Finding Rest in the Nature of the Mind
Page 3
After the concealment of these texts, the secret oral transmission continued for about 140 years through a line of masters, all of whom are said to have attained the rainbow body. At length, it was received by the eleventh-century master Neten Dangma Lhungyal. In response to visionary promptings, Dangma Lhungyal removed the texts of the seventeen tantras from their places of concealment in the Zhai Lhakhang and eventually transmitted them to Chetsun Senge Wangchuk (eleventh–twelfth centuries), who later also recovered the four volumes of pith instructions that Vimalamitra had himself hidden at Trakmar Gekong. Chetsun Senge Wangchuk made copies of these texts and hid them again.12 This proved a turning point in the teaching transmission. For from that moment onward, the Nyingthig lineage of Vimalamitra, henceforth referred to as the Vima Nyingthig (Bi ma snying thig), came to be more openly propagated, coming down at length, through Melong Dorje and Kumaradza, to Longchenpa himself. After staying with Kumaradza for two years, Longchenpa embarked in 1337 on a six-year period of more or less solitary retreat.
In addition to the Vima Nyingthig received from Kumaradza, Longchenpa also inherited, and became the main lineage holder of, the Khandro Nyingthig (mKha’ ’gro snying thig), the Heart Essence of the Ḍākinī, the Great Perfection teachings brought to Tibet by Guru Padmasambhava. Unlike the Vima Nyingthig, which was essentially an orally transmitted lineage, the Khandro Nyingthig was concealed as a terma, or Dharma treasure. The story is told that Trisong Detsen had a daughter, Pemasel, who died in early childhood. In his grief, the king besought Guru Rinpoche, who brought the child back to life. Restoring Pemasel to health, the great Guru transmitted to her the pith instructions for the seventeen tantras belonging to the Nyingthig teachings, which, like Vimalamitra, he had received from Śrī Siṁha. He did so in the manner of “terma concealment,” placing them—far from the dangers of degeneration and decline—in the deepest levels of the princess’s mind.13 He also entrusted his Nyingthig teachings to Yeshe Tsogyal and to a vast multitude of wisdom ḍākinīs, and concealed them again as an earth treasure in the cave of Danglung Thramo, giving the prophetic authorization that they would eventually be revealed by an incarnation of the princess.14
In due course, Pemasel was reborn as the master Pema Ledreltsel, who revealed the treasure five hundred years later, toward the end of the thirteenth century. In the incarnational line, it is usually said that Longchenpa was Pema Ledreltsel’s immediate successor. And although, for that reason, it is said that he held the treasure of the Khandro Nyingthig in his own mind, he nevertheless received the transmission of the treasure texts from Pema Ledreltsel’s disciple Gyalse Lekpa Gyaltsen. It remains to be said for the sake of completeness that the seventeen tantras of Nyingthig were also concealed separately by Guru Rinpoche, to be discovered later in Bhutan by Pema Lingpa (1450–1521).15
Longchenpa began to transmit the Nyingthig teachings in his early thirties. In 1340, at the age of thirty-two, he gave the empowerments of the Vima Nyingthig for the first time at Shugsep in the vicinity of his hermitage at Gangri Thökar. These were followed a year later by the empowerments of the Khandro Nyingthig.
Soon afterward Longchenpa embarked upon an important work of compilation in which the Vima Nyingthig and Khandro Nyingthig are brought together. For the Vima Nyingthig, he composed a supporting text consisting of thirty-five treatises entitled The Innermost Essence of the Master, or Lama Yangtig (bLa ma yang tig), and for the Khandro Nyingthig, he revealed as a mind treasure (dgongs gter) a series of fifty-five treatises of supplementary material called The Innermost Essence of the Ḍākinī, or Khandro Yangtig (mKha’ ’gro yang tig). These four collections of scriptures—again supplemented by a comprehensive commentary called The Profound and Innermost Essence, or Zabmo Yangtig (Zab mo yang tig)—are together referred to as the Four Parts of Nyingthig or Nyingthig Yabzhi (sNying thig ya bzhi) and constitute one of Longchenpa’s most important works.
Temperamentally, Longchenpa was drawn to an eremitic life of study, composition, and meditative retreat. And most of his adult life, while in Tibet, was spent in or near his hermitage at Gangri Thökar. The fame of his scholarship and saintly accomplishments, however, attracted a large following, and he inevitably became a well-known figure throughout the central provinces.
POLITICAL ENTANGLEMENTS AND EXILE
In 1350, at the age of forty-two, Longchenpa had a vision of Vimalamitra, who instructed him to repair the temple of Zhai Lhakhang in the valley of Drikung. This, it will be remembered, was where Nyang Tingdzin Zangpo had concealed the seventeen tantras and other texts of the Vima Nyingthig, later to be discovered by Dangma Lhungyal. The restoration of the temple proved to be a fateful enterprise, for it brought Longchenpa into dangerous proximity with the powerful Drikung monastery and its ambitious minister for civil and military affairs, the gompa (sgom pa) Kunga Rinchen, or Kunrin for short.16
The story goes that, conscious of the probable karmic consequences of his political ambitions and ruthless desire for power, Kunrin, who was of course a monk, was made even more apprehensive by a prediction of Guru Rinpoche found in a recently discovered terma. This prophecy seemed to identify Kunrin personally and to predict his infernal destiny unless he be protected of “an emanation of Mañjuśri coming from the south.”17 His restless gaze soon alighted on the person of Longchenpa, who was famed for his learning and wisdom and who, in order to repair the Zhai Lhakhang, had indeed come to Drikung from the south. Motivated perhaps more by fear than devotion, Kunrin begged for Longchenpa’s protection and, for a time, became his disciple.
With the disintegration of the rule of the Sakya lamas, which eventually broke down in the middle of the fourteenth century, Tibet entered a period of political and social instability that, aggravated by a series of short-lived and warring hegemonies, would last till the advent of the Fifth Dalai Lama two hundred years later. The basic lineaments of the inevitably complicated story, filled with ruthless intrigue and military violence, are as follows.18
The appointment (largely nominal) of Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251) as the ruler of Tibet by Koden Khan, followed by the favor shown to his nephew Chögyal Phakpa (1235–1280) by Kublai Khan (both khans being grandsons of Genghis Khan), political power in Tibet effectively passed to the hierarchs of the Sakya monastery, which remained paramount for about a hundred years. The position of the Sakyapas was, however, contested from the beginning by the Drikung Kagyu school, whose pretensions were for a time forcibly suppressed by the troops of Kublai, by then the emperor of China. As long as Kublai held power, the preeminent position of the Sakya monastery remained unassailable, but with the death of the emperor in 1294, its political influence began to wane—a process accelerated by problems of dynastic succession within the family of the Sakya lamas, as well as by the corrupt government of venal and incompetent ministers. Amid the mounting disarray at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Changchub Gyaltsen, a young monk of the Phakmodrupa school employed in the Sakya administration as the governor of Nedong, emerged as a capable and incorruptible administrator gifted with skills of political and military leadership. As the Sakya administration collapsed, he found scope to fulfill his own political ambitions; in the teeth of personal hardships, which included periods of imprisonment and torture, he gathered an army of supporters and gradually gained control of the central provinces. In recognition of Changchub Gyaltsen’s effective power, and no doubt in the attempt to domesticate the potentially dangerous upstart, the Mongol authorities in Beijing awarded him the title of Tai Situ, or Supreme Preceptor. Complete authority, however, still eluded him and was frustrated by several obstacles, notably the defiance of Drikung, concentrated as this was in the person of Gompa Kunrin.
Whatever restraining effects Longchenpa may have had over his turbulent disciple, events were to prove them superficial and transient. Provoked by the Tai Situ’s successes, Kunrin was unable to resist the temptation to reassert, if necessary by military action, the position of his own monastery—an enterprise that was now made
possible by the gradual weakening of Mongol influence in Tibet since the death of Kublai. In response, Tai Situ systematically isolated his adversary by neutralizing his supporters, among whom the famous and influential lama from the south, who had recently become Kunrin’s guru, was a conspicuous object.
Hostilities between the two ambitious prelates quickly deteriorated. At length, Kunrin made the fatal mistake of challenging Tai Situ to a showdown, and in the ensuing battle, the Drikung forces were decisively defeated, never to recover. The way was now open for Tai Situ’s accession to full political power. Taking advantage of a coup d’état in 1358, in which the ruling Sakya lama was poisoned by one of his ministers, Tai Situ mustered his forces, marched on Sakya, arrested and imprisoned the murderer, deposed the Sakya lama’s young successor, and seized the reins of power for himself.
Given the accuracy of the dates supplied in the traditional accounts—admittedly a precarious assumption—and in the attempt to establish a timeline that is in any way plausible, we must conclude that when Longchenpa arrived at the Zhai Lhakhang in 1350, he must have encountered Kunrin almost immediately. Quickly taking the measure of his unruly character and realizing that serious conflict was soon to follow he decided to leave the area right away. Passing quickly through Lhasa, where he narrowly evaded the soldiers sent by Tai Situ to arrest him, he slipped away with a party of disciples and discreetly made his way to Bhutan, arriving there, so folk legend records, riding on a yak.19
The escape from Tibet marked an important change is Longchenpa’s lifestyle. Settling in Bumthang, he relinquished the monastic state, took the lady Kyipala as his consort and with her had two children: a daughter said to have been born in 1351, followed by a son in 1356. In other words, by the year of Tai Situ’s full accession in 1358, Longchenpa was already well established far to the south and out of harm’s way.
While in Bhutan, Longchenpa is said to have founded a series of small monasteries, the so-called eight “ling temples” in reference to the fact that their names all end in the syllable ling (gling).20 Of these, the first and most important was Tharpa Ling, which became Longchenpa’s principal residence and was the place where he seems to have composed a large number of texts. Longchenpa’s stay in Bhutan left an indelible mark in the folk memory of the people. His physical lineage survives there to this day, and the entire region of Bumthang is suffused with the memory of his presence. It is clear too that he loved the place, which he celebrated for its wholesomeness and beauty in a long and richly descriptive poem. “Not like a land of humankind,” he said, “this is a paradise transplanted.”21
After about ten years of residence in Bumthang, and not long before his death, Longchenpa left his family in Bhutan and returned to the land of his birth. There he was reconciled with Tai Situ and is said to have accepted him as a disciple, imparting to him the Nyingthig teachings.22 He also had time to revisit several places, including the Zhai Lhakhang and Lhasa, giving teachings to vast audiences before retiring to a hermitage in Samyé Chimpu, where he died amid many miraculous signs in 1363.
LONGCHENPA’S WORKS
Tulku Thondup tells us (citing the fourteenth-century biography composed by Chödrak Zangpo) that Longchenpa composed more than 270 treatises.23 Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, basing himself on the partial catalog composed in Bumthang by Longchenpa himself, raises this figure to the stunning total of 307.24 It is possible that the majority of these texts were quite short and composed during the ten years of exile, only to be lost in a calamitous accident in a river on the way back to Tibet. This is no more than a plausible speculation, but in any case, one cannot but be amazed by such an enormous output, especially given the brevity and the circumstances of Longchenpa’s life.
Regarding the works that have survived, Tulku Thondup has provided a useful catalog that lists them in five groups.25 The first of these comprises Longchenpa’s most famous collection, the Seven Great Treasures (mDzod chen bdun):
• The Precious Treasure That Is Like a Wish-Fulfilling Jewel (Yid bzhin rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of Pith Instructions (Man ngag rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of the Ultimate Expanse (Chos dbyings rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of Tenet Systems (Grub mtha’ rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of the Supreme Vehicle (Theg mchog rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of Words and Meanings (Tshig don rin po che’i mdzod)
• The Precious Treasure of the Natural State (gNas lugs rin po che’i mdzod)
All except the last of these texts are mentioned in Longchenpa’s catalog, which suggests that at the time that he composed it, The Precious Treasure of the Natural State had yet to be written. Moreover, as Gene Smith has pointed out, the remaining six texts are all mentioned separately in the catalog, which suggests that the Seven Great Treasures were not a literary unit of Longchenpa’s own devising but only came to be considered as such by later tradition owing to the similarities in the texts’ titles. Be that as it may, the Seven Great Treasures taken as whole are certainly to be regarded as one of Longchenpa’s supreme masterpieces.
The second category in Tulku Thondup’s list is the Trilogy of Rest, which will be discussed in greater detail below.
This is followed, in the third category, by the Trilogy of Natural Freedom (Rang grol skor gsum), consisting of three texts: The Natural Freedom of the Mind Itself (Sems nyid rang grol); The Natural Freedom of Ultimate Reality (Chos nyid rang grol); and The Natural Freedom of Equality (mNyam nyid rang grol).
The fourth category comprises the three texts composed or revealed by Longchenpa as part of the Four Parts of Nyingthig. As we have seen previously, these are, first, The Innermost Essence of the Master, which is a supplementary and explanatory text for the Vima Nyingthig; second, The Innermost Essence of the Ḍākinī, which is a collection of pith instructions on the Khandro Nyingthig (mKha’ ’gro snying thig); and third, Longchenpa’s detailed general commentary The Profound and Innermost Essence or Zabmo Yangtig. These texts embody Longchenpa’s synthesis of the most and unsurpassably secret section of the pith-instruction class of the Great Perfection teachings transmitted in Tibet by Vimalamitra and Guru Rinpoche.
The fifth and last group of texts listed by Tulku Thondup is the Trilogy on the Dispelling of Darkness (Mun sel skor gsum), which consists of commentarial material on the Guhyagarbha Tantra, the main text of Mahāyoga, the first of the three inner classes of Tantra. The three texts are, first, a general outline entitled Dispelling the Darkness of the Mind (sPyi don yid kyi mun sel); second, a concise summary entitled Dispelling the Darkness of Ignorance (bsDus don ma rig mun sel); and finally, the great Commentary That Dispels Darkness throughout the Ten Directions (’Grel ba phyogs bcu mun sel), a vast work of over six hundred pages.
It is impossible to establish with any certainty the date of composition of these works or, consequently, the order in which they were written. For this reason, there can be no question of trying to plot Longchenpa’s intellectual and scholarly development, if indeed such a concept is meaningful in the case of a master who seems to have attained prodigious erudition and an unchanging level of spiritual realization at a very young age. On the other hand, the colophons of many of Longchenpa’s extant writings give indications of the place, and therefore may suggest the time, of their composition. Longchenpa’s contributions to the Four Parts of Nyingthig seem to have been written in the hermitage at Gangri Thökar. The same is true for most of the Seven Treasures, so that one is inclined to think that they were all composed in Tibet before the incident with Kunrin. On the other hand, there exists an oral tradition26 to the effect that the Seven Treasures were all composed during Longchenpa’s exile in Bhutan but that they had to be recomposed in Gangri Thökar following the accident in the river mentioned earlier, in which most of his writings were lost. This possibility seems scarcely credible, however, given that Longchenpa returned to Tibet only a few�
��and in the event, quite busy—years before his death. Given, therefore, that the Seven Treasures were composed before his exile, we are led to conclude that practically all of Longchenpa’s existing works, generally regarded as masterpieces of a very high order, were composed while he was still a young man. On the other hand, Tulku Thondup specifies that The Treasure of the Supreme Vehicle, Longchenpa’s meaning commentary on the seventeen tantras and the 119 pith instructions of the Nyingthig teachings were composed around the time of Rigdzin Kumaradza’s death, which occurred when Longchenpa was forty years old.
THE TRILOGY OF REST
It has often been said (for example, by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche) that Longchenpa generally adopted two methods of discourse in relation to the teachings of the Great Perfection: the extensive, expository method of the paṇḍitas, and the profound and direct method of pith instructions intended for yogis engaged in the practice. The former approach is abundantly exemplified in the Seven Treasures, while the latter is the chosen method for the three quintessential commentaries in the Four Parts of Nyingthig.