The Gathering of Intentions

A History of a Tibetan Tantra

Jacob P. Dalton

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231541176
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

The Gathering of Intentions reads a single Tibetan Buddhist ritual system through the movements of Tibetan history, revealing the social and material dimensions of an ostensibly timeless tradition. By subjecting tantric practice to historical analysis, the book offers new insight into the origins of Tibetan Buddhism, the formation of its canons, the emergence of new lineages and ceremonies, and modern efforts to revitalize the religion by returning to its mythic origins.

The ritual system explored in this volume is based on the Gathering of Intentions Sutra, the fundamental "root tantra" of the Anuyoga class of teachings belonging to the Nyingma ("Ancient") school of Tibetan Buddhism. Proceeding chronologically from the ninth century to the present, each chapter features a Tibetan author negotiating a perceived gap between the original root text—the Gathering of Intentions—and the lived religious or political concerns of his day. These ongoing tensions underscore the significance of Tibet's elaborate esoteric ritual systems, which have persisted for centuries, evolving in response to historical conditions. Rather than overlook practice in favor of philosophical concerns, this volume prioritizes Tibetan Buddhism's ritual systems for a richer portrait of the tradition.

1

ORIGINS

MYTH AND HISTORY

The Gathering of Intentions stands astride multiple worlds. Termed a sutra, an āgama (Tib. lung), and a tantra, it is said to have been translated into Tibetan by an international team of scholars working in Nepal and Brusha, both ancient Himalayan kingdoms located along the Indo-Tibetan border. It is considered the fundamental tantra of the Anuyoga class, a category of Buddhist tantras that lies between the more familiar classes of Mahāyoga and Atiyoga that comprise the Nyingma School’s tantric system. But perhaps most important for its enduring influence within Tibet, the Gathering of Intentions constitutes a powerful mythic bridge between the abstract heights of the ultimate dharmakāya buddha (i.e., awakening in the formless form of utter emptiness) and the all-too-human world that we inhabit. It is at once a nondual reflection of buddhahood wordlessly communicated beyond all time, and a transcript of an elaborate teaching that has been passed down from master to disciple for some eleven centuries. In affording a passage between the buddhas and ourselves, the Gathering of Intentions and its mythic narratives allow the ultimate to manifest within the conventional, and conversely, modern-day Tibetans to trace their practices back to the original buddha, Samantabhadra himself.

From early on, the authors of the Buddhist tantras were intensely interested in the mechanics of emanation: How do the buddhas move from undifferentiated meditative absorption into their compassionately emanated worldly forms? In the earliest tantras, this was not just some matter of abstract theorizing; it had practical consequences, for once the inner workings of the buddhas’ emanations were laid bare, they could be reformulated as ritual processes and reenacted by tantric practitioners. Another Buddhist tantra, the famous Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha, for example, describes a series of five stages through which all buddhas and tantric ritualists alike must pass in order to arise as the fully efficacious tathāgata, Vajradhātu seated atop Mount Meru at the center of the universe.¹ Here, at the origin of all enlightened activity, myth and ritual are inextricable.

But such mythic accounts of emanational processes not only provided models for tantric ritual practice, they also revealed the very origins out of which the tantric teachings emerged. Thus the above-cited Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha, in narrating the Buddha’s progress through the five stages by which he manifested complete enlightenment, is also telling the tale of its own appearance in this world. This was, after all, the originary moment when the heads of the five buddha families introduced Buddha Śākyamuni to the teachings of the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha and its central Vajradhātu mandala. Thus the early tantric interest in the mechanics of emanation was also driven by a need to legitimate new scriptures, to explain their origins, and to tie them to the historical Buddha Śākyamuni.

An assortment of tantric origin myths may be found. The Purification of All Negative Rebirths, for instance, tells how the Buddha first preached that tantra in the heavens, to save a god named Vimalaprabhā who had died and subsequently plunged into the hells. But that story remained tied to that particular tantra. Over time, two other narratives emerged as the principal tantric origin myths.² One told of how the tantras were first received in this world by King Indrabhūti, the legendary ruler of Oḍḍiyāna in northwestern India. In some versions, the king’s name differed (he might be King Dza from Bengal, or King Sucandra of the mythical realm of Śambhala), but the basic story remained the same: a great Buddhist king receives a tantra from an emanated buddha and thereby inaugurates a new lineage of tantric teachings on earth. Alongside this myth grew a second, even more influential narrative in which the tantras were originally taught in order to tame the terrible demon Rudra, sometimes Maheśvara, whose power had grown to an otherwise unruly extent. The buddhas emanate for this purpose, enact the violent subjugation of Rudra, and teach him the tantra in question.³

The Gathering of Intentions is unusual for weaving extensive versions of both these origin myths into a single narrative. It does so by introducing a system of three transmissions (brgyud pa gsum), three levels on which its teachings emanate into the world. This triadic structure has exerted considerable influence upon Tibet’s Nyingma School. The extent of its impact becomes clear when one reads any modern-day presentation of the school’s history; it will almost certainly open with a discussion of these three transmissions and King Dza’s original reception of the tantras.⁴ Origins, myth, emanation: the weave of these three ideas within the Gathering of Intentions forms the focus of this first chapter. We begin, then, at the beginning, with the origins of this obscure tantra, first in history, then in myth.

HISTORICAL ORIGINS

One often begins a Tibetan text by turning not to its first page but to its last, where lies the colophon. In the Gathering of Intentions it reads: “In the district of Brusha, the Indian scholar Dharmabodhi and [the master of] the great tradition, Dhanarakṣita, as well as the principal editor, the translator Che Tsengye, translated and edited [the Gathering of Intentions] from Burushaski into Tibetan.”⁵ Unfortunately, all three of the figures named—Dharmabodhi, Dhanarakṣita, and Che Tsenkyé—are rather obscure. To date their supposed translation, one must turn instead to a related and better-known figure.

The great Tibetan exegete Nupchen Sangyé Yeshé lived through Tibet’s “age of fragmentation,” a kind of “dark age” in Tibetan history that stretched from around the mid-ninth to the late tenth century.⁶ During these years, Nupchen composed several influential texts, most famously his Lamp for the Eyes in Contemplation, an extended discussion of nonconceptuality in sutric and tantric Buddhism.⁷ By far his longest work, however, is his two-volume commentary on the Gathering of Intentions, titled Armor Against Darkness. This remarkable work stands out as one of the longest Buddhist treatises to be composed by a Tibetan prior to the eleventh century. Nupchen seems to have written it around the turn of the tenth century, and it is said that he studied directly under the Gathering of Intentions’ three translators, especially the Tibetan Che Tsenkyé. Given this, it would seem that the Gathering of Intentions was translated—if “translated” is the right term—not long before Nupchen penned his commentary, i.e., around the mid-ninth century.⁸

The question remains, however, whether the Gathering of Intentions really was ever “translated” in the normal sense. Certainly today the work exists only in Tibetan, and no mention of it appears in any definitively Indian texts. The colophon’s claim that it was translated from the obscure language of Burushaski rather than from Sanskrit is remarkable; no such claim is made of any other text in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Indeed, precious little is even known about the kingdom of Brusha.⁹ Burushaski has received some attention from linguists, as it is developmentally distinct from other languages in the region.¹⁰ Once upon a time, it enjoyed considerable popularity around Gilgit, but at some point its speakers were forced to move into the much smaller area where they are found today, the Hunza Valley and its environs.¹¹ Knowledge about the people of Brusha in their Buddhist days has been obscured by their later conversion to Islam, and by a paucity of documents dating from the period. However, they continue to sing a version of the Tibetan Gesar epic in Burushaski; there, at least, their ancient connections to Tibet may still be remembered.¹²

Among Tibetan sources, the Old Tibetan Annals, an ancient record of the Tibetan empire discovered near Dunhuang, mention Brusha in the context of a Tibetan military expedition to the region that took place around 737/8 C.E.¹³ The campaign was successful and shifted control of the area from Chinese into Tibetan hands. In 740, Tibet’s sovereignty was further secured through marriage, and Tibetans maintained control of the region for another decade, until, after several attempts, the Chinese finally dislodged them. Even so, Tibetans seem “to have held on to some of their positions in the Pamirs until later in the [ninth] century,”¹⁴ when the Tibetan empire collapsed.¹⁵ That occurred following the death of the Tibetan king Wui Dumten (a.k.a. Lang Darma) and inaugurated the so-called age of fragmentation, a period of economic collapse and political chaos. The imperial government was divided and the Buddhist monasteries of Tibet closed. If the Gathering of Intentions was “translated” around 850 C.E., it would have been at the beginning of this period of imperial decline. One twelfth-century author, to whom we will return later, even suggests that the Gathering of Intentions’ translation had to take place outside of Tibet precisely because of all the internal political turmoil,¹⁶ and Buddhism does seem to have fared better in Brusha during this time.¹⁷ On this point, at least, we are given no reason to doubt that the Gathering of Intentions might have originated there.

Nonetheless, the possibility remains that the Gathering of Intentions was composed directly in Tibetan and that no Burushaski original ever existed. In the eleventh century, both the princely monk Podrang Zhiwa Ö and the translator Gö Khukpa Lhetsé leveled claims that the Gathering of Intentions was apocryphal and actually written by the ninth-century Tibetan Dorjé Pelgyi Drakpa.¹⁸ There is some evidence that such was not entirely the case, at least for a few parts of the work.¹⁹

In his cursory study of the Gathering of...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Origins: Myth and History
• 2. The Gathering of Intentions in Early Tibetan Tantra
• 3. The Spoken Teachings
• 4. The Rise of the Sutra Initiation
• 5. Dorjé Drak and the Formation of a New Lineage
• 6. The Mindröling Tradition
• 7. Returns to the Origin
• Appendix: The Four Root Tantras of Anuyoga
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index