Tibetan Ritual This page intentionally left blank Tibetan Ritual edited by josé ignacio cabezón 1 2010 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2010 Oxford University Press 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 Tibetan ritual / edited by José Ignacio Cabezón. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-539281-4; 978-0-19-539282-1 (pbk.) 1. Tibet (China)—Religious life and customs. 2. Rites and ceremonies—China—Tibet. I. Cabezón, José Ignacio, 1956– BL1945.T5T54 2010 294.3'438—dc22 2009012773 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents Contributors, vii Introduction, 1 José Ignacio Cabezón 1. Written Texts at the Juncture of the Local and the Global: Some Anthropological Considerations on a Local Corpus of Tantric Ritual Manuals (Lower Mustang, Nepal), 35 Nicolas Sihlé 2. Tibetan Indigenous Myths and Rituals with Reference to the Ancient Bön Text: The Nyenbum (Gnyan’bum), 53 Samten G. Karmay 3. Continuity and Change in Tibetan Maha–yoga Ritual: Some Evidence from the Tabzhag (Thabs zhags) Manuscript and Other Dunhuang Texts, 69 Robert Mayer and Cathy Cantwell 4. The Convergence of Theoretical and Practical Concerns in a Single Verse of the Guhyasama–ja Tantra, 89 Yael Bentor 5. Chilu (‘Chi bslu): Rituals for “Deceiving Death”, 103 Irmgard Mengele vi contents 6. Representations of Effi cacy: The Ritual Expulsion of Mongol Armies in the Consolidation and Expansion of the Tsang (Gtsang) Dynasty, 131 James Gentry 7. The “Calf ’s Nipple” (Be’u bum) of Ju Mipam (‘Ju Mi pham): A Handbook of Tibetan Ritual Magic, 165 Bryan J. Cuevas 8. Rites of the Deity Tamdrin (Rta mgrin) in Contemporary Bön: Transforming Poison and Eliminating Noxious Spirits with Burning Stones, 187 Marc des Jardins 9. Texts as Deities: Mongols’ Rituals of Worshipping Su¯tras and Rituals of Accomplishing Various Goals by Means of Su¯tras, 207 Vesna Wallace 10. The Ritual Veneration of Mongolia’s Mountains, 225 Jared Lindahl 11. Encounter with a Dream: Bhutanese Pilgrims in Tibet—Performing a Ritual?, 249 Françoise Pommaret Bibliography, 263 Index, 291 Contributors Yael Bentor is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Indian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of a num- ber of books and articles on the theory and practice of Tantra, most recently “Do ‘The Tantras Embody What The Practitioners Actually Do’?” (in Contributions to the Study of Tibetan Literature, 2008), and “Can Women Attain Enlightenment Through Vajraya–na Practices” (in Karmic Passages: Israeli Scholarship on India, 2009). Currently, she is working on a book on the creation stage of the Guhyasama–ja. Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer are Research Offi cers and Mem- bers of the Buddhist Studies Unit of the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, and Senior Researchers at the University of Cardiff. They have coauthored two books: The Kı¯laya Nirva–na Tantra and the Vajra Wrath Tantra: Two Texts from the Ancient Tantra Collection (2007) and Early Tibetan Documents on Phur pa from Dunhuang (2009). Their cur- rent research focuses on the Tabzhag (Thabs zhags) or Noose of Methods Tantra, on the early Bön and Buddhist traditions of the deity Purpa (Dagger), and (together with Professor Geoffrey Samuel) on a twenti- eth-century ritual cycle of the Dujom tradition. Bryan J. Cuevas is Associate Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. He is the author of The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (2003) and Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives viii contributors of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet (2008), and is the editor, with Jacqueline I. Stone, of The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (2007). He is currently working on a study of Tibetan sorcery and the politics of war magic from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. J. F. Marc des Jardins is Assistant Professor of the Religions of China and Tibet in the Department of Religion of Concordia University in Montréal. He specializes on the Tibetan Bön religion and the practice of religion along the Sino-Tibetan frontiers. He has been engaged in fi eld-based research in Tibetan territories within the PRC since 1991. He not only studies Bön textual material, but also rituals and other religious practices in contemporary settings. James Gentry is a doctoral candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. He is working on a dissertation on the life and times of Sogdogpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan), focusing on his memoir, the History of How the Mongols Were Turned Back (Sog bzlog bgyis tshul gyi lo rgyus). He is the author of “Historical Skepticism in ‘Pre-modern’ Tibet: the Contested Historicity of Traditional Padmasambhava Narratives,” in New Perspectives on Tibetan Traditionality, Columbia University Press (2009). Jared Lindahl has completed his MA in Religious Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and is presently a doctoral candidate at that same institution. He did fi eld research on sacred geography in Mongolia in 2004. Lindahl is currently working on a doctoral dissertation focusing on the doctrine of light and use of light imagery in Tibetan Buddhism and early Christianity. Irmgard Mengele is a research scholar in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of dGe-‘dun- chos-‘phel: A Biography of the 20th-Century Tibetan Scholar (1999) and The Life and Art of the Tenth Karma-pa Chos-dbyings-rdo-rje (1604–1674): A Biography of a Great Tibetan Lama and Artist of the Turbulent Seventeenth Century (forthcom- ing). Currently she is working on a project on the theory and practice of heal- ing, medicine, and longevity in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Françoise Pommaret is Directeur de recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que, Paris, and advisor to the Institute of Language and Cultural Studies, Royal University of Bhutan. She has authored Tibet, A Wounded Civilization (2005) and has contributed to as well as edited Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods (2005), Lhasa in the 17th century: The Capital of the contributors ix Dalai-Lamas (2005), and Bhutan: Tradition and Change (2007 with J. Ardussi). She works on the sociopolitical signifi cance of rituals and their evolution. Samten Karmay is Directeur de recherche emeriate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que, Paris. He is the author of The Great Perfection, A Meditative and Philosophical Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism (1988, reprint 2007); Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1988, reprint 1998); and the two-volume The Arrow and the Spindle, Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet (1998 and 2005). Currently he is working on the Dukula, the autobiography of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Nicolas Sihlé is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia and Associated Member of the Laboratory “Milieux, Sociétés et Cultures en Himalaya” of the CNRS (France). His work focuses, from an anthropological perspective, on Tibet and the Himalayas, on Tibetan religion in particular, and more generally on the comparative study of Bud- dhist societies, as well as on theories of ritual and religion. He is completing a book entitled Rituals of Power and Violence: Tantric Buddhism in the Tibetan Himalayas. Vesna Wallace is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the Uni- versity of California, Santa Barbara. She is author of The Inner Ka¯lacakratantra: A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual, and has published several books of translation from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian. She has also authored a series of articles on esoteric Buddhism and produced four documentary fi lms on Mongolia. Vesna Wallace has been conducting annual fi eld research in Mongolia on the revival of Mongolian Buddhism since 2000, research that will result in her new volume on contemporary Buddhism in Mongolia. This page intentionally left blank Tibetan Ritual This page intentionally left blank Introduction josé ignacio cabezón Look around almost anywhere you fi nd yourself in the greater Tibetan cultural world—in Tibet, certainly, but also in Bhutan, Mongolia, and the Nepalese Himalayas—and you see ritual. If you live near a mon- astery, chances are that you will awaken to the sound of a gong calling monks to their morning prayer-assembly or tsog (tshogs). Even if you live far from a monastery, you may well be roused from sleep by the high-pitched clanging of someone ringing a ritual bell, or by the soft murmur of neighbors reciting khandön (kha ‘don), their daily ritual commitments. When you walk out of your door into the courtyard of your home, you see a family member burning sang (bsang), juniper incense, for the daily purifi cation of the household or as a ritual offer- ing to the gods. Before you begin eating your breakfast, you will recite a prayer offering the food to the Three Jewels.