Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen

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kalden yungdrung
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Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen

Post by kalden yungdrung »

Tashi delek DW members,

Found a nice history about Jonang and Dolpopa.
Zhentong is here his philosophy. The other side was Rangtong.

Maybe short explanation possible about Zhen Tong? Thanks. :applause:

Gelug is convinced about Prasangika Madyamika, which became the Tibetan "standard".

Mutsug Marro
KY.

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Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen (dol po pa shes rab rgyal mtshan) was born in 1292, in the Dolpo region of present-day Nepal. He took ordination as a novice monk in 1304 and spent the following years studying the tantras of the Nyingma tradition. In 1309 he traveled to Mustang (glo) to study the treatises on the vehicle of the perfections, epistemology, and abhidharma under the master Kyiton Jamyang Drakpa Gyeltsen (skyi ston 'jam dbyangs grags pa rgyal mtshan, d.u.). Kyiton soon left Mustang and went to teach in the great monastery of Sakya (sa skya) in the Tsang region of Tibet, and Dolpopa followed him there in 1312.

Dolpopa received many teachings from Kyiton at Sakya, the most important of which were the Kālacakra Tantra, the Bodhisattva Trilogy (sems 'grel skor gsum), the ten Sutras on the Buddha-nature (snying po'i mdo), the five Sutras of Definitive Meaning, and the Five Treatises of Maitreya. He became an expert in the Kālacakra tradition he received from Kyiton and served as his teaching assistant for several years. He also received teachings and initiations from other masters at Sakya, such as the Sakya throne-holder of the Khon ('khon) family, Daknyi Chenpo Sangpo Pel (bdag nyid chen po bzang po dpal, 1262-1324). From Kunpang Drakpa Gyeltsen (kun spangs grags pa rgyal mtshan, d.u.) he again received the Vimalaprabhā commentary on the Kālacakra Tantra. From Sengge Pel (seng ge dpal, d.u.) of the Sharpa family of Sakya, he received the teachings of epistemology, and from that master's brother, Kunga Sonam (kun dga' bsod nams, d.u.), he received the teachings of the Lamdre (lam 'bras) and the textual transmission of many tantras of the Hevajra cycle.

In 1314 Dolpopa traveled to many of the great monasteries of Tsang and Central Tibet and received the title “Omniscient” (kun mkhyen) because of his mastery of scriptures such as the one-hundred-thousand-line sutra on the perfection of wisdom. He also received full monastic ordination from the abbot Sonam Drakpa (mkhan chen bsod nams grags pa, d.u.) of Cholung (chos lung) monastery and made the vow to never eat slaughtered meat for the rest of his life. During this journey he received many teachings of the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions, and the instructions of Chod and Zhije.

In the year 1321, when he was twenty-nine years old, Dolpopa ascended to the monastic seat (gdan sa) of Sakya monastery. During the same year he visited Jonang monastery for the first time and was deeply impressed by the tradition of intense meditation emphasized there. Then he traveled to U, where he had extensive conversations with the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (karma pa rang byung rdo rje, 1284-1339), at the great Karma Kagyu monastery of Tsurpu (mtshur phu). The Karmapa significantly prophesied that Dolpopa would quickly become even more expert in the view and practice.

In 1322 Dolpopa left Sakya and went to Jonang monastery, where he received from the master Khetsun Yonten Gyatso (yon tan rgya mtsho, 1260-1327) the complete transmission of the Kālacakra Tantra, the Bodhisattva Trilogy, and the Kālacakra completion-stage practices of the six-branch yoga. Then he entered a meditation retreat at the Jonang hermitage of Khacho Deden (mkha' spyod bde ldan). After this retreat, Yonten Gyatso convinced Dolpopa to teach in the assembly at Jonang, and also taught him many more systems of esoteric knowledge, such as Lamdre, the Five Stages (rim lnga) of the Guhyasamāja and the Cakrasaṃvara, Zhije and Chod. Dolpopa then visited Sakya at the invitation of Tishri Kunga Gyeltsen (ti shrI kun dga' rgyal mtshan, 1310-1358) of the Khon family, and offered him the Kālacakra initiation.

On returning to Jonang, Dolpopa began a strict retreat at Khacho Deden, meditating on the six-branch yoga for one year. During this time he achieved realization of the first four of the six branches, beholding immeasurable figures of the buddhas and pure lands when practicing individual withdrawal and meditation, and gaining exceptional experience and realization due to the blazing of blissful warmth when practicing breath control and retention. During this retreat the realization of the zhentong (gzhan stong) view first arose in Dolpopa's mind, but he would not teach it to others until at least five more years had passed.

In 1325 Yonten Gyatso urged Dolpopa to become his heir and accept the monastic seat of Jonang monastery. This was completely at odds with Dolpopa's own desire to practice meditation in isolated hermitages, but he finally agreed and ascended the monastic throne of Jonang in 1326. When Yonten Gyatso passed away the next year, Dolpopa decided to build a monumental stupa to repay his master's kindness. In 1330 many skilled artisans and laborers gathered from different regions of Tibet. Building materials and supplies were brought from all directions and hundreds of workers labored while chanting manis and praying to the masters of the lineage. Dolpopa himself sometimes carried earth and stones and sometimes worked on the building of the walls.

During the intense physical labor on the stupa, Dolpopa gave many teachings on the ultimate significance of the Buddha's doctrine. As the long central poles were placed in the stupa, he taught the Bodhisattva Trilogy to a huge assembly, explaining for the first time the distinction between the relative as empty of self-nature (rangtong) and the absolute as empty only of other relative phenomena (zhentong). He revealed the connection between his realization of the zhentong view, the teachings of the Kālacakra Tantra, and the stupa of Jonang in a series of verses:

Alas, my share of good fortune may be inferior,
but I think a discovery such as this is good fortune.

Is this discovery by a lazy fool
due to the blessing of the Kalki emperor?

I have not physically arrived at Kalapa,
but has the Kalki entered my faithful mind?

My intelligence has not been refined
in three-fold knowledge,
but I think the raising of Mount Meru
has caused the ocean to gush forth.

I bow in homage to the masters, buddhas, and kalkis,
by whose kindness the essential points,
difficult for even exalted beings to realize,
are precisely realized, and to their great stupa.

The raising of Mount Meru refers to Dolpopa's construction of the massive stupa, and the "ocean" that flowed from the blessing and energy thus awakened was his famous Ocean of Definitive Meaning (nges don rgya mtsho). The stupa was finally consecrated on October 30, 1333. In the following years Dolpopa mostly stayed in meditation retreat and had many visions. In particular, he directly beheld the pure land of Shambhala, the source of the Kālacakra teachings, and once claimed to have actually gone there by visionary means.

In 1336 Dolpopa was invited to teach several thousand people at Sakya monastery. Calling upon the sutras and tantras as witnesses, he distinguished between relative and absolute truth by means of the categories of an emptiness of self-nature (rangtong) and an emptiness of other relative phenomena (zhentong). In 1338 he passed the monastic seat of Jonang monastery to his disciple Lotsāwa Lodro Pel. Mongolian imperial envoys arrived in 1344 with decrees issued by the Yuan emperor Toghon Temur inviting Dolpopa to China, but he retreated to isolated hermitages for the next four years to evade the request.

Dolpopa became extremely heavy in his later years and it was difficult for him to travel. But in 1358, when he was sixty-seven years old, he decided to make a pilgrimage to Central Tibet and traveled by boat down the Tsangpo River, stopping at different places along the banks to teach. He stayed for one year at the monasteries of Nesar (gnas gsar) and Cholung (chos lung), where he gave many teachings. The great Sakya master of the Khon family, Lama Dampa Sonam Gyeltsen (bla ma dam pa bsod nams rgyal mtshan, 1312-1375), came to meet Dolpopa at Cholung, received teachings, and asked him to compose one of his major works, the Fourth Council (bka' bsdu bzhi pa).

In 1359 Dolpopa slowly traveled by palanquin through U and Tsang, welcomed by crowds of people lining the roads and escorting him into the different monasteries. When he finally arrived in Lhasa he stayed for about six months and gave the instructions of the six-branch yoga of Kālacakra many times. So many people came to request teachings that they could not fit into the buildings, and doors were broken and stairways collapsed.

At the beginning of 1360 a party arrived to invite Dolpopa back to Jonang. The people of Lhasa were distraught at the thought of his departure, and for some time his pelanquin could not be carried through the crowds of people and horses. Many monks had to join hands in a circle around it and people who wanted blessings joined hands and scrambled under his palanquin. The monks recited supplications such as Dolpopa's General Commentary on the Doctrine (bstan pa spyi 'grel) while the masses of people wailed. Most of the crowd was hysterical and many could not even walk. When Dolpopa was helped into a boat to cross a river, many people jumped into the water after him and had to be saved by others.

As Dolpopa traveled back into the Tsang region he stopped to teach at various monasteries such as Ralung (ra lung) and Nenying (gnas rnying). The ruler Pakpa Pelzang ('phags pa dpal bzang) and his younger brother Pakpa Rinchen ('phags pa rin chen) had for some time wished to request teachings from Dolpopa, but because of his weight it was too difficult for him to climb the long stairs to their castle. So he stayed on the plain below, where he spread out a huge silk maṇḍala of Kālacakra and bestowed the great Kālacakra initiation.

As the procession of about one hundred people proceeded to Jonang, Dolpopa taught in all the large and small monasteries along the way. It was an emotional scene, with great crowds of people escorting him through the valleys, chanting the six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteśvara, making prayers, and weeping from faith. In 1360 Dolpopa arrived back at the great hermitage of Jonang and again stayed in meditation at his residence of Dewachen.

One day toward the end of 1361 Dolpopa said he wanted to go to the stupa, but his attendants said the path was unsafe because snow had fallen and assisted him to his residence. Tea was served and elder disciples were summoned for some private conversation. The master was pleased with everyone, and there was much joking and laughter. Then he went to sleep.

In the early morning his attendant served him, but Dolpopa did not reply to several questions and sat with staring eyes, appearing to be in deep meditation. Thinking he was possibly affected by the intense cold, his disciples took him out into the sun and massaged him. After about midday his eyes closed, and, without any sign of illness, he passed into deep meditation. He was then taken back into his quarters. After a few minutes he adjusted his body into the position of Vajrasattva and passed away into bliss.

Dolpopa's body was placed in a wooden casket anointed with perfume and adorned with silk and precious ornaments, and put inside the crematorium. The body was extremely flexible, like a piece of cotton-wool. When the cremation began, the smoke rose only a few feet and then streaked to the stupa, circled it many times, and finally disappeared to the west. The men and women practitioners offered butter lamps on the roofs of their individual meditation huts, so that the entire valley sparkled. Until the smoke had faded away, each of them made prayers with tears flowing down their faces.

When the crematorium was later opened, some of Dolpopa's remains were distributed to the disciples who had received from him the transmission of the Vimalaprabhā. Among the ashes were many relics that were clear like crystal. Then many votive images (tsha tsha) covered with gold leaf were made from the remains. Ashes from the cremation were gathered and put along with other relics into an image of Dolpopa that was placed in the great stupa he had built.
The best meditation is no meditation
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kalden yungdrung
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Re: Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen

Post by kalden yungdrung »

IN ADDITION:


The Innovations of Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen Seen Through His Life Story and Collected Works

By: Naomi Worth

Lastly, throughout this study, I will attempt to address the philosophical origins of Dolpopa’s “emptiness of other” system, and suggest that the Indian origins of the radiant and permanent emptiness of other doctrine lie not in the Sankya school of Indian thought as Professor Jeffrey Hopkins has recently argued, but rather that they originate in the mountains of Kashmir in the Shaiva sect...

Dolpopa’s theory uses the model of the 2 Truths, namely ultimate truth and relative truth, and claims both truths are empty, just like the other philosophical schools already mentioned claim. He then assigns two levels to each Truth, the level of what they are empty of, and then what they are made up of, or their positive qualities. Using reasoning reminiscent of Indian thought he claims that if two things are asserted, such as the emptiness of Ultimate truth and the emptiness of Relative truth, those two things cannot refer to the same thing because that would be redundant, and nothing the Buddha ever taught was redundant.

At the relative level, phenomena are empty of self-nature, meaning that they do not possess a self or essence— they lack any fixed quality at their core. Such a statement is not an innovation. What is new in Dolpopa’s writing, however, is the assertion that the ultimate nature of ultimate truth could not possibly be empty in the sense of lacking qualities—that would be the redundancy in the system. He asserted that Ultimate Truth is “empty of other” (gzhan stong), meaning empty of anything other than its true nature. That true nature, however, has an absolute nature which possesses the qualities of purity and radiance.

Dolpopa went on to equate the pure and radiant nature of Ultimate Truth with Buddha nature (Tathāgatagarbha), the main cause for enlightenment. In this scenario, Buddha nature, possessed by all beings, no longer becomes something needing to be developed. It simply needs to be revealed via the spiritual path. Such a foundational motif promises to have abundant repercussions in the execution of its pursuit. The main metaphors of these disparate systems that promise to lead to enlightenment also differ. In “potential” system, each person possesses Buddha Nature, which is represented as a seed that must be nurtured to grow into the full tree of Buddhahood; alternatively, in the “revelation” model of Dolpopa, Buddha Nature is represented as an already pure and radiant sun, which is simply obscured by clouds...


Intellectual Influence on Dolpopa.

At 29, Dolpopa first visited Jonang Monastery, where he experienced great humility and awe in the face of the meditation practitioners there. Around the same time, another significant relationship in Dolpopa’s life began which he goes down in the history books for, with the 3rd Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339).

While by some accounts Dolpopa inspired Rangjung Dorje to author the Zab Mo Nang Don a year later, and include praise to the shentong view, there is considerable evidence that it was actually Rangjung Dorje who taught Dolpopa about “other emptiness”. It was noted that while Dolpopa was more versed in scripture than the Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje had clairvoyance and prophesied that Dolpopa would soon have a much-improved view and practice, as well as a Dharma language of his own.

Soon after meeting Rangjung Dorje, on a return trip to Jonang, Dolpopa met the second great teacher in his life, Yönden Gyatso (1260-1327).
Of all the people that Dolpopa included in his works, not only is Yönden Gyatso mentioned the most, but he is also praised the most.

Because of a dream Yönden Gyatso had the night before Dolpopa’s arrival in which the victory banner of the Buddhist teachings was raised over Jonang by the emperor of Shambhala, Kalkin Puṇḍarīka, Yönden Gyatso felt moved to bestow many important transmissions and initiations onto Dolpopa, including the Kālacakra initiation, instructions on Six-branch Yoga, and The Bodhisattva Trilogy. After receiving these extensive teachings, Dolpopa stayed in retreat at Jonang for some time. Later Yönden Gyatso would also teach and transmit to Dolpopa additional esoteric systems of knowledge, including on the Path and Result (lam ’bras), the Pacification of Suffering (zhi byed), the Pañcakrama of the Guhyasamāja tantra, and the Severence Cycle (gcod skor).

Next, something very important to Dolpopa’s life story happens. After staying in retreat for a year, when Dolpopa emerges, he proclaims mastery, or realization, of the first four of the Six-branch Yoga system, including the admission of firsthand encounter with buddhas and pure lands. This bold move by Dolpopa will serve him greatly as an innovator, because it is on this firsthand experience that he will gain his credibility as an innovator worthy of trust and investment.

Around that period Dolpopa spent much more time in retreat, especially in dark retreat, a practice which was also highly extolled by his contemporary Longchen Rabjampa. While there is no record of direct contact between Dolpopa and Longchenpa, it is clear from their works and practices that they shared mutual ideas of their time. In practice, Dolpopa embraced the Sarma (gsar ma) method of meditation associated with the Completion Stage (rdzog rim), which emphasize on the three main channels of the subtle inner body as essential to gaining enlightenment. Longchenpa, on the other hand, gave inner body practices a much lower status as preliminaries in his system. However, the fact that during the same time period, and coming from different philosophical backgrounds, they both praised the same practice—that of Dark Retreat— indicates that the practice itself may have been popular at that time Dolpopa came out of his period of retreat and realizations in 1325 at the age o f33, but he did not reveal his experiences publicly until much later, including his newly synthesized beliefs about the Shentong view...


Re-Explaining the Dharma: Dolpopa Creates His Own Language

The most striking thing about Dolpopa’s work is the audacity he had in re-defining the Dharma. In order to express his ideas, Dolpopa composed several short works which were so replete with new hermeneutical language that they made the heads of his audience spin. In fact, people reported experiencing heart seizure (snying gas) and scrambled brains (klad pa ’gems pa) upon the assertion of this new philosophical tenet system. Dolpopa was so masterful in his own position that he positioned already extant teachings in such a way so as to point out their definitive meaning, which was his own new interpretation.

However, the joke was on the reader/ listener, because the definitive meaning was a far cry from what everyone else was teaching (at least publicly).

Dolpopa’s innovation of the Dharma relied upon appropriating terms from Mahāyāna sūtras and treatises that were mostly out of use in the parlance of his time. Moreover, what had previously been categorized as provisional words of the Buddha that required interpretation and could not be taken at face value were now, in Dolpopa’s system, taken to be definitive. In the wild world of hermeneutics, poetic license is given to the interpreter, and with his special combination of dialectic and didactic skills, peppered with his own direct perceptions (“realizations”) of the Dharma, Dolpopa was well positioned to start a philosophical revolution. Hermeneutical terms demarcating his views, such as “definitive meaning” (nges don), are abundant in his works.

The term SHENTONG itself however was not completely new to Tibet; it had seen very limited use up until then.

While it seems doubtful that Dolpopa created his system in a vacuum, one thing he can definitely be credited for is popularizing his Dharma language.
According to Stearns, it may be possible to date Dolpopa’s works based on the presence of certain key terms from his Dharma language. Such an endeavor will be as quite simple using full versions of digitized texts. However, for the purpose of this paper I made use of text titles and colophon only because they were readily available on TBRC’s website.

Within the titles and colophons of Dolpopa’s works, only the terms “gzhan stong” (9 times), kun gzhi (3 times), and kun gzhi ye shes (1 time) appear. Due to software innovations in the area of digital humanities, and with the availability of full-length digital texts, it will not be difficult to upload each of Dolpopa’s texts individually, and perform simple keyword searches in order to establish a possible chronology.

As could be expected, the Sakya clan felt particularly betrayed, because up until that point Dolpopa was actually one of them, as was Jonang Monastery a Sakya institution. Not only that, Dolpopa was a SAKYA monk of great fame and expectation, and at that time, he publically contradicted the Sakya teachings. While Sakya teachers continued to request teachings from Dolpopa in his lifetime, evidence that there was not a complete rejection from the people who were still a part of his roots and upbringing, a significant amount of rejection and discord was recorded in Dolpopa’s biography. However, Dolpopa himself possessed the unique qualities of a true leader, who, upon face-to-face contact, was able to persuade his conversation partner with rather well thought-out responses.


Interpreting the Dharma: The Fourth Council, and the Kṛtayuga

Not only did Dolpopa create a vibrant system of language for his followers to identify with, but he also corrected Buddhism’s historical record that was accepted in his time. In establishing his views, he was in effect taking on the whole of Buddhist scholasticism as his dialectic opponent. The important distinction to recognize here is the body of literature that was generally accepted as qualifying the definitive meaning of the words and commentaries of the Buddha, verses the provisional meaning.

In order to carry out this task of reassignment, Dolpopa had to create a backstory that showed how his opponents were wrong, namely those who upheld the literature associated with the Third Turning of the Wheel of Dharma to be the definitive, true intention of the Buddha.

Dolpopa started with a not-too-distant scholar, Sakya Paṇḍita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182-1251), whose approach to explaining the dharma he seems to have admired, even though they were philosophically fundamentally different. Dolpopa attached himself onto Sakya Paṇḍita’s coattails
by reiterating his point of view which said:

If you have a game,
Where the pieces and the board are unrelated,
Then those pieces might as well be corpses.
In the same way,
Many Dharma sects are similar,
In that their texts are unrelated to the source, And sound like pointless babble.

Having established the existence of wrong sources within the literature based on his recent, and popular predecessor the Sakya Paṇḍita, Dolpopa went on to delineate which views were incorrect and which were valid according to his own system. In order to do so he cleverly referred to the Indian system of Yugas, or ages, saying that many teachings in distribution in his time were of the Tretayuga, a degenerate age, but that some were linked to the Kṛtayuga, the Perfected age26, which account for the Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings.

Dolpopa claimed that his teachings comprised a 4th Council, as opposed to the already extant 3-Council system that was in acceptance in Tibet, as the definitive system by which to interpret the true meaning of the words of the Buddha. There is no doubt that he would have created quite a controversy with such activity; he may have even made some enemies at that time, and he certainly incited impassioned reactions from his contemporaries just at the audacity of such an enormous claim.
Dolpopa categorized those teachings that pertain to the real truth as Fourth Council teachings, and all other in different degrees of discredit.

In the end, Dolpopa’s seminal work, The 4th Council, and his teachings on the Kṛtayuga became a very neat and succinct way to brand his ideas, and also to distinguish himself from other scholars. Below is an map of Dolpopa’s works, which might help to give the reader a more nuanced concept of what Dolpopa’s system looks like as he created it through literature. Of 5952 folios in Dolpopa’s Collected Works, 3,147 pertain to the 4th Council/ Shentong View. That estimate comprises 53% of his total works.

While Dolpopa was most certainly influenced to some degree by his contemporaries, a more interesting inquiry might trace his ideas further back in their origins. How did shentong’s qualities of radiance and eternality appear in the ultimate nature of existence in the Buddhism of Tibet?

It is generally agreed upon that the transmission of the Kālacakra Tantra came from Kashmir, Northern India, to Tibet via Tsen Khawoche (bstan kha bo che) (b. 1021), who himself had a strong connection to the Uttaratantra, a text that Dolpopa also made frequent use of. Tsen Khawoche went so far as to teach about incorrect assertions concerning the Third Turning of the Wheel of Dharma, which for some people is enough evidence to show that Dolpopa’s ideas were in circulation before his own proclamations.

Another line of evidence for the existence of Dolpopa’s signature ideas lies in the Kālacakra tantra transmission lineage that includes Yumowa Migyö Dorje (b. 1028), who clearly articulated primary concepts of the SHENTONG doxographical system in his collection 4 Clear Lamps (Gsal sgron skor bzhi). While the works thematically establish the shentong school, none of the characteristic Dharma language is present.

Dolpopa is said to have used Yumowa’s texts in his teaching, but he makes no reference to Yumowa in his literature.

Yumowa’s view on the Path to enlightenment is noteworthy. He takes a stance that emphasizes an experience of emptiness that is in contrast with the other prevalent view, e.g. that emptiness is something that can be taken as a meditative object. He maintains that emptiness cannot be directly known with the mental consciousness, but rather that it will be seen through the lens of the eyes. Dolpopa picked up on the pivotal role of the eyes in his work as well.

Another important leader of the 14th century, Longchenpa, also places great import around practices having to do with seeing, as well as dark retreat. Dolpopa’s engagement with practices surrounding the eyes, however, are much different than they are for Longchenpa. Dolpopa emphasizes the Sarma movement of reliance upon manipulation of the three main channels and the subtle inner body; Longchenpa, on the other hand, de-emphasizes the role of inner body mechanics. However, the fact that both leaders emphasized dark retreat and the eyes as central to practice indicates a meditative trend in the 14th century.

Something else that Dolpopa has in common with Longchenpa is the quality of radiance attached to the concept of the “Ground” which is at the core of Longchenpa’s philosophical system.

For Longchenpa, the Ground functions as both the beginning and the end of the cyclic of existence for all beings. The Ground is pure potential, much like the emptiness of the Middle Way. It precedes the existence of all things, and represents the primordial reality inherent to all things— it is the true nature of everything. Masked behind a screen, the Ground lies dormant waiting to be revealed, and is the essence of Buddha nature.
The striking similarity between the fullness of the Ground, and the radiance of the ultimate aspect of ultimate nature in the shentong presentation, is an area worthy of fuller exploration in future research.

Since the Jonang lineage has been reasonably clearly traced by other scholars to Kashmir, that seems like a fitting place to look for some of these radiant, God-like qualities.

One does not have to look far in the Shaivism of Kashmir and Northern India to find a similarly radiant, central and underlying concept. In that system, not only do we find strikingly parallel practices revolving around the three main subtle inner body channels and inner body mechanics, but there is also a central presence to all things aptly termed madhya.

“It is in the center of the center that the Śakti (feminine power) dwells as the power that enlivens and controls the entire wheel of sense capacities and subtle conduits. This power is conceived as the place of birth of all beings.... This powerful dimensionless ‘point’ of the center is the place of union of the Divine Pair, Śiva and Śakti. It is from this place of union that the power which manifests all of reality radiates outward.”

Based on the documented lineage history from Kashmir, as well as the similarity of the positive quality of power and radiance at the center of reality, which is simultaneously manifesting reality, it seems that much more work can be done in tracing some of the philosophical underpinnings of Tibet back to Kashmir.

Dolpopa’s arguments were completely unprecedented in Tibet, according to Stearns.

However, Dolpopa’s contemporary Longchen Rabjampa has an abundance of language in his treatise The Treasury of Words and Meanings that indicate a positive quality to the ultimate nature of phenomenon.

In Professor Jeffrey Hopkins recent work on Dolpopa, a claim is made that the Indian origins of Dolpopa’s thought lies in the Sāmkhya school of Hinduism because of similarities in terminology between Dolpopa’s system and that of Sāmkhya. However, that claim seems specious because Kashmir Śaivism possesses exactly the same list of aspects of creation that Professor Hopkins points to, with the addition of 11 components.

Since the lineage has been traced to Kashmir, and the Śaivist system possesses exactly the same components that could be pointed to as evidence of origination, it seems more logical to equate the Indian origins of Dolpopa’s ideology to Kashmir Śaivism over Sāmkhya.

Proposing Qualities of Innovators

Because Dolpopa was such a unique character in the landscape of Tibetan history, his qualities as an innovator of a tradition really stood out, so it seems appropriate to enumerate them here. Determining motives for human behavior is a tricky business, and yet the question lies before the historian and religious scholar alike: why innovate? It seems that when the circumstances are in order, and the chain of causality has a special moment in time, there is a shift in the consciousness of a culture, and Dolpopa is a charming representation of that shift. I will enumerate eight qualities of innovation that helped Dolpopa to incite a new lineage of the Dharma, in the hopes of defining the qualities of the innovators that incite major historical changes.


1. Have a charismatic leader. Dolpopa won over the hearts of his friends and followers from an early age. He was not just the charming type, but he could also back up his views with articulate, well thought out responses to questions and challenges to his views.

2. Create your own language. As previously stated, Dolpopa took relatively unused terms from Mahāyana sūtras and tantras. This established a connection and credibility with the tradition, while allowing him to introduce new concepts. It is wise to establish terms at the beginning, ensure that everyone agrees upon them, and then point out new relationships between what has been previously established in order to effectively prove a point.

3. Make it the same, but different. If the fundamental premise of a religion has changed, then is it still really the same religion? Religious boundaries are certainly fluid, and yet there is always a place, but probably not a point, where one tradition flops over into another. It is not the point to say that the Jonang tradition is not Buddhist, for it surely is. But it may be a form of crypto-Kashmir Shaivism with all the dressings of Tibet.

4. Synthesize, synthesize, synthesize. It would simply not hold up within Tibetan society, and possibly most societies, to create an entirely new system and expect people to take it up. It can be seen throughout the works of important Tibetan authors such as Dolpopa, Longchenpa, and Tsongkhapa that synthesizing previous works to make new points is a highly successful technique. Dolpopa synthesized the view and practice of Mahāyāna and Vajrayana Buddhism.

5. Use your own esoteric experience to interpret reality. This quality is somewhat unique to religion, for it is generally only in the confines of religion that we see people making claims to direct access to supernatural states of mind or figures. Dolpopa himself claimed
to have been to the Shambhala Pure Land,and he wrote about his meditative experiences there in two works, and also described his experience in detail to his disciples. Furthermore, these types of religious or spiritual experiences often come with the cost of having undergone extreme austerities and difficult practices, and are esoteric by nature. It does not seem too much to say that most people would like to have such experiences, but might not do the work or have the aptitude to do so. However, being around someone else who has is enticing to others because it seems that it might open a doorway to such an experience.

6. Make a claim to unique and direct access to knowledge that no own else has. Because of Dolpopa’s unique experience, he claimed to know directly and without a doubt that he was correct.

7. It never hurts to have a prophesy. Dolpopa’s coming was prophesied by the original founder of Jonang monastery, Kunpang Tukje Tsöndrü (1243-1313). He is quoted to have said,
“At this hermitage of mine, there will come a grandson better than the son, and a great- grandson even better that the grandson. In the future (the great-grandson) will teach Dharma at upper Zangden and build a great stūpa at lower Zangden.”

8. Have an inspiring project that serves to unite your community. Dolpopa’s project was building the great stūpa. During that time, he able to gather his disciples together in working towards a “higher” purpose that served the community, giving people the chance to establish a communal identity. Furthermore, it was a great opportunity for him to offer his teachings to an interested audience, and to gain fame throughout the greater Tibetan region.

Was Dolpopa Really that Innovative? A Comparison with Rangjung Dorje

In order to consider possible trends present during Dolpopa’s time, let us now compare Dolpopa’s Collected Works with that of his contemporary Rangjung Dorje to possibly get some perspective on trends happening in Tibet at that time.


From the above table, we can see that in terms of length, these two figures are almost the same. However, it seems that Dolpopa wrote many more shorter texts than did Rangjung Dorje.

Examining these two authors from the perspective of Literary Genre, certain trends during their times appear. T he first chart is of Dolpopa’s Collected Works divided into genres, and then Rangjung Dorje’s follows. The third chart is a comparison of those two.

From the perspective of ritual, Dolpopa was certainly more eclectic in his taste than Rangjung Dorje, although this difference might be accounted for in differences in the scholars who coded the works...
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