Dharma Wheel

Notes, thoughts and fragments of research on the history of Tibet

The Author

I am based at the British Library, as Research Manager for the International Dunhuang Project, where I am currently involved in a 3-year project on the Tibetan Chan tradition. Previous research projects include a 5-year project on Tibetan paleography and a 3-year project on the earliest Tibetan tantric manuscripts. I also occasionally lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

My PhD in Religious Studies was awarded in 2000 by the Department of Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester. The dissertation, on the Dzogchen works of the 18th-century writer Jigmé Lingpa, was published as Approaching the Great Perfection in 2003.

Since then I have worked closely with the Tibetan manuscript collections from Central Asia. My research has focused mainly on the impact of social and historical factors on key issues in Tibetan culture. These include the contemplative tradition of the Great Perfection, the tantric ritual system and its social contexts, and the development of mythical narratives of imperial Tibet. I’ve also written on the intersection between orality and literacy, and on the creation and development of the Tibetan writing system. Tibet: A History, my narrative history of Tibet, was published by Yale University Press in 2011.

Given that rdzogs chen is closely associated in the Guhyagarbha tantra with the ritual moment of the culmination of perfection stage yoga, the question of what it signifies remains.

In general, the significance seems to differ little from later Great Perfection traditions: all qualities (yontan) and enlightened activities ('phrin las) - that is, the aims of the Buddhist practitioner -are complete (rdzogs) from the start (ye nas). That is to say, in another phrase that is used in the tantra far more often, everything is spontaneously present (lhun gyis grub).8 Furthermore, there is an emphasis on the transcendence of concepts in a state beyond the reach of thought (bsam gyis mi khyab). In spite of the association of rdzogs chen with these ideas, so familiar from the later Great Perfection texts, the phrase itself occurs only four times in the tantra, and is certainly not the defining term for this complex of ideas that it later became.

Certain texts preserved in the Dunhuang collections confirm that the term rdzogs chen was actually used in practice in the context of the ritual moment of consecration. 9 For example, in PT 321, a sadhana based arounda Heruka mandala, following self-consecration and the offering of the bodhicitta to the mandala of deities, the text mentions the mandala of the secret great perfection (rdzogs pa chen po gsang ba'i dkyil 'khor), which is associated with the purity of all phenomena.

7 Dalton 2004.
8 For translations of the passages reflected to here, see Germano 1994, pp. 214-215.
9 Dalton 2004. 10 PT 321, f.16r. Another manuscript, ITJ 437, a treatise on the development and perfection stages incorporating material from the Guhyasamaja tantra and the Vajramrta

Stewart wrote:Elaborate on this please, I have never heard that Marpa never met Naropa.

Leo Rivers wrote:It is this kind of renovation of understanding of original materials in their original context that creates an unavoidable strain between traditional presentations and academic insight. But I can't help but think that this kind of warmth generate by wresting with the materials is what will re-invigorate practicing a Buddhism that come to have to struggle with it's own identity rather than just recite the inheritance. It's a good exercise in embracing the situation.

SSJ3Gogeta wrote:

Stewart wrote:Elaborate on this please, I have never heard that Marpa never met Naropa.

http://books.google.com/books?id=H5tdZz ... pa&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Naropa is overrated anyway. Marpa did definitely meet many genuine gurus though.

Stewart wrote:Elaborate on this please, I have never heard that Marpa never met Naropa.

Malcolm wrote:

Stewart wrote:Elaborate on this please, I have never heard that Marpa never met Naropa.

In Sakya sources, it is reported that Milarepa himself never reported that Marpa had met Naropa in person. Jetsun Dragpa Gyaltsen expresses the opinion therefore, that Marpa indeed never met Naropa in person. Jetsun Rinpoche was born mid 12th century.The standard dates for Mila are 1052-1135.

Jetsun Dragpa Gyaltsen lived 1147-1216. He was teaching the Hevajra tantra by the time he was eleven. He had received Kagyu teachings from minor lineage holder from Marpa.

So the Sakyas have always maintained that Marpa never met Naropa in person, that he was a disciple only of Maitripa in fact.

conebeckham wrote:Anything is possible when you're talking about Tibetan Hagiographies. In particular, writers have agendas--even academics have agendas, much less adherents and promulgators of various lineages.

But in the end, Naropa is a source of great blessings, and he is known widely as the "synthesizer" (or compiler, if you like) of the most famous Tibetan Tantrayana Completion Stage system known to the wide world, and is important not merely for the Kagyupas--as well as being the source of Sakyapas Vajrayogini. He is hardly "over-rated," regardless.

conebeckham wrote:Naropa's over-rated. Ha Ha, one can read all sorts of things here at Dharma Wheel!

SSJ3Gogeta wrote:Only qualm I had with Tibet A History by Sam van Schaik is that he says that Marpa actually met Naropa.

But Ronald Davidson strongly disagrees.

So I don't know what the truth is.

Not that it matters, since Marpa has genuine lineages from several masters, like Maitripa.

conebeckham wrote:They are included in SOME Mahamudra lineage prayers......I think you're thinking of the Dorje Chang Thungma?