Tibetan Buddhism

Buddhism was Introduced into Tibet during the 7th century. The Tibetan kings brought the Tibetan tribes to some kind of unified government. With the country unified, they started to expand and interact with the great cultures of India and China. One of the most important and influential elements that Tibetans found in these cultures was a sophisticated practice of Buddhism.

King Songtsän Gampo ordered the construction of a series of temples around the country because he was told that Tibet laid on the body of a demoness. He ordered to build these temples to subdue the demoness. The actions of Songtsän Gampo didn’t just subdue the demoness, but also gave Tibet the form of a Mandala. Today, pilgrims walk around the country visiting these temples to later go straight to the center of the Mandala, which is a temple in the capital city of Lhasa. This temple is the most sacred place in Tibet. This is how starts the History of Tibetan Buddhism.

After the time of Songtsän Gampo, a king by the name of Trisong Detsen sponsored the construction of the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The king was helped by the Tantric saint Padmasambhava and the philosopher Shantarakshita. These two individuals represent the two faces of Tibetan Buddhism. Padmasambhava is the Tantric magician that subdued the demons that opposed the construction of the temple with rituals. Shantarakshita is the scholar that introduced the sophisticated monastic curriculum into Tibet.

The scholarly tradition is still alive, active and flourishing in Tibetan monasteries. If you want to study philosophy in the way we discussed here, Tibetan Buddhism is the way to go.

In the 11th century occurred what we call the later diffusion of the dharma. During this time, many important teachers emerged, either Indian saints and philosophers that came into Tibet or indigenous Tibetan figures who traveled to India and studied with Tantric saints and came back to Tibet to promulgate the tradition of Tantric practice. Out of these individuals floating through Tibet grew most of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Tibetans adopted this new religious practice grabbing influence from the greater countries India and China, but as they did this, they created a unique mix in the history of Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is said to incorporate the three yanas or vehicles of Buddhism: the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana.

There are four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism: the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and the Gelug. Each one of these has slight differences from each other, but they share some common traits. Tibetan Buddhism is a strongly scriptural tradition. They don’t just revere old texts that come back from the time of the Buddha, but texts that are generated by authoritative figures who manifest themselves from time to time in the history of Tibet.

Tibetan Buddhism has a canon of scripture. It is big and widely disseminated. It was settled in the 13th century and contains within it what you might call the authoritative Tibetan definition of the teaching that came to Tibet from India. In a broader sense, the Buddhist canon in Tibet still remains open. New texts can be generated or discovered to respond to all sorts of new situations.

The word lama is common in the Tibetan tradition. It is the equivalent of the Sanskrit word guru, which means a religious teacher. It also means someone who passes on a lineage or power. The lama is particularly important in Tantric and Tibetan Buddhism because the secrecy of Tantric rituals are always present. It is important to learn from a teacher who can tailor it effectively.

Lamas are so important in Tibetan Buddhism that the tradition itself is sometimes referred to as Lamaism. This word expresses an important truth about Tibetan Buddhism. It really does rely on Lamas. You might say that in Tibetan Buddhism the Lama is the representation of the Buddha.

• History of Tibetan Buddhism
• The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism
  

The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism

The place to start in any survey of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism is with the Nyingma school. This is the only one which traces its origin back before the later diffusion of the dharma, back to the time of Padmasambhava. The word Nyingma means “the old school”. The name refers to the early phase in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.

Because of the gap between the first diffusion of the dharma and the later diffusion, the connection between Padmasambhava and this later Nyingma tradition has always been pretty problematic. To establish the continuity with Padmasambhava, the members of the Nyingma school claim to have discovered secret texts that Padmasambhava left behind in Tibet written in the rocks, hidden in the mountains or sometimes buried in the mind of his disciples. They have attempted to discover these texts, interpret them and promulgate them in the present era.

Termas and Tertons

These texts are known as termas, a word that simply means treasure. Some of the most important authorities in the Nyingma history are people who discovered these termas and have been able in some way to disseminate them.

To look at the development of the Nyingma tradition it would be helpful to look at the lives of the Tertons, the people who discovered termas and made them available to others in their community.

A good example of the practice of the discovery and interpretation of the termas is a figure by the name of Jigme Lingpa. He claimed to be the reincarnation of Trisong Detsen. Like many Nyingma lamas and like many Indian Tantric saints, Jigme Lingpa spent many years meditating in the mountains. He had the experience of being visited by many of the important figures in the history of the tradition, including Padmasambhava and Trisong Detsen.

One of his most important revelations came to him in a dream. In the dream he was transported out of Tibet, across the Himalayas into the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, where he visited the Swayambhunath Stupa. When he was there a heavenly messenger came to him and revealed a text in a form of writing that it was impossible for him to understand. The heavenly messenger gave him the key to the code that he could use to unlock and interpret that text. As he translated and recorded these revelations, he created the nucleus for a new scriptural tradition in his community.

This story about Jigme Lingpa is not by any means an isolated story. There are other important revealers of Termas in the Nyingma tradition.

Nyingma is Founded on Direct Experience

The Nyingma school is a tradition founded on meditative experience. Jigme Lingpa was meditating in the mountains and while he was there he had powerful experiences that affirmed not only the depth of his own meditation but also his connection to this long lineage of teaching that took him all the way back to Padmasambhava and the ancient Buddhas of the Indian tradition.

In this sense, Nyingma is the Tibetan tradition that comes closest to the pure transmission of the Tantric impulse. Jigme Lingpa didn’t study or at least didn’t study in a sophisticated monastery. He wasn’t a great student of philosophy. His charisma and his power were established by the vividness of his own personal vision.

The Nyingma tradition still maintains this character today. It appeals to people because it puts its feet down on direct personal experience.

The Nyingma tradition and the story of Jigme Lingpa also convey the ancient Buddhist respect for scriptural transmission. Jigme’s Lingpa may have been founded on personal experience, but it was expressed and it was spread in a body of texts. Even in its most esoteric and personal form, Tibetan Buddhism is a strongly scriptural tradition. These aren’t just old texts that come back from the time of the Buddha, but texts that are generated by authoritative figures who manifest themselves from time to time in the history of Tibet.

Tibetan Buddhism has a canon of scripture. It is big and widely disseminated. It was settled in the 13th century and contains within it what you might call the authoritative Tibetan definition of the teaching that came to Tibet from India. In a broader sense, the Buddhist canon in Tibet still remains open. New texts can be generated or discovered to respond to all sorts of new situations.

The Nyingma tradition that is represented by Jigme Lingpa has come to North America. You can encounter it in various Tibetan communities. Interestingly enough, it is popular among scholars who study the tradition intellectually but have some kind of hunger for personal experience. They often study with Nyingma teachers to make that direct personal encounter with the dharma.

The Kagyu School

The word Kagyu means “teaching lineage”. This school traces its origin to the lama Marpa, who lived between the years 1012 and 1096. He was a Tibetan by birth but he traveled to India and studied with Tantric teachers. He brought their texts back to Tibet to serve as the foundation of a new lineage.

Marpa’s most important disciple and the person who carried his teaching was a man by the name of Milarepa. He is one of Tibet’s most beloved saints. The biography of Milarepa is one of the best ways to become familiar with the typical life of the Tibetan saint.

He starts out as a rather weak-willed and not very organized young man. It turns out that Milarepa’s father died when he was a young man and the relatives stole the family’s property. Milarepa’s mother was deeply angered by this and wanted to seek revenge. He took his malleable young son and sent him to study with one of the black magicians in Tibet to learn the black arts. He learned how to use the mantras that would help him bring storms on the relatives’ fields and even kill some of them through natural phenomena.

He did this and worked. However, Milarepa got worried about this because he realized that what he was doing created enormous bad karma, and unless he could find some way to remove this karma he would end up in one of the lowest hells. He began to wonder where he could find a teacher that would help him achieve enlightenment in this life.

He studied with a couple of different teachers and it didn’t work out well for him. He finally was advised to go and find a man by the name of Marpa, who would give him the teaching that he needed.

Milarepa seeks and meets Marpa. They have a difficult relationship. Marpa really puts Milarepa through intense trials. Milarepa finds himself in a state of complete despair. Once he tries to run away and realizes that running away from Marpa wouldn’t solve the problem. He comes back and begs for Marpa’s forgiveness.

One of the most interesting points in the life of Milarepa is when he finished his studies with Marpa and went to meditate by himself. He didn’t go to a cave to find solitude back he returned to his home with his mother. The relationship between Buddhist monks and their mother usually is pretty important. Unfortunately her mother had died and the house had fallen into ruin. Milarepa used it simply as a meditation on impermanence.

Milarepa went on from this experience to become a great ascetic and the founder of a great lineage.

The Sakya and Gelug School

There are two other schools that are worth mentioning. One of these is the Sakya school, that emerged in the 11th century under the leadership of a lama named Drokmi. Drokmi was the teacher of Konchok Gyelpo, who in 1073 founded a monastery at Sakya, a place that gave the school its name.

This school played an important role in the negotiations between the Tibetans and the Mongols. Eventually, the Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism and became important protectors of Tibetan Buddhism not just in Tibet but also in other parts of Asia. The 13th century, when the Mongols first appeared, was a crucial century in Tibet for a couple of reasons. First of all it gave rise to this incipient political allegiance between Tibetan monks and Mongols. This became an important theme in later Tibetan history.

It also was the first century after the death of Indian Buddhism. Indian Buddhism ended around the year 1200. We could say that the 13th century marks the beginning of a truly independent Tibetan religious tradition.

Today the old allegiance between Tibetan lamas and the Mongols is a difficult theme in Tibetan history because it is translated into this troubled relationship with the Chinese. China has always viewed itself as being the heirs of the Mongols. Chinese political leaders visualize Tibet as a part of the large Chinese empire.

The fourth school that I want to mention just briefly is the Gelug or “way of virtue” school. It emerged in the 14th century under the leadership of the scholar Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa followed the example of the Indian scholarly tradition and tried to establish a pure form of monastic practice. This involved an intense effort to codify the Tibetan approach to Buddhist philosophy and the stages of Tantric practice. Tsongkhapa is one of the great systematizers of the Tibetan tradition. He wrote extesively.

Tsongkhapa founded some major monasteries in central Tibet. These have been some of the most influential religious institutions in the history of Tibet and have been actively restored in recent years. Tsongkhapa is not only reveered by scholars and monks but also by common people as a great saint.

After the death of Tsongkhapa, the leadership of the Gelug school passed to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas.

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History of Tibetan Buddhism

The first introduction of Buddhism to Tibet is known as the “first diffusion of the dharma”. It began in the 7th century, about the time when Tantra was beginning to manifest itself in the Indian Buddhist community. During the 7th century the Tibetan kings brought the Tibetan tribes to some kind of unified government. They began to expand their military influence out of central Tibet and into the rest of Asia.

As they did this, they came into contact with China and India. In both of these places they found quite sophisticated Buddhist cultures. These early Tibetan kings began to link themselves to the larger countries of Asia by beginning to adopt some of their religious practices. Buddhism was a central part of what they encountered in these places.

Songtsän Gampo and the Introduction of the Cult of the Buddha

According to the Tibetan chronicles, king Songtsän Gampo, who reigned roughly from 609 to 649, invited one of his two Buddhist wives to help him introduce the cult of the Buddha to Tibet. What this meant was to introduce a statue of the Buddha in Tibet and establish him as a focus of worship.

According to stories, the first attempts to build the temple in the capital city of Lhasa were unsuccessful. The carts that were carrying the Buddha’s statue fell to the swamps and were impossible for them to construct the temple the day they hoped to build it.

In a dream, the king was told that the land of Tibet laid on the body of a demoness, who had to be subdued before the cult of the Buddha could successfully be established. So, he ordered a series of temples to be build around the country. These temples were pinning down her knees, her elbows, her hips and her shoulders. Finally a temple was build in the center of the capital city to pin down her heart. This temple today is the most sacred in Tibet and is the focus of Buddhist pilgrimages.

The actions of Songtsän Gampo not only subdued the demoness but marked Tibet with the form of a Mandala, a Mandala that could be traced by pilgrims as they made their way from the fringes of the Tibetan plateau into this holy site in the center.

Trisong Detsen and the First Monastery

After the time of Songtsän Gampo, the next series of major events in Tibetan history occurred in the 8th century during the reign of another Buddhist king named Trisong Detsen. Trisong Detsen sponsored the construction of a monastery at Samye. This was the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet and obviously it marked a major shift in the relationship between Tibet and Buddhism.

The construction of the monastery required the help of the Tantric saint Padmasambhava, also known in Tibet as Guru Rinpoche or “precious teacher”. With his magic power, Padmasambhava subdued the demons that opposed the monastery’s construction. He has become the focus of tremendous story telling and myth making in Tibet.

King Trisong Detsen needed the help of another specialist as well. Padmasambhava was good at Tantric magic but he wasn’t necessarily a scholar. For the scholarly curriculum of his new monastery, king Trisong Detsen had to turn to one of the representatives of the Indian tradition whose name was Shantarakshita. He was actually a Madhyamaka philosopher of the Svātantrika branch. He helped introduce to Tibet that sophisticated monastic corriculum that we talked about in another article.

I think that you could say that these two figures represent the two faces of Tibetan Buddhism. A reverence for the power of a Tantric practitioner has always been important in Tibetan Buddhism. Tantra is a living force in Tibetan society and it manifests itself in a form of practice that is not unlike the practices associated with Padmasambhava. There also has been in Tibetan culture a deep reverence for the practice of Buddhist scholasticism as represented by Shantarakshita.

If you want to study philosophy in the way we discussed here, Tibetan Buddhism is the way to go. The scholarly tradition is still alive, active and flourishing in Tibetan monasteries.

The Definition of the Character of Tibetan Buddhism

The Tibetan tradition also tell us that Trisong Detsen didn’t just founded a monastery but he sponsored a debate to determine the character of Tibetan Buddhism. He brought a Chinese religious specialist and an Indian religious specialist. He set them up in a mode of discourse that would lead eventually to a conclusion about which variety of Buddhism would be best for Tibetan culture.

Representing the Chinese side was a meditation master whose name was Moheyan. He advocated the practice of sudden awakening. Representing the Indian side was a disciple of Shantarakshita whose name was Kamalashila. He advocated the practice of gradual awakening.

According to the Tibetan tradition, the king decided in favor of the Indian party and permanently oriented the Tibetan tradition towards India. This was another watershed in Tibetan history.

The Later Diffusion

What we call the “later diffusion of the dharma” took place in the 11th century. It is associated with important teachers, one of these is a man by the name of Atisha, who was an important scholar who came from one of the monasteries in Eastern India. In Tibet he had a group of disciples and established a lineage that recreated some of the scholarly tradition.

There were also some indigenous Tibetan figures who traveled to India and studied with Tantric saints and came back to Tibet to promulgate the tradition of Tantric practice. Out of these individuals floating through Tibet grew most of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

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