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A MEMORIAL TO THE SHRINE OF THREE JEWELS

Published by Jeff Wallman on 27 Feb 2010

A few Bhutanese seems to realize the great loss of Konchosum Lhakhang, which was destroyed by fire in the afternoon of 24 February, 2010 and even fewer may have lingering pictures of this small temple. In spite of its significance, it was not an icon like Taktshang or Kurje temples. Yet, it was a small, beautiful, well designed and above all a very old and historically important temple in Bhutan. I always loved it for its aesthetics, antiquity and lack of opulence. Also known as Tselung and Chokhor Lhakhang in literary writings,the temple is supposed to have been built by Thrisong Deutsen after receiving instructions from Guru Rinpoche to do so. The king sent one Bami Trisher from Yarlung to supervise the construction and Guru Rinpoche himself is said to have designed and consecrated the Chokhor Lhakhang with its adjacent monuments. A very interesting relic preserved in the temple which supports its origin in the 8th century is a large broken bell (choedril), one of the very few bells from the Yarlung dynastic period surviving today. Locals believe that when the bell was rung, the sound was heard as far as Tibet. The jealous Tibetans came to take away the bell but unable to carry across the mountains, they broke it.

The temple contains as its central figure a statue of Buddha Vairocana, which was in vogue during Yarlung dynastic period, flanked by exquisite Avalokiteshvara and Guru Rinpoche statues, which are perhaps later additions. An ancient megalith stands at the entrance of the temple and some other interesting objects have been found during a recent excavation. Sometime in the early part of the first millennium, Bonpo Dragtsal, whom some consider to be the first Bhutanese terton or treasure discoverer, is said to have extracted a dzogchen text from this temple. Much later in the 15th century, the temple became an important venue for the works of Pema Lingpa, Bhutan’s foremost religious figure and cultural hero.

Following a prophecy to repair the temple, Pema Lingpa undertakes the renovation of Chokhor Lhakhang in 1479. He mobilized the people of Chokhor valley to work on the project and invited an artist called Kungawo from Lhodrak, who restored the paintings. To fund the project, Pema Lingpa was told in a prophecy to extract gold from behind the Vairocana statue. This he did in public only to reveal a thumb size wax figure of a donkey, causing him much distress. However, the next day he found two tiny pieces of gold hidden in the wax donkey which miraculously turned out to be sufficient for gilding all statues and murals. The restoration took two years. In a dramatic turn of events, Pema Lingpa, who was already a reputed religious figure, was once again called to the temple in 1490, this time by the people of Chokhor who alleged that he unduly took out a turquoise from the back of the Vairocana statue. Pema Lingpa had to take a solemn oath before the statue that he did not. The temple also saw a great number of Buddhist visitors, one of them being the great Sogdogpa, who correctly noted that the locals call this temple Konchogsum Lhakhang for the
three main statues it houses.

Today, the temple remains gutted by a fire caused by a habitual butter lamp. The caretaker was away attending a ceremony in the neighbouring Tamshing monastery. It is a tragic lesson of impermanence and of cultural loss. “The murals which have been restored in recent decades using turpentine paints have easily succumbed to the flames”, says a lama of Tamshing. Luckily, the main statues were not severely damaged and other relics have been saved before any harm was done. Like other people of Bumthang, I will sorely miss the Shrine of Three Jewels.

Karma Phuntsho
Cambridge

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The Nyingma Kama Collections

Published by Michael Sheehy on 19 Feb 2010

By Paldor and Michael Sheehy

Though the oral precepts of the Nyingma were introduced from the time of the imperial period, it was not until Smin gling Gter chen Rig ‘dzin ‘gyur med rdo rje (1646-1714) and his younger brother Smin gling Lo chen D+harma shrI (1654-1718) wrote a series of commentaries on these teachings that the kama (bka’ ma) or collection of oral transmissions were created. This indicated a separate category of Nyingma canonical literature in contrast to the terma (gter ma) or revelatory treasures.

In the 19th century, during the years 1840-1845, the scholar Rgyal sras Gzhan phan mtha’ yas (1800-1855) composed a set of ritual texts in association with the kama. Including the table of contents, this set totaled 9 volumes (ka-ta) and 83 individual texts (sometimes delineated as 88 works), and printing blocks were carved at Rdzogs chen Monastery in Kham. This was the 1st compilation of the Nyingma Kama Collections.

A few decades later at Dpal yul Monastery in 1875, Rgyal sprul Pad+ma mdo sngags bstan ‘dzin (1830-1892) then added an additional 16 volumes making the total of the kama 25 volumes (ka-ra) including 266 individual texts. The blocks for these were originally carved at Dpal yul Monastery and were later practiced and developed as part of the curricula at all of the major Nyingma monasteries in Kham, including Rdzogs chen, KaH thog, and Zhe chen. This became known as the Phyogs bsgrigs thengs gnyis pa or the second compilation of kama.

Bdud ‘joms Rin po che ‘Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje (1904-1988) later edited the existing kama collection and added another 33 volumes (ka-si), totaling 58 volumes or 567 individual texts. These were all handwritten manuscripts that were printed in India and titled the Bka’ ma rgyas pa. Gzan dkar Rin po che was then instrumental in publishing a set of 100 volumes that were distributed to monasteries and libraries. This expanded edition was the 3rd compilation of the kama.

In 1992, while Karma Bde legs was in KaH thog Monastery receiving the kama transmissions, he noticed that they had additional kama works that were not included in the Bdud ‘joms Rin po che collection. A year later, he went to visit Mkhan po Mun sel in Mgo log and discussed with him the additional works that he had discovered at KaH thog. Mkhan po Mun sel then suggested that the kama undergo a recompilation and though he did not have much money at the time, he gave 1,000 yuan to Karma Bde legs and asked his students KaH thog Mkhan po ‘Jam dbyangs and Nyga rong Tshe ring rgya mtsho to proceed. Under the auspices of this project, KaH thog Mkhan po ‘Jam dbyangs and Nyag rong Tshe ring rgya mtsho traveled to the various Nyingma monasteries throughout Kham, Karma Bde legs travelled through U-Tsang, Nepal and India. Also, Gzan dkar Rin po che helped in Europe and the United States in order to collect rare kama manuscripts and actualize Mkhan po Mun sel’s request. An edition of 100 copies of 120 kama volumes were then printed for the festive occasion of the Tenth Day Ceremony (Tshe’i bcu’i dus ston) at the reopening of KaH thog Monastery. This is known as the Bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa or the extremely extensive edition of the kama. In addition to this one time printing of the 120 volumes, there were printings of an additional 55 volumes that were distributed to monasteries and added to the exisitng 58 volumes of the Bdud ‘joms Rin po che edition, making the kama a 113 volume collection.

With the advice of Gzan dkar Rin po che, Tshe ring rgya mtsho started to organize the computer input of the entire kama. This was oficially initiated as a government project under the direction of the Sichuan Department of Minorities (Si khron mi rigs don gcod khang) at the National Minority Rare Text Collection and Restoration office (Dpe rnying dpe dkon ‘tshol sdud khang). This department spent 1 million and 3 hundred thousand yuan to rearrange, edit, add, and publish the kama in a total of 133 volumes (ka-po) or 1,110 individual texts. Though this is often referred to as the 2nd edition of the 3rd compilation, it is in fact a 4th compilation of the Nyingma Kama Collection.

The TBRC Library currently features outlines for the Bka’ ma rgyas pa (58 vols.) compiled by Bdud ‘joms Rin po che and the Bka’ ma shin tu rgyas pa (120 vols.).

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Wisdom out of the box

Published by Jeff Wallman on 01 Feb 2010

Appears in DNA India

Wisdom out of the box
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Lhendup G Bhutia
January 31, 2010

Mumbai — My grandfather is a distant memory. Tall, dark-skinned, a little hunched, he spoke only Tibetan and Nepali. We did not spend much time with each other, but I still remember that every morning he woke me up and took me to our chausham (prayer-room).

There I was made to clasp my hands and touch with my head a wooden box, about four feet by two. After this little act of obeisance, I was free to go and play. The day he passed away, he did not have the strength to come and rouse me from my sleep. But someone else called me in and made me pay my respects to the box.

And then one day, the box was opened. It contained a bunch of antiquated papers, all neatly stacked and without any binding. They featured writings in Tibetan, with tiny drawings of people in meditation. It was called Lam remd (roughly translated as ‘stages to a path’) and contained prayers (to help attain enlightenment).

Unlike most other Tibetans, my grandfather Abo Kunga did not come to India in 1959, when the Dalai Lama took refuge in India.

He came as a tradesman in 1945 to Kalimpong, which was then a small hamlet by a river in what is now northern West Bengal. He made the journey sometimes on foot, sometimes on mule, carrying silverware and wool atop 11 mules, traveling sometimes for two weeks at a stretch, surviving on yak cheese, dried meat and tsampa (barley flour that, with a little warm water, could make for a quick meal). This 10 day long trip that sometimes stretched to 14 was undertaken every month, and the trade was so good, he not only rented a house and a stable, he even brought my grandmother.

And then in early 1950, China invaded Tibet and they could never return.

When news reached of the invasion, I’m told the first thing my grandmother prayed for was not her house in Lhasa, nor her relatives, but for the book of Lam remd she owned in Tibet. But relatives who sneaked out of Lhasa brought bad news: the book had been destroyed in a fire. She did not cry on hearing that; instead she gathered enough money to travel to Dharamsala, get a reprint of an original Lam remd, and seek out the Dalai Lama to bless it. She died when my father was only 15, and the book was passed on.

When the Dalai Lama stated last year that a “cultural genocide” was taking place in China, he could have as easily been speaking about the genocide of these Tibetan books. Many of them were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s when monasteries and libraries were burnt; some were lost while the Tibetans were fleeing the marching Chinese, and many more were simply lost in the march of time.

As a matter of fact, there are ten kinds of Tibetan books, the more important ones being on Tibetan medicine, Buddhist religion and philosophy, architecture, grammar (of Sanskrit and Tibetan), and translated works of Indian scholars on Buddhist philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. Their content is invaluable, as Sonam Topgyel, assistant librarian at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) in Dharamsala explains. “Some extremely important Indian works were lost forever when the Nalanda University was destroyed by the Turks,” says the librarian of one of the world’s largest libraries containing Tibetan books. “But these are still available in Tibetan translation,” he adds. But these works, till now preserved in Tibetan, now risk being lost forever, if not lost already.

There is, however, a significant attempt going on to find these books and preserve them. At the forefront of this endeavour is a Mormon from Utah by the name E Gene Smith. He is a leading Tibetologist, the founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) in New York, and the subject of a new documentary, Digital Dharma (that has been directed by veteran television and documentary filmmaker Dafna Yachin) which is almost ready for release. The TBRC has more than a 1, 00,000 Tibetan books, making it the largest collection of Tibetan literature outside Tibet.

Since 1968, Smith has been travelling across the world, collecting these books for preservation. And he has also helped reprint them, so that each one of these books is now not locked up in some dingy corner awaiting disintegration, but has a hundred other copies. This way, he hopes, the culture of a nation will not become a passing memory.

But of late, he has started a new project: digitising these books. About 8,000 volumes of these books, ranging from religion to medicine, have now been uploaded on the internet. “We reprinted the books so that more people could access them. But imagine the reach when you upload it on the internet!” Smith says.

Along with this project of preserving and maximizing the reach of these books, Smith is also busy with what he calls a project of “giving back.”

Five years ago, the LTWA in Dharamsala, along with many other monasteries and libraries in Chinese-occupied Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Central Asia received a hard disk, containing 300 GB of different Tibetan prayers. That small hard disk, no bigger than the size of their fists, contained, to the utter amazement of many monks, content that could dwarf many a library. But a recurrent trouble bothered them. “They didn’t get strong enough anti-viruses, and the computer kept crashing,” says Smith.

It wasn’t the first time Smith had faced a problem. When he had first started reprinting Tibetan books, the Tibetans themselves weren’t happy. “Tibetan books are not like the ones we use. They are not bound and are long. The first set of reprints was like our modern notebooks and centrally bound, and most did not like this. I rectified this issue, by simply getting them bound from the top,” adds Smith.

Similarly, he solved the problem of the viruses too. Since last year, these libraries and universities, 70 till now, have been receiving brand-new Apple Macintosh computers that are more virus-resistant and have a storage capacity of 400 GB. Topgyel of LTWA says, “It is so much easier to use the Mac to read these texts. We don’t have to go through large libraries to find the relevant information.”

Widely acknowledged as a saviour of Tibetan culture and literature, Smith believes his task is still incomplete. “Several thousands of Tibetan texts are still lost across continents. What we have accomplished is nothing more than retrieving a solitary drop from the ocean,” says Smith.

As for me, my parents discarded a lot of old belongings when we shifted home a few years ago. But the book in the box still remains. And I still clasp my hands and touch my head with it. Not because it is religious, but because it tells me who my grandfather was and where he came from.

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Gene Smith Receives Lifetime Achievement Award for Preserving Tibetan Literature

Published by Jeff Wallman on 27 Jan 2010

Representatives of more than 300 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, India, Nepal, and Bhutan unanimously nominated E. Gene Smith for a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to the preservation of the Tibetan literary and spiritual heritage. The award ceremony took place at the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo international prayer festival in Bodhgaya, Bihar, India, January 22-23, 2010.

In 1959, thousands of Tibetans fled their homeland in the Himalayan Mountains. They carried with them cultural artifacts and priceless texts representing 1,500 years of teachings that chronicle the advances of humankind, as well as the traditional works of the great Indian scholars and masters, which were systematically documented and preserved in Tibet.

E. Gene Smith has dedicated more than four decades of his life to the preservation and public availability of these essential Tibetan texts. In 1968 he joined the Library of Congress’s New Delhi Field Office as a young scholar and developed a program that used proceeds from the sale of U.S. agricultural products to print Tibetan texts. For the next three decades he tirelessly led the effort to locate and print every extant Tibetan text. In so doing, he rescued numerous Tibetan Buddhist traditions from extinction. In 1997 he took early retirement from the U.S. Library of Congress and formed the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC). Today, TBRC continues to develop digital technologies that preserve and distribute Tibetan texts around the world. Smith’s work to save these texts, encourage their translation, and make their contents available to the public, provides a model for the use of personal networking and digital technology to save the priceless textual traditions of unique ancient cultures in an increasingly global society.

Although Gene says that he was “stunned” on hearing he was to receive this high honor, those familiar with Gene’s incredible work were not surprised. “I have heard about this work for some time.” said Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche. “This is one of the very, very outstanding contributions in the field of preservation of Tibetan culture and spiritual heritage. It is, however, a contribution not only to the Tibetan people but to all of humanity.”

Gene first became interested in Tibetan Buddhism while studying Sanskrit and Tibetan at the University of Washington in 1960. While helping Tibetan refugees assimilate into American life, he met a learned Lama, Deshung Rinpoche, to whom he taught English. In return, Deshung Rinpoche taught Smith about Tibetan culture and Buddhism and provided him with letters of introduction to important lamas when Smith subsequently traveled to Asia on a Ford Foundation scholarship at the urging of Deshung Rinpoche.

Gene recently stepped down as executive director of TBRC to devote his time and energies to critical scholarly work. To date, the Center has digitized more than 7 million pages of Tibetan texts and has built a digital library for research, scholarship, and text delivery on the Internet (www.tbrc.org).

The Nyingma Monlam Chenmo is an annual prayer festival that takes place in Bodhgaya, India, from the first to the tenth day of the twelfth month of the Tibetan calendar. The festival is a unique congregation of many great Nyingma masters, yogis, tulkus, khenpos, monks, nuns, ngakpas, lay people, and western Buddhists who come to Bodhgaya to express their devotion. More than 10,000 students and practitioners attended last year’s festival.

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The Scions of Dudjom Lingpa

Published by hollygayley on 21 Jan 2010

The scions of the 19th century terton or “treasure revealer” (gter ston) Bdud ‘joms gling pa (1835-1904) had a significant impact on the religious history of Mgo log and environs. The eldest, ‘Jigs med bstan pa’i nyi ma (1865-1926), became a scholar of great acclaim and served as the third in a line of Rdo grub chen incarnations. Another son, Dri med ‘od zer (1881-1924), became a leading terton of his generation, considered an emanation of the 14th century Rnying ma master Klong chen rab ‘byams. As a family treasure lineage par excellence, each generation in the Bdud ‘joms line has produced prominent tertons: among his sons, Dri med ‘od zer, Nam mkha’ ‘jigs med, and Rdo rje dgra ‘dul; among his grandsons, Kun bzang nyi ma, Bsod nams lde’u btsan, and Bstan ‘dzin nyi ma, and among his great-grandsons, Mdo li nyi ma.

The Bdud ‘joms line has synthesized distinct processes for the transmission of esoteric Rnying ma teachings and ritual cycles, including family succession, reincarnation schemas, and the revelation of treasures (gter ma). One can see this synthesis through three variants of reincarnation found in his family line. First and foremost, ‘Jigs med bstan pa’i nyi ma, as the 3rd Rdo grub chen, exemplifies the normative schema for reincarnate lamas in Tibet, consisting of a line of successive tulkus (sprul sku) associated with a monastic seat, each recognized and enthroned after the death of the previous one. In his seminal article on the topic, Turrell Wylie (1976) dates this Tibetan innovation in reincarnation to the 14th century during the career of the Bka’ brgyud hierarch Rang byung rdo rje and suggests its importance as a mechanism to transform the personal charisma of a lama into the charisma of office, thereby providing administrative continuity for monastic succession and later facilitating the “hierochratic form of government” under the Dalai Lamas in central Tibet.

Early on, the Rnying ma also appropriated reincarnation into the emergent treasure tradition. The autobiography of the 12th century terton Nyang ral nyi ma ‘od zer, while the date of its composition remains uncertain, claims him to be the rebirth of Khri srong lde’u btsan (Phillips 2004). This is an alternate form of reincarnation, particular to the treasure tradition, which traces the past lives of a terton to the 8th century in order to legitimate his or her revelations as the teachings of Padmasambhava or comparable master. As an example of this second variant, the terton Dri med ‘od zer traced his past lives through Klong chen rab ‘byams to the 8th century princess Padma gsal who, according to treasure lore, was temporarily revived by Padmasambhava after dying at the age of eight in order to pass on esoteric knowledge, later buried as treasures.

The treasure tradition’s version of reincarnation does not demand a linear succession of incarnations, and the past life genealogy of Bdud ‘joms gling pa himself illustrates this point well. After a timeless reference to his identity as the emanation of Vajradhara in the form of the yogin Nus ldan rdo rje, the first on the list of Bdud ‘joms gling pa’s past lives is Śāriputra, linking him to the historical Buddha as a prominent disciple, and next is the Indian siddha Hūṃ(chen)kara, locating him in the tantric milieu of medieval India. Never mind the gap of more than a millennium. His past life in Tibet during the 8th century, crucial to his capacity to reveal treasures, is reckoned as the translator, Khye’u chung of the ‘Brog clan, situating him as a direct disciple of Padmasambhava. Rather than emphasizing linear succession, a terton’s past lives routinely skip across the centuries with a focus on linking him or her to seminal times and places in the history of Buddhism and its transmission to Tibet. In addition, tertons often count previous tertons among their past lives. In this vein, Bdud ‘joms gling pa is referred to as the 3rd Bdud ‘dul, an emanation of the 17th century terton Bdud ‘dul rdo rje and a lesser-known figure Bdud ‘dul rol ba rtsal.

Third and perhaps most interestingly, in the Bdud ‘joms line, one finds reincarnation schemas articulated within the family. Bdud ‘joms gling pa spawned a line of three emanations, the most famous of which was Bdud ‘joms rin po che ‘Jigs bral ye shes rdo rje (1904-1988), who left Tibet in the 1950s and became the head of the Rnying ma lineage in exile. Notably, Bdud ‘joms gling pa’s other two emanations were his own grandsons, Rdzong gter Kun bzang nyi ma (1904-1958) and Bsod nams lde’u btsan (1910-1958), both who remained in Mgo log and became tertons in their own right. The latter also served as the steward of Bdud ‘joms gling pa’s monastic seat, Brda tshang bskal bzang dgon. In Kun bzang nyi ma and Bsod nams lde’u btsan, one sees all three processes of transmission at work: family succession, reincarnation schemas, and the revelation of treasures.

Alongside the tertons in the family, all of the scions of Bdud ‘joms gling pa were recognized as reincarnate lamas. It is not uncommon for the children of a Rnying ma master to be identified as emanations of prominent religious figures from the previous generation. Bdud ‘joms gling pa’s sons were recognized as the reincarnations of no less figures than Mdo mkhyen brtse Ye shes rdo rje and Dpal sprul rin po che O rgyan ‘jigs med chos kyi dbang po. While the male heirs of Rnying ma masters might become high-ranking lamas at area monasteries, the female heirs were sometimes identified as emanations of Ye shes mtsho rgyal with no associated monastic seat. More unusually, in Mgo log and environs, the female terton Mkha’ ‘gro Bde ba’i rdo rje provided a proximate antecedent for at least one of Bdud ‘joms gling pa’s great-granddaughters, Lha lcam Chos kyi sgrol ma, as well as for the female terton Mkha’ ‘gro Tā re lha mo (1938-2002), herself the daughter of a terton in the region.

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Padma ‘od gsal mtha’ yas. Skyabs rje mchog sprul rin po che padma theg mchog bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan gyi yab mes rig ‘dzin brgyud pa’i byung ba mdor bsdus tsam brjod pa ngo mtshar gser gyi snye ma. Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003.

Turrell Wylie. “Reincarnation: A Political Innovation in Tibetan Buddhism.” In Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Memorial Symposium, ed. Louis Ligeti, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978.

Bradford Phillips. Consummation and Compassion in Medieval Tibet: The Maṇi bka’-'bum chen-mo of Guru Chos-kyi dbang-phyug. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Virginia, 2004.

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This is the first in a series of blog posts on the Bdud ‘joms line by Holly Gayley, Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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