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Buddhism's Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 36 Number 1 Article 15 May 2016 Buddhism's Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning Dominique Townsend Rubin Museum, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Townsend, Dominique. 2016. Buddhism's Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning. HIMALAYA 36(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol36/iss1/15 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Buddhism's Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning Acknowledgements This article is rooted in research conducted for my dissertation, “Materials of Buddhist Culture: Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Tibet” a project made possible by the help of countless scholars, teachers, and friends. The perspective I present in this particular article, and any mistakes it contains, are solely my responsibility. I would like to offer a special note of thanks to Pema Bhum for his generosity and patience discussing Tibetan language sources with me. I am also grateful to Gray Tuttle and Annabella Pitkin for commenting on early drafts. And finally, my sincere thanks to Holly Gayley and Nicole Willock for their significant commitment ot this volume and my article. This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol36/iss1/15 Buddhism’s Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning Dominique Townsend By analyzing the writings of select Tibetan many centuries. Worldly knowledge was and authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth is a basis for political and cultural prestige in centuries, this article reflects on the prestige Tibetan society as well as a common ground attached to secular (but not anti-religious) for connecting with the ruling classes of knowledge, and the ambivalence prominent neighboring civilizations, also shaped in part by thinkers expressed around the proper Buddhism. Over the centuries, the inculcation relationship between worldly and religious of rikné among educated Tibetans contributed learning. Tibetan lay and religious leaders to the development of a connoisseur class. have long been steeped in a classical Indic Further, the Tibetan socio-political theory of system of categorizing knowledge, known in the ‘union of religion and the secular’ (chos Sanskrit as pañcavidyāsthāna and in Tibetan srid zung ’brel) and the closely related ‘two as rikné nga (rig gnas lnga). Sakya Paṇḍita first traditions’ (lugs gnyis) model, were primary established the importance of these fields concerns of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his of knowledge in Tibet during the thirteenth colleagues. These theories articulated an ideal century. Later intellectual figures such as the union between worldly and religious power. Fifth Dalai Lama Nga ang Lozang Gyatso Precisely how Tibetan literati have understood and his cohort, including figures associated and valued worldly fields of learning in relation with the influential Nyingma monastery called to religious subjects has varied across time, Mindroling (Smin grol gling), all acknowledged place, and religious tradition. Investigating the significance of rikné even as they struggled particular Tibetan statements on the to balance their worldly interests with religious significance of rikné reveals the strong, if concerns. Their writing shows that worldly notably ambivalent, presence of secular values subjects, distinct from but in combination with in Tibetan history and culture. the study of religion, have been important in Keywords: Tibet, Buddhism, education, art, literature, history. shaping Tibetan thinking and social life for 130 | HIMALAYA Spring 2016 Introduction ritual masters. This is in addition to monks and nuns. The Nyingmapa founders of Mindroling, with strong ties to In Tibet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the the eighth-century Indian tantric adept Padmasambhava, Tibetan literati worked to reconcile the world-bound de- were especially well known for mastery of Great Perfection mands of constructing a unified polity with the world-r - (rdzogs chen), a distinctive philosophical, meditative, and nouncing values of Buddhism. This was not a new struggle. ritual system. The Fifth Dalai Lama’s family had diverse Across the many times and places where Buddhism has religious affiliations and he was extremely interested in taken root, worldly engagements and renunciation often Great Perfection practice, to the chagrin of some of his have been in productive tension.1 For centuries prominent orthodox Gelukpa colleagues (Karmay 1988). He looked to Tibetan Buddhist practitioners who also held temporal Nyingmapa masters, including the founders of Mindroling, authority argued for a balance of religious and worldly for Great Perfection teachings. In addition, and most rele- learning. A key example is the thirteenth century scholar vant to this article, from its founding in 1676, Mindroling Sakya Paṇḍita (Sa skya paṇ ḍi ta, 1182-1251). He is known Monastery was a center for the Tibetan literati to study even today as a paragon of the Buddhist intellectual thanks both Great Perfection and the fields of classical learning in large part to having mastered the classical Indic system known in Tibetan as rikné which included worldly and of learning (Skt: pañcavidyāsthāna) known in Tibetan as religious subjects (Townsend 2012). rikné nga (rig gnas lnga). Sakya Paṇḍita’s writing on rikné nga helped make him famous beyond Tibet. Most signifi- The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries cantly, his reputation as an enlightened intellectual was cogently can be called Tibet’s early modern period. Janet instrumental in drawing the support of the Yuan court to Gyatso describes the period as “roughly corresponding his family’s religious tradition and monastery, eventually with the development of Tibetan self-consciousness of its establishing the powerful Sakya-Mongol alliance of the political and cultural position vis-à-vis other powers in thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Gold 2007). From at the region” (Gyatso 2015: 409). During that time, highly least that time forward, Tibetan intellectuals debated the influential Tibetan intellectuals and political leaders, most value of the worldly subjects of rikné and the proper rela- notably the Fifth Dalai Lama’s powerful regent Desi Sangyé tionship between worldly and religious learning.2 Gyatso (Sang rgyas rgya mtsho, 1653-1705), helped estab- lish rikné as indispensable to the learned, cultured Tibetan Beginning in 1642, under the aegis of the Koshot Mongol person. Inspired by Sakya Paṇḍita and previous Indian Gushri Khan (1582-1684), the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Buddhist masters, those same thinkers (and the wide circle Lobsang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rygya mtsho, 1672- of Tibetans whose views they helped shape), asserted that 1682) and his inner circle strove to build a political union total mastery of rikné, sometimes translated as the ‘scienc- across Tibetan regions that had not been united since the es,’ or ‘arts and sciences,’ is necessary for the attainment fall of the powerful Tibetan Yarlung dynasty in the ninth of full enlightenment. In sum, the category of rikné is said century. This time was marked by extreme sectarian strife to encompass all that is knowable (Dungkar 2002: 1902). between Tibetan religious groups, as well as tensions be- Therefore mastery of rikné is tantamount to omniscience. tween various Tibetan, Mongol and Qing factions all vying for influence. The Dalai Lama’s Geluk (dge lugs) or ‘virtuous’ The assertion that worldly knowledge is essential to en- tradition, known for strict monasticism and scholasticism, lightenment might come as a surprise to readers familiar was pitted against other Tibetan religious traditions, in with Tibetan Buddhism and culture. This surprise is due some cases with dire consequences. At the same time, in part to the fact that the same Tibetan authors who there were notable examples of inter-sectarian collabora- established the importance of rikné also used rhetoric that tions. The Dalai Lama’s direct support of the founding of favored religious knowledge. It might also be that the rhet- Mindroling (Smin grol gling) Monastery, an important in- oric claiming worldly learning to be essential for enlight- stitution affiliated with the Nyingma or ‘ancient’ tradition enment eventually was overwhelmed by Buddhists who (rying ma) is an example of a major effort across sectarian feared the distracting power of secular concerns. Be that as divides. The reasons for this alliance are too numerous it may, the same Tibetan authors who stressed the impor- to mention here, but they involved familial, political, and tance of rikné also demonstrated conflicting views on how historical factors.3 worldly and religious values should be balanced, demon- strating a climate in which this question was contested. One distinction between the Geluk and Nyingma groups was and is that the Nyingma tradition has
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