Good evening. And good day to all of you around the world.
We are very happy to host Zim Pickens today,
who is a grad student in the South and Southeast Asian Studies Department at U.C. Berkeley and his dissertation,
which hopefully will see the end of the light at the end of this year.
Focuses on the history of relevance to 12th century Indian and Tibetan Buddhist preliminary practices.
The window into today he's going to talk about some parts of his upcoming dissertation that I am really eager to get my hands on.
And it's going to concern the rise of the Guru Yoga in 12th century Tibet.
Yeah. So I'm very happy to be here today and have a chance to finally share some of my dissertation research.
For the last couple of years. I'm just kind of after making a quick scan of the audience, I've drawn from a lot of your work and my own research.
So thank you. I'm very grateful for. I couldn't have done that without the foundation that you provided.
So the other topic for today is the rise of Guru Yoga in 12th century Tibet.
So just a kind of quick overview of some of my methodology, I guess.
So my research, as Daniel mentioned, is on the 11th is the 12th century Indian and Tibetan preliminary rights.
And I sort of I find the preliminary practice genre fascinating in Buddhist literature because on the one hand,
Buddhist authors are very explicit at times that preliminary practices can be done differently in a given time and place.
So there's a certain flexibility that is attributed to the Journal, and we'll see that an example of that in today's talk.
And personally, that's because they're just preliminary practices, right? So we can do them in different ways.
On the other hand, they have to come first, and there's a lot of emphasis on the necessity of doing preliminary practices.
And so I like the tension between those two ways of understanding the genre on the one hand.
They're just preliminary practices. They just report what follows, what comes after.
And then, on the other hand, they are important and necessary.
They need to be done in order to have success in later practice.
Okay. So the second point about innovation and ritual.
So that's a sort of broader theme that I'm exploring in today's talk.
Buddhist authors, even if they say preliminary practices, can be done differently from time to time.
They don't necessarily come out and say, well,
I'm just making up this particular ritual that's sort of frowned upon most of the time in Buddhist traditions.
So that raises the question, well, how does innovation happen in the rituals or how does the change happen in these types of practices?
And then the kind of gesture towards an answer.
One of the main topics we're going to look at today is how Buddhist authors use narrative and scripture to frame current Buddhist practice,
perhaps even innovative Buddhist practice as traditional. So we're going to look at a couple of examples of that coming up.
And a more specific question for today is how did you come to focus on the Tibetan Lama?
And then in introducing this particular question,
I thought it'd be appropriate to draw from a blog post made roughly ten years ago by Oxford, Oxford very own Robert Mair.
So Professor Mair raises this very same question.
In India, with the obvious exception of shocking only Buddha,
it seems that countryside and others aren't known or oriented towards historical figures.
They're more focussed on what is often is or contracted is.
Whereas in Tibet we have a whole collection of yoga rituals that are explicitly focussed on a human teacher in professor emeritus terms,
a human teacher who is identifiable in current or recent local history.
So that's the question that we'll talk about a little bit today of how how did this
shift happen where the guru kind of came into the focus in the ritual sphere,
and then we're going to gesture towards how did even the human lama come to come to the fore?
Okay. So this is the outline for today's talk. We're going to look at a few different genres of preliminary practices leading up to Guru Yoga.
So first is 50 verses on the Guru. And then another important genre is the foundational practices or other common practices.
Then we're going to zoom in on such a profound path of Guru Yoga.
And finally, we're going to finish with a little bit of a look at Harvard Report.
And then some of the cardiopulmonary practices, which also include greater.
So first 50 verses on the guru.
So for a long time this text was sort of attributed to Ashford Bhatia, and that's now just, you know, definitively been proven.
I mean, not the case. It was composed by Berkeley, Descartes, circa 10th century.
And as early as the 12th century, Tibetan commentators got into the back of school and told how far they had identified this author.
So and that's also been confirmed by Peter Schmeichel more recently.
All right. So this collection of practices, the punch card is a rather short text, mostly composed of bodily practices and social codes.
It's meant for a disciple living in or near a household of a late tantric guru.
So a lot of these. Bodily practices are relational practices for how to act in the presence of a guru.
So they include, you know, standing up when the guru stands up, not pointing feet towards the guru, not stepping on the guru's shadow.
For example, a lot of these social codes are drawn from earlier environments.
For example, the laws of manners. There's also conventions around how to speak in the presence of the guru.
You shouldn't launch into long, complicated narratives or things or tell, you know, boring anecdotes.
You should speak gently. You should use honorific terms of address.
So and there's even more proscriptions around making offerings to the guru, seeing the guru as the Buddha following the guru's commands.
So these are all important sort of contract principles that are outlined in this in this short medieval Indian manual.
So just I think it's worth mentioning passing the other bucket about this kind of collecting is codes and bodily practices.
And the he didn't really also he didn't make them up, of course, himself.
They're kind of circulating around India at the time, not just within Buddhism, but in lots of different traditions.
My interest in sort of why I'm using the 50 versus on the grill as a starting point is that towards the end of the text,
it sort of suggests that there's these modes of relating to a guru are and are themselves the preliminary stage of practice.
So in looking at versus 48 to 49, the texts suggest, okay, first give the triple refuge to a suitable disciple.
And then it says This service to the guru is then meant to be given as a daily recitation.
You know, it could also mean it's meant to be memorised.
In any case, it sort of plays this intermediate or preliminary stage between refuge and then receiving initiation or tantric initiation.
So that's sort of why I'm using it in this project as a sort of starting point for looking at tantric preliminaries,
especially ones that are focussed on the guru.
And then also because it took on such a prominent role in Tibetan religious culture in the 11th century.
So moving along to a second genre of practice, the foundational practices.
These were mostly written in the vicinity of because we consider the monastery in eastern India in the 11th and 12th centuries.
There's a number of these compendiums. So basically they're relatively concise collections of liturgical vows, contemplations and ritual practices.
In a lot of cases, it seems like they were meant for householders. They're done in a sort of very intensive period of practice.
And most of the compendium sort of this outline is one period of practice that starts in the morning and is completed in the evening.
In some cases. They were also probably done by monks.
Many of the authors are monks, but the emphasis on this text is that they're for householders in removal of wrong views is one prominent
example of this genre was written by Abi Vondra or my trip to the foundational practice compendium.
Then I'm going to talk about mostly today was. Written by an album Bhadra and it's called Light On.
The foundational practices are bit deeper and more specifically, I'm going to look at this one right that's really emphasised by this author.
So I know my mantra really prioritises this practice called the Guru Mandala,
and he introduces the practice with a number of exegetical remarks that sort of speak to its inclusion in this article.
Madonna. First, I just wanted to highlight the visualisation instructions for this Guru Mandala Right.
So it says in the middle of the mandala, imagine my scenario.
And then at the centre of that sits the venerable guru in the form of Mudra Sapphire, adorned with various ordinance.
So this is the sort of visualisation instructions for the practice, and it's different than many of the other.
Mandala writes in the article Madonna, insofar as it really specifically highlights the role of the guru at the centre of the ritual mandala.
So I'm not going to go too much more into the liturgy of the Guru Mandala itself,
but I am quite interested in the rhetorical or exegetical remarks that honorarium of idea uses to introduce this, right?
So I'm going to go through this a little slowly or sort of in depth just because I think
they present a very good case studies for how innovation can happen in the ritual sphere,
and how Buddhist authors sort of draw from the past scriptures to sort of account for a new way of performing a given practice.
So just to kind of reiterate, I don't think my body is kind of making up for the remainder of the practice,
but I do think it's prioritising in a way the other body karma.
Authors don't do. And then secondly, it's kind of arising as an important daily practice.
All right. So let's go through. I know, but my boundaries are immense for the good among the left and a step by step.
So it starts out by saying, well, you should actually do the girl mandala first before the other one, meaning the mandala.
And then. So you introduces this kind of. Dialogical kind of format where he introduces the hypothetical objections of an interlocutor.
So that is the sort of way that he introduces the room under the right.
So now the interlocutor says, Well, why is it that the government allows you to be done at the very beginning?
And I look at my Bhadra says, you know, he equates the guru with all the Buddha.
He says, The Buddha is the the guru is the Buddha.
The Guru is the Dharma. The guru is the song. So he's saying, okay, it's suitable to worship.
You're in the beginning because the guru has such an exalted status.
Now the interlocutor says, Yeah, well, I don't think so.
All of that was spoken by the Buddha to point out that the guru has the distinction of a great man.
But not to make a mandala. So he's kind of suggesting that Bhadra has taken some of these citations out of
context and that they might be used to sort of celebrate the Arabian Nights and,
you know, not and not to present this Guru Mandala. Right.
Incorrect, says Omnicom about Drew says the Buddha explains at length in the pilot trucker tantrum.
I wasn't able to find it there necessarily, but I should look into it a little bit more, the interlocutor says.
Well, maybe so, but that was actually just for the beginning of a practice.
Maybe in that case you should imagine the guru in the manner of a Buddha so that you have devotion when you're listening to the teachings.
And then again about Vajra says, No, it's not like that either.
And now he goes on a very long sort of passage that is meant to really emphasise that the Guru Mandala isn't just for restricted context,
it's not just for the beginning of a teaching or some other ritual context.
It's really supposed to be a daily practice in this article.
Madonna. I'm not going to read through this whole long citation,
but I highlighted the passages that come that are also found in the repertoire of the 50 verses on the Guru.
Just to give a little bit of an indication of how he how about his drawing from that text to make his case for the Guru Mandala?
In other words, he's drawing on the sin of social codes or bodily practices for relating to a guru in person.
But he's using them to support this idea of worshipping the guru in a ritual manner or in a ritual idiom.
So mostly he's really emphasising the need to make offerings to the guru, which was the topic in 50 verses.
But he's really saying the guru model does the best job of, you know, accomplishing that task.
And even sort of interspersed with the passages from the verses are shorter passages that sort of explain the Guru Mandala offering itself.
So finally, this will be our last slide with the key.
He picks the six perfections, you know, very well known sort of category of of Buddhist ethics and says,
well, those two are also fulfilled through performing the Guru Mandala.
So generosity of using the appropriate substances in the right cow dung mixed with
water morality is smearing the area with that patients is removing tiny bugs.
So each step in the ritual process. Fulfils one of these perfections.
And finally, he claims that having made this mandala of this age, these very six perfections are obtained again.
And this is the final sort of interjection from the interlocutor interlocutors as well.
Look at a little closely. You said having made the model of the stage is being used to designate,
but that's not quite right because what you're actually seeing is the Buddha mountain, not the Buddha.
It's not the model of the sage you're promoting. In other words, it's the model of the guru.
And finally, on top of that, my vajra draws from the 50 versus a final time and says,
just like it says there, to not draw any distinction whatsoever between the guru and Vadodara.
The Guru Mandala also brings about these very same qualities.
So just to kind of recap. He takes a lot from the city versus on the guru,
an earlier Indian Buddhist text and he uses these passages to support his presentation of the Guru monologue
as being a daily practice for imagining the guru at the centre of the mandala in the manner of a Buddha,
and using that as a way of making offerings.
So that's the Guru Mandala in a nutshell.
Now we'll move on in to Tibet into the 12th century.
Tibet in a text by a secular man named Sykap.
And it's a very famous lama. But he also wrote a less well-known text on Guru Yoga.
So it's called The Profound Path of Guru Yoga. And he's pictured here with his uncle.
He's going to be a prominent figure in this in this text, Robert Johnson.
Well, the soccer pundit's uncle and also his teacher or his woman.
So this is this will be the sort of second case study and.
In a similar way to I know if I'm about to suck up a little introduces the world through yoga, right?
With scriptural citations, with narratives, and also with autobiographical narratives.
So he introduces a lot of material before he actually talks about the the short practice itself.
So we're going to go through some of that. So he stuck up in the beginning with.
A series of scriptural citations that account for the importance of the guru on the path.
That was not controversial. But then the next he cites a number of index stories on the theme of seeing the Guru as a Buddha.
Even when engaged in transgressive acts. So for, you know, for for scholars of tantric Buddhism, these types of narratives are very well known.
But some of the politics going to draws on a number of them nonetheless.
So he talks about anecdotes and stories where a disciple or, you know, even just sort of want to be a disciple meets a guru.
But the guru isn't, you know, sitting on a throne and then teaching or talking about philosophy or talking about meditation.
They're doing more ordinary things, for example, like farming or taking care of horses, taking care of pigs, selling beer even.
He cites the famous example of not open to the open or open needs to love by, you know,
acting like a crazy person, killing fish and frying them, sitting on the river banks.
And so soccer, soccer pandita invokes all of these stories to it to sort of introduce the idea, well,
it's important to see the guru as a Buddha, even when they're engaged in such surprising behaviour.
In other words, just because they're acting sort of in unexpected ways,
but it's still incumbent on the disciple to really see them as a Buddha in a in a pure way.
And then he follows that sort of passage by introducing the idea of hardships as another sort
of well-known category where disciples sort of undertake a stage of relating to the guru,
where they follow their commands and even transgress ethical, you know,
ethical conduct or engage in different kinds of surprising behaviour themselves.
In following the commands of the guru. So check up on data frames.
This as a preliminary stage of practice that needs to be done for a certain period of time.
And again, he provides a number of different examples on this topic.
So for example, he says, nope, nope, followed around,
followed by for 12 years and did all kinds of difficult things and by a vadra undertook the superior conduct the luck pajiba for one year.
And it provides different examples of the hardships that were experienced by these disciples in following the commands of the guru,
even in many cases getting beaten or different physical hardships.
But he says this is important because it helps the disciple eventually receive the blessing from the guru.
And also he frames these blessings as being able to see the guru as a Buddha.
So just to sort of recap the sort of equation that is presenting competitors
saying what's very important to see the guru as a Buddha by in order to do so,
a disciple needs to undertake this very difficult series of hardships first.
Then a soccer player just switches to an autobiographical mode.
And this brings us right into the contemporary 12th century Tibet and the ritual practices of the monastery.
There's one really big difference, though,
unlike in the narrative citations where the girls are all engaged in transgressive behaviour, Jakob Anita has the opposite problem.
You can only see his uncle with, you know, and also who as llama Dr. Galton as his ordinary uncle.
So he's kind of stuck with this order and this perception of his uncle as an ordinary person.
But even as a young man, he says, I asked my uncle, John McLaughlin, to bestow the guru yoga.
Right, so I could see him as a Buddha. So here, this idea of seeing the guru of the Buddha is affected through ritual practice,
but it's not so easy at first sight, says I requested the lamas concentration for the yoga right when I was young.
And dropping out doesn't get better. At first, he says, you have not generated the perception of a Buddha.
You perceive your uncle meaning himself as an ordinary.
You perceive your ordinary uncle. You are unable to undergo hardship for the lama with body or wealth, and he did not bestow it.
So this is such a conundrum. He only can see his ordinary uncle.
Now drop that out and continue these days.
What is the use even of being beaten and struck by the Lama?
And the disciple holds a grudge if the Lama speaks one critical word or if given a single meal.
One is also angry, even becoming upset in regard behind those seats.
What's the point in discussing practising hardships for an entire year?
So you can almost imagine a sort of precocious Dr. Pandita coming to his uncle with some of these, you know,
inspiring anecdotes of past disciples being so diligent and sort of capable and is kind of dismissed by his uncle and says, you know,
some of these actually have a sort of sounds like someone with a little privilege within the institution,
someone who is being served and is getting instructions from the Lama directly in a, you know, mighty sitting, even on a high.
Steve So might even be have a more personal note for him.
But he also talked about loss of frames this passage by saying these days ten songs.
So this is one interesting passage for me insofar as.
We have a Buddhist author being attributed, you know, as saying, well, these things need to be done a little bit differently.
Let's not try to live up to the standards set by these, you know, citizens from India.
We may need to do things a little differently here in this time and place.
But incidentally, there's another in Dr. Dobson's commentary versus on the girl who uses this exact phrase.
Tom to you got quite a bit it's kind of one of his rhetorical refrains in that in that commentary so know somehow that gives a nice little flavour of
his the fact that it's also included here in the in the citations and kind of
a nice little touch in personal touch based on some of his other writings.
It seemed like he used that phrase quite a bit. So dropping out.
Nicholson give us a little bit of an out. He says, Well, you know, let's not even talk about doing hardships for a whole year,
but if you want to get the yoga right, how about serving me or the Lama for the duration of a month as an attendant?
So that says compromise and just to kind of follow the narrative for a little bit longer.
Sarcopenia just a little later on, a frightful side of death arose.
He was feeling sick. And then, coincidentally or so it seems, Dr. Johnson also was sick at this time.
Encyclopaedia to forget forgets about his own troubles and thanks to his uncle
for without any concern for food and sleep in this period for for a month,
the sort of designated period of time. And he says in this text, well,
it's through that some of my negative deeds were purified through that service to the Lama and then through graduate school yoga practice,
the perception of the master as the Buddha arose, and I saw him as the essence of all Buddhas.
So this is how the there's a lot more to the autobiographical narrative, but this is kind of the gist of it,
is that Dr. Gautam pretends to be sick, you know, which is a well-worn trope in Tibetan literature.
The Lama sort of acts in the way that's considered beneficial for the disciple and through through being able to serve.
His Uncle and lama for one month. And that is enough.
That's okay. Pandita can now receive the good yoga practice and that really effects the desired sort of transformation in how he sees his uncle.
In other words, before he saw him as an ordinary uncle.
And now it is as the Buddha. I'm on. Okay.
So at the end of the text. And it presents yoga as a daily practice.
Imagine that the Lama is inseparable from daily, such as Hey, the truck or some bar and so forth.
So that part of the text is quite short.
So just to sort of recap before moving on,
the need to also sort of introduces a rite for imagining the guru as a Buddha and and then so supplies a lot of narrative material and scriptural
citations that's presented as a traditional right of sorts or fulfilling this stage of necessary stage of practice and affecting this desire,
true transformation and how the Lama is perceived.
So he presents the guru of yoga as fulfilling some of these traditional goals in Buddhist practice,
even as he doesn't really account for the history of the rite itself.
So we can return to that point. And how are we doing for time then?
Okay. Just perfect. Okay. So the last stage here is parchment paper and the preliminary practices.
I decided to kind of look at Pagano dripper because a lot of the iconography is that used to depict madripoor
but pretty unique and it seems to introduce a lot of new tropes in Tibetan art in the 12th century,
probably early 13th century as well.
One particularly striking work is this Pugno Groupe Enviro China painting and art historian Christian Said states it may maybe late 12th century.
You know, it's hard to know for sure, but it employs a lot of the standard Indic iconography.
But then at the very top, Pablo Agrippa sitting on the top of the crown of the Indic Buddha via Otranto.
So that's one striking element from this painting.
A second one is the lineage of gurus that's on the top register.
Uh. Okay. We're going to sort of look there's Pugno and Rupa him.
So in the target material in the how you grew younger,
some of it seems a little more common to actually just imagine the lemon sort of
in the manner of a Buddha rather than as a degree more than manner of a Buddha.
And I think some of the material that surrounds the group is going to speak to that, that shift towards just kind of imagining lama as a Buddha.
In their own right. So here is the parliament report, environmental statement.
And then in this bottom corner, there is the detail of a devoted sort of looking, gazing of birds and viral trauma, perhaps even more dramatic.
And then from paratroopers versus a group, the. We have sort of a liturgical.
I'm a little hesitant to say equivalence, but it's, you know, some parallels with with this particular painted Tonka.
So, for example, the sort of imaginative evocation of the lineage assembly of the lineage of Buddhism and lamas together with the different Buddhas.
And then especially this key point here, that the dilemma is imagined in the form of a Buddha rather than being tied to a particular deity.
And then secondly, the visualisation and the impact of Japan's grew yoga right gets a little bit more complex,
but by the end of it it says, imagine the lama as mahabharat prana blazing, emanating blazing light.
So it's a little tentative, but I feel like there might be some connection between this yoga passage and the kind of unique punker itself.
Who sort of later works on Hollywood.
I do a lot with using his recognisable facial characteristics through his human iconography, especially his bulbous nose and his thin black beard.
You can see it really well on this statue, and it's mixed with, you know, traditional stand or standard ways of depicting the Buddha.
So we have the urn and he's sitting with the earth, touching moonrise dry, sitting on a lotus throne.
So all of these tropes are sort of mixing the image of a human, a recognisable Tibetan lama with tropes for depicting the Buddha.
And that kind of gets more and more practised in other clunkers and later paintings as well,
of kind of thinking of grief as the interesting case study for looking at how
Tibetan lamas started to become increasingly portrayed as Buddhas themselves,
so to speak. Just to kind of wrap up a couple, I'm just going to kind of share a couple of short passages from.
Kind of guru yoga liturgies. I mean, again, these passages sort of exemplify the idea that maybe it's okay just to sort of imagine.
The Lama songs did just kind of in and of themselves.
And in these passages, the Lamas really imagined as this sort of all encompassing figure,
where every every other object of Buddhist worship sort of gets drawn into the singular lama.
So here we have an example of that. The Lama sits on the throne in this sort of imaginative yoga practice,
but then all the lineage of Lamas and Buddhism builds up and the collection of it is all sort of dissolve into the body speech and mind of that lama.
So that and another passage uses this term like gathering into one.
So the lama in these meditation instructions is really imagined as a sort of singular figure that encompasses all other objects of worship.
So this particular text is attributed to Lama Song.
Imagine that the Lama is in particular the essence of all the Koku Lamas.
And then the interesting kind of passage here where there's kind of a branding happening where he's like,
well, in other traditions they they rely on Bodhisattva for doing compassion practice.
But here we rely on the Lama and acting in that way, if one asks what qualities of that target are present,
it is said the Buddha of the three times, the Dharma Sangha and so forth, are entirely.
You can see it in the Lama, relying upon the Lama.
All these sources of refuge arise. So just to kind of wrap up,
I thought it was kind of kind of a neat example to my to my mind that the guru of mandala a right in which the guru as a man and as
the address of the author on the above address states that that guru is equal to all the Buddha and that the guru is the Buddha.
You know, that one is also the Dharma and Sangha.
So in that context, I know that my Vajra uses these kinds of doctrinal or scriptural citations to really emphasise that.
It's perfectly fine to imagine the guru as a Buddha, you know, as Vajra software, in other words.
So but then here in the 12th century, Tibet, we see lama following using these very similar ideas,
namely that the guru is equal to the Buddha's or the Lama is equal to all the Buddha as and Obama is, you know, good at the Sangha.
He uses these same kind of spiritual ideas to kind of.
Let go of your software, so to speak. So now we don't even need that.
You know, this idea of seeing the Lama as indic Buddha anymore.
So let's you know, the Lama alone is perfectly adequate support for a confessional practice.
So I think that's a kind of just a kind of a representative example of how Buddhist scripture can be used in sort of even in this case,
sort of parallel ways, but also to accomplish different purposes.
And finally, I just thought it had been nice as a sort of starting point for the discussion.
What what is the broader significance of the focus on the Tibetan lama and the yoga right and other pulmonary practices?
In other words,
who cares or what what what are what are the stakes in sort of using Tibetan iconography as opposed to indic iconography in in ritual practices?
Well, I think, you know, one very obvious conclusion is that this was a way for Tibetans to sort of, you know,
make Buddhism their own or sort of put a Tibetan face on some of these introductory or preliminary ritual practices.
That was sort of mark sort of the entry point or the participation in sort of these
distinct Tibetan traditions that are emerging during this 12th century period.
So that's my side show, and I'm hoping we can have a nice discussion after that.