Dreaming the Great Brahmin : Tibetan Traditions of the Buddhist Poet-Saint Saraha / Kurtis R
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Dreaming the Great Brahmin: Tibetan Traditions of the Buddhist Poet-Saint Saraha KURTIS R. SCHAEFFER OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Dreaming the Great Brahmin This page intentionally left blank Dreaming the Great Brahmin Tibetan Traditions of the Buddhist Poet-Saint Saraha kurtis r. schaeffer 1 2005 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜o Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright ᭧ 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schaeffer, Kurtis R. Dreaming the Great Brahmin : Tibetan traditions of the Buddhist poet-saint Saraha / Kurtis R. Schaeffer. p. cm. Accompanied by a full translation of the Doha Verses and a rare Tibetan commentary, the first commentary on Saraha’s work to be translated into any Western language. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-517373-4 ISBN 0-19-517373-2 1. Sarahapa˚ada, 8th cent. 2. Sarahapa˚ada, 8th cent. Doha˚akosa. 3. Spiritual life— Buddhism. I. Sarahapa˚ada, 8th cent. Doha˚akosa. English. II. Title. BQ984 .A66993S35 2004 294.3'092—dc22 2004009082 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Lighting-quick, in a single moment: South to S´rı¯ Parvata Mountain I dream-traveled. In the sweet shade of fig trees, On a seat, a tira’s corpse, Lord, Great Brahmin Saraha! Face brilliant, unlike any seen before, Two noble women with him, Body bedecked with charnel ground fare, Joyous face smiling— “Son, welcome,” said he. Unable to bear the joy of seeing the Lord, My body’s hair rippled. Tears I wept. —Tsangnyon Heruka (1452–1507), from the story of Marpa This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I offer thanks to Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, my mentor and friend in scholarly pursuits. I thank him for having instilled in me a curi- osity for the “hitherto unknown.” This book is dedicated to him. I thank Ron Davidson for reading the manuscript carefully and offering many helpful suggestions. The following people helped me to bring this book to completion: Janet Gyatso, Charlie Hallisey, Da- vid Jackson, Martin Jaffee, Stephanie Jamison, Matthew Kapstein, Russell McCutcheon, Dan Martin, Klaus-Dieter Mathes, Richard Sal- omon, Jeffrey Schoening, Khenpo Shedrup, Gene Smith, Cyrus Stearns, Kasinath Thamot, and Michael Witzel. I would like to offer special thanks to Roger Jackson, who offered much insight and en- couragement. His Tantric Treasures: Three Collections of Mystical Verse from Buddhist India (Oxford University Press, 2004) was published too late for me to take full advantage of his elegant translations of the doha¯s. Without my family I would not have been able to finish this or any other project. To Heather Swindler, Ruby Marguerite Schaeffer, Maxwell Louden Schaeffer, Shirley Schaeffer, Philip Schaeffer, Rich- ard Swindler, Patsy Swindler, and Laura Swindler I give my most heartfelt thanks. This page intentionally left blank Contents Abbreviations, xi Introduction: Stories and Songs of the Great Brahmin Saraha, 3 PART I. Traditions of Saraha in Tibet 1. Tales of the Great Brahmin, 13 2. Meeting the Great Brahmin in Rituals, Paintings, and Dreams, 35 3. Contesting the Great Brahmin: Saraha as Abbot and Adept, 49 PART II. Traditions of Saraha’s Songs in Tibet 4. Bringing the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses to Tibet, 59 5. Commentary and Controversy on the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses in Tibet, 71 6. Creating the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses,79 7. Recreating the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses, 101 x contents PART III. The Treasury of Doha¯ Verses and Ornamental Flower for the Doha¯s Introduction to the Commentary, 123 Ornamental Flower for the Doha¯s, 129 Epilogue: In Praise of the Great Brahmin, 175 Appendix 1. Compositional Features in the Anthologies of Phadampa Sangye, 179 Appendix 2. Adepts in the Anthologies of Phadampa Sangye, 183 Appendix 3. Outline of Ling Repa’s Commentary on the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses, 187 Notes, 191 Bibliography, 209 Index, 225 Abbreviations AA: D2268: The Do ha mdzod kyi snying po’i don gyi glu’i ‘grel pa of Advaya Avadhu¯ti AV: D2256: Do ha mdzod kyi dka’ ‘grel of Advayavajra CPN: Cultural Palace of Nationalities, Beijing D: Works in the Sde dge Bka’ ‘gyur or Bstan ‘gyur cited ac- cording to the catalog number in Ui (1934) J: Do ha mdzod of Saraha in the Collected Works of ‘Jam dbyangs bzhad pa’i rdo rje JIABS: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies L: Do ha mdzod of Saraha prepared by Lha btsun pa Rin chen rgyal mtshan M: D2258: Do ha mdzod kyi dka’ ‘grel of Moksfia¯karagupta NGMPP: Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project P: Works in the Peking Bka’ ‘gyur and Bstan ‘gyur R: D2257: Mi zad pa’i gter mdzod yongs su gang ba’i glu zhes bya ba gnyug ma’i de nyid rab tu ston pa’i rgya cher bshad pa of Gnyis su med pa’i rdo rje Note: All Tibetan proper names have been phoneticized in the body of the text, though kept in transliterated format in the notes. All transliterations for Tibetan proper names are found in the in- dex within parentheses adjacent to their phoneticized versions. This page intentionally left blank Dreaming the Great Brahmin This page intentionally left blank Introduction Stories and Songs of the Great Brahmin Saraha The imagination nourishes man and causes him to act. It is a collec- tive, social, and historical phenomenon. A history without the imagi- nation is a mutilated, disembodied history. —Jacques Le Goff A Tibetan writer once prefaced a volume of his poems with the fol- lowing tale: When people lived to be one hundred years, Glorious Saman- tabhadra appeared as the enlightened body of Vajradhara and turned the wheel of religion—the Diamond Path of Arcane Speech. This very one also appeared to ordinary disciples as the enlightened body of S´a¯kyamuni and turned the wheel of reli- gion as philosophy. Then he came to rest in the quiescent realm. After this came innumerable emanations of the Buddha— gurus, spiritual friends, scholars, and the Eighty Adepts who had attained realization on the banks of the River Ganga in In- dia. They sang innumerable diamond-songs for the sake of dis- ciples. It was especially the great Saraha who sang these diamond- songs, the doha¯s. ...1 Thus does the great Tibetan poet-saint of the nineteenth century Zhabkar Natsok Rangdrol (1781–1851) begin his own collection of over- a thousand spiritual songs with a call to hear them in the context of a tradition reaching back to the beginning of time. The songs he sang and wrote are no mere amusement, he suggests, but an emula- tion of the voices of his spiritual masters. It is fitting that he begins the present work on Buddhist songs and stories by showing us the depth and breadth of the poetic lineage to which he considered him- 4 introduction self heir. In the primordial past, when people lived to one hundred years, the teachings of the Buddha were given to disciples. The teachings were varied according to the spiritual status of the disciples, and likewise the teachers that followed the primal incarnation of the Buddha Vajradhara were of many kinds: from learned scholars to yogic adepts. All of these masters were needed, and all were present in these founding moments of Buddhist history. But for Zhab- kar, who here prepares the reader to enter the world of his thousand diamond- songs, the preeminent saints of the past are the Eighty Adepts, those masters of yogic realization who gave voice to their experiences not in learned treatises of philosophy, but in songs. It is these songs performed on the banks of the River Ganga that Zhabkar evokes to place the reader in the right frame of mind for reading his own songs.2 And among all of these adepts—eighty, eighty- four, and countless more—it is the Great Brahmin, Saraha, who reigns as the poet-saint supreme. It is the tale of this powerful figure in the religious imag- inations of Tibetan writers, and the story of his most important work of spir- itual philosophy—the Treasury of Doha¯ Verses—that I will tell in this book. Studying Saraha The study of Saraha has for the most part consisted of an attempt to fix his dates and decide upon which of the narrative traditions contain the correct details of his biography, all based upon a scant number of Tibetan hagiogra- phies dating hundreds of years beyond even the latest dates assigned to him. Such a project has been rightly deemed impossible,3 and yet scholars have nevertheless in the last decade proceeded to grant sole creative license and ingenuity to an otherwise unknowable historical figure named Saraha, totally ignoring the creative potential of the Tibetan commentators upon which their research is based.4 One recent writer sums up this notion, averring that if the Saraha of Tibetan stories did not write the Doha¯kosfia, then some other individ- ual to whom we can only give the name “Saraha” did write it.5 This book focuses upon the traditions that made Saraha.