Steven Weinberger: Violence, Sex, and Yoga Tantra in Imperial Tibet: Will the Real Padmasambhava Please Stand Up

[Derek Maher]

Before I rush away, um, let me introduce, uh, the next, uh, speaker. This is Steve Weinberger. He's from Indiana, which he likes to call "America's Holy Land." Um.. [laughter]

Excuse me? America's Buddhist Holy Land! I stand corrected. Um.. The, uh, I was thinking about what to say about Steve, and, uh, several things come to mind.

He has an encylopedic knowledge, uh, 1970s television, and, uh, [laughter] advertising jingles, so you can quiz him later. Um.

Steve had the great opportunity living at the, uh, uh, uh, Tibetan, the Learning Center up in New Jersey when, uh, uh, I guess before he even came here, but even during his time here. And he lived out in Jeffrey's for quite a while and came into contact with a lot of lamas.

And, so, Steve could always speak Tibetan so much better than all of us. And, um, uh, even today, you know, I was trying to think, who--he has such a great Tibetan accent. I think the only people, western people, I know who have a better Tibetan accent's are Jeffrey, Georges, and, um, I guess, I think, Jules too.

So, I think we have a lot, the rest of us have a lot to learn from, uh, Steve. So, Steve now is working with the THDL. He's a manager of the reference project and, so, he continues to have an impact on the program here. [applause]

Steve Weinberger

It's great to be here. Uh, it's esepcially nice being here with so many people who have, in addition to Jeffrey, who have had such an impact on my own, uh, development--academic and otherwise.

Um, my first Tibetan teacher, Dan Purdue, is here, and he's part of the reason why I'm here. Uh, Dan taught me at the Antioch Buddhist Studies program in India, and then recommended that I go to the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center, which I did.

Uh, Josh Cutler is here from there. Uh, before coming here, um, also Betsy Knapp, who was my first Tibetan teacher here. Bill McGee was a Tibetan teacher here. Jules Levinson. I learned about East Asian Buddhism from Paul Groner, if he's still here? He's still here?

Um, as Derek mentioned, I now work for THDL. Um, and--although I didn't know it at the time--uh, you could say this is partly the training I got from Jeffrey, who's probably going to wonder what I'm talking about.

Um, but when I first came here, uh, I worked for Jeffrey cataloguing his Tibetan library. I'd go out in the evening, it was during the summer, after he was done working, and he was, uh, advanced technologically so that he was not just putting this into a word document. He was using a databased, which it was all new stuff to me at the time.

Um, and the first thing, the first work I did for THDL was cataloguing a much larger collection of Nyingma tantric materials. So, um, I look back sort of to the seeds planted at that point.

I also worked on Jeffrey's dictionary various times, doing some proofreading and making a few entries from some of the work I was doing. Uh, and I'm now, as Derek mentioned, working on the reference project for THDL and one of the main components of that is an online Tibetan dictionary, so that work continues.

And over the years I have done some proofreading on several of Jeffrey's manuscripts, and, uh, if you talked to anybody at THDL, um, one of my jobs at THDL now is to proofread, even when people don't want me to... [laughter]

Which means that I send them emails saying, "Hey, this is mispelled--fix that page, would you?"

So, in a way, I was receiving a vocational training, unbeknowst to me at the time....because I just came here interested in studying and hadn't thought about jobs until, well, not that many years ago. I'm somewhat embarassed to say. [laughter]

Uh, now one thing that I did not learn from Jeffrey was how to prepare an annual progress report for a federal grant. And since I just had one due this week, I wish I had. However, that's something that I could have learned from Cindy Benton-Groner at the Center, and I wish I had learned.

Uh, I worked at the Center for some time, um, and I would like to thank Cindy for all of her work at the Center, which made possible for me things like support from a FLAS fellowship, um, working there as the newsletter editor [clears throat] um, and serving as the outreach instructor, which meant that I got to teach a class once and as David said, uh, much as was the case with David, I had never prepared a lecture, I had never stood up and talked about anything in front of anybody before that.

So, uh, thank you, Cindy, for all your work and all your support.

Derek mentioned that I lived at Uma, um, with Jeffrey and Betsy for almost two years. And, while I was living there, um...well, first, I'd like to say that [clears throat] one of the, I think maybe, two of the main...quantifiable things I have learned from Jeffrey are how to read a Tibetan text and a grounding in Buddhist doctrine, Buddhist systems

Um, I read a lot of texts with Jeffrey over the years, and when I lived at Uma, uh, one summer we read every other day, I think. And this was vacation time for him, so he was...this was not part of his job description.

Um, and before I go into, uh, some of the research I've done that comes out of that work of Jeffrey, I'd like to talk about a few things, the other things I have learned from Jeffrey. And a lot of this has to come out of living for a period of time with Jeffrey.

Um, the first thing is I learned how to play squash. I'd never done before. I learned the importance of setting up your schedule so that you are most productive. I had always gotten up fairly early, but I found if I got up at 5 or 5:30, I also could get more work done and feel better, in general.

And that was definitely Jeffrey's model at that time. Uh, I learned the importance of napping. [laughter]

And I learned the importance of having activities in your daily life, um, that were relaxing, uh. Now, for Jeffrey, this meant watching several hours of evening news every day, which is not my idea of relaxing, but I learned a structure, uh, rather than the content on that one.

Although, I was recently at Jeffrey's and if I had a TV screen that large, maybe it would be relaxing for me... [laughter] I'm not sure.

And so, in the, in the time I've been here, particularly in the time when I lived at Uma, um, I feel very fortunate to have developed a friendship with Jeffrey, and to have shared in his worldview.

Ok.

The texts that we read were Yogatantra texts--that was the topic of my dissertation. Uh, most of them were by Buton, a fourteenth-century Tibetan--one of the main figures in Tibetan religious history.

Uh, and we read different kinds of texts. We started with a commentary on an Indian ritual text, tantric ritual text. We read, uh, uh, religious history texts, or parts of it. Uh, we re-, we looked at the Indian ritual text itself.

Um, and at commentaries, Indian commentaries translated in Tibetan on, uh, the actual tantra itself.

And, so what I'm going to talk, like to talk for a few minutes about today, um, is, uhhhh, the situation in Tibet during the imeprial period when Buddhism was first being transmitted there in a big way--the eighth and ninth centuries.

And so first, um, and so I'm gonna draw on a recent, relatively recent, um, version or publication of a text of the, uh, the earliest history of that period. The earliest Tibetan history.

There are several versions of the Sba bzhed, or Testament of Ba, which refers to a clan family and probably the person from that family who also wrote this, this text.

Um, but there was another version discovered a few, or published, a few years ago, which is the earliest version of this text and dates to a version, um, from the the eleventh-century. And it's quite different in its presentation than the later text.

There's much less, uh, elaboration, and the scale of things is smaller.

And there are also, I think, a lot of, uh, important differences just in the presentation of the culture, what was happening in Tibet, at that time--especially during the eighth century, when Buddhism was coming there for the first time.

Um, and the Tibetan, so, the Tibetan empire was in full swing at that point. They had conquered large portions of central Asia. They had sort of Tibetanized areas bordering central Tibet. Um, they had entered into relationships with a lot of, uh, other regional interests in central Asia--China, and so forth.

Um, and there was interest from the Tibetan court and the Emperor Trisong Detsen in, uh, in Buddhism, but there was also opposition. And this, in the later Tibetan histories and presentations, this seems to have kind of gotten washed out. There's this kind of monolithic decision to become Buddhist and then that's done, and then it's Buddhist from there on.

But, uh, at this earlier version of the Testament of Wa, it gives us a much different picture. And it's much more ambiguous, and there's much more gray area.

So, the Tibetan empire was a large empire, um, at that time--much as today--the Tibetan world was a world of unseen agents and forces. Uh, and so the control of those was important to, for one thing, was important to a large empire.

Um, also the ability to keep populations under control, large populations that were spread out across large geographical distances was also important.

And so, it's in the, against the backdrop of this that there's an invitation to Shantarakshita, who is a monastic preceptor, uh, who was in Nepal at the time. And, there seems to be a lot of haggling at the court between the king and his ministers, some of whom supported this, and some of whom opposed it.

Uh, and eventually Shantarakshita is invited to central Tibet, and he comes to central Tibet. But there's still this great, kind of, suspicion, and it seems particularly of black magic, evil spirits, and so forth. And, so, Shantarakshita is kept for two months after he arrives in central Tibet before the king will meet him, and the king instead sends three ministers to, kind of, interview him and figure out, make sure he's safe and everything is OK.

So, there's this great suspicion. Then, the king meets Shantarakshita. Shantarakshita gives some religious teachings, um, he begins to teach Buddhism, and then there's a series of natural disasters.

There's a palace that floods; there's a castle that is struck by lightning and burns. There, uh, is a famine. There are epidemics that afflict both humans and livestock. And so, several of the ministers decide that this is because they have invited Buddhism into Tibet, and that is the source of this.

And so they kick Shantarakshita out.

And he goes back to Nepal.

And before I move on to talk about Padmasambhava, who--Derek, I'm sorry, David, don't forget your big book is still here.

Before I talk about Padmasambhava, I'll kind of, mmm, do a...I'll, I'll talk for a short time about tantra in Tibet at this time.

Uh, there was interest from the, uh, imperial court in tantra because, one, they had supposedly these better techniques for controlliung things. Um, and also, the main, sort of, tantric figure at the time in terms of deities was Vairocana.

And in China, uh, esoteric or tantric Buddhism was being transmitted, transmitted in various parts of central Asia. It was also being transmitted...and so the cult of Vairocana, um, was a kind of common cultural currency that the Tibetans could use to relate to both areas that they had conquered, as well as border areas with which they had relationships.

And so that all, there was a kind of practical element involved also.

Now in terms of specifically Yogatantra, um, and translation of tantra at this time, uh, the official catalogue of official translations that were sanctioned by the Tibetan court lists very few tantric works.

Um, but it is clear that a lot more tantras were being translated, um, there is various textual evidence that supports this and even if we just look at the, the corpus, the tantric corpus of the Nyingma school, um, if even just a fraction of those tantras were translated in this period, there's still a whole lot of stuff that was going on outside of official, um, channels.

But, uh, so there was interest and there was also this kind of leary and suspicious attitude at the same time.

Now, there seems to have been censorship even of what was being translated. Um, there's a Yogatantra, the, uh, Purification of All Bad Transmigrations, uh, the Sarvadurgatiparishodhana in Sanskrit, and this had some rites, rituals on, uh, the violent or wrathful, basically, subjugation of other people.

And these sections were, uh, at official request, not translated. These parts of the translation were left out. Um, and they seem to have circulated unofficially anyway, and Leonard vander Kuijp wrote an article about this tantra and said that these were used as kind of "inserts" when the ritual was done.

Uh, and they circulated unofficially. And, if you look in the Dege edition of the Tibetan canon, you find between the two recensions of the Purification of All Bad Transmigrations Tantra a small, less-than-one-page text--it doesn't have a title--but at the end it says, "This, um, this is the wrathful activities section."

And so this is possibly this part that was cut out. So, there's this ambivalence, ambivalence of the, uh, official court in Tibet towards tantra in particular, Buddhism more generally.

Uh, particularly dealing with rituals that involve violence, particularly includes presumably murder and those kinds of things.

Um, ok.

Sorry, where am I on time? Five minutes? Ok.

Ok, so that's kind of, that kind of sets the general scene, uh. There's, after Shantarakshita is invited to leave, he's then later invited to come back for a second time, and he brings with him Padmasambhava.

Now, Padmasambhava is a tantric, uh, he's a tantric guy--that's what he does. [laughter]

And, the account in this early, this version of the Testament of Wa, Ba, or Wa says that on the road he performed subjugations and he did rituals that involved water, like some boiling springs that he does rituals over and that they are then calmed down.

And presumably can then be used, uh, for irrigation or other purposes.

And so when he arrives in Tibet, um, he does a ritual, he does a divination first to determine what the local deities were that were responsible for the flood, the lightning, the famine, um, the epidemic when Shantarakshita was there the first time.

And then he performs the rituals to subjugate these local deities.

Um, and he says that these need to be done two more time for it to be fully effective, and at some point before he can do that, there seems to be this suspicion again from the court about Padmasambhava and what he's doing.

And so then they invite him to leave.

And that's basically all of his activities in Tibet, according to this earliest account. Now, later Tibetan accounts Padmasambhava, he's the Tibetan national guru basically. He's there for a long time. Uh, he does these subjugation rituals. He establishes Buddhism there, um, he teaches the king and his ministers. He has twenty-five main disciples. He's involved in tantric, uh, techniques that involve sex. Um, and he hides various texts in the minds of his disciples to be discoverd in some future life of their's, when the time is right for them to be useful.

And none of this is found in this earliest version.

So not only is Padmasambhava invited to leave like Shantarakshita was, um, but after he leaves the court apparently is still concerned and they decide, "Well, we better send somebody to kill him, because he might do something bad to us."

And so apparently they did that, and he, of course, divined this with his powers, and so did a ritual to, kind of, render them, uh, inactive for a while. And so he, they did not kill him.

And that's as much of this earliest account says about Padmasambhava.

Now, the one text that he's actually supposed to have written--in addition to a whole corpus of texts that he concealed in people's minds--is a commentary on the Secret Nucleus Trantra, the Guhyagarbha.

Uh, this is the main Mahayoga Tantra. Um, its a commentary on the thirteenth chapter, and... There are only... It's a short text and he only has six quotes from other texts in it.

Now one of these quotes, um, is identified by Rongzong in the eleventh century, in his commentary, and I was able to piece it together that that referred to a Yogatantra text, a text in one of the Yogatantras.

Um, it's a, it's the Conquest of the Three Realms, which is an explanatory tantra on the second of the four sections of the main Yogatantra, which is the Compendium of the Principles. I'll try not to add any other details, because that was probably a little confusing.

And I think the fact that this, um, that he quotes. So, there's no reason at this point that Padmasambhav did not write this one text. Uh, we don't know for certain that he did, but that's kind of where that stands.

And, uh, the importance of him quoting from a Yogatantra text shows that he was involved in Yogatantra, which is not really talked about in, uh, the later Tibetan traditions.

Um, it shows that he was familiar with the kind of central Yogatantra corpus and the fact that the content of this stanza deals with the process that is laid out at the beginning of the Compendium of Principles Tantra on how to become a buddha in a tantric way--sort of the declaration of independence of tantra, because it re-casts Shaklyamuni's enlightenment and says that it happened through tantric practice and that it doesn't happen any other way.

The fact that he quotes from this and the first of these five, a series of five steps, which has to do with realizing the nature of the mind, um, I think that reflects Padmasambhava's involvement earlier with Yogatantra.

It reflects somewhat the development of Yogatantra into Mahayoga or Great Yoga. Um...

And perhaps meets with or touches on, uh, some of the other things which Padmasambhav is said to have been involed with, like the development of Atiyoga, or Dzogchen.

Okay...So, Padmasambhava, so, the other important thing about him quoting from a text that is a commentarial tantra on the second section of The Compendium of Principles is that the second section deals with violent, wrathful subjugation activities and it is the locus of, uh, the Maheshvara Subjugation myth, in which Vajrapani kills and then revivifies Maheshvara or Shiva in a kind of display of Buddhism's dominance over Shaivism.

And so this again ties in with Padmasambhava's, kind of, subjugating activities.

Okay.

So, these two views--the kind of later view of Padmasambhava who did all these things in Tibet, is called Guru Rinpoche, or the, basically, the national guru, Tibetan national guru, and this earlier view, where he came, he did some subjugation, there was suspicion and he was asked to leave--um, these are pretty contradictory and...uh, really that rubs hard against the kind of overwhelming Tibetan cultural view of Padmasambhava.

Um, in which, yeah...

And so, for me personally, there's also some kind of conflict or there's some tension or I'm pulled, in a way, in two directions, because I have over the years kind of developed my own relationship with Padmasambhava and spent a week meditating on him in a cave in Tibet where he was supposed to have meditated.

Um, and so, the last I would like to say about Jeffrey....no it's not that... [laughter] ...is that I learned from Jeffrey one way to negotiate the line between being a hermit and being a hermeneut.

Um, and so to my Gen-la Jeffrey, I would like to say, "Thu-de-she."

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