THE EIGHTH KARMAPA'S LIFE AND HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE GREAT SEAL Jim Rheingans A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bath Spa University, School of Historical and Cultural Studies June 2008 UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND ABSTRACT THE EIGHTH KARMAPA'S LIFE AND HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE GREAT SEAL Jim Rheingans This thesis investigates the Eighth Karmapa (1507-1554) and his Great Seal instructions. It demonstrates that the Eighth Karmapa was not only one of the most significant scholars of his school, but one who mastered and taught its highest meditational precepts. The thesis argues that analysing his Great Seal teachings through studying instruction-related genres in their historical, doctrinal, and literary contexts reveals a pedagogical pragmatism. It is more useful to view the Great Seal as an independent key instruction that the guru adapts to the students' needs, rather than a fixed doctrine. The thesis contributes significantly to the religious history of Tibet by interpreting a number of previously unstudied Tibetan sources. The main textual sources are selected spiritual biographies (rnam thar), question and answer texts (dris lari), meditation instructions (khrid), esoteric precepts (man ngag), and advices (slab byd) from the Collected Works of the Eighth Karmapa (2000-2004). Chapter One engages with previous research and justifies the methodologies employed. Chapter Two elaborates key points of the bKa' brgyud pa Great Seal and the religious and political contexts of the Eighth 11 Karmapa. Chapter Three evaluates the main textual sources and genres used. Chapter Four delineates the Eighth Karmapa's development into one of the most renowned scholars and mystical teachers in his tradition and outlines his programme for teaching meditation. Chapter Five investigates concrete teaching situations in three case studies, showing divergent expressions of the Great Seal and their contexts. Chapter Six argues that the Great Seal is an independent instruction conveying the essence of the teachings, which can be taught as either tantric or non-tantric, and establishes the teacher as the main unifying spiritual element of Great Seal instructions and practices. Chapter Seven concludes by asserting the importance of contexts, such as genre and history, in the study of Buddhist mysticism. in TABLE OF CONTENTS Conventions Used in this Thesis....................................................................vii Abbreviations................................................................................................viii Chapter 1: Introduction...........................................................................................................! 1.1 Aim and Scope of this Research................................................................ 5 1.2 Methodologies Employed ......................................................................... 8 1.3 Previous Research on the Life and Works of the Eighth Karmapa........ 15 1.4 Plan of this Thesis.................................................................................... 30 Chapter 2: The Great Seal and Medieval Tibet......................................................33 2.1 The Great Seal..........................................................................................33 2.1.1 ThebKa' brgyud pa Great Seal: A Brief Overview........................34 2.1.2 sGam po pa, Early bKa' brgyud pa, and the First Karmapa...........39 2.1.3 Sa skya Pandita, Indian Great Seal, and Later Systematisations....45 2.4 Tibet from the Fifteenth to Sixteenth Centuries: Conflicts between dBus and gTsang.......................................................................................48 Chapter 3: Textual Sources for the Eighth Karmapa's Life and Great Seal...................................................................................................................... 57 3.1 History of the Eighth Karmapa's Writings.............................................. 57 3.2 The Collected Works of the Eighth Karmapa 2000-2004: Origins and Rubrics....................................................................................................... 65 3.3 Sources on the Eighth Karmapa's Great Seal .........................................72 3.4 Spiritual Memoirs and Biographies of the Eighth Karmapa................... 77 Chapter 4: The Eighth Karmapa: Scholar, Monk, and Yogi............................ 94 4.1 The Eighth Karmapa's Life .....................................................................95 IV 4.1.1 Birth and Early Childhood (1507-1511) ......................................95 4.1.2 The Dispute about the Incarnation (1512-1513)..........................99 4.1.3 Early Exposition, Composition, and Travels (1513-1516)........ Ill 4.1.4 Becoming a Scholar and Training the Great Seal (1516-1529) .115 4.1.5 Scholastic Contributions (1530-1550)........................................ 135 4.1.6 Travel to rTsa ri, Sickness, and Passing Away (1554)............... 146 4.2. The Eighth Karmapa: 'Learned and Accomplished One' of his Day . 149 4.3 Spiritual Programme for Teaching Meditation ..................................... 155 Chapter 5: Case Studies of the Eighth Karmapa's Great Seal...................... 164 5.1 Case Studies: Concrete Examples of Teaching the Great Seal............. 165 5.2. Dialogues in A khu A khra's Spiritual Biography............................... 166 5.2.1 Their Function in the Main Narrative......................................... 167 5.2.2 Dialogue with A khu A khra....................................................... 171 5.2.3 Dialogue with rGya ston Nang so Seng ge ba............................ 178 5.2.4 Dialogue with dGa' Idan dBon po Nam mkha' rgyal mtshan.... 182 5.2.5 Dialogue with Mi nyag sKya ging Bya bral ba .......................... 186 5.2.6 Conceptualisation and Dhannakdya ........................................... 190 5.3. Answer to gLing drung pa's Query on the Great Seal......................... 192 5.3.1 The Addressee and Other Contexts............................................. 192 5.3.2 The Content.................................................................................. 197 5.3.3 The Story of sBas mchod: Pedagogy, History, and the Great Seal..............................................................................206 5.3.4 Great Seal beyond Tantra ...........................................................211 5.4 Identifying the Blessing: A Mantra Path...............................................213 Chapter 6: Contextualising the Eighth Karmapa's Great Seal Instructions.................................................................................................... 217 6.1 Basic Distinctions of the Great Seal .....................................................217 6.2 Interpretations of Conceptualisation as Dharmakaya...........................219 6.3 Common Strands and Divergent Interpretations. .................................. 224 6.4 The Guru as Origin and Example in Vajrayana and Great Seal Traditions .............................................................................................230 6.5 The Guru as Means in the Eighth Karmapa's Great Seal Instructions. 234 Chapter 7: Conclusions . Bibliography ........................................................... .............................................................250 Indian Buddhist Works ................................................................................ 250 Primary Sources and Secondary Literature in Tibetan Language .............251 Secondary Literature in Western Languages.... ....................................... ....271 VI CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS THESIS Transliteration Tibetan characters are transliterated according to the system of Turrel W. Wylie as laid out in 'A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription' (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 22 (1959), 261-267) in its extended form. When a Tibetan word is capitalised, the root letter is written in capitals. Two frequently used Tibetan titles were not transliterated: Karmapa and Dalai Lama. Foreign language terms found in the Oxford Dictionary of English, ed. by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, second edition, revised (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) are not italicised. Sanskrit (written with diacritics): bodhisattva, dharma, nirvana, sangha, siddha, stupa, sutra, tantra; Tibetan: lama (except for occurrences in a name), Lhasa, Shigatse; Greek: topos. Referencing The sources regarding the Eighth Karmapa are cited from the Tibetan standard edition of the Collected Works of the Eighth Karmapa, published 2000-2004. When a further edition of any text is used, the specific reference to this particular edition will be provided. vn ABBREVIATIONS General Abbreviations HR History of Religion IATS International Association of Tibetan Studies JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JIABS Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies JIATS Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies JlPh Journal of Indian Philosophy JTS Journal of the Tibet Society LTWA Library of Tibetan Works and Archives NGMPP Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project PIATS Proceedings of the Conference of the International Association of Tibetan Studies Abbreviated Tibetan Texts If the abbreviation consists of words from the title of the source, the abbreviation is italicised. The abbreviation usually goes back to words