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Series Editor's/Author's Preface
Homage to Vajrasattva!
Homage to Jey Lama, Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa! Homage to Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal! Homage to Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Dalai Lama!
Since in the case of this work, I am the introducer, translator, as well as the author of the English version of Tsong Khapa's master work, this Preface will be a bit longer than usual.
In 1 970-1 971, I spent a year in India with the American Institute of Indian Studies, working on a translation and study of Tsong Khapa's Essence of True Eloquence, Differentiating the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings of the Buddha's Discourses. During that year I had the privi- lege and pleasure of working closely on the Tibetan edition of that text in frequent meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was given
excellent instruction in the difficult points and deeper meanings of Buddhist Central Way hermeneutical thought. After his experience instructing a Westerner such as me in those ideas, His Holiness wrote his own book on the topic (with me working on the first draft of the English version), published eventually as The Key to the Middle Way. When I had to leave India, His Holiness charged me to take up the responsibility to see to the translation of the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons. I most enthusiastically committed myself to under- take the task. I returned to America and received the hearty approval of this project by my root teacher, the Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal.
He further urged that, in order for contemporary philosophers and practitioners to appreciate the work of Tsong Khapa and his followers, they would need to have access to the Tengyur, the vast collection of Tibetan translations from the Sanskrit of the thousands of treatises of the great masters of Indian Buddhism. When I wryly said "Thanks a lot! " to that huge expansion of the burden, he said, "Of course, not just
xi
. rii ? . 4uthor ? . f Prt'face
b? ? yourself all alone. . . in your lifetime you just set up a system and get it started. ? ?
The next step that led to the present work happened during my completion of the Essence of True Eloquence. I was getting a lot of help from an excellent commentary written by a certain Losang Puntsok (bLo
bZang Phun tshogs). While studying that commentary, I came upon a statement by that lama scholar saying that he also was going to write a commentary on Tsong Khapa ' s Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Fi,? e Stages, the Tantric equivalent of the Essence of True Eloquence. It analyzed the five stages of the perfection stage of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra. focusing on the Esoteric Community noble tradition descending from Nagarjuna. The moment I read that, I formed the resolve to trans-
late this Tantric master-treatise of Tsong Khapa's.
In 1978, I applied again to the American Institute of Indian Studies
to spend a year in India to study the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras through this text. I thought that, in order to understand this great treatise, I would have to complete the Esoteric Community studies which I had begun long before when I was a Buddhist monk. During that year in India, I began the study and translation of the work, producing also drafts of a number of associated works. Consultations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on this second big text were extremely rewarding, as to be expected. How- ever, toward the conclusion of that year of studies, I decided not to rush
to publish it, due to the esoteric nature of its teachings. His Holiness' senior teacher, the Ganden Throne-holder Kyabjey Lingtsang Rinpochey, transmitter to him (and me) of various Esoteric Community teachings, was strongly opposed to the general publication of such works.
Clearly I have not rushed to publish this work, begun thirty years ago. I do so now, since almost all the main practices of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras have been described and published-with varying degrees of clarity and explicitness-though the huge variety and immensely rich and sophisticated detail of their millennial sciences are like an ocean still largely unexplored. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has reasoned that misunderstanding of Tantra already abounds, and so it is desirable and even necessary to be fully transparent about the authentic teachings.
Also, in a project to make available the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons, a large percentage of them do concern the Tantras, so one cannot avoid them. Some esoteric secrets keep themselves: they are incredible to
some, incomprehensible to others, and often are approached as the roman- tic fantasy or science fiction of a far away ancient culture. Further, a deter- mined researcher will find almost anything nowadays. if they look hard enough. Thus, it is my hope, and my intention in publishing this book now, that they should find authentic and accurately clarified information about the amazing "mental" or "inner" science of the Indian and Tibetan masters, scientists, and yogT/nTs of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras of Universal Vehicle (Mahayana) Buddhism!
In regard to the various sub-series to be included in our Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences list, we are hereby delighted at long last to add another: the Complete Works of Tsang Khapa and Sons, each of which builds upon the Indian works in the Tengyur. As mentioned above. it was planned at the very beginning of the idea for the Tengyur translation project. As it is decades behind schedule, it is a great relief to launch it with this book. The Essence of True Eloquence was my first translation of one of Tsong Khapa's key books. The publication still remains with the Princeton University Press, and they licensed an Indian edition to
Motilal Banarsidass publishers in Delhi. Eventually, I hope to improve that work further and bring it back into this series.
I have many people to thank. First of all I thank the Tibetan and Mongolian scholar lamas who opened to me the treasury of the Esoteric Community: the late Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, who read to me the Panchen Rinpochey's summary of the path and its scope during early morning sessions in 1964; the late His Holiness Kyabjey Lingtsang
Rinpochey, who admitted me first into the Community mandala universe; His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has so generously given of his kind friendship, and transmitted more than I yet know, especially the special tradition of this text at Thegchen Choling in Dharmsala in 1984; the late Venerable Tara Tulku Rinpochey, for his learning, insight, patience and humorous brilliance; the late His Eminence Serkhong Tsenshab Rinpo- chey, for his generosity and kindness; and my friend and cheerful lama,
Gelek Rinpochey, for his elegant teachings of the practices. Among academic benefactors, I thank the late Professor Masatoshi Nagatomi, with whom I first read parts of the Shrr Guhya Samaja in Sanskrit; the late Professor Alex Wayman, my predecessor in Buddhist Studies at Columbia, who was the first American scholar to go deeply into the
Author's Preface? xiii
xiv ? Author's Preface
Esoteric Community literature; Dr. Lozang Jamspal, whose tireless, careful work contributes so much to the Tengyur Translation Initiative, and who went through the translation, checking line by line; Dr. Thomas Yarnall, my esteemed colleague, for his indispensable expert and meticulous assis- tance on all levels, from the scholarly insight and editorial revision, to
the design expertise, to the publishing technicalities; Dr. Paul Hackett, another younger colleague, for his careful and laborious finding of the sources in the Tengyur that verified Tsong Khapa's many quotes, bring- ing their variants and Sanskrit where available into the annotations to the critically edited Tibetan text, published as a companion volume in a lim- ited edition and in an e-book,? as well as for flagging remaining errors in
the translation; Ms. Annie Bien who helped enormously with editing and polishing; Mr. Jason Dunbar of the Asian Classics Input Project, who worked originally with the Asian Classics Input Project on the digitiza- tion of Tsong Khapa's works, and later significantly improved the Tibetan edition of the text; and finally my fellow translator, Dr. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, whose interest in this text gave me the impetus to get it finalized at long last. With all of this excellent assistance and support, all delays, errors, and remaining imperfections remaining are entirely my fault.
Finally, among financial benefactors and supporters, I thank the American Institute of Indian Studies, for the senior grant thirty years ago that enabled me to live in India from 1979-1980 to study with the authen- tic lamas of the noble tradition and begin this work; Mr. Joel McCleary for his generous help and steady encouragement; Ms. Lavinia Currier of the Sacharuna Foundation, whose generous donations and grants enabled
the work at a crucial time to advance to the penultimate stage; to Mr. Marc Benioff and Mrs. Lynne Benioff for their generous, world-changing support down the home stretch; and Mr. William T. Kistler, Mrs. Eileen Kistler, and Mr. Brian Kistler of the Kistler Foundation for their vision- ary recognition that amid the many crises and catastrophes afflicting the multitudes of suffering beings around the world, the recovery and transla- tion needed to open the door for the modem mind to the inner or spiritual
? The companion volume of the critically edited Tibetan tex. t, annotated with the found quotes from Tengyur and Kangyur tex. ts in Tibetan und Sanskrit where available, will soon be published in u limited edition, and subsequently made more widely available to specialists on our website and as an e-book.
? Author's Preface ? xv
science of the Buddhist tradition remains a high priority for the awakening of humanity; perhaps essential to empower us to rise to the challenges we all face together at this critical planetary moment.
Finally my ever immeasurably increasing gratitude goes to my best friend and wonderful wife, Nena von Schlebrugge Thurman, who has given her unstinting support and inspiration over these many years.
Robert A. F. Thurman (Ari Genyen Tenzin Chotrag)
Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University;
President, American Institute of Buddhist Studies; Director, Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies; President, Tibet House US.
Ganden Dekyi Ling
Woodstock, New York
February 25, 2010 CE
Tibetan Royal Year 2137, Year of the Iron Tiger
SOURCES, CONVENTIONS, AND ABBREVIATIONS
Primary Textual Sources
The study and translation of Tsong Khapa's Brilliant Illumination ofthe Lamp ofthe Five Stages (Rim lnga rab tu gsa/ ba'i sgron me) con- tained herein was produced with reference to a combination of several different sources. The primary sources were the following:
Derge The Derge (sde dge) recension of the root text (Delhi, 1 982)
Zh T h e Lhasa Zh o l Parkhang printing of Tsong Khapa's Col lected Works (gsung 'bum). Gray citations in square brackets embed-
ded throughout the translation are references to this edition. TL A reproduction of the Tashilhunpo (bkra shis /hun po) print-
TKSB
ing and the Kumbum Jampaling (sku
printing: Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa, The Collected
'
Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa, The Collected Works (gsunR 'bum) of the Incomparable Lord Tsong k. ha pa Blo bzang grags pa. vol. JA. Sku-'bum: Sku-'bum-byams-pa- gling. 2000
Works (gsun 'bum) of Rje Tson
vol. II. New Delhi: Ngawang Gelek Demo, 1978
ACIP
based upon the Derge and Zh
Electronic files from the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP),
xvi
-
kha
-
bum byams pa gling) pa Blo-b:. an-grags-pa.
Sources, Conventions, and Abbreviations? xvii
Also consulted were the two published editions of the Tibetan translations of the root text of Nagarjuna? s Five Stages. as well as the excellent Sanskrit edition in the former work:
MIMAKI MIMAKI Katsumi and TOMABECHI Toru. Paiicakrama. Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO (1994)
Chengdu Bstan 'gyur dpe bsdur ma. Chengdu: Chengdu Peoples' Publishing House (1998-2005), vol. 18
The large number of canonical citations herein were located and checked against the Derge recension of the Kangyur and Tengyur; and often the Narthang, Lhasa, Peking, and/or Chone recensions were consulted as well. Both the index and bibliography herein list the Derge sources, with English translations of the titles and with the corresponding Tohoku numbers. In addition, the bibliography, sorted by English title, gives the full citation information (Sanskrit and Tibetan titles, author names, location, and so on) for these Derge sources. Similar citations for non- canonical sources will likewise be found herein.
The precise locations of quoted passages, as well as text critical annota- tions regarding significant variants and so on, are given in our critical edition of the Tibetan text, forthcoming in print and in electronic format.
Typographical Conventions
We have strived generally to present Tibetan and Sanskrit names and terms in a phonetic form to facilitate pronunciation. For most Sanskrit terms this has meant that-while we generally have kept conventional diacritics-we have added an h to convey certain sounds (so s, $, and c are rendered as sh, sh, and ch respectively). For Sanskrit terms that have entered the English lexicon (such as "nirvana"), we use no diacritical marks. In more technical contexts (notes, bibliography, and so on) we use full standard diacritical conventions for Sanskrit, and Wylie translitera-
tions for Tibetan.
xviii ? Sources, Conventions, andAbbreviations
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been used in various places throughout the present work:
f237al
*
Skt. Tib. Toh.
Small gray citations in square brackets embedded throughout the translation are references to the folio number and side of the Zh edition. These same citations are embedded in our forthcoming Tibetan edition. Zh citations are also used in the Topical Outline (sa bead) included herein as an Appendix.
An asterisk before a Sanskrit word or phrase indicates a hypothetical reconstruction from the Tibetan.
Sanskrit
Tibetan
Tohoku catalog (1934, Sendai, Japan) of the Derge canon.
Christian Wedemeyer, ed. and trans. A. ryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryamelapakapradfpa). New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007. Tsong Khapa herein frequently cites this text by Aryadeva; hence we herein frequently cite the Skt. or Tib. editions (or the English transla-
tion) of this text contained in CW.
CW
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
1. What is a "Buddha Vajradhara," the Goal of this Tradition?
Ablaze in glory ofwondrous signs and marks, Forever playing in the taste ofthe bliss-void kiss, Recklessly compassionate, free ofextremist calm- I bow to the Victor with the seven super-factors! 1
To study this work fruitfully, we need first of all to understand what the author thinks is the goal of the practices described within it. That is to say, we need to imagine what Tsong Khapa imagines is the kind of being called a "buddha vajradhara"-what a buddha really is-whether viewed from the Tantric perspective or not. What he thinks a buddha-being is, is so utterly fantastic, even preposterous, from the perspective of our philo- sophically materialist modem culture, it takes a real effort of imagination, a nearly sci-fi exercise in openness of mind. We don't have to agree that in reality there is such a thing, but to understand the work at hand, it is fruitful to place ourselves in the position of Tsong Khapa's audience. To catch a glimpse of where he is coming from, we have to review the parameters he sets up for our imagining. This is an effort required to understand any form of Buddhism, but it is particularly important in the
Tantric or mantric context, since a lot of the work of mantric practice involves contemplative deployment of the structured imagination.
It is also quite probable that Tsong Khapa feels he should salute Vajradhara Buddha in this technical way because even his own Tibetan Buddhist contemporaries and successors might not so easily imagine what a buddha is, in its inconceivable reality. Tsong Khapa himself said
-after what he referred to as his coming to complete clarity about the uttermost subtleties of the realistic view, and what others refer to as his perfect enlightenment-that it was the opposite of what he had expected it to be, indicating that even a great scholar such as he had not fully been
? 3
1 Tib. rGyal ba yan lag bdun ldan. These are the components of a Buddha Vajradhara's
material body: 1 ) it has the auspicious signs and marks; 2) it is in embrace of a wisdom- intuition consort (being both the male and the female); 3) its mind is always super-bliss; 4) such bliss is ever aware of voidness; 5) its compassion avoids extremist calm; 6) its bodily continuum is uninterrupted; and 7) its enlightened deeds are unceasing.
4 , lntmd11ction
able to imagine what the buddha-uwareness was really like. When even a Buddhist thinks of enlightenment. she thinks of a kind of awareness far greater than her habitual own, but still it is difficult to imagine a being whose consciousness is at once infinitely expanded and minutely detailed, who feels him- I her- I it-self a timeless eternity of utter freedom ecstatically blissful. and whose multi-sourced presence can manifest in relation to
countless individual beings as countless different relational beings at once. To try to express the inexpressible, from the three buddha-body theory perspective, a buddha is a being who is not restricted to having to be enclosed in a single separate embodiment that faces an "other" universe and yet who does not neglect the countless beings who persist in feeling that they are separate, and are facing him, her, or it as an "other. " When a buddha completes its, her, or his wisdom store in the buddha-truth-body (Skt. dlumnakiyi a), it viscerally experiences itself as indivisibly one with all realities, and other beings and things and the spaces and energies within and around them are felt to be part of its body. This feeling feels those beings, things, and energies as configurations of a limitless bliss, as the truth body is simultaneously a bliss body, the buddha-beatific-body
(Skt. sambhogakiyi a). This bliss feeling does not anaesthetize the buddha being from also feeling what the beings feel of suffering; in a way the bliss energizes the ability to remain aware of the others' feelings of dis- satisfaction and pain. Indeed, the awareness of others ? dissatisfaction and pain in tum stimulates the spacious cloudlike truth-beatitude-indivisible buddha-body to manifest or emanate limitless forms of embodiment (Skt. nirmlif)Qkiyi a) as beings or things that can be perceived by the suffering beings and that perfectly mirror to them, according to their perceptual capacities, their potential freedom from suffering and their potential aware- ness of their own natural bliss.
Although this description of the inconceivable, amazing cognitive- dissonance-tolerant, dichotomy-reconciling nature of buddhahood is ultimately ungraspable in linear binary terms, we can imagine it with the help of limiting concepts such as voidness, freedom, nonduality, and the elaborated theory of the three bodies of buddhahood. Imagining it, we can aspire consciously to evolve toward achieving it for ourselves and those with whom we want to share it, in case it is really possible and not just a Buddhist fantasy. At any rate, the mantric or Tantric path is pre- sented as the science and art of accelerating such conscious evolution by
Introduction ? 5
employing a supremely subtle technology of spiritual genetic engineering of a buddha mind and buddha bodies.
A point that should be clarified here is that the buddha mind is referred to in the theory as a "body of truth," and the buddha bodies of beatitude and emanation are referred to as a "material body" (Skt. rapa- kiiya, often wrongly translated as "form body"). This may be a hint in the exoteric Universal Vehicle of the esoteric doctrine of the nonduality of body and mind at the ultimate or supremely subtle level.
To such an end of stimulating imagination and inspiration, Tsong Khapa embeds in his opening salutatory verse a standard formulation of the seven super-components of the material body of a buddha vajradhara (inconceivably indivisible from his and all buddhas' infinite truth body, itself completely interpenetrating all other embodied beings and discrete things).
There are seven super-components of a buddha vajradhara's material body.
1. IT HAS THE AUSPICIOUS SIGNS AND MARKS
There are traditionally thirty-two auspicious signs and eighty auspi- cious marks which a buddha vajradhara's material body has in common with other buddhas such as Shakyamuni and so forth. Nagarjuna in his
Jewel Rosary details these 112 signs and marks, explaining in brief how each one is the evolutionary (karmic) result of specific deeds in the many lives leading up to buddhahood (see below).
The final body of a buddha is the truth or reality body, which is infinite and timeless and indivisible. The individual expands always em- bodied awareness to encompass the ultimate reality of infinite worlds and beings, both enlightened and unenlightened, mental and physical. At the
same time, the individual momentum of positive engagement with others -the love and compassion that drives a being to evolve into the ability of providing happiness to countless others-persists in the physical omni- presence of a buddha in an equally infinite beatific body that infinitely enjoys having all reality as its body, and simultaneously encompasses the awarenesses of the infinite others who suffer due to their failure to realize their oneness with such a universe. This awareness automatically and effort- lessly then manifests as infinite seemingly discrete embodiments, called "emanations. " For their own evolutionary benefit, self-alienated migrating beings can interact with these emanations. Therefore, a buddha vajradhara
6 ? Introduction
is not just one individual, beautiful, divine embodiment, separate super- being in a desire realm heaven - that manifestation is just one of countless manifestations, but it is the one that best expresses to the evolutionary psychonaut, or adept, the ideal and goal he or she is aiming for.
Regarding the emanation bodies, there are said to be three kinds: artistic, incarnational, and supreme. The artistic emanation body consists of all representations of buddhas and their deeds by artists whose aim is to help beings imagine the supreme evolutionary state all beings can achieve. The incarnational emanation body is all the manifestations a
buddha can create to interact with alienated beings in order to help their development, including inanimate objects such as buildings, continents, even planets, in addition to plants and animate beings. The supreme ema- nation body is a buddha like Shakyamuni Buddha, who manifests descent from heaven, conception, birth, and so on (the twelve deeds with which we are familiar). It is such a supreme emanation that manifests a body that carries on it the graphic demonstrations (the signs and marks) of all his or her evolutionary achievements. In this way all emanation bodies are themselves teachings for specific beings in specific evolutionary times
and places.
In his Jewel Rosary,2 Nagarjuna gives a summary of the marks and
their causes in a buddha's evolutionary past:
Through proper honoring of stupas, venerables, noble ones, and the elderly, you will become a universal mon- arch, your glorious hands and feet marked with wheels.
0 King, always maintain firmly your vows about your practices: you will then become a bodhisattva, with very level feet.
By giving gifts, speaking pleasantly, fulfilling beings' wishes, and practicing what you teach, you will have hands with glorious fingers joined by luminous webs.
2 Here I quote a number of verses to give a taste of the specifics of the biological theory of karmic evolution (Jewel Rosary, vs. 177-197).
? Introduction ? 7
By always generously giving the finest food and drink, your glorious hands and feet will be soft, and along with your shoulder blades and the nape of your neck, seven areas will be broad, and your body will be large.
By never doing harm and freeing condemned persons, your body will be beautiful, straight, and tall, your fingers will be long, and the backs of your heels will be broad.
By spreading spiritual disciplines, you will have a good complexion, a good repute, your ankles will not pro- trude, and your body hairs will stand upwards.
Due to your enthusiasm in propagating the arts and sciences, and so on, you will have the calves of an antelope, a sharp intelligence, and great wisdom.
When others desire your wealth and possessions, by disciplining yourself to give them immediately, you will have broad arms, an attractive appearance, and will be- come a world leader.
By reconciling friends who are in conflict, you will become supreme, and your glorious private organ will retract within [like a stallion].
By bestowing upon others excellent dwellings, your complexion will be soft, like stainless refined gold.
By granting to others superior powers and dutifully fol- lowing your teachers, your each and every hair will be your ornament, including a special tuft of hair between the eyebrows.
By speaking pleasantly and meaningfully, and by acting upon the good speech [of others], you will have curving shoulders and a lion-like upper body.
By nursing and healing the sick, the area between your shoulders will be broad, you will live in a state of ease, and all your tastes will be excellent.
Introduction
By conducting your affairs in accord with the Dharma, your skull dome will be beautifully elevated, and [your body] will be symmetrical like a banana tree.
By speaking true and gentle words over a long time, 0 lord of men, your tongue will be long, and your voice like that of Brahma the creator.
By always speaking truth continuously, your cheeks will be lion-like, glorious, and you will be hard to overcome.
By being carefully respectful, serving others, and doing what is proper, your teeth will be shining, white, and even.
By always speaking true and non-divisive words, you will have forty glorious teeth, set evenly and wondrous to behold.
By gazing at beings with altruistic love without desire, hatred, or delusion, your eyes will be bright and blue, with lashes like a hull's.
Thus in brief know well these thirty-two signs of a great lion of beings, together with their [evolutionary] causes.
Nagarjuna then goes on to mention the eighty auspicious signs, not listing them, saying it would take too long; but the lists are common in the Sotras. This list gives us the feel of the Buddhist worldview. Life is evolutionary. The acts we perform of body, speech, and mind in any given life produce their result in the future of this life or in a future life. The patterns cited in this specific case of attaining the thirty-two auspi- cious marks of a superbeing (mahapuru? ha) connect moral actions with biological results.
A point to be emphasized is that this counts in the Buddhist culture as a " scientific" explanation of the physical characteristics of a "supreme emanation buddha body," such as that of Shakyamuni. Therefore, less evolved beings who have some physical marks resembling these thirty- two have bene committing acts of the same type. Thus if you are tall, with long fingers, and the backs of your heels are broad. you have been rela- tively less harmful to other beings in many previous lives; in numerous
8 ?
Introduction ? 9
life-forms, and in previous human lives you have saved lives and par- doned condemned beings.
Anything in these directions-height and breadth and beauty of body, nature of hands and feet and limbs, shape of eyes. length of tongue, beauty of cheeks, and so on-all these physical traits come from past evolutionary actions of body and speech and mind. The Darwinian theory of "survival of the fittest"-meaning increase of the survival-enhancing qualities of a species (not individuals) due to the physical propagation of the offspring of better equipped individuals generation after generation, producing mutations that cope better with the environment, that are transmitted by physical genes, and so forth - is somewhat parallel to the Buddhist theory. But added here to that picture (of the mutations of species over countless generations in coordination with environmental changes) is the individual's own personal evolution. That individual carries the results of his or her own evolutionary actions encoded in a
mental gene (Skt. gotra) that goes from one coarse flesh and blood em- bodiment to another, meeting the physical genes of fathers and mothers in human or other animal forms born in mammalian womb, reptilian or avian egg, insect moisture, or magical environment.
Once persons encounter such a "karmic" biological worldview and come to think of it as realistic, either through cultural conditioning in a Buddhist culture or through historical and internal scientific investiga- tion, they adapt their lifestyles to consciously cultivate that mental gene through skillful evolutionary actions, considering that cultivation to be
the prime priority of their lives, since its results will determine the quali- ties of their inevitable lives far into the future. The ultimate change of lifestyle is precisely the Tantric one, where individuals decide that they cannot wait for countless rebirths of gradual progress to reach the summit of positive life experience for self and other that is defined as buddhahood. And so they enter the Tantric path of self creation and self perfection, compressing all those deaths and rebirths into a single intense lifetime or
a few lifetimes in order to get to the highest goal as soon as possible. Tantric art and contemplative technology is thus a form of genetic engineering. The main tool is the highly concentrated and stabilized crea- tive imagination, which uses the patterns of the mandala environments and the divine embodiments (themselves derived from meritorious actions and scientific insights) to shape the spiritual gene of the practitioner. This shaped gene then simulates, in the virtual reality of the lucid-dream-like
10 ? Introduction
1. '"0ntemplative performance (Skt. slldhana). the death, between, and rebirth processes; first as a rehearsal of out-of-coarse- or subtle- body perform- ances; and then as actual mind- and shape- shifting transformations in the
evolutionary direction of buddhahood.
2. IT IS IN EMBRACE OF A WISDOM-INTUITION CONSORT
(AS BOTH THE MALE AND THE FEMALE)
The highest pleasure in ordinary life is generally conceded to be the release experienced in sexual orgasm, wherein an individual melts his or her normal bodily rigidities and feels intense rapture through a blissful inner flooding of pleasurable energy. In Buddhist neuro-biology, this is explained as the bodily energies (or vital winds) dissolving away from their normal functions in the limbs and muscles and nerves (including the
brain) and concentrating in the central channel of the nervous system, said to run through the body from mid-brow up to crown of head and down in front of the spine to the tip of the genital organ. These energies take with them endocrine drops that anchor blissful feelings and concentrate them into a powerful force that carries the mind with it into release from all mental and physical preoccupations. The most powerful bliss experience of this kind occurs in a "normal," egocentrically-wired being only at death, as the mental energy is released from preoccupation within the coarse body. That experience dissipates as that mental-subtle-energy continuum arises as a subtle dreamlike body in a "between state. " This fairy-like "between being" (Skt. gandharva) migrates in its state of separateness throughout all the optional forms of existence in the vast universe other than it.
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Series Editor's/Author's Preface
Homage to Vajrasattva!
Homage to Jey Lama, Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa! Homage to Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal! Homage to Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Dalai Lama!
Since in the case of this work, I am the introducer, translator, as well as the author of the English version of Tsong Khapa's master work, this Preface will be a bit longer than usual.
In 1 970-1 971, I spent a year in India with the American Institute of Indian Studies, working on a translation and study of Tsong Khapa's Essence of True Eloquence, Differentiating the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings of the Buddha's Discourses. During that year I had the privi- lege and pleasure of working closely on the Tibetan edition of that text in frequent meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was given
excellent instruction in the difficult points and deeper meanings of Buddhist Central Way hermeneutical thought. After his experience instructing a Westerner such as me in those ideas, His Holiness wrote his own book on the topic (with me working on the first draft of the English version), published eventually as The Key to the Middle Way. When I had to leave India, His Holiness charged me to take up the responsibility to see to the translation of the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons. I most enthusiastically committed myself to under- take the task. I returned to America and received the hearty approval of this project by my root teacher, the Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal.
He further urged that, in order for contemporary philosophers and practitioners to appreciate the work of Tsong Khapa and his followers, they would need to have access to the Tengyur, the vast collection of Tibetan translations from the Sanskrit of the thousands of treatises of the great masters of Indian Buddhism. When I wryly said "Thanks a lot! " to that huge expansion of the burden, he said, "Of course, not just
xi
. rii ? . 4uthor ? . f Prt'face
b? ? yourself all alone. . . in your lifetime you just set up a system and get it started. ? ?
The next step that led to the present work happened during my completion of the Essence of True Eloquence. I was getting a lot of help from an excellent commentary written by a certain Losang Puntsok (bLo
bZang Phun tshogs). While studying that commentary, I came upon a statement by that lama scholar saying that he also was going to write a commentary on Tsong Khapa ' s Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Fi,? e Stages, the Tantric equivalent of the Essence of True Eloquence. It analyzed the five stages of the perfection stage of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra. focusing on the Esoteric Community noble tradition descending from Nagarjuna. The moment I read that, I formed the resolve to trans-
late this Tantric master-treatise of Tsong Khapa's.
In 1978, I applied again to the American Institute of Indian Studies
to spend a year in India to study the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras through this text. I thought that, in order to understand this great treatise, I would have to complete the Esoteric Community studies which I had begun long before when I was a Buddhist monk. During that year in India, I began the study and translation of the work, producing also drafts of a number of associated works. Consultations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on this second big text were extremely rewarding, as to be expected. How- ever, toward the conclusion of that year of studies, I decided not to rush
to publish it, due to the esoteric nature of its teachings. His Holiness' senior teacher, the Ganden Throne-holder Kyabjey Lingtsang Rinpochey, transmitter to him (and me) of various Esoteric Community teachings, was strongly opposed to the general publication of such works.
Clearly I have not rushed to publish this work, begun thirty years ago. I do so now, since almost all the main practices of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras have been described and published-with varying degrees of clarity and explicitness-though the huge variety and immensely rich and sophisticated detail of their millennial sciences are like an ocean still largely unexplored. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has reasoned that misunderstanding of Tantra already abounds, and so it is desirable and even necessary to be fully transparent about the authentic teachings.
Also, in a project to make available the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons, a large percentage of them do concern the Tantras, so one cannot avoid them. Some esoteric secrets keep themselves: they are incredible to
some, incomprehensible to others, and often are approached as the roman- tic fantasy or science fiction of a far away ancient culture. Further, a deter- mined researcher will find almost anything nowadays. if they look hard enough. Thus, it is my hope, and my intention in publishing this book now, that they should find authentic and accurately clarified information about the amazing "mental" or "inner" science of the Indian and Tibetan masters, scientists, and yogT/nTs of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras of Universal Vehicle (Mahayana) Buddhism!
In regard to the various sub-series to be included in our Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences list, we are hereby delighted at long last to add another: the Complete Works of Tsang Khapa and Sons, each of which builds upon the Indian works in the Tengyur. As mentioned above. it was planned at the very beginning of the idea for the Tengyur translation project. As it is decades behind schedule, it is a great relief to launch it with this book. The Essence of True Eloquence was my first translation of one of Tsong Khapa's key books. The publication still remains with the Princeton University Press, and they licensed an Indian edition to
Motilal Banarsidass publishers in Delhi. Eventually, I hope to improve that work further and bring it back into this series.
I have many people to thank. First of all I thank the Tibetan and Mongolian scholar lamas who opened to me the treasury of the Esoteric Community: the late Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, who read to me the Panchen Rinpochey's summary of the path and its scope during early morning sessions in 1964; the late His Holiness Kyabjey Lingtsang
Rinpochey, who admitted me first into the Community mandala universe; His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has so generously given of his kind friendship, and transmitted more than I yet know, especially the special tradition of this text at Thegchen Choling in Dharmsala in 1984; the late Venerable Tara Tulku Rinpochey, for his learning, insight, patience and humorous brilliance; the late His Eminence Serkhong Tsenshab Rinpo- chey, for his generosity and kindness; and my friend and cheerful lama,
Gelek Rinpochey, for his elegant teachings of the practices. Among academic benefactors, I thank the late Professor Masatoshi Nagatomi, with whom I first read parts of the Shrr Guhya Samaja in Sanskrit; the late Professor Alex Wayman, my predecessor in Buddhist Studies at Columbia, who was the first American scholar to go deeply into the
Author's Preface? xiii
xiv ? Author's Preface
Esoteric Community literature; Dr. Lozang Jamspal, whose tireless, careful work contributes so much to the Tengyur Translation Initiative, and who went through the translation, checking line by line; Dr. Thomas Yarnall, my esteemed colleague, for his indispensable expert and meticulous assis- tance on all levels, from the scholarly insight and editorial revision, to
the design expertise, to the publishing technicalities; Dr. Paul Hackett, another younger colleague, for his careful and laborious finding of the sources in the Tengyur that verified Tsong Khapa's many quotes, bring- ing their variants and Sanskrit where available into the annotations to the critically edited Tibetan text, published as a companion volume in a lim- ited edition and in an e-book,? as well as for flagging remaining errors in
the translation; Ms. Annie Bien who helped enormously with editing and polishing; Mr. Jason Dunbar of the Asian Classics Input Project, who worked originally with the Asian Classics Input Project on the digitiza- tion of Tsong Khapa's works, and later significantly improved the Tibetan edition of the text; and finally my fellow translator, Dr. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, whose interest in this text gave me the impetus to get it finalized at long last. With all of this excellent assistance and support, all delays, errors, and remaining imperfections remaining are entirely my fault.
Finally, among financial benefactors and supporters, I thank the American Institute of Indian Studies, for the senior grant thirty years ago that enabled me to live in India from 1979-1980 to study with the authen- tic lamas of the noble tradition and begin this work; Mr. Joel McCleary for his generous help and steady encouragement; Ms. Lavinia Currier of the Sacharuna Foundation, whose generous donations and grants enabled
the work at a crucial time to advance to the penultimate stage; to Mr. Marc Benioff and Mrs. Lynne Benioff for their generous, world-changing support down the home stretch; and Mr. William T. Kistler, Mrs. Eileen Kistler, and Mr. Brian Kistler of the Kistler Foundation for their vision- ary recognition that amid the many crises and catastrophes afflicting the multitudes of suffering beings around the world, the recovery and transla- tion needed to open the door for the modem mind to the inner or spiritual
? The companion volume of the critically edited Tibetan tex. t, annotated with the found quotes from Tengyur and Kangyur tex. ts in Tibetan und Sanskrit where available, will soon be published in u limited edition, and subsequently made more widely available to specialists on our website and as an e-book.
? Author's Preface ? xv
science of the Buddhist tradition remains a high priority for the awakening of humanity; perhaps essential to empower us to rise to the challenges we all face together at this critical planetary moment.
Finally my ever immeasurably increasing gratitude goes to my best friend and wonderful wife, Nena von Schlebrugge Thurman, who has given her unstinting support and inspiration over these many years.
Robert A. F. Thurman (Ari Genyen Tenzin Chotrag)
Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University;
President, American Institute of Buddhist Studies; Director, Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies; President, Tibet House US.
Ganden Dekyi Ling
Woodstock, New York
February 25, 2010 CE
Tibetan Royal Year 2137, Year of the Iron Tiger
SOURCES, CONVENTIONS, AND ABBREVIATIONS
Primary Textual Sources
The study and translation of Tsong Khapa's Brilliant Illumination ofthe Lamp ofthe Five Stages (Rim lnga rab tu gsa/ ba'i sgron me) con- tained herein was produced with reference to a combination of several different sources. The primary sources were the following:
Derge The Derge (sde dge) recension of the root text (Delhi, 1 982)
Zh T h e Lhasa Zh o l Parkhang printing of Tsong Khapa's Col lected Works (gsung 'bum). Gray citations in square brackets embed-
ded throughout the translation are references to this edition. TL A reproduction of the Tashilhunpo (bkra shis /hun po) print-
TKSB
ing and the Kumbum Jampaling (sku
printing: Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa, The Collected
'
Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa, The Collected Works (gsunR 'bum) of the Incomparable Lord Tsong k. ha pa Blo bzang grags pa. vol. JA. Sku-'bum: Sku-'bum-byams-pa- gling. 2000
Works (gsun 'bum) of Rje Tson
vol. II. New Delhi: Ngawang Gelek Demo, 1978
ACIP
based upon the Derge and Zh
Electronic files from the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP),
xvi
-
kha
-
bum byams pa gling) pa Blo-b:. an-grags-pa.
Sources, Conventions, and Abbreviations? xvii
Also consulted were the two published editions of the Tibetan translations of the root text of Nagarjuna? s Five Stages. as well as the excellent Sanskrit edition in the former work:
MIMAKI MIMAKI Katsumi and TOMABECHI Toru. Paiicakrama. Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO (1994)
Chengdu Bstan 'gyur dpe bsdur ma. Chengdu: Chengdu Peoples' Publishing House (1998-2005), vol. 18
The large number of canonical citations herein were located and checked against the Derge recension of the Kangyur and Tengyur; and often the Narthang, Lhasa, Peking, and/or Chone recensions were consulted as well. Both the index and bibliography herein list the Derge sources, with English translations of the titles and with the corresponding Tohoku numbers. In addition, the bibliography, sorted by English title, gives the full citation information (Sanskrit and Tibetan titles, author names, location, and so on) for these Derge sources. Similar citations for non- canonical sources will likewise be found herein.
The precise locations of quoted passages, as well as text critical annota- tions regarding significant variants and so on, are given in our critical edition of the Tibetan text, forthcoming in print and in electronic format.
Typographical Conventions
We have strived generally to present Tibetan and Sanskrit names and terms in a phonetic form to facilitate pronunciation. For most Sanskrit terms this has meant that-while we generally have kept conventional diacritics-we have added an h to convey certain sounds (so s, $, and c are rendered as sh, sh, and ch respectively). For Sanskrit terms that have entered the English lexicon (such as "nirvana"), we use no diacritical marks. In more technical contexts (notes, bibliography, and so on) we use full standard diacritical conventions for Sanskrit, and Wylie translitera-
tions for Tibetan.
xviii ? Sources, Conventions, andAbbreviations
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been used in various places throughout the present work:
f237al
*
Skt. Tib. Toh.
Small gray citations in square brackets embedded throughout the translation are references to the folio number and side of the Zh edition. These same citations are embedded in our forthcoming Tibetan edition. Zh citations are also used in the Topical Outline (sa bead) included herein as an Appendix.
An asterisk before a Sanskrit word or phrase indicates a hypothetical reconstruction from the Tibetan.
Sanskrit
Tibetan
Tohoku catalog (1934, Sendai, Japan) of the Derge canon.
Christian Wedemeyer, ed. and trans. A. ryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryamelapakapradfpa). New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007. Tsong Khapa herein frequently cites this text by Aryadeva; hence we herein frequently cite the Skt. or Tib. editions (or the English transla-
tion) of this text contained in CW.
CW
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
1. What is a "Buddha Vajradhara," the Goal of this Tradition?
Ablaze in glory ofwondrous signs and marks, Forever playing in the taste ofthe bliss-void kiss, Recklessly compassionate, free ofextremist calm- I bow to the Victor with the seven super-factors! 1
To study this work fruitfully, we need first of all to understand what the author thinks is the goal of the practices described within it. That is to say, we need to imagine what Tsong Khapa imagines is the kind of being called a "buddha vajradhara"-what a buddha really is-whether viewed from the Tantric perspective or not. What he thinks a buddha-being is, is so utterly fantastic, even preposterous, from the perspective of our philo- sophically materialist modem culture, it takes a real effort of imagination, a nearly sci-fi exercise in openness of mind. We don't have to agree that in reality there is such a thing, but to understand the work at hand, it is fruitful to place ourselves in the position of Tsong Khapa's audience. To catch a glimpse of where he is coming from, we have to review the parameters he sets up for our imagining. This is an effort required to understand any form of Buddhism, but it is particularly important in the
Tantric or mantric context, since a lot of the work of mantric practice involves contemplative deployment of the structured imagination.
It is also quite probable that Tsong Khapa feels he should salute Vajradhara Buddha in this technical way because even his own Tibetan Buddhist contemporaries and successors might not so easily imagine what a buddha is, in its inconceivable reality. Tsong Khapa himself said
-after what he referred to as his coming to complete clarity about the uttermost subtleties of the realistic view, and what others refer to as his perfect enlightenment-that it was the opposite of what he had expected it to be, indicating that even a great scholar such as he had not fully been
? 3
1 Tib. rGyal ba yan lag bdun ldan. These are the components of a Buddha Vajradhara's
material body: 1 ) it has the auspicious signs and marks; 2) it is in embrace of a wisdom- intuition consort (being both the male and the female); 3) its mind is always super-bliss; 4) such bliss is ever aware of voidness; 5) its compassion avoids extremist calm; 6) its bodily continuum is uninterrupted; and 7) its enlightened deeds are unceasing.
4 , lntmd11ction
able to imagine what the buddha-uwareness was really like. When even a Buddhist thinks of enlightenment. she thinks of a kind of awareness far greater than her habitual own, but still it is difficult to imagine a being whose consciousness is at once infinitely expanded and minutely detailed, who feels him- I her- I it-self a timeless eternity of utter freedom ecstatically blissful. and whose multi-sourced presence can manifest in relation to
countless individual beings as countless different relational beings at once. To try to express the inexpressible, from the three buddha-body theory perspective, a buddha is a being who is not restricted to having to be enclosed in a single separate embodiment that faces an "other" universe and yet who does not neglect the countless beings who persist in feeling that they are separate, and are facing him, her, or it as an "other. " When a buddha completes its, her, or his wisdom store in the buddha-truth-body (Skt. dlumnakiyi a), it viscerally experiences itself as indivisibly one with all realities, and other beings and things and the spaces and energies within and around them are felt to be part of its body. This feeling feels those beings, things, and energies as configurations of a limitless bliss, as the truth body is simultaneously a bliss body, the buddha-beatific-body
(Skt. sambhogakiyi a). This bliss feeling does not anaesthetize the buddha being from also feeling what the beings feel of suffering; in a way the bliss energizes the ability to remain aware of the others' feelings of dis- satisfaction and pain. Indeed, the awareness of others ? dissatisfaction and pain in tum stimulates the spacious cloudlike truth-beatitude-indivisible buddha-body to manifest or emanate limitless forms of embodiment (Skt. nirmlif)Qkiyi a) as beings or things that can be perceived by the suffering beings and that perfectly mirror to them, according to their perceptual capacities, their potential freedom from suffering and their potential aware- ness of their own natural bliss.
Although this description of the inconceivable, amazing cognitive- dissonance-tolerant, dichotomy-reconciling nature of buddhahood is ultimately ungraspable in linear binary terms, we can imagine it with the help of limiting concepts such as voidness, freedom, nonduality, and the elaborated theory of the three bodies of buddhahood. Imagining it, we can aspire consciously to evolve toward achieving it for ourselves and those with whom we want to share it, in case it is really possible and not just a Buddhist fantasy. At any rate, the mantric or Tantric path is pre- sented as the science and art of accelerating such conscious evolution by
Introduction ? 5
employing a supremely subtle technology of spiritual genetic engineering of a buddha mind and buddha bodies.
A point that should be clarified here is that the buddha mind is referred to in the theory as a "body of truth," and the buddha bodies of beatitude and emanation are referred to as a "material body" (Skt. rapa- kiiya, often wrongly translated as "form body"). This may be a hint in the exoteric Universal Vehicle of the esoteric doctrine of the nonduality of body and mind at the ultimate or supremely subtle level.
To such an end of stimulating imagination and inspiration, Tsong Khapa embeds in his opening salutatory verse a standard formulation of the seven super-components of the material body of a buddha vajradhara (inconceivably indivisible from his and all buddhas' infinite truth body, itself completely interpenetrating all other embodied beings and discrete things).
There are seven super-components of a buddha vajradhara's material body.
1. IT HAS THE AUSPICIOUS SIGNS AND MARKS
There are traditionally thirty-two auspicious signs and eighty auspi- cious marks which a buddha vajradhara's material body has in common with other buddhas such as Shakyamuni and so forth. Nagarjuna in his
Jewel Rosary details these 112 signs and marks, explaining in brief how each one is the evolutionary (karmic) result of specific deeds in the many lives leading up to buddhahood (see below).
The final body of a buddha is the truth or reality body, which is infinite and timeless and indivisible. The individual expands always em- bodied awareness to encompass the ultimate reality of infinite worlds and beings, both enlightened and unenlightened, mental and physical. At the
same time, the individual momentum of positive engagement with others -the love and compassion that drives a being to evolve into the ability of providing happiness to countless others-persists in the physical omni- presence of a buddha in an equally infinite beatific body that infinitely enjoys having all reality as its body, and simultaneously encompasses the awarenesses of the infinite others who suffer due to their failure to realize their oneness with such a universe. This awareness automatically and effort- lessly then manifests as infinite seemingly discrete embodiments, called "emanations. " For their own evolutionary benefit, self-alienated migrating beings can interact with these emanations. Therefore, a buddha vajradhara
6 ? Introduction
is not just one individual, beautiful, divine embodiment, separate super- being in a desire realm heaven - that manifestation is just one of countless manifestations, but it is the one that best expresses to the evolutionary psychonaut, or adept, the ideal and goal he or she is aiming for.
Regarding the emanation bodies, there are said to be three kinds: artistic, incarnational, and supreme. The artistic emanation body consists of all representations of buddhas and their deeds by artists whose aim is to help beings imagine the supreme evolutionary state all beings can achieve. The incarnational emanation body is all the manifestations a
buddha can create to interact with alienated beings in order to help their development, including inanimate objects such as buildings, continents, even planets, in addition to plants and animate beings. The supreme ema- nation body is a buddha like Shakyamuni Buddha, who manifests descent from heaven, conception, birth, and so on (the twelve deeds with which we are familiar). It is such a supreme emanation that manifests a body that carries on it the graphic demonstrations (the signs and marks) of all his or her evolutionary achievements. In this way all emanation bodies are themselves teachings for specific beings in specific evolutionary times
and places.
In his Jewel Rosary,2 Nagarjuna gives a summary of the marks and
their causes in a buddha's evolutionary past:
Through proper honoring of stupas, venerables, noble ones, and the elderly, you will become a universal mon- arch, your glorious hands and feet marked with wheels.
0 King, always maintain firmly your vows about your practices: you will then become a bodhisattva, with very level feet.
By giving gifts, speaking pleasantly, fulfilling beings' wishes, and practicing what you teach, you will have hands with glorious fingers joined by luminous webs.
2 Here I quote a number of verses to give a taste of the specifics of the biological theory of karmic evolution (Jewel Rosary, vs. 177-197).
? Introduction ? 7
By always generously giving the finest food and drink, your glorious hands and feet will be soft, and along with your shoulder blades and the nape of your neck, seven areas will be broad, and your body will be large.
By never doing harm and freeing condemned persons, your body will be beautiful, straight, and tall, your fingers will be long, and the backs of your heels will be broad.
By spreading spiritual disciplines, you will have a good complexion, a good repute, your ankles will not pro- trude, and your body hairs will stand upwards.
Due to your enthusiasm in propagating the arts and sciences, and so on, you will have the calves of an antelope, a sharp intelligence, and great wisdom.
When others desire your wealth and possessions, by disciplining yourself to give them immediately, you will have broad arms, an attractive appearance, and will be- come a world leader.
By reconciling friends who are in conflict, you will become supreme, and your glorious private organ will retract within [like a stallion].
By bestowing upon others excellent dwellings, your complexion will be soft, like stainless refined gold.
By granting to others superior powers and dutifully fol- lowing your teachers, your each and every hair will be your ornament, including a special tuft of hair between the eyebrows.
By speaking pleasantly and meaningfully, and by acting upon the good speech [of others], you will have curving shoulders and a lion-like upper body.
By nursing and healing the sick, the area between your shoulders will be broad, you will live in a state of ease, and all your tastes will be excellent.
Introduction
By conducting your affairs in accord with the Dharma, your skull dome will be beautifully elevated, and [your body] will be symmetrical like a banana tree.
By speaking true and gentle words over a long time, 0 lord of men, your tongue will be long, and your voice like that of Brahma the creator.
By always speaking truth continuously, your cheeks will be lion-like, glorious, and you will be hard to overcome.
By being carefully respectful, serving others, and doing what is proper, your teeth will be shining, white, and even.
By always speaking true and non-divisive words, you will have forty glorious teeth, set evenly and wondrous to behold.
By gazing at beings with altruistic love without desire, hatred, or delusion, your eyes will be bright and blue, with lashes like a hull's.
Thus in brief know well these thirty-two signs of a great lion of beings, together with their [evolutionary] causes.
Nagarjuna then goes on to mention the eighty auspicious signs, not listing them, saying it would take too long; but the lists are common in the Sotras. This list gives us the feel of the Buddhist worldview. Life is evolutionary. The acts we perform of body, speech, and mind in any given life produce their result in the future of this life or in a future life. The patterns cited in this specific case of attaining the thirty-two auspi- cious marks of a superbeing (mahapuru? ha) connect moral actions with biological results.
A point to be emphasized is that this counts in the Buddhist culture as a " scientific" explanation of the physical characteristics of a "supreme emanation buddha body," such as that of Shakyamuni. Therefore, less evolved beings who have some physical marks resembling these thirty- two have bene committing acts of the same type. Thus if you are tall, with long fingers, and the backs of your heels are broad. you have been rela- tively less harmful to other beings in many previous lives; in numerous
8 ?
Introduction ? 9
life-forms, and in previous human lives you have saved lives and par- doned condemned beings.
Anything in these directions-height and breadth and beauty of body, nature of hands and feet and limbs, shape of eyes. length of tongue, beauty of cheeks, and so on-all these physical traits come from past evolutionary actions of body and speech and mind. The Darwinian theory of "survival of the fittest"-meaning increase of the survival-enhancing qualities of a species (not individuals) due to the physical propagation of the offspring of better equipped individuals generation after generation, producing mutations that cope better with the environment, that are transmitted by physical genes, and so forth - is somewhat parallel to the Buddhist theory. But added here to that picture (of the mutations of species over countless generations in coordination with environmental changes) is the individual's own personal evolution. That individual carries the results of his or her own evolutionary actions encoded in a
mental gene (Skt. gotra) that goes from one coarse flesh and blood em- bodiment to another, meeting the physical genes of fathers and mothers in human or other animal forms born in mammalian womb, reptilian or avian egg, insect moisture, or magical environment.
Once persons encounter such a "karmic" biological worldview and come to think of it as realistic, either through cultural conditioning in a Buddhist culture or through historical and internal scientific investiga- tion, they adapt their lifestyles to consciously cultivate that mental gene through skillful evolutionary actions, considering that cultivation to be
the prime priority of their lives, since its results will determine the quali- ties of their inevitable lives far into the future. The ultimate change of lifestyle is precisely the Tantric one, where individuals decide that they cannot wait for countless rebirths of gradual progress to reach the summit of positive life experience for self and other that is defined as buddhahood. And so they enter the Tantric path of self creation and self perfection, compressing all those deaths and rebirths into a single intense lifetime or
a few lifetimes in order to get to the highest goal as soon as possible. Tantric art and contemplative technology is thus a form of genetic engineering. The main tool is the highly concentrated and stabilized crea- tive imagination, which uses the patterns of the mandala environments and the divine embodiments (themselves derived from meritorious actions and scientific insights) to shape the spiritual gene of the practitioner. This shaped gene then simulates, in the virtual reality of the lucid-dream-like
10 ? Introduction
1. '"0ntemplative performance (Skt. slldhana). the death, between, and rebirth processes; first as a rehearsal of out-of-coarse- or subtle- body perform- ances; and then as actual mind- and shape- shifting transformations in the
evolutionary direction of buddhahood.
2. IT IS IN EMBRACE OF A WISDOM-INTUITION CONSORT
(AS BOTH THE MALE AND THE FEMALE)
The highest pleasure in ordinary life is generally conceded to be the release experienced in sexual orgasm, wherein an individual melts his or her normal bodily rigidities and feels intense rapture through a blissful inner flooding of pleasurable energy. In Buddhist neuro-biology, this is explained as the bodily energies (or vital winds) dissolving away from their normal functions in the limbs and muscles and nerves (including the
brain) and concentrating in the central channel of the nervous system, said to run through the body from mid-brow up to crown of head and down in front of the spine to the tip of the genital organ. These energies take with them endocrine drops that anchor blissful feelings and concentrate them into a powerful force that carries the mind with it into release from all mental and physical preoccupations. The most powerful bliss experience of this kind occurs in a "normal," egocentrically-wired being only at death, as the mental energy is released from preoccupation within the coarse body. That experience dissipates as that mental-subtle-energy continuum arises as a subtle dreamlike body in a "between state. " This fairy-like "between being" (Skt. gandharva) migrates in its state of separateness throughout all the optional forms of existence in the vast universe other than it.
