The Religions of Tibet 0520038568

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THE RELIGIONS OF TIBET GIUSEPPE TUCCI

Translated from the German and I talian by

GEOFFREY SAMUEL

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles

University of California Press Berkelcy and Los Angeles, California English translation 0 Routledge 65' Kegan Paul Ltd 1980 First published as Die Religionen Tibets in Die Religionen Tibets und der Mongolei by Ciuseppe Tucci and Walther Heissig O 1970 W Kohlhammer G m b H , Stuttgart Berlin Koln Mainz

ISBN 0-520-03856-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-520-06348- 1 (pbk.) First Paperback Printing 1988

T h e Library ofcongress has cataloged the first printing of this title as follows

lhcci, Giuseppe, 1894T h e religions ofTibet / Giuseppe Tucci; translated from the German and Italian by Geoffrey Samuel.-Berkeley: University of California Press, c 1980. xii, 340p., [2] leaves of plates: ill. ; 23 cm A translation of the author's Die Religionen Tibets, published in 1970 in Tucci & Heissig's Die Religionen Tibets und der Mongolei; with additions and changes made for the 1976 Italian ed. and this ed.

1. Tibet (China)-Religion. BL1945.T5T815

I. Title. 294.3'923

Library of Congress

[8509r85]rev

80- 1 10768 MARC

CONTENTS

Preface

vii

Note on transcription and pronunciation

xii

1 T h e first diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet 1 T h e beginnings 2 Co-existence and conflict among the various tendencies a t the time of the first introduction of Buddhism into Tibet 3 Ordination of monks, foundation of monasteries, donations to monasteries 4 T h e Indian and Chinese currents

2 T h e second diffusion of Buddhism 1 T h e revival of Buddhism

2 Rin chen bzang po and Atisa 3 T h e foundation of the great monasteries 3 General characteristics of Lamaism 1 Fundamentals 2 T h e most important schools 3 T h e conflicts between the schools and their significance for the political history ofTibet. The office of Dalai Lama 4 T h e figure of the religious teacher (bla ma)

4 T h e doctrines of the most important schools 1 Assumptions common to all schools 2 T h e vehicle of the Mantra 3 Investiture and consecrations 4 T h e Tantric process of transcendence: mental body, maya-body, body of transcendent consciousness 5 Stms and light

CONTENTS

6 Substantialism of the Jo nangpa school 7 The bKa 'brgyud pa school 8 Tantric practice according to the tradition of the Bla na med rgyud 9 The rNying ma pa school 10 The gCod tradition 1 1 Conclusion. The special nature of the Lamaist teaching of salvation Appendix: The process of transformation of Sems and rLungs

5

Monkhood, monastery life, religious calendar and festivals 1 Organization of monastic community: hierarchy and offices 2 Religious calendar and festivals 3 The hermits' way of life 4 The property of the monastery and its administration

6 The folk religion 1 General characteristics 2 Man face to face with divine and demonic powers 3 Personal protection and protection of the house 4 The soul 5 Death 6 The bsangs or sufimm (offering of incense) 7 Looking into the future: investigating the favourable or unfavourable omens for an action 8 The protection of property and of flocks 9 Final considerations

7 The Bon religion Chronological table Notes Bibliography 1 Tibetan sources 2 Books and articles Index

PREFACE

At the beginning of 1958, when Dr C. M. Schroder asked me to write the volume on Tibetan religion for the collection edited by him, 'Die Religionen der Menschheit', which in its totality constitutes a remarkable body of material on the history of religion, I hesitated before I accepted. T h e writing of a book on the subject of Tibetan religion is not a task to be taken on light-heartedly. T h e main reason for this is that we still know little about Tibetan religion in comparison with other religions; the vast literature which i t has produced, and which illuminates its history, is still far from having been made fully. accessible or edited, and is in any case so enormous that a single human life is not enough to master it. In addition there is a deep division between monastic Lamaism and religion as it is lived by the people; the former, too, is fragmented into many schools, while the latter shows numerous variations from place to place. While I was writing it became progressively clearer to me that an account of Lamaism presupposed a presentation of its theoretical foundations; for these, as always in Buddhism, condition the actual religious experience, and give the individual schools their particular character. his however makes it necessary to refer continually to the theory of Indian Buddhism. O n the other hand my task was precisely to uncover and ascertain what in Tibetan Buddhism had been created in the meeting between old forms of religious experience and new ideas and motives that was new and individual. A further difficulty? perhaps the greatest ofall, has still to be mentioned; no agreement has yet been reached on the precise translation of the religious terminology, of the technical terms, that is, which are used in Tibetan religion and gnosis. O n e wavers between the two extremes of a comparatively literal rendition, as has mostly been used for Indian Buddhism (although there too there has been a similar lack of unanimity), and the: recent fashion of adopting the vocabulary of the more modern philosophical schools of the West as a terminological basis for this area, which is so different in its nature. This latter procedure is certainly the more dangerous of the two, for i t misrepresents or even vii

PREFACE

falsifies Tibetan modes of thought. I became convinced of this when I showed Tibetans who knew English well certain translations which had recently appeared of particular works or of commentaries on the doctrines they contained. T h e Tibetan scholars found it difficult to make any sense of these translations, since Buddhist thought was expressed in them in a mode other than that in which they were used to understanding it. Besides this, many Tibetan concepts and doctrines refer to interior and mystical experiences, and their transposition into rational concepts and expressions is extremely problematic. The corresponding Tibetan words are symbols, which can evoke living experiences which the word as such can only suggest but not define. We a r e faced here with a n extremely difficult, almost impossible task: to coin equivalent technical terms for experiences which take place within the spiritual realm, and which can radically modify our psychic a n d spiritual reality. I have tried to translate Tibetan expressions in such a way as to avoid both of the extremes mentioned above, those of over-li teralness and of arbitrariness, and have struggled throughout to render the Tibetan tennini technici with words of meaning close to that which the Tibetan masters appear to give to them. I am not sure that I have always succeeded, but I believe that I have done my best to make accessible to Western readers the complex speculative structure which constitutes the foundation of Tibetan religion. At the same time I recognize that in this field there are real limiting cases. T o give a n example: the word sems, a pillar of the Lamaist doctrinal edifice, is sometimes translated in English as 'mind', 'mind-stuff and so on; in the German edition of this book it was rendered as Geist.* All the same it is evident that the terms Geist and sem do not entirely coincide. T h e meaning of the term scm will only become clearer to the reader when he has attained an overview of the whole region of signification which this word has, after acquainting himself with the entire contents of the book. For this reason I have, to avoid misunderstanding, almost always retained the Tibetan form sems, so as to lead the reader gradually to connect the word with the correrponding concept or range of concepts. In the writing of this book I was able to call upon both my personal

Some writers have used 'spirit' and related terms in English; thus W . Rahula renders the Sanskrit word n'tta (= Tib. s m ) as espn't in his translation ofthe A bhidhannasarnuccaya, and in T. C . Dhongthog's recent The New Light English- Tibetan Dictionav the English word 'spirit' is translated by s m . (G.T.)'Spirit' in English however (~lnlikeGekt, and esprit and spinto, used in the French and l talian translations) nowadays refers almost exclusively to the transcendent and external, and I have generally felt it less confusing to use 'mind' and 'mental'. Wherever possible, however, the Tibetan form itself is used. (G.B.S.) +

PREFACE

experiences and a critical review which I had recently carried out of the literature, both that which was known and which was previously unfamiliar to me. T h e reader will find many of these texts in the bibliography a t the end of the work, which however makes no claim to be comprehensive. I have only included those works which have become familiar to me through constant usage. In the text references are given only where it has appeared necessary to indicate the sources and explanatory material concerned. Considering that my intention was to give in this work an overview of the Tibetan religious world, such indications had to be kept to a minimum, in other words primarily to isolated facts and references to sources. Taken all in all my presentation may serve as a summary of past researches, and at the same time as a n anticipation of future, more conclusive studies; it is in short a n attempt a t a bringing to account of the results of a n involvement with Tibetan Buddhism which has lasted many years. What is said above will scarcely seem surprising if it is remembered that we have not yet succeeded in completing a comprehensive and convincing account of the Indian world of thought, and particularly of the religious conceptions of India, although today the sources are more easily accessible than in the past, and for many years now accounts of the individual philosophical and religious schools have constantly been appearing. I myself have attempted such a synthesis in my Storia dellajlosojia indiana (Bari, 1957), although 1 did it more with the aim of clarifying my own ideas in this field than to present those ofothers. In my work I have been greatly aided by the counsel, always freely given, of Geshe (Lha ram pa) Jampel Sanghie, a scholar initiated into all the doctrinal problems and details of the reformed school of Tsong kha pa and of its offshoots, and also by the assistance of Professor Namkhai Norbu, formerly a sprul sku of Gonchen monastery, who is closely familiar with all the philosophical doctrines of the rNying mapa school, and also served as a pre-eminent source of information on the folk traditions. Both these two Tibetan religious scholars have lived in Rome for ten years as collaborators of the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (IsMEO). Professor Norbu teaches Tibetan language at the Istituto Universitario Oriental in Naples. He is also responsible for the drawings which accompany the book, which were prepared in a form suitable for publication by M r Fiorentini of IsMEO. I am deeply indebted to both gentlemen for this valuable co-opera tion. I owe much gratitude also to Dr Giovanna Vallauri Galluppi of Rome, who during my absence of a year (in connection with the archaeological excavations entrusted to me in the Orient) maintained contact with Dr C. M. Schriider, assisted me with valuable advice,

PREFACE

a n d also helped untiringly with the correction of the proofs. This English version includes certain modifications and additions made in the I talian translation. These include two summaries which clarify the meditative stages of the two processes which are open to the neophyte; ( a ) the gradual method of the Prajnaparamita, as systematized by Nagarjuna and his followers, and presented in the Abhisamayalamkara; and ( b ) the method of the Tantra (rgvud) which naturally starts off from the previous method, which forms an indispensable preliminary training, but is more complex, in particular in that it proposes experiencing in this very life the concatenation of the three phases of the path (lam) ofsalvation: (i) the initial phase, (ii) the path itself, (iii) the phase of the result or effect. T h e English translation, as the most recent, has the advantage of some further additions or reconsiderations which I think should facilitate the reading of a book which is certainly not easy. Since Dr Samuel is a Tibetanist himself his work in several places has been not merely that of a translator but also of a knowledgeable advisor. Thus the arrangement of chapters and ofsome appendices has been altered from that in the other editions at his suggestion, with the intention of making the flow of the argument easier to follow. I a m particularly grateful for his many suggestions and for the careful corrections of some errors which had escaped me, the worst corrector of proofs. Thus this English edition has the advantage of being the most readable. Naturally I a m already thinking of adding some further chapters and of changing some sections if further editions are made; I certainly do not have the presumption to believe that the first version of a work can be perfect, but it may get there ifit is chiselled and filed with revisions a n d modesty. In short I have no great dislike for being my own zhu chen, especially if in the course of the years I can avail myself of the good advice of a kalyanamitra. During the preparation of the book I was continually aware of a difficulty which I was not in a position to deal with consistently; in describing Tibetan religion I sometimes use the present tense, sometimes the past. This inconsistency ofverbal forms is brought about by the singular situation in which Tibet is placed today; it is hardly necessary to say that Tibet is today no longer the same country, from a n economic, social and religious point of view, as before becoming an 'autonomous region' of the Chinese People's Republic. Many things have been radically changed. Along with the conditions of life in general, religion too has undergone a violent upheaval. The lamas, like all the other Tibetans who fled to India and other countries, have been able to preserve their beliefs, but their new environment is not like that in which almost their entire previous existence took place. They have been forced to put down new roots in a completely different X

PREFACE

milieu; but above all the natural links have been broken which until then had bound together men of the same thoughts and concepts, of the same heritage of religious fears and hopes. Tibetan Buddhism as it lives in the sacred scriptures and in ancient traditions-and with it the spiritual world in which these refugees have grown up and been educated-has found its last homeland, beyond all worldly change, in their souls. Their country of origin has meanwhile become the scene of profound upheavals, as a consequence of which much contained in the present pages may seem to belong to the past. The present crisis ofTibet is not only political; it is also religious. A centuries-old total social structure has been overthrown, to give place to a completely different one. This is the reason for the 'duplicity' of my mode of expression, which now slips from past to present, now falls back from present into past. If I were required to renounce the ambiguity I would rather use the past tense exclusively; although the ideological and theoretical premises, thanks to their universality, remain the same, their echo in the soul is different today, and will be different again in the future. Along with it the basic religious situation will also alter more and more. Such transformations are taking place before our eyes also in all the other religions, progressively exposed to new ways of thinking and of conceiving; throughout the whole world their strength and their powers of resistance will be put to a hard test. Giuseppe Tucci Rome, August 1969-February 1978

NOTE O N TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION

I n the text diacritical marks on Sanskrit words have been omitted. They can be found in the index. Tibetan words are transliterated, following the Tibetan spelling, according to the Wylie system (T. V. Wylie, 1959, 'A standard system of Tibetan transcription', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vo1.22, pp.261-7). This system uses no diacritical marks, so the forms in the text are complete. (Some letters only used in words borrowed from Sanskrit form an exception; the only one of these letters to occur at all frequently here is n, in pug chen and mani.) It should be noted that ' is a letter in the Wylie transcription, a n d that g,v (as in g9ag) and gy (as in rgyal) are two distinct combinations of Tibetan consonants. T h e complete alphabet is as follows: k k h g n g c c h j n y t t h d n p p h b r n t s t s h d z w ~ h . f':y r l s h s h a . T h e clusters of initial consonants in Tibetan words are generally much simplified in actual pronunciation. bKa' brgyud pa becomes Kagyiipa or Kajiipa; khri srong lde'u brtsan is pronounced as Trisong Detsen. T h e rules governing such transformations are quite regular, though they vary somewhat between dialects. They are, however, too complicated to be summarized here. A brief account may be found in Anagarika Govinda's Foundationr of Tibetan Mysticism (pp.286-92 of the paperback edition, London, 1969). Approximate pronunciations for proper names and for the main technical terms used in this book are given in the index (following the system used in R. A. Stein's Tibetan Civilization, London, 1972). Readers who d o not know the Tibetan language should perhaps be warned also that it employs a large number ofshort particles (e.g. kyi, kyis, gi, pa, Po, du) which are frequently omitted in literary compounds and abbreviations. Thus mum par shes pa (= Skt. vijnana) can be reduced to mum shes, and shes rub kyi pha rol tu phyin pa (Skt. Prajnaparami ta) can become shes rub phar phyin, or be abbreviated even further to sher phyin. Several terms occur in the text in both extended and abbreviated forms. G.B.S.

0 10 2 0 1

1

1

Miles 40 60 I

I

80

100

I

I

Monaster~esof dGe lugs pa order

o Monasteries of other orders Other places

A Mountains GTSANG YAR KLUNGS

Name of region Name of district

Myang chu

Name of rlver or lake

Doptradzong

B H U T A N

Miles

I I

0

50

100

200

300

I

I

I

I

1

Monasteries of dGe lugs pa order

400 1

500 I

I fa

i

F

0 Monasteries of other orders k

Other places A Mountains

I I

ONE

T H E FIRST DIFFUSION O F BUDDHISM IN TIBET

1 T h e beginnings T h e dates of the first penetration of Buddhism into Tibet, and of the commencement of large-scale conversion, have already been discussed many times, as have the accompanying events. Of course there is no problem for the Tibetans themselves. For them only the traditiqnal account is valid, and it is believed as an act of faith. According to this traditional account, Buddhism was introduced into Tibet during the lifetime of Srong btsan sgam po, who died in 649, and is held by all schools to be the founder of the Tibetan royal dynasty. Occasional voices, admittedly, go back in time beyond this legend. With the aim of giving their native country a stronger claim to religious preeminence, they assert that there was a first encounter with the Buddhist teachings during the time of Lha tho tho n', a distant ancestor of Srong btsan sgampo. At that period Buddhist scriptures and symbols fell from the sky for the first time. Other commentators, wishing to give a rational foundation to the legend, point to the arrival of certain religious teachers from Central Asia and from India a t that time. In any case, the adoption and first diffusion of Buddhism is attributed to Srong btsan sgampo.' His conversion was said to result from the influence of his two wives, a Nepalese princess and a Chinese princess. While there are doubts, in my opinion well-fo~nded,~ concerning the first marriage, the second marriage is confirmed by the chronicles. Whatever the truth may have been, the Chinese wife (rgya bza') was said to ni as the Jo bo and have brought with her the image o f ~ i k ~ a m uknown to have installed it in the temple of Ra mo chc3 which she founded. T o the Nepalese wife, on the other hand, is attributed the merit of having brought in her dowry the image of Mi bskyod rdo r j e and of having erected the temple of 'Phrul snang. Certainly one cannot deny the possibility of an earlier, sporadic penetration of Buddhist teachings into Tibet by various routes, from Central Asia, from China or from Nepal, before the reign ofSrong btsan sgampo. However, the question of the 'prehistory' ofTibetan Buddhism 1

T H E F I R S T DIFFUSION O F BUDDHISM IN T I B E T

needs to be understood correctly. T h e orthodox tradition cannot be taken a s literally true. There can be no question of a conversion of King Srong bisan sgampo, or ofan extensive diffusion of the faith carried out by him. Even the edicts of the later kings Khri srong lde brtsan and Khn' ide srong btsan, as preserved in the history of dPaYogtsug lag (provided always that we are not dealing here with later interpolations), speak of King Srong btsan sgam po only in very obscure terms. They confine themselves to attributing to him, in the first edict, the foundation of the temple of 'Phrui snang, without mentioning the Nepalese princess, while the Chinese princess is mentioned as founding the Ra mo che temple. T h e second edict ascribes to Srong btsan sgam po the second temple of Pe har in Ra saS4Certainly, in view of the links between Tibet and China, the existence of cult centres on a small scale is perhaps already possible at that time. T h e Tibetans would have tolerated them with that respect, mixed with fear of invisible, mysterious powers of whatever kind they might be, which is natural to them. However, the chronicles do not appear to offer proof of a real conversion of King Srong btsan sgam po to Buddhism, or even of his profession of faith in it or active support for it, such as the orthodox tradition maintains. Events of this kind first happen in the time ofKhri srong lde brtsan (756-97?), well after the period of Srong btsan sgam Po, a n d culminate in the founding of the monastery of bSamyas. At the same time, one can hardly imagine that king Khri srong lde brtsan's pro-Buddhist policy was the result of a spur-of-the-moment decision. I t must have been the fruit of a gradual process of maturation. Despite the uncertain and contradictory character of our sources, the assumption of earlier occasional infiltrations of Buddhist elements into Tibet is an obvious one to make. We are perhaps concerned here more with Chinese and Central Asian influences than with those from India. Such influences must have become steadily stronger after the arrival of Princess Wen-ch'eng (Tibetan Kong chu, Kong j o ) . The fact i lde brtsan was not the first also cannot be ignored that ~ h r rrong Tibetan king to show an interest in Buddhism. His father, King Khh ide gtsug brtsan (704-55), had already made efforts in this direction, as Khri lde srong brtsan's edict at Karchung reports, but he was frustrated through the forceful and decisive opposition of some ministers. The hostility of these ministers towards Buddhism persisted during the time of Khn' lde gtsug brtsan. In addition, even after the acceptance of Buddhism, there are signs of indecision between the Chinese and Indian traditions. This indecision can only be explained on the assumption that two currents of thought had already come into conflict, one proposing adherence to China and the other inclining towards Indian Buddhism. Two personalities played an outstanding role a t this point in time; gSal snang ofsBa, and a Chinese, called Sang

2

T H E F I R S T D I F F U S I O N O F B U D D H I S M IN T I B E T

shi in the chronicles, who according to the tradition had been a playing-companion of the young Khri srong lde brt1an.l In this case too we have in the sources both the echo of real events and, simultaneously, a fantastic overgrowth of elements from the cycles of legends which later grew up about these characters. These legends originated in particular families or a t particular religious centres, with the aim of authenticating their various interests or claims, or of glorifying personalities connected with them. Cycles of this type include that concerning sBa gSal snang (which stands at the centre of a famous work, the first part of the sBa b