu chung 'di yi gces 'dzin bor ||
shing gi skyes bus dal [~ngal] dub spangs ||...

Hūṃ. The zephyr has the crack [in the wall] as its homeland.
The eye of the hand-wheel [mill] overcomes all.
Abandon attachment to this young child [you were?].
The man of wood has been freed from painful tasks...

It's interesting that the hand-wheel is mentioned here. It might possibly refer to the hand-held prayer wheel — about that more in a moment — but here I believe it means the hand-operated mill used for food processing. 


The following is from Symbol Song of Vajraḍākinī (Rdo rje mkha' 'gro ma'i brda'i mgur; Dergé Tanjur no. 2442, folio 66):

khyi phag gnyis kyis bram ze'i gsang tshig rlung la bskur ||
mi mgo skam po la ni shing gi skyes bu dga' ||
gyi ling sgrog dang bral na kun du rgyug par rigs ||
kha ba'i nus pa mtsho la gnas par mi 'gyur ro ||

Both the dog and the pig load the secret words of the brahmin on the wind.
[Even] a dried up human head [would be] a wooden man's delight.
Remove the gyiling horse's hobbles and it runs all over the place.
The power of the snow, when it gets to the lake, does not remain.

From Vajra Songs: The Vision of Suchness of All Yogis (Rnal 'byor pa thams cad kyi de kho na nyid snang ba zhes bya ba rnams kyi rdo rje'i mgur; Derge Tanjur no. 2453, fol. 96v):

sgyu lus kyi rnal 'byor ma kun dha li'i zhal snga nas |
'khrul 'khor las dang shing gi mi ||
bya ba rnams la 'dod pa med ||
de bzhin 'dod pa'i blo bral ba ||
'dzin med skyes pa 'phags pa'i lam ||

From the mouth of the Illusory Body Yoginī Kundhali, 
"The work done by a mechanism and the man of wood,
in their actions there is no desire.
Similarly, being without thoughts of desires,
a person without grasping [is on] the Path of Saints."


We know from this that the wooden man is an action figure. We also see, once again, an association between it and a yantra, or 'mechanism.' The Path of Saints means the Path of actual (not just potential) Bodhisattvas, Bodhisattvas who have experienced the direct vision of Truth (which requires further cultivation in order to approach Complete Enlightenment).

What's the source of the 'wooden man' in Padampa? The Adventures of Vikram is one possibility. Padampa surely knew of it. It has a frame story in which 32 wooden human (female) figures upholding a throne tell stories each in turn. (Not only that, but in recent times in Rajasthan, these stories have been performed in puppet theater; see Plowright.) Then again, perhaps a more Buddhist source was his inspiration, Śāntideva (chapter 5, verse 61). The context is a practice, universal to Buddhism, known as 'mindfulness of the body':

rmongs pa'i yid khyod ci yi phyir | | 
shing gzugs gtsang ma gzung mi byed | | 
mi gtsang tshogs kyi 'khrul 'khor 'di | | 
rul ba bsrungs te ci zhig rung | |


The Sanskrit text from this source:
na svīkaroṣi he mūḍha kāṣṭhaputtalakaṁ śucim|
amedhyaghaṭitaṁ yantraṁ kasmādrakṣasi pūtikam||61||


You foolish mind! Why wouldn't you rather
possess a pure wooden form?
Instead you protect this rotten thing,
this contraption of hosts of impurities. How is that right?


Dating several centuries before Padampa, this verse is remarkable for combining the interesting term 'wooden form' (actually, the Sanskrit word puttalaka seems to be the more usual word for both 'doll' and 'puppet') with the word yantra. This can hardly be a coincidence. Surely 'wooden form' means puppet here, and at least one modern commentator takes it so. Since I know some of my readers are native speakers of German, here is Ernst Steinkellner's translation. Perhaps one of you could tell me if Holzpuppe necessarily means 'puppet' or perhaps just 'wooden doll'?

"Ach du Narr! Eine saubere Holzpuppe hältst du nicht für dich; warum hütest du diese aus Unrat geschaffene, stinkende Maschine?" (chapter 5, verse 61)


We can be sure that Padampa knew Shantideva's famous Entry into the Awakened Life. Every inhabitant of the major North Indian monasteries studied it in those days. If anybody requires further indications, something more specific, Padampa was ordained as a novice monk by a teacher who is otherwise known to posterity only as author of a still-existing commentary on Shantideva's work. His name was Kshemadeva.

There are several historico-cultural-lexical barriers to explaining in a simple way why the connection between wooden forms and yantras ought to add up to puppets (or more accurately, marionettes, the ones with strings). Well, not quite necessarily. It could mean wooden figures made to move through still other devices, couldn't it? OK, you have me cornered, so I'll have to admit it. But let's look at the wording problem. The Tibetan for yantra is not a calque translation of the Sanskrit, and neither does it represent an attempt to etymologize the word, as often happens. It is what we would have to call a 'meaningful' translation, which means there was a pre-existing word considered sufficiently close to the Sanskrit that it was made to fill its place. The Sanskrit derives from the verbal root √yam, which means (following Monier-Williams) to sustain, hold, hold up, support, wield [a weapon], restrain, curb, govern, control. Yantra is defined as "any instrument for holding or restraining or fastening, a prop, support, barrier."  Or, "any instrument or apparatus, mechanical contrivance, engine, machine, implement, appliance (as a bolt or lock on a door, oars or sails in a boat, etc.)." And finally, "a mystical diagram supposed to possess occult powers." 

The Tibetan word trungkhor ('phrul-'khor) means 'wonder wheel' in its modern spelling, and 'bewilderment/error wheel' in the classical spelling ('khrul-'khor, spelled differently but pronounced precisely the same). Trungkhor is at the same time the only commonly used word for what we moderns are most likely to call 'yoga'. While Hatha Yoga (in its correct sense as 'forceful' yoga) is known to Tibetans as 'forceful methods' (tsentab, btsan-thabs), the bodily postures are called trungkhor. Tibetans have traditionally kept these trungkhors quite secret, although some have been published in recent times. I've even seen some very recently made videos, and an older work by Namkhai Norbu on "Yantra Yoga" has just been published in a more popular edition. 

Then, particularly in the Kālacakra Tantra we find descriptions of yantras that clearly mean 'war machines,' siege warfare instruments of various kinds, but primarily the catapult (Newman's dissertation). Yet even here we also find, within the same category, an amusement ride and an irrigation device.

With the pretty obvious exception of the yoga postures, all these things might be called mechanisms, but I suggest that the meaning of the word 'mechanism' has come to mean something quite different (which is to say that it evokes a very different image in our minds when we hear it) than it did in the old Greek days when it meant a kind of device: 

"For this, we cannot rely on modern ideas of what counts as 'mechanical.' The Greek equivalents – ta mêchanika or hê mêchanikê technê, 'the mechanical art' — are derived from a word for 'devices.' They are used of a body of work describing construction technology and the theoretical attempts to understand the powers of devices such as levers and pulleys, ballistic and hydraulic gadgets..." (Berryman, p. 347)


I'd like to refer to yantras simply as 'devices,' because I think this works quite well. I think its use helps to avoid some of the anachronisms that may be brought into play with the word 'mechanism.' We have to think in very broad terms of any object that appears to move or talk but is made of non-vital materials that normally do not permit this. Whether we understand what makes it happen or not, we will just call it a 'device,' perhaps leaving it at that. We will go on calling it by this same name even if we might find out that human or animal locomotion is in some way involved (Bhoja divides yantras into two categories to account for this possibility; Raghavan, p. 20). Most of the pre-15th-century history of technology in Eurasia, as I understand it, can be reduced to two basic motives. One was to create simulacra of humans and animals that are made, in various ways (and within limits, of course), to behave like them. The other was to create likenesses or models of celestial motion (globes, planetariums, clocks). To this we might add irrigation and milling technology (sugar mills, cotton gins, etc.) as a significant third, largely agricultural motive. (This is in large part taken from Price's essay). Of course even electric-era history is interested in such things as robots, atomic clocks, hydraulic works, combine harvesters &tc., so these motives surely do enjoy a continuing influence in our day.)

I imagined I heard somebody snickering in the background, so I ought to make one thing perfectly clear. Save the mirth.  Toys belong to the history of technology every bit as much as 'serious' machinery. Like Price (p. 15) says: 

"Amongst historians of technology there seems always to have been private, somewhat peevish discontent because the most ingenious mechanical devices of antiquity were not useful machines but trivial toys."

The merry-go-round described in the Kālacakra Tantra, and also by Bhoja (Raghavan, pp. 27-8), being useful for fun purposes, must count as a benchmark in the history of technology, every bit as much as the catapults useful in war. And if you are thinking puppets are trivial to technological history, just try dreaming up robotic machinery and prosthetics without them.

And that goes as well for the use of the Tibetan 'hand-wheel' as a tool for mantra recitation. Most of the history of technology that has involved Tibet up until now has revolved around this particular instrument, which people around the world have found intriguing just because it is a mechanism placed in the service of an internal (devotional and/or meditational) practice that may look like prayer — explaining the widely used misnomer 'prayer wheels.' Motives of play and worship can (and I think must) be accepted into the history of technology. 
(So, too, must magic, but I have enough on my plate as it is without even going there. That magic is a problem for many historians of science is proven by the cold responses and denials that greeted publication of the works of Frances Amelia Yates [1899-1981] of the Warburg Institute, London, so justly famous for her The Art of Memory.  This and her other books, among other things, make the case that the histories of today's sciences run through magical lineages extremely well.)



Another problem to get out of the way: Evolution doesn't matter. You heard me right. Technological changes in the past were not made in order to lead to the technology we know today (the 'teleological problem' in which all things lead up to what we think today is all about, is widespread, but deeply wrongheaded). It doesn't become a 'western' or European phenomenon because we choose to draw the historical lines that way. 

(Ignoring that Heron, being very probably a Graeco-Egyptian, or an Egyptian well educated in Greek, was anyway an African... ignoring that most of Greek technology, itself in some areas strongly influenced by Babylon and Egypt, was revived thanks to preservation and innovation in the Muslim world... ignoring inventions of China [movable type, gunpowder, the belted fly-wheel] and India [the worm screw, scissors]... And if we accept Lynn White's ideas about Tibetan 'prayer wheel' technology bringing the ball-&-chain governor to Italian machine design, we surely must bring Tibet in here, too... See Aris...) 


Wherever technological changes are introduced, it counts. That goes in particular for the Eskimo use of the screw, and I very heartily recommend Laufer's article on the subject. We really must not ignore Inuit ingenuity when we get the chance to learn about it, just because it doesn't fit into a lineage of knowledge we have drawn for ourselves as a way of serving our supposed needs.

And just one last pet peeve, although it may be news to some people who don't know me so well: Technological innovations are not the only true changes, with all other human developments tagged on as mere secondary results (human culture is not an 'epiphenomenon' of technology, to use the 10-dollar word for it). Other things in human history matter, too — both things that change and things that don't change — and may have priority over technological changes. Other things not only matter, on occasion they may even form bases for technological innovation: human thought and imagination to give obvious examples that ought not be overlooked.  Were you overlooking them?

And while you've got me going, one more thing: The past isn't there for us to tear it apart. It isn't a 'man of straw' for us to demolish in order to make us feel superior, smug in our modernity. It's there for us to widen our minds by imaginatively entering into it. The past is another culture. Get used to it. Exercise understanding. Learn the language. Think outside those boxes instead of just thinking how it might be a good idea.

We've just mentioned Laufer, which is nice, since he's one of the few Tibetologists (of course he was much more than that, and Sinologists among others will claim him as part of their history, too) who paid technology very much mind. Given how little there is, his work on milling devices is a very significant one. This, along with small writings on prayer wheels, and some writings about the tempered steel chain-suspension bridge builder Tangtong Gyalpo (best see the great book by Cyrus Stearns, or the online book by Manfred Gerner), are about all we can readily point to in the history of technology in the Snow Land. Part of the reason more hasn't been written is because most of us are either philosophers or scriptural Buddhologists, trained in those areas and plodding along in the same old ox-cart grooves, following the same methods — and consulting the same sources — that earned us our academic degrees. That goes toward explaining why we just don't recognize technology when we see it in our texts. We don't know how it was talked about. We don't see enough of it to know it's there, let alone place it in a larger picture. I also suspect that we don't expect to find any. Perhaps unknowingly we still labor under the illusions of those old writers who made fun of Tibet for knowing about the wheel for prayer, but not about its use for practical purposes like transportation. 

(Nah! Early Tibetans knew about wheeled transportation, sure enough. They just didn't find it practical. Just imagine trying to get those things to go on footpaths over high mountain passes.)

Has anyone even asked the question, Were there automata in Tibet like in the rest of Eurasia? Just asking it might lead to serious considerations about whether Tibet was or was not a part of the continent, over which it towers for other reasons, in terms of mechanical developments.

This story told in the 14th-century history, the Clear Mirror of the Royal Dynasty: Late in the reign of Tibetan Emperor Trisong Detsen in the last decades of the 8th century, several temples were built outside the outer walls of the new temple of Samyé, where the first Tibetan-born monks were ordained. One of these temples was the Butsel, built by a Queen named Poyongza. The Queen displayed her generosity by serving the workers elaborate meals with thirteen courses. In gratitude they added thirteen unexpectedly wonderful and clever additions to the temple. Number 12 was this one, as translated by Taylor & Yuthok:

"A golden coral emitted a sound when the gate was opened."

This may be the first coral made of gold in all of natural history, or it may be the first coral that ever emitted a sound. Well, matters are greatly clarified in the meticulous [rich with square brackets and footnotes] translation by Per Sørensen:

"For the openings and closing of the entrance [to the chapel] a golden bird [flew up and] gave signal."


I don't have the original passage behind these two translations immediately in hand, but I will hunt it down and add it here when I do locate it. Anyway, I could find more quickly the passage in the Feast for Scholars (p. 351). It tells of a pleasant water fountain not mentioned in the Clear Mirror. This fountain demonstrates some knowledge of hydraulics, no doubt, but it could also conceivably form part of the device that made the bird sing:

chu thams cad 'dril nas seng ge'i kha nas rus sbal gyi rgyab tu 'bab pa | goshir sha sgo yod pa | sgo 'byed gcod la gser gyi bye chung 'phar zhing skad 'don pa |

"All the water was collected and from a lion's mouth it fell on the back of a turtle. There was a door of white sandalwood. When this door was opened and closed a little bird of gold jumped up and sang."


I think it is clear enough that a bird sang, and moved some, whenever anyone entered the temple. I can't be sure this rings a bell for you like it does for me. I could be wrong, but I imagine it looked a little like this drawing, which was made to illustrate a translation of a work of Heron of Alexandria (1st century CE) done by Giovanni Batista Aleotti d'Argenta (b. 1546). It illustrates a hydraulic device for making birds sing when doors are opened.* 

*Heron Mechanicus, to use the Graeco-Latin name, also knew of hydraulic methods for making doors open automatically, which could be happening here, I'm not sure of it. For more on early automatic doors, see Needham, p. 162.  Notice that water is pouring from the mouths of lions in the drawing.


I'm not ready to claim that the singing bird was a hydraulic device invented independently by Tibetans, but neither can I demonstrate borrowing (although some Greek/Hellenistic rhytons, ewers and other metalworks have been found in Tibet*). Singing bird devices were known in the 10th century in the Magnaura Palace in Constantinople, and even earlier in Baghdad. Although the source is unclear, it is said that Caliph al-Ma'mun,** early in the 9th century, had a gold and silver tree with singing birds sitting in it (Brett, pp. 480-482, & illustrations). Considering this limited body of evidence, it would seem that Tibet was keeping up with technological developments, and perhaps even ahead of other parts of Eurasia.***

* There are articles on these 'out of place' artifacts (some of the most interesting ones now kept in Cleveland, Ohio) by Czuma, Denwood, Heller & Shepherd, but my bibliography is already too heavy to hold them. **Al-Ma'mun's reign was very important for the translation of Greek systems of science, especially astronomy and medicine, into Arabic (Syriac was also involved here). *** I hesitate to mention all those fantastic wonder stories scattered about the internet about "advanced ancient technology" in Tibet. If you want you can schmoogle the words and find them for yourself.


It's time to get back to the subject of puppets, I'd say. My argument is this: Puppets are a type of simulacrum as well as a type of automaton. The device that permits their movement is hidden from the viewer. But even puppets that are controlled by the presence of a living organism inside them ought to be included in the same category, like the 'lion suit' that Padampa mentions so often. 

(Bhoja, like Heron, recommends that the mechanism be concealed in order to increase wonder in the viewer.)




These devices belong to the field of drama, it's true, but then there are a number of signs that Padampa was familiar with Indian dramatic theory. One rather mysterious sign of this might be found in his use of the word karaṇa, a technical term probably drawn from Indian dramatic theory (nāṭya śāstra — a mystery I may go into another time, since I'm still pondering; it's a technical term in grammar, also). Another is the lion suit, and of course the 'Chinese mask' in the last blog. Some believe that the original drama in India was puppet drama, pointing to the word used in theater for the director or narrator, sūtradhāra. It very literally means 'holder of the string[s].' This same word, in context of architecture, means the architect (or chief artisan, or carpenter).*

* Chalk lines are laid down using strings, and not only in drawing out building plans on the ground, but in other artisanal contexts as well, including carpentry. Some people might need reminding that the mandala is also an architectural structure, even if in art it is most often seen in two dimensions (three-dimensional blowups, called lolang [blos-bslangs] do exist). The first stage in the construction of a mandala is laying out the chalk lines, and these are the strings the string holder holds.


When Padampa talks about a wooden man cutting off the head of (or slaying, as the text variant says) an elephant, I assume it's [1] a puppet play context, in which both the man and the elephant are puppets playing their parts, or [2] an automata display that involves some kind of at least minimal movement and interaction between the wooden man and the wooden elephant that results in the death of the elephant. Here there is an immoral moral that could be understood, this being that the world is an illusion so it doesn't matter what evil we do. And desireless robots have zero moral liability. I thought so, too, at first, laboring under my modern negative understanding of androids (it hadn't occurred to me yet that 'man of wood' might mean 'puppet'), without any will or motivation of their own, and hence not constituting moral agents. But if we accept the Tibetan commentator, the slaying of ignorance is done 'on its own ground' simply through the light of spiritual realization falling on it. No slaying at all takes place, just equally illusory characters in a play that forms its own resolution. Well, when the play is over, we remember the 'devices' that made the show possible and go home reflecting on the action, but conscious that it was, finally, just a show. What we were thinking was happening there didn't matter in the way we were thinking it did. Focus on the device and you just might lose interest in the show.

Where for moderns the droid is an irredeemably negative and threatening image, the puppet in Padampa's time was nothing so ominous, since anyway, the mechanistic worldview hadn't much developed yet (the big idea that everything non-mechanical can be understood better by pretending as if it were; see Berryman's article). It was something more sympathetic. It was a device, an instrument, for entertainment, drama. In Padampa's eremetic world, it is a positive symbol for the  wholly realized individual, meaning the actualized Bodhisattva and completely Enlightened Buddha. And in the quotes from Tenné, in his self-consciously inadequate analogy, the puppet and its 'control' device become symbols for the two Form Bodies that manifest after Complete Buddhahood due to the force of altruistic Bodhisattva aspirations, aspirations that 'automatically' continue to act on the stage of the world in order to resolve the confusion and miseries of us animated beings.

One of the most common puppet figures in India is Ganesha. Puppet plays commonly start (as do many other undertakings in India) with an appearance by Ganesha and offerings made to him as overcomer of obstacles. The most famous elephant decapitation in all of history is surely the one that resulted in Ganesha

(The good that can be derived from drastic situations?) 

Could the man of wood be Shiva in his puppet form? Are we starting to get some sense of what's going on behind Padampa's cryptic words? I'm asking.

There are those who think histories ought to end with the kind of conclusion that brings us, finally, to a state of comforting wistful irony. I don't belong to their school. In fact, I don't think I believe in putting ends on things at all.  Let's stick with beginnings.






Too Much Stuff to Read about Automata & Puppets 
(& OK Humans) —

Michael Aris, Tibetan Technology and the West. Look here.

Christopher I. Beckwith, Tibetan Science at the Court of the Great Khans, The Journal of the Tibet Society, vol. 7 (1987), pp. 5-11. Available online.

Sylvia Berryman, Ancient Automata and Mechanical Explanation, Phronesis, vol. 48, no. 4 (2003), pp. 344-69. Try JSTOR if you can.

Gerard Brett, The Automata in the Byzantine "Throne of Solomon," Speculum, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 1954), pp. 477-87. On Heron of Byzantium (called so so as not to confuse him with the much earlier Heron of Alexandria), whose book is dated 938 CE. The Throne of Solomon was a popular theme all over Europe and the Middle East, including such places as the Alhambra, the Ste. Chapelle in Paris etc. The Biblical description has sculptured lions on each step leading up to the throne, and in the Byzantine version of it, at least, there not only were lions, they were lions that roared.


William Dolby, The Origins of Chinese Puppetry, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 41 (1978), pp. 97-120. Our 'puppet' translation for 'man of wood' might, I suppose, be ratified with reference to a Chinese word for 'puppet' we find here which means very literally 'wooden doll.' I don't believe it's necessary to appeal to evidence from China, even if Padampa had recently spent twelve years there. He must have known about Indian puppetry, also.

Georges B. Dreyfus, What is Debate for? The Rationality of Tibetan Debates and the Role of Humor, Argumentation, vol. 22 (2008), pp. 43-58, the quote at p. 57.

Andrew Glass, Early Adopters: Debunking Stereotypes of Buddhist Attitudes toward Technology, IIAS Newsletter, no. 49 (Autumn 2008), pp. 20-21. Technology in this brief paper means primarily techniques of literary reproduction, such as paper and printing technologies, although there is a bit on structural mechanics in Buddhist architecture.

Irfan Habib, Pursuing the History of Indian Technology: Pre-Modern Modes of Transmission of Power, Social Scientist, vol. 20, nos. 3-4 (March 1992), pp. 1-22.

Berthold Laufer (1874-1934 CE), The Eskimo Screw as a Culture-Historical Problem, American Anthropologist, new series vol. 17, no. 2 (April 1915), pp. 396-406. Of course nobody in Laufer's day thought the ethnonym 'eskimo' problematic, as some do today. Notice the words on p. 401: "A history of the screw has not yet been written." This can no longer be said, thanks to Rybczynski (just below). Have a look here. Or here.

Berthold Laufer, The Noria or Persian Wheel, Oriental Studies in Honour of Dasturji Saheb Cursetji Erachji Pavry, Oxford University Press (Oxford 1933), pp. 238-50.

Joseph Needham, Mechanical Toys, contained in: Joseph Needham with Wang Ling, Science And Civilisation in China, Volume 4: Physics and Physical Technology, Part II: Mechanical Engineering, University Press (Cambridge 1965), pp. 156-65.

John R. Newman, The Outer Wheel of Time: Vajrayāna Buddhist Cosmology in the Kālacakra Tantra, PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin at Madison (Madison 1987).  On pp. 543-77, are the tantra's instructions for the construction of siege weapons, chariots, merry-go-rounds, and hydraulic systems for irrigation. A separate title on these devices by Gö Lotsawa (1392 1481), the author of the Blue Annals, has survived in a collection in Lhasa, but has not been made available to the world at large as yet. It is quite short, in only two folios.

Jamyang Norbu, Newspeak & New Tibet, Part I: The Myth of China's Modernization of Tibet and the Tibetan Language. A nice sketch of early Tibetan technology, among other matters, is to be found in this article from the inimitable J.N.'s famously formidable pen. Available here, at Phayul.com.

Poh Sim Plowright, The Desacralization of Puppetry: A Case History from Rajasthan, New Theater Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 273-98.

Derek J. de Solla Price, Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy, Technology & Culture, vol. 5, no. 1 (Winter 1964), pp. 9-23.

Venkatarama Raghavan, Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient India, Transaction no. 10, The Indian Institute of Culture, Basavangudi, Bangalore (1952), a booklet in 31 pages.  I'm unbelievably fortunate to have a copy of this rare publication (for two microfilmed versions in U.S. libraries, look here).  I got it from the duplicates box in the Kern Institute in Leiden a few years ago (they still have at least two copies; look here).

Keith Rawlings, Deeper Investigations into Shadow Theatre and Puppetry (April 2003). Available here.

Keith Rawlings, Observations on the Historical Development of Puppetry. Dated November 1999, but updated April 2003. Available here.

Witold Rybczynski, One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw, Scribner (New York 2001), in 176 pages. I haven't read this, but I imagine you, like me, might want to.

Śāntideva, Eintritt in das Leben zur Erleuchtung (Bodhicaryāvatāra), translated from the Sanskrit by Ernst Steinkellner, Eugen Diederichs Verlag (3rd reprint, Munich 1997). Daniel Stender's website has a great collection of related online links

Michael Schuster, Visible Puppets and Hidden Puppeteers: Indian Gombeyata Puppetry, Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 59-68. The author, himself a puppeteer and founder of the Bell Theater in Jerusalem, supplies us with the amazing information that South Indian puppets sometimes have paper yantras (in this case ritual diagrams that resemble mandalas) inserted inside their heads and arms. Puppets might even undergo a type of consecration ritual similar to those for divine images performed in the temples. Color plate 3 shows the elephant-headed Ganesha puppet with a motor in the back of its head to make its halo revolve.

Per K. Sørensen, Tibetan Buddhist Historiography: The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, an Annotated Translation of the XIVth Century Tibetan Chronicle rGyal-rabs gsal-ba'i me-long, Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden 1994), the cited passage on p. 389.

McComas Taylor & Lama Choedak Yuthok, trs., Sakyapa Sönam Gyaltsen, The Clear Mirror: A Traditional Account of Tibet's Golden Age, Snow Lion (Ithaca 1996), p. 242, was quoted above.

Stephanie West, Cultural Interchange over a Water-Clock, The Classical Quarterly, new series vol. 23, no. 1 (May 1973), pp. 61-64.

Marianne Winder, Aspects of the History of the Prayer Wheel, Bulletin of Tibetology, new series vol. 1 (1992), pp. 25-33.  PDF here.




"[T]he shadow-casting images used in the cave [in Plato's famous cave analogy in The Republic] are referred to as thaumata, here meaning puppets or fabrications, made by thaumatapoioi, here meaning puppet-makers or tricksters." (Danzig, p. 189) 

In The Republic, this allegory is, in the cynical interpretation of it, mainly about the possibility of molding public perceptions for reasons of statecraft. Thaumata means 'wonder,' but then it has been said, 

"Ancient sources claim that it is only the inexperienced — those who do not perceive the cause — who feel the wonder." 
— Berryman, p. 347

No history of early Eurasian technology could be complete without including more on al-Jazarī, Ma Chün, Mo Ti,* Vitruvius, Leonardo and Bhoja, but I've tried to keep from writing too much about things I don't know very much about.  I've done enough of that today. The next time you're in Dhubai, visit the Ibn Battuta Shopping Mall in order to see the nine-meter-high Elephant Clock, built according to al-Jazarī's specifications. Or if the economic situation discourages your patronage of shopping malls, have a look here, here and here and be amazed.


*Mo Ti was an inventor [?] of automobiles in 4th century China; see Needham, p. 159.
I didn't really get a chance to say much about the history of clock-making technology that can be known from Tibetan-language texts, mainly in Vinaya scriptural translations.  Gregory Schopen has written about the subject recently, in his article "Marking Time in Buddhist Monasteries" that also forms a chapter in his book Buddhist Monks and Business Matters.  You can get some idea about Indian water clocks and sundials in this downloadable PDF, and a book by the same author published in India last year that I'm eager to read at my first opportunity: Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma, The Archaic and the Exotic: Studies in the History of Indian Astronomical Instruments.

There is a reason the modern Tibetan word for 'clock' and 'hour' is chutsö (chu-tshod). It might be etymologized as meaning something like 'water reckoning.'  Chutsö is in fact registered in the main Sanskrit-Tibetan vocabulary of the early 9th century, the Mahāvyutpatti, as equivalent to Sanskrit ghaṭikā, the device described by Schopen, which in its turn is quite comparable to the Greek clepsydra (κλεψυδρα).  The Greeks very likely got this time keeping technology, in turn, from the Egyptians (see the article by West).





If you haven't heard the story of how Ganapati (Ganesh) got his elephant head before, or if you need to jog your memory, there is a nice animation of the myth at YouTube, but beware the graphic violence. 

A mechanical singing bird by Bontems of Paris dating from 1870.


NOTE:  A puppet appendix or addenda should be going up soon, which might change our minds some more.  I hope so.  There are also some fairly early Mahabharata / Bhagavad Gita puppet metaphors.  Perhaps more important is a metaphor from the Prajnaparamita pointed out to me by Henk Blezer of Leiden, The Netherlands.  Thank you Henricius!

Sunday, February 08, 2009

The Chinese Mask Trick


I'm no expert in the Chinese dramatic art of sudden mask changes. What I can tell you is this: that some Tibetans were familiar with it nearly a thousand years ago. This video of the Singapore-based artist “Alex the Magician” is placed here as a footnote and an introduction to a relatively short compilation of Padampa's pieces of advice, given to a select group of individuals, called “White Conch Fragments.”

Bian lian, or ‘changing face,’ is a special dramatic technique associated with Szechuan Opera in particular. I don't know how old it is, although I suppose it must be quite old. Right now I would have to say I'm sure it isn't true to say that it was first documented 300 years ago. Write us a comment if you have some clear idea. I am unsure of the real explanation for the very impressive effect, which is instantaneous, or very nearly so. What I can do is give a quote that would seem to explain it, at least up to a point. It's from an article by Wei Minglun and Yu Shiao-ling: “This change is brought about by having the actor wear several layers of facial masks, all painted on very thin paper.”

If that destroys the magic for you, so be it. I think it’s OK. What's the point of living if we can't peel away delusions and see more clearly what it’s really all about?  (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.  Go find your own answers.) We’re supposed to gain in knowledge (experience, wisdom) and find better ways to live.  I don’t know how I can explicate our human predicament any simpler (and better?) than that.  (And that was a rhetorical answer.  Go ask your own questions.)

Padampa uses it in a context of political leadership and, well, politics. Everyone knows that politicians change their faces to suit different needs and circumstances. We also know that the great changes they boast of, or promise for the future, are often little more than cosmetic or just simply false. The underlying malaise remains.  

What you will find at the link offered below is a translation-in-progress, which means I’m conscious of not succeeding in ironing out every problem, and of course — for those familiar with Padampa’s modes of expression this will go without saying —  there are lots of passages that would seem to require commentary. For the most part Padampa has encouraging words, but a couple of times Padampa lets the least hopeful cases know they’re going nowhere fast. I am completely unaware of any translation ever being made before this one, and I did it without assistants (I meant that word assistants). As for assistance, I looked for it wherever I could find it, even in YouTube, and yes, even in Wikipedia. Or, as the old Islamic saying attributed to Muhammad goes, “Seek knowledge, even in China.”  Life is, as Padampa says, “bright but not long lasting,” while the art is long. This we know, or surely ought to, even without relying on online resources.


To get there immediately, press here once or twice.

Datura, symbol of delusion



Biblio. ref.:

Wei Minglun and Shiao-ling Yu, "Pan Jinlian — The Story of One Woman and Four Me, a New Sichuan Opera," Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 1-48.






Dissolving the most fundamental delusion is what 'Buddha' means.  

Padampa

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Losar eCard




What makes this year different from other years?

By now it would appear that the movement to give up Losar — Tibetan New Year — celebrations has gained considerable momentum among Tibetans everywhere.  Some may see contradictions in today's blog, or even reactionary impulses. I fail to see any. Losar observances will without doubt be carried out in every Tibetan home this year more or less as they always have been.  The very idea that there won't be any Losar is, let's admit it, a little bit like calling off Christmas in a Christian community. Not very likely. But I think what we are going to see this year are less of the public 'celebratory' parts of Losar than usual.  The simple reason is the grief of the previous year (unless you've been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle, you'll know its reasons). For more on the problems with New Year this year, read this blog by Agam's Gecko. The news from Lhasa and eastern Tibet in recent days is disheartening. Don't think for a moment that anything about the Tibet situation has been resolved. Not at all. When Beijing isn't displaying its anxiety, it's indulging in denial. And if you have questions about what Tibetan New Year is, or in more ordinary times would be, there might be a few answers in this post from last year.

If you have Tibetan friends, why not send them a Losar eCard on or before the new moon of February 25th? I wasn't able to get my Tibetan fonts to work together with photoshop, but perhaps you will have more success with that. If you would like to add your own message to the card, download this uninscribed version by double-clicking and sliding it onto your computer desktop


Then import it into Photoshop and see what you can do with it. Or take your own photo of an ox-like creature if you don't think highly of mine. I know a lot of you have been searching the internet in vain in hopes of finding Losar eCards. I know. I have my sources.  

But now that I look, I see there are a couple of ready-made cards for the Earth Ox over at "Tibet Cafe." Never mind. I spoke too soon. It happens.

If your Tibetan friends are living a place without fast internet connections, do them a favor and print your cards out on photo paper and drop them in the mail.  If you act quickly there may still be time.



This Losar will begin the 23rd year of the 17th rabjung.  Some have developed the custom to number the year from the first year in the reign of the first Tibetan Emperor Nyatritsenpo.  They would call it the year 2136. If you have read this far, consider this to be my Losar eCard to you this year. We'll just leave it without any labels, or call it Tea-Coloured Light.  Let's say its rays symbolize hope in all its audacity.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Black Bodhisattvas



Two Mahāmudrā teachers. From a small 14th-century painting once in the Jucker Collection, presently in the collection of the Rubin Museum. Vairocanarakṣita, an important Indian teacher from Orissa, best known for his single-handed translations of Dohā (‘couplet’) songs of the Mahāsiddhas, is on your left, with Padampa on your right. They are identified beyond any possibility for doubt by inscriptions on the reverse side of the painting. Padampa's name is given as Dampa Gyagar Nagpo ('Holy Black Indian' —for this name, look here, on p. 32). For the full picture, look here.


I would like to dedicate today's brief blog, along with the paper linked to it, to both Martin Luther King Day, which was yesterday, and to the inauguration of the first ever African American (or as people my age will probably continue forever to say with pride and respect, disregarding the latest demands of the logo-therapists [those who believe in the theory that changes in reality are brought about by changes in terminology], black) president, which has taken place today. Like some others, I'm sure, I'm a little too old, world-weary and cynical to be a true believer in all that rhetoric of 'hope' and 'change' repeated so often in the pre-election campaign. Nonetheless I've been in an unusually optimistic mood these last few days. Even I can't make myself so cynical as to say that hope is unjustified. What is President Obama's book called, The Audacity of Hope? I see real possibilities that a black head of state — and yes, even one with faults and the ability to make mistakes — might go very far to heal the racial divide in the U.S. Racism is hardly a U.S. monopoly, but its long and shameful history of black slavery and subsequent exploitation and discrimination has practically defined the term for the rest of the globe. And beyond the U.S. borders, we can hope (and if you prefer, pray) that the Obama presidency will be instrumental in bringing richly deserved and long overdue peace to the Middle East. With peace, equality, personal growth and understanding, everyone benefits. Partisanship, chauvinism, hostility, discrimination? We know what they bring all too well.


R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  Yes indeed!

It may be audacious of me to imagine the attached paper will make people think about things that so far haven't much entered into the minds of those with interests in Tibet; I mean in particular the academic Tibetologists. Although limited to a particular locale at only one point in Tibetan history, it raises issues of ethnic identity and conflict on various levels. I hope it can lead to some rethinking and creative solutions to some old problems, even if I haven't been able to propose very much along those lines. Because it is somewhat technical, I only recommend it to people engaged in Tibetan Studies, or to those who have been following the previous blogs and articles on Padampa.  I tried to make things clear/er, but it isn't for beginners.  If you think you want to read more, press here to get started. Meanwhile, whether you feel like reading it or not, remember to be thankful for air and other simple gifts.








Warmly recommended reading:

Janice D. Willis, Dreaming Me — Black, Baptist and Buddhist: An African American Woman's Spiritual Journey, was first published in 2001 by Riverhead Books. The author is a professor at Wesleyan University. Written in a clear style, this book should prove appealing to practically everyone I know. Sorry, but I loaned my copy to my sister, and don't expect to see it again any time soon. Here is the kind of commercial link I don't usually like to give.


President Obama neglected to mention Buddhists in his Inaugural acceptance speech.  I don't think it means anything, and won't make an issue of it.  But Buddhism has over time achieved a high public profile in the U.S. (here's proof if any were needed), and probably deserves mentioning as much as those he did mention:  
"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.  We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth..."

One country — guess which one — felt free to edit out (to censor) parts of his speech that endangered their susceptible citizens.

I would also like to point out the website “Rainbow Dharma,” and particularly this page, "Black Buddha: Bringing the Tradition Home."  The interviewee, with the Tibetan name Choyin Rangdrol (this could be approximately translated, “The Realm of Dharmas Self-Liberated”), is a teacher of the Tibetan Nyingmapa school active in the area of Oakland, California.  I don't know much in particular about him or his teaching activities, but I'd like to learn more.  My favorite quotes: "The suffering is on both sides!" and "...being human is enough, and the rest is a footnote."

Essential reading on Padampa iconography:  Rob Linrothe, Strengthening the Roots: An Indian Yogi in Early Drigung Paintings of Ladakh and Zangskar, Orientations, vol. vol. 38, no. 4 (May 2007), pp. 65-71.

Are you wondering what the Tibetan "Obama" has to say these days?  If so, walk on over to "High Peaks Pure Earth" blog and have a look at this.


For more remarkable artworks featuring Padampa, see this link (second figure from your left; that's Virūpa on your far right... identifications for all four figures, see Linrothe's article, p. 69) and this one, too.  A small collection of Padampa  artworks are here.



§  §  §



Quotes of the day

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.



— Rev. Martin Luther King


These things are old.
These things are true.

— Barack Hussein Obama,
President of the U.S.




Full moon over the rotunda of the Capital Building 

in Washington DC on January 10, 2009

Friday, December 19, 2008

Tibschol Downloadable



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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


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


Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Tingri Hundred


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

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

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

One way among others to divide the different recensions is to look at this verse (no. E16) to see if it has the word for 'monkey' (spre'u) or the rather similar, but only in its written form, word for 'rhinoceros' (bse'u, which I take to intend bse-ru) I think the monkey version makes better sense, but that's rather beside the point here.
In the forest fastness the monkey [or rhino] thinks it's happy,
but the edge of the forest is ringed with fire, my Tingrians.
We'll call those the monkey and rhino versions.  I only give this as one example among many others, just so nobody will imagine that the text was ever set in stone for all eternity.  Like texts throughout Eurasia in earlier centuries, the manuscripts were alive and evolving beings.

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

I imagine you might have been a little surprised when I suggested, just now, that they might not be by Padampa.  Let me rephrase that.  All the versions that we have today were most definitely inspired by Padampa, who was the first to pronounce verses in the just-described form. Padampa spoke the original Tingriwa couplets. The second person to compose them was Padampa's immediate disciple Kunga, who pronounced no fewer than 118 of them just before his own death only 7 years after Padampa's. The odd and interesting fact is that only a very few of the Tingriwa couplets in the popular collections available today are actually found in the sets pronounced by Padampa and Kunga (these two latter preserved only in the Zhijé Collection). The simple solution to this problem is just to say that it's very likely that the collections we have today were not in fact by Padampa, but appeared at a later date in Tibetan literary history.  This idea might be supported with the information that, to the best of my knowledge, the very first Tibetan-authored work to quote any of the verses from the Tingri Hundred is one by the author of the most famous Tibetan history book, The Blue Annals.  That means Gö Lotsawa, in his commentary on the Ratnagotravibhaga.  You can find the verse Gö Lotsawa quotes at no. E20 in our text of The Tingri Hundred.
Escorted by your Lama you will arrive where you want to go.
As your fee, pay your trust and veneration, my Tingrians.
What that means is that the earliest citation of a couplet resembling any of those we have in our Tingri Eighty or Tingri Hundred collections (both of them include this verse, but the sets of Tingriwa couplets in the Zhijé Collection do not have it) is in a composition dated to 1473 CE.  The other known verse citations date between the 18th century and the present.  There are quite a few of these, testifying to the popularity of our collection in the last three centuries.

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

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

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


It shouldn't be cause for any wonder that a recurring theme of the verses is death. It is a Last Will and Testament, after all. I hope that hearing that word won't scare you off. That would be unfortunate.
A flower one moment fine, the next moment all dried out,
there’s no relying on the body, my Tingrians.

– Couplet E30 of The Tingri Hundred.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
 Tomorrow will be dying.

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

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

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

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



READ MORE...

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

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


Chapter 17, "The Gesture of Thought, the Sign of Logos," contained in: H.P. L'Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World, Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning (Oslo 1953), pp. 171-197.  
"The scroll [or book] in the left hand contains the written speech; the gesture of the right one expresses the realization of the written in the living word."


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



Thursday, November 20, 2008

Leeches & Prapañcas


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


In the comments section there was a discussion on the subject of metaphor no. 2 of Padampa's Root Text.  I have now changed my translation, following Early Tibet's correction, to read as follows:
The leech, satiated with blood, doesn't go after meat that is in the water.

The Commentary on no. 2 reads (also changed slightly, adding the words in blue):
Leech — The worm known as the leech is found in narrow places in swamps all over Mon and India. It drinks the blood it sucks from the feet of humans. Until it has had its fill, even if you pull on it you can't remove it. Then it's exhausted, and won't even go after meat that's [been placed] in the water. Likewise when you have ceased the outflows (prapañca) of a mind that has cultivated learning, reflection and meditation, a sense of ease appears.

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

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

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

Lang nicely summarizes in her introduction the practical meditation concerns within which the term prapañca operates:
"Several Indian religious works... use the expression prapañca (Pâli papañca) to refer to the world perceived and constructed as the result of disturbed mental states.  In order to calm this unquiet world, these works advocate meditative practices that staunch the flow of normal sensory experience."
Even more nicely, Lang says:
"[T]he Buddha, when asked how to realize nibbâna, responded that one must cut off the root of what is called conceptual proliferation, namely the thought "I am" and by remaining mindful control whatever internal desires he has.  In this way, one achieves the goal of inner calm."
And if I may quote from the summary at the end of Premasiri's essay:
"[I]t [papañca] may be interpreted as a psychological term that signifies the internal sub-vocal chatter that goes on in the mind using the prolific conceptual constructions based on sense perception.  This internal chatter feeds and is fed by unwholesome emotions such as craving, conceit and dogmatism and produces the tensions, anxieties and dogmatism that produce the tensions, anxieties and sorrows of the individual. The overt expression of this psychological condition is witnessed in the conflicts and disputes that manifest in society.**** Papañca may be understood as the psychological turmoil to which a person becomes a victim due to the lack of awareness and insight into the realities of the sensory process to which all beings constituted of a psychophysical organism are exposed."
Prapañcas are closely intertangled with conceptual thinking (vitarka, rtog-pa) — both are also intertangled with sense perceptions — but, unlike conceptual thinking, they have an apparently 'outward' interfering function (mind you, they don't really go anywhere). They are driven by irrational cravings, selfish conceit and inflexible views. They in turn result in both individual mental disturbances and social miseries, the latter particularly including conflicts with other people.  Clear?  Hmm. Let me give it one final shot, if you will permit me.

Narcissism as a world-distorting mechanism?

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

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


†  †  †

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

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

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

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

****"I heard David Chase [the director] say one time that it's about people who lie to themselves, as we all do. Lying to ourselves on a daily basis and the mess it creates."
— James Gandolfini, the actor who plays Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, interviewed in Rolling Stone in March 2001. Watch this television series with care and you might see and reflect how people can be both true to [what they regard as] themselves and constantly telling lies. (Tony even exploits his sessions with his analyst in order to justify and rationalize to himself doing the [evil] things he would have done anyway, making her complicit in his criminality rather than bettering himself as a human being.) An interesting example of art as metaphor for life, for how art works, and for how art works on us. For this quote and more, look here.
***If you would like to know other ways of defining prapañca, try this short one at Wikipedia or this longer one at Buddhist Door.  You might also want to try here and scroll down to part "a" of section "3."  

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

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



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


phyi yi spros pa rang gi sems la bsdus ||
'khyag rom chu ru zhu'o ding ri ba ||

The conceptual elaboration of your external world is subsumed in your own mind.
Frozen blocks of ice melt into water, my Tingrians.

— Padampa Sanggyé


 
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