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Materials of Buddhist Culture: Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism at Mindroling Monastery
Materials of Buddhist Culture: Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism at Mindroling Monastery Dominique Townsend Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Dominique Townsend All rights reserved ABSTRACT Materials of Buddhist Culture: Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism at Mindroling Monastery Dominique Townsend This dissertation investigates the relationships between Buddhism and culture as exemplified at Mindroling Monastery. Focusing on the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, I argue that Mindroling was a seminal religio-cultural institution that played a key role in cultivating the ruling elite class during a critical moment of Tibet’s history. This analysis demonstrates that the connections between Buddhism and high culture have been salient throughout the history of Buddhism, rendering the project relevant to a broad range of fields within Asian Studies and the Study of Religion. As the first extensive Western-language study of Mindroling, this project employs an interdisciplinary methodology combining historical, sociological, cultural and religious studies, and makes use of diverse Tibetan sources. Mindroling was founded in 1676 with ties to Tibet’s nobility and the Fifth Dalai Lama’s newly centralized government. It was a center for elite education until the twentieth century, and in this regard it was comparable to a Western university where young members of the nobility spent two to four years training in the arts and sciences and being shaped for positions of authority. This comparison serves to highlight commonalities between distant and familiar educational models and undercuts the tendency to diminish Tibetan culture to an exoticized imagining of Buddhism as a purely ascetic, world renouncing tradition. -
Guenther's Saraha: a Detailed Review of Ecstatic Spontaneity 111 ROGER JACKSON
J ournal of the international Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 17 • Number 1 • Summer 1994 HUGH B. URBAN and PAUL J. GRIFFITHS What Else Remains in Sunyata? An Investigation of Terms for Mental Imagery in the Madhyantavibhaga-Corpus 1 BROOK ZIPORYN Anti-Chan Polemics in Post Tang Tiantai 26 DING-HWA EVELYN HSIEH Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in's (1063-1135) Teaching of Ch'an Kung-an Practice: A Transition from the Literary Study of Ch'an Kung-an to the Practical JCan-hua Ch'an 66 ALLAN A. ANDREWS Honen and Popular Pure Land Piety: Assimilation and Transformation 96 ROGER JACKSON Guenther's Saraha: A Detailed Review of Ecstatic Spontaneity 111 ROGER JACKSON Guenther's Saraha: A Detailed Review of Ecstatic Spontaneity Herbert Guenther. Ecstatic Spontaneity: Saraha's Three Cycles of Doha. Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions 4. Berkeley: Asian Humani ties Press, 1993. xvi + 241 pages. Saraha and His Scholars Saraha is one of the great figures in the history of Indian Mahayana Buddhism. As one of the earliest and certainly the most important of the eighty-four eccentric yogis known as the "great adepts" (mahasiddhas), he is as seminal and radical a figure in the tantric tradition as Nagarjuna is in the tradition of sutra-based Mahayana philosophy.l His corpus of what might (with a nod to Blake) be called "songs of experience," in such forms as the doha, caryagiti and vajragiti, profoundly influenced generations of Indian, and then Tibetan, tantric practitioners and poets, above all those who concerned themselves with experience of Maha- mudra, the "Great Seal," or "Great Symbol," about which Saraha wrote so much. -
By Saraha; Study, Translation, and Tibetan Critical Edition by Lara Braitstein
H-Buddhism NEW BOOK> The Adamantine Songs (Vajragīti), by Saraha; Study, Translation, and Tibetan Critical Edition by Lara Braitstein. Discussion published by Thomas Yarnall on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 Dear Colleagues - The American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS) at Columbia University is very pleased to announce the publication of the following title: The Adamantine Songs (Vajragīti) -- by Saraha -- Study, Translation, and Tibetan Critical Edition by Lara Braitstein Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series New York: The American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2014. ISBN 978-1-935011-17-0 (cloth) • 256 pp. • $45.00 http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-adamantine-songs-vajragiti/9781935011170 Presented here in English for the first time is a set of three of Saraha’s “Adamantine Songs” (Skt. Vajragīti; Tib. rdo rje’i glu), poetic works that play a central role in the Great Seal mahāmudrā( ) Tantric tradition of both India and Tibet. The Tantric adept siddha( ) Saraha was among the most notable figures from India’s late first millennium, a time of rich religious and literary activity. His influence on Buddhist practice and poetry extended beyond the Indian subcontinent into Tibet, where it continues to affect every tradition that engages the practice and philosophy of the esoteric Great Seal. In these songs, Saraha’s views on the nature of mind are presented as both evocative poetry and theoretical exegesis. These songs offer a new perspective on the religious life of Buddhist India and the figure of one of its most famous adepts. Braitstein opens the door to this important set of texts by Saraha through her elegant translation, critical edition of the Tibetan texts, and in-depth analysis of the three poems. -
Introduction: Theorizing the Secular in Tibetan Cultural Worlds Holly Gayley
Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons Philosophy Faculty Publications Philosophy & Religious Studies 5-2016 Introduction: Theorizing the Secular in Tibetan Cultural Worlds Holly Gayley Nicole Willock Old Dominion University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/philosophy_fac_pubs Part of the Asian Studies Commons, and the Religion Commons Repository Citation Gayley, Holly and Willock, Nicole, "Introduction: Theorizing the Secular in Tibetan Cultural Worlds" (2016). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 33. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/philosophy_fac_pubs/33 Original Publication Citation Gayley, H., & Willock, N. (2016). Introduction | Theorizing the secular in tibetan cultural worlds. Himalaya, The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 36(1), 12-21. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy & Religious Studies at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Introduction | Theorizing the Secular in Tibetan Cultural Worlds Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the contributors to this volume—Tsering Gonkatsang, Matthew King, Leigh Miller, Emmi Okada, Annabella Pitkin, Françoise Robin, Dominique Townsend—as well as the other original panelists—Janet Gyatso, Nancy Lin, and Tsering Shakya—on the panel, ‘The Secular in Tibet and Mongolia,’ at the Thirteenth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies in 2013. The presentations, questions, and comments by panelists and audience offered new perspectives, provided the fodder for further investigations into the secular in Tibetan cultural worlds, and paved the way for this special issue of HIMALAYA. -
Dr. Matthew C. Altman Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Matthew C. Altman Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Publications Series (series editor) The Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. The Palgrave Kant Handbook, ed. Matthew C. Altman, manuscript submitted, forthcoming in 2017. The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. Sandra Shapshay, in process, forthcoming in 2017. The Palgrave Hegel Handbook, ed. Marina Bykova and Kenneth Westphal, in process, forthcoming in 2017. The Palgrave Fichte Handbook, ed. Steven Hoeltzel, under contract. The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Elizabeth Millán, proposal under consideration. Planned: The Palgrave Schelling Handbook; The Palgrave Handbook of Transcendental, Neo-Kantian, and Psychological Idealism; and The Palgrave Handbook of Critics of Idealism. Books (editor) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2017. (editor) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Reviewed in: Continental Philosophy Review, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy (coauthor, with Cynthia D. Coe) The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Reviewed in: Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophy in Review, Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (author) Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Reviewed in: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Ethics & Behavior, Choice, Ethical Perspectives, Synthesis Philosophica, Diametros (author) A Companion to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Boulder, Col.: Westview, 2008. Book Chapters “A Practical Account of Kantian Freedom.” In The Palgrave Kant Handbook, ed. Matthew C. Altman. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2017. (coauthor, with Cynthia D. Coe) “Wolves, Dogs, and Moral Geniuses: Anthropocentrism in Schopenhauer and Freud.” In The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook, ed. -
JACOBI and FICHTE on PHILOSOPHY and LIFE Rolf Ahlers
VITALISM AND SYSTEM: JACOBI AND FICHTE ON PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE Rolf Ahlers Abstract: This paper thematizes the crucial agreement and point of depar- ture between Jacobi and Fichte at the height of the “atheism controversy.” The argument on the proper relationship between philosophy and existence or speculation and life had far-reaching consequences in the history of thought after Jacobi and Fichte in German Idealism on the one hand, primarly advo- cated by Schelling and Hegel, and on the other hand by existentialism and vitalism. The essay focuses first on Jacobi’s philosophy of life, which cen- trally influenced and attracted Fichte to Jacobi. Jacobi’s dualism between speculation, of which he was skeptical, and life, became Fichte’s dualism. Fichte’s transcendentalism, however, prioritized, contrary to Jacobi, both speculation and systematicity. Both of these elements became central for later forms of German Idealism. In the last part of the essay Hegel’s absolute idealism becomes the platform affording a critical perspective on Fichte’s transcendental philosophy. The immediacy of life could for Fichte in 1799 not have any reality without the abstraction from life accomplished by speculative philosophy. Both “speculation” and “life” do not really have any common ground between them—a position which Reinhold attempted to find—because both oppose each other but are also dependent upon another. As “life” could not be had without speculation, so “speculation” is impossible without life, for it needs life to be able to abstract from it. Fichte made this very clear at the height of the “atheism-controversy,” in a letter to Jacobi of April 22, 1799,1 in which he says this (1799:61):2 The original duality, which traverses through the whole system of reason, and which is grounded in the duality of the subject-object is here on its highest plateau. -
The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: a Genealogy of Padmasambhava's
The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: A Genealogy of Padmasambhava’s Tantric Masculinity in Two Early Namthar By Joshua Shelton A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado Boulder In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Religious Studies 2019 ÓJoshua Shelton, 2019 Shelton ii This thesis entitled: The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: A Genealogy of Padmasambhava’s Tantric Masculinity in Two Early Namthar Written by Joshua Shelton has been approved for the Department of Religious Studies Holly Gayley, Ph.D. Loriliai Biernacki, Ph.D. Jules Levinson, Ph.D. Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the discipline of Religious Studies Shelton iii Abstract Shelton, Joshua Brallier (M.A., Religious Studies) The Siddha Who Tamed Tibet: A Genealogy of Padmasambhava’s Tantric Masculinity in Two Early Namthar Thesis advised by Associate Professor Holly Gayley. The eighth-century Indian tantric master Padmasambhava, famed siddha (!བ་ཐོབ།) of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, has been the subject of decades of Western scholarship seeking to understand his place in the matrix of Tibetan history, culture, religion, and literature. This thesis contributes to that body of work by thematizing Padmasambhava’s gender as a key component in the development of his early myth in two formative narratives: Nyangrel Nyima Öser’s Copper Island Biography of Padmasambhava and Orgyen Lingpa’s The Testament of Padmasambhava. I draw upon Raewyn Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity to trace Padmasambhava’s gendered positionality in these early texts vis-à-vis his interactions and contestations with kings. -
Challenging Central Tibet's Dominance
! CHALLENGING CENTRAL TIBET’S DOMINANCE OF HISTORY: THE OCEANIC BOOK, A 19TH-CENTURY POLITICO-RELIGIOUS GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY GRAY TUTTLE This article considers how the northeastern part of the Tibetan plateau, called A mdo (now in Qinghai, Gansu, and northern Sichuan) came to be seen as part of Tibet, focusing mainly on a mid-nineteenth-century text but also examining pre-modern sources.1 Explicitly geographic texts dealing in detail with most of the territory of what we now consider Tibet only date from the eighteenth century.2 These relatively late geographic sources share a distinctively early modern conception of a plateau-wide Tibetan region, and are quite different from earlier histories of ‘Tibet,’ which tended to pay little attention to most of eastern Tibet. But rather than merely focusing on such texts, I have expanded my focus to include all historical works that are dominated by any suggestion of ‘cartographic’ narratives. By this I mean texts that focus on broad regions of Tibet and especially how particular regions are politically and religiously controlled. This is what Julia Thomas has called “the 1 I want to thank the late Gene Smith, Dan Martin, Kurtis Schaeffer and Jann Ronis for all their bibliographic work on Tibetan histories, on which I have relied in this present study. For an introduction to Gene Smith’s work see www.tbrc.org and Gene Smith 2001 Among Tibetan Texts: History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau. Kurtis R. Schaeffer (ed.) Boston: Wisdom Publications. For Dan Martin, see his 1997 Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works. -
Dr. Matthew C. Altman Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Matthew C. Altman Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies CENTRAL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Publications Series (series editor) Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. • Published: The Palgrave Kant Handbook (ed. M. C. Altman, 2017), The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook (ed. S. Shapshay, 2017). • Under contract: The Palgrave Hegel Handbook (ed. M. Bykova and K. Westphal, 2018), The Palgrave Fichte Handbook (ed. S. Hoeltzel, 2018), The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy (ed. E. Millán, 2018), The Palgrave Schelling Handbook (ed. S. McGrath and K. Bruff, 2018), The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism (ed. J. Stewart, 2019), The Palgrave Tillich Handbook (ed. R. Re Manning and H. Matern, 2019). • Planned: The Palgrave Handbook of Transcendental, Neo-Kantian, and Psychological Idealism; The Palgrave Handbook of Critics of Idealism; The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy; The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Phenomenology; The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, Deconstruction, and Its Aftermath; The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Feminist Philosophy. Books (editor) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. (editor) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Reviewed in: Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review, Kant-Studien. (coauthor, with Cynthia D. Coe) The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Reviewed in: Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy in Review. (author) Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Reviewed in: Choice, Diametros, Ethical Perspectives, Ethics & Behavior, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Synthesis Philosophica. -
Chapter II * Place of Hevajra Tantraj in Tantric Literature
Chapter II * Place of Hevajra Tantraj in Tantric Literature 4 1. Buddhist Tantric Literature Lama Anagarik Govinda wrote: “the word ‘Tantrd is related to the concept of weaving and its derivatives (thread, web, fabric, etc.), hinting at the interwovenness of things and actions, the interdependence of all that exists, the continuity in the interaction of cause and effect, as well as in spiritual and'traditional development, which like a thread weaves its way through the fabric of history and of individual lives. The scriptures which in Buddhism go under the name of Tantra (Tib.: rgyud) are invariably of a mystic nature, i.e., trying to establish the inner relationship of things: the parallelism of microcosm and macrocosm, mind and universe, ritual and reality, the world of matter and the world of the spirit.”99 Scholars like N.N. Bhattacharyya and also Pranabananda Jash, regard Tantra as a religious system or science (Sastra) dealing with the means (sadhana) of attaining success (siddhi) in secular or religious efforts.100 N.N. Bhattacharyya mentions that “Tantra came to mean the essentials of any religious system and, subsequently, special doctrines and rituals found only in certain forms of various religious systems. This change in the meaning, significance, and character of the word ‘Tantra' is quite striking and is likely to reveal many hitherto unnoticed elements that have characterised the social fabric of India through the ages.”101 It is must be noted that the Tantrika tradition is not the work of a day, it has a long history behind it. Creation, maintenance and dissolution, 99 Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Myticism (Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1969), p.93. -
What Is Mahāmudrā Traleg Rinpoche
What is Mahāmudrā Traleg Rinpoche The Mahāmudrā tradition encompasses many key Buddhist terms and presents them in a unique light. The Sanskrit word mahāmudrā literally translates as “great seal,’’ or “great symbol,’’ which suggests that all that exists in the conditioned world is stamped with the same seal, the seal of ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is synonymous with the quintessential Buddhist term emptiness (śūnyatā), which describes the insubstantiality of all things—the underlying groundlessness, spaciousness, and indeterminacy that imbues all of our experiences of the subjective and objective world. In the Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the word mahāmudrā is also used to refer to the nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is a pivotal concept in this tradition. The essential quality of the mind is emptiness, but it is described as a luminous emptiness, for the mind has the inherent capacity to know, or to cognize. When spiritual fulfillment is attained, this lumi- nous emptiness is experienced as pervasively and profoundly blissful, and enlightenment is characterized as luminous bliss. The Tibetan term for Mahāmudrā is chag gya chen po. The word chag denotes wisdom; gya implies that this wisdom transcends mental defilement; and chen po verifies that together they express a sense of unity. At a more profound level of interpretation, chag gya suggests that <4> our natural state of being has no origin, because we cannot posit a particular time when it came into being, nor can we say what caused it to conic into existence or what it is dependent upon. Our natural state of being is self-sustaining, self- existing, and not dependent upon anything. -
An Exhibition of Rare Thankas By
An Exhibition of Rare Thankas by Central Institute of Buddhist Studies 2nd Feb. 2001 - 14th Feb. 2001 Matighar, IGNCA Contents Message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama Foreword Preface Introduction Bodh Kala: Udhbhav aur Vikas (Hindi) Catalogue and Plates Thanka No. 01: Lord Sakyamuni Buddha Thanka No. 02: Arya Manjusri Thanka No. 03: Arya Maitreya Thanka No. 04: Padmasambhava Thanka No. 05: Atisa Thanka No. 06: Guhyasamaja Thanka No. 07: Cakrasamvara Thanka No. 08: Vajrabhairava Thanka No. 09: Mandala Thanka No. 10: Sarahapa Thanka No. 11: Luipa Thanka No. 12: Naropa Thanka No. 13: Melerepa Thanka No. 14: Sachen Kung sNyingpo Thanka No. 15: Klong chen rab byam pa Thanka No. 16: Tsongkhapa The Details of the Thankas Credits Message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama MESSAGE When so much of the Tibetan cultural heritage has been destroyed in its own land, related works of art are being preserved and created anew elsewhere in the Himalayan region. These Buddhist paintings are an expression of an ancient civilization. I am therefore very happy to know that the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, Leh, Ladakh is organizing a series of Thanka exhibitions in New Delhi, Samath (U.P.) and Hyderabad (A.P.). We Buddhists of the Himalayan region regard most of these artifacts as sacred. They represent various aspects of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. All of them are a source of inspiration. Appreciation of this kind of art has long been the preserve of experts. However, I trust that people visiting these series of exhibitions and reading the catalogues will come to a better understanding of the Buddhism of the Himalayas and a greater appreciation of its timeless values.