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Mahayana Buddhist Meditation Tradition of Tibet's Great Woman Saint Machig Labdron

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Mahayana Buddhist Meditation Tradition of Tibet's Great Woman Saint Machig Labdron A STUDY OF THE PROFOUND PAm OF GCOD: THE MAHAYANA BUDDmST MEDITATION TRADITION OF TIBET'S GREAT WOMAN SAINT MACmG LABDRON by CAROL DIANE SA VV AS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (South Asian Language and Literature) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 1990 Table of Contents Preface ......................................... Xl Part One: General Introduction 1. Name, Historical Background, Classification and Overview of the gCod tradition. .................................... 1 1.1. The definition of the name gCod. .................. 1 1.2. H~storical Background .......... .. 3 1.2.1. gCod and early Buddhism. .. 5 1.2.2. gCod and the Mahayana . 13 1. 3 Indian sources of gCod ........................ 18 1.3.1. The buried text of Machig Labdron' s previous Indian incarnation on Vulture's Peak ................... 19 11 1.3.2. Aryadeva ........................... 22 1.3.3. Phadampa Sangye ...................... 28 1.4. Classification and Overview of the gCod . 32 1.4.1 The view of gCod ...................... 33 1.4.2. gCod as union of Sutra and Tantra ............ 41 1.4.3. The gCod Meditation .................... 45 1.4.4. Activities of the gCod Practice .............. 50 1.4.5. The result ........................... 51 2. An overview of Machig Labdron. 52 2.1. Accounts relating the reason for the birth of Machig Labdron . 52 2.2. Birth and prophesies .......................... 52 2.3. Machig Explains Her Identity .................... 61 2.4. Machig Labdron's Teachers ..................... 63 2.5. Machig Labdron's status in the monastic and lay communities 67 2.5.1. Machig's status -- ordained or lay ............ 67 2.5.2. Her marriage to Thodpa Bhadra ............. 68 2.5.3. Her children ......................... 69 ... III 2.6. Machig Labdron's students ...................... 72 2.7. Machig Labdron's Nunnery, Zangs ri mkhang dmar ....... 75 3. The Cutting Practice . 81 3.1. What is to be cut . 81 3.2. Machig Labdron's definition of a Demon ............. 83 3.3. The Four Maras according to the gCod system ......... 84 3.4. Machig Labdron's account of what the gCod is ......... 89 3.5 . The place for the practice of gCod . .' . 91 3.6. The requirements regarding the type of person to engage in the gCod practice ............................. 99 4. The Ritual .................................... 103 4.1. Requirements for the Practice of the Meditative ritual .... 103 4.1.1.1. The prerequisite common Sky opener initiation 105 4.1.1.2. The optional initiation of the wrathful five Dakinis ............................ 106 4.2. The Ritual Itself ........................... 106 4.3. The ritual objects ........................... 113 IV 4.4. What kind of signs occur through this practice ......... 121 5. Functions of gCod in Society and Suggestions for Further Research ............................ 126 Part Two Introduction to the Writings of Machig Labdron . 132 Introduction to the Material Presented in Part Two . 146 Thun mong rna yin pa'i Le Lag brgyad (The Eight Extraordinary Chapters) by Machig Labdron ............................. 154 Chapter Five of Phung po gzan bskyur kyi roam bshad gcod kyi don gsal (Namshil Chenmo) compiled by byams pa bsod nam, containing the teachings of Machig Labdron . 195 v Part Three Lineages of the gCod Tradition . 285 Texts translated in Part 3 ............................. 305 Zab lam gCod kyi khrid yig (Commentary on the Profound Path of gCod) by Matibhadra bLo bzang grags pa ................... 308 gCod kyi gdams pa thar 'dod ded dpon (The Guide for those Desiring Liberation) by Panchen Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen . 400 Zab lam gCod kyi snying po mdor sdus nyams su len tshul (A Concise instruction of the Very Essence of the Profound gCod) by Thu 'ukhwan Lobsang Choyki Nyima ............... 428 gCod sdus pa fA Condensed gCod Practice) by dNgul chu Dharmabhadra . 436 . VI Zab lam gCod kyi mal 'byor ba'i tshogs mchod 'bul tshul nag 'gros su bkod pa (The Way to Offer the Ga1)Q.cakra in Connection with the Yoga of the Profound Path of gCod) by Zong Rinpoche Lobsang Tson 'gros . 439 Abbreviations .................................... 474 Bibliography ..................................... 476 - ----- .. Vll PREFACE This dissertation explores the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist meditation tradition known as gCod (pronounced "Cho") or 'Cutting', developed by the eleventh century Tibetan woman yoginI and philosopher, Machig Labdron. This great scholar and yoginI taught the special meditation and philosophic system, gCod, in Tibet, where it was received at that time with great enthusiasm on the part of lay and monastic Tibetans and even Indians. Even today the gCod is among the greatest treasures-which the-'Fibelan refugees brought with them when fleeing Tibet after the Chinese invasion in 1959, and is among the most popularly received Tibetan Buddhist teachings being taught today. Just as Machig Labdron's name and fame spread throughout Tibet and to all the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, so too are her teachings and stories of her outstanding lifestyle and deeds enjoying great popularity among western and Tibetan scholars and contemporary students of Tibetan Buddhism. A seemingly countless number of texts on the gCod practice have been written and continue to be written by Tibetan scholars and followers of gCod, and European scholars have shown great interest and curiosity about the gCod viii since the early days of Tibetology, if at first in a somewhat superficial and fantastic way. Western scholars, especially in the past ten years, have shown a deeper understanding of and interest in the gCod as a subject which deserves thorough investigation. What is presented in this dissertation is only a small, but we believe a relevant and beneficial portion of primary resource material toward a deeper understanding of the gCod tradition. It has been our intention to gather information about the texts available -on thegCod practice, in an attempt to explain the ritual itself and the meaning it has for Tibetan scholars and practitioners, so that western scholars may have a look at the ritual from the inside out, instead of from only the other way around. The gCod system is a union of both Sutra and Tantra, and as such a multivalent approach to the subject has been necessary, for, as scholars such as Edward Conzel have noted, tantric traditions have regularly been misrepresented by Western scholars, whose purely philological approach to the texts has proven unsatisfactory due to the highly symbolic and enigmatic style IEdward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, London, Allen and Unwin, 1962, p. 270. IX of the material. Therefore my research methods have been largely phenomenological, and have involved both textual work and active fieldwork, including reading and translating the Tibetan texts together with Tibetan scholars of the gCod tradition; observing and recording gCod rituals perfomled in various contexts and for various purposes, and consulting Tibetan scholars of gCod about both the oral tradition and the textual tradition regarding the gCod meditation system, written by great Tibetan scholars. Our purpose in undertaking this dissertation has been to find out what the gCod system was meant to be when it was developed by Machig Labdron in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and to determine if and how it has changed and developed to the present time. As the subject is so vast and complex, and there are literally hundreds of gCod texts available for study, we have focussed primarily on a discussion of the gCod meditation ritual. The ritual itself is imbued with rich symbolism, utilizes powerful imagery and makes challenging demands on the meditator's capacity for compassionate love and wisdom. The meditator in a sense guides her/himself through the entire meditation with singing, accompanying herself with the rhythmic patterns of the 4amaru (a kind of drum similar to the Indian drum chang-te 'u). All the x elements of the ritual performance have a particular significance -- the voice is said to be the expression of the yoginI's gift of the body, speech and mind. The tj.amaru makes the sound of the wisdom of the union of compassion and emptiness, and the thighbone trumpet serves to remind the yoginI of impermanence and dependent arising. The meditation involves visualizing that one's own body is transformed into food and all desired objects for other beings to enjoy. At the beginning of the ritual, the yoginI sings a verse recalling the Buddha's previous lives as Bodhisattva, during which times he repeatedly gave his life and services for the sake of others. The gCod yoginI tries to follow in the example of the Buddha through the practice of the meditative ritual. In an effort to come to a deeper understanding of this complex and engaging ritual and of the gCod system as a whole, in Part Two we have translated Machig's text entitled The Eight Extraordinary Chapters, which was selected for translation because it elucidates all the basic features and , requirements of the gCod practice. The Introduction preceding the translation also gives a list of texts attributed to Machig that we have constructed based on references found in several different Tibetan sources. Part Two also contains a translation of Chapter Five of the famous text referred to as the Namshll Chenmo, its full title being Phungpo gzan skyur gyi . Xl rnam bshad gCod kyi don gsal which gives detailed commentary on the gCod meditation, ascribed to Machig Labdron. It has also been t.lte aim of this dissertation to survey how the geod has developed through the centuries to contemporary times, and therefore in Part Three translations of several more recent texts are presented in the chronological order in which they were written. 1. the Commentary on the gCod by Tsongkhapa, 2. the manual for practice of the Ensapa Whispered Lineage by Panchen Lobsang Chokyi Gyalstan 3. a concise recitation text by Thu'kwan Lobsang Chokyi Nyima 4. a one--page gCod text by Dharmabhadra 5.
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