1 00:00:15,760 --> 00:00:21,080 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So welcome, everybody to the fourth talk in our Padmasambhava, Ludhiana and Tibet seminar series. 2 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:28,760 We've got a wonderful line up this term still to come to San Francisco Dylan Esler, Dorjee Wangchuk and Luis Doni. 3 00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:33,520 You can find details on our website with abstracts and so on. 4 00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:37,640 But today we're really delighted to be able to introduce Professor Ben Bogan. 5 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:45,880 Benjamin Bogan is a scholar of Himalayan Buddhism. He's associate professor at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. 6 00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:53,120 He writes and teaches on the intersections of biographical literature, sacred geography, and visual art in Himalayan cultures. 7 00:00:54,480 --> 00:01:02,420 He's the author of The Illuminated Life of the Great Yamada, published by India 2013, and the co-editor, with Andrew Quitman, 8 00:01:02,900 --> 00:01:06,940 of Himalayan Passages Tibetan and Nahua Studies in Honour of Hubert de Clare, 9 00:01:07,780 --> 00:01:12,620 published by Wisdom Publications in 2014, and with Ariana mackey and Rachel Seligman. 10 00:01:13,540 --> 00:01:18,500 Forms of Awakening Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection, published by Delmonico Books, 2025. 11 00:01:20,100 --> 00:01:28,820 And I should add, Ben has also spent many years researching Padmasambhava, his famous Pure Land, the glorious copper coloured mountain. 12 00:01:29,940 --> 00:01:31,340 Over the last ten years or more, 13 00:01:31,780 --> 00:01:38,060 he's probably some extremely valuable journal articles that have been our most important and respected academic resources on the subject. 14 00:01:39,100 --> 00:01:43,180 Now he's also preparing for publication an entire book on a glorious copper coloured mountain, 15 00:01:43,940 --> 00:01:49,220 which is eagerly anticipated by all scholars of the Nimoy's school in particular, and of Tibetan Buddhism in general. 16 00:01:50,700 --> 00:01:54,460 So it's really a great privilege to be able to hear Ben talk on this important topic today. 17 00:01:55,700 --> 00:01:58,180 Ben, thank you so much for coming. And over to you. 18 00:01:59,630 --> 00:02:07,390 Thanks so much, Rob, for that very kind introduction and for the invitation to participate in this webinar series. 19 00:02:08,430 --> 00:02:14,150 It's an amazing Line-Up of scholars, many of whom I've relied on in my own research, 20 00:02:14,550 --> 00:02:18,990 and I very much look forward to the upcoming seminars in the series. 21 00:02:20,630 --> 00:02:25,110 And thank you to everyone for joining today. I always find lecturing on zoom challenging, 22 00:02:25,830 --> 00:02:32,350 as I'm more accustomed to the face to face interaction that we have in seminars and conferences and meetings, 23 00:02:33,470 --> 00:02:42,710 but it really is meaningful to me that you've decided to take some time from your day to listen to my thoughts about the songbook, 24 00:02:43,550 --> 00:02:45,670 about the copper coloured mountain. As Rob mentioned, 25 00:02:46,030 --> 00:02:55,990 I've been working on this topic for a number of years and have a book that should be coming out in the near future devoted to the subject. 26 00:02:57,190 --> 00:03:01,970 And I'm going to share today some parts of that work. 27 00:03:02,890 --> 00:03:07,810 Some of them are related to some of the journal articles that Rob mentioned that I've previously published. 28 00:03:09,010 --> 00:03:16,690 And to take advantage of zoom, some of those articles dealt with visual materials that I was not able to include in the article. 29 00:03:17,170 --> 00:03:24,290 So zoom gives us an opportunity to really immerse ourselves in the visual world that's so central to this tradition. 30 00:03:24,810 --> 00:03:34,050 So in some cases, I'll be speaking about research that I published in journal articles, but together with the visual supplement. 31 00:03:35,090 --> 00:03:39,730 And then there's other material from the book that I have not yet published that I want to share today. 32 00:03:40,570 --> 00:03:46,650 So to begin, I thought I would just read a little from the introduction to the book to talk about the overall project. 33 00:03:47,610 --> 00:03:55,290 I introduced the broader project, and then I'll speak more informally about a couple of aspects from that project as a whole. 34 00:03:56,130 --> 00:04:04,270 So, um. So, uh, this is a book about encountering Padmasambhava. 35 00:04:05,630 --> 00:04:10,750 His footprints, relics, stories, images, caves, paintings, 36 00:04:11,790 --> 00:04:21,470 songs and ritual practices over the past 20 years at sites across the Himalayas associated with the figure known as the Second Buddha. 37 00:04:23,350 --> 00:04:27,070 I encountered his presence in the words and actions of his many worshippers. 38 00:04:28,430 --> 00:04:34,470 My interest in Padmasambhava grew over time as I came to see the tremendous diversity of his identity. 39 00:04:35,390 --> 00:04:41,790 I realised how the glimpses of the figure that I happened upon deeply challenged my presumptions about Buddhism. 40 00:04:42,790 --> 00:04:47,950 As my exploration of the figure of Padmasambhava shifted from the places associated with 41 00:04:48,110 --> 00:04:53,390 him in the Himalayas to the vast textual archive of Tibetan literature devoted to him. 42 00:04:53,910 --> 00:05:01,280 I've grown to appreciate more fully, both his unquestionable centrality to the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, 43 00:05:02,200 --> 00:05:09,520 and the challenge that the study of such figure of such a figure poses to the academic study of Buddhism. 44 00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:17,280 The sheer quantity and variety of textual sources, from literary genres as diverse as historical narratives, 45 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:25,480 philosophical treatises, poetic compositions, liturgical texts, and contemplative guidebooks forms a daunting edifice. 46 00:05:26,640 --> 00:05:32,680 However, as essential as textual research is, and this remains my primary means of approach to the topic, 47 00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:39,080 this often offers only a pale and hollow approximation of the figure of Padmasambhava. 48 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:43,880 There's also the artistic, architectural, and ritual embodiments of Padmasambhava, 49 00:05:44,760 --> 00:05:51,640 and the diverse contexts where his image is shaped by social, historical, institutional, and personal elements. 50 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:59,140 Padmasambhava Importance as the mythologised founder of Tibetan Buddhism is difficult to overstate. 51 00:06:00,980 --> 00:06:04,460 The paucity of scholarly research devoted to him is stunning. 52 00:06:05,940 --> 00:06:12,020 This book has two goals. First, it seeks to advance our knowledge of the role of Padmasambhava in Himalayan Buddhism, 53 00:06:12,620 --> 00:06:18,420 and second, it seeks to appreciate the diverse range of cultural practices surrounding him. 54 00:06:20,740 --> 00:06:24,820 The starting point of these two journeys is his extraordinary palace. 55 00:06:26,060 --> 00:06:35,380 Padmasambhava is said to dwell even today in the palace of Lotus Light that sits atop the peak of the copper coloured mountain, 56 00:06:36,100 --> 00:06:45,260 a place described both as a pure land, dark base, Shinken like Amitabha s famous Land of Bliss devotion and as a tantric Paradise 57 00:06:46,060 --> 00:06:53,280 inhabited by once ferocious man eating demons now tamed by the Buddhist teachings. 58 00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:58,280 This imagined world has attracted relatively little attention. 59 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:07,720 I might mention one exceptional exception to that is this lovely book by George Celsius and Christina Padalecki. 60 00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:12,520 The copper coloured mountain, which focuses on signalling prayer for rebirth. 61 00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:18,000 There is a recent publication and there are also some publications from Bhutan 62 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:24,600 on the extraordinary murals and Temple Copper Kaliamman Temple in Bhutan. 63 00:07:24,960 --> 00:07:28,480 That's a photographic book with wonderful material. Um. 64 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:37,400 This may be the relative lack of attention to the copper coloured mountain. 65 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:44,600 Maybe because Padmasambhava palace challenges biases endemic to the study of religion in general and of Buddhism in particular, 66 00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:48,280 the assumed dichotomy between elite and popular religion, 67 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:54,490 the classification of religious traditions according to sect or schools such as Tantric Buddhism versus Pure Land Buddhism. 68 00:07:55,370 --> 00:08:01,810 And the almost exclusive reliance upon doctrine as the ultimate source of religious authority. 69 00:08:02,850 --> 00:08:08,090 The traditions surrounding the copper coloured Mountain challenge all of these categories and demand a method that 70 00:08:08,370 --> 00:08:15,530 renounces the search for some abstract form of religious meaning that can be extracted from the messiness of human lives. 71 00:08:16,370 --> 00:08:21,010 Texts, images, and rituals are neither created nor understood in isolation. 72 00:08:21,970 --> 00:08:29,250 They participate in a sophisticated cultural system, where meanings are shaped and reshaped by shared visions of a historical event, 73 00:08:30,170 --> 00:08:33,130 of the death of a family member, of the building of a road. 74 00:08:34,290 --> 00:08:39,010 In the pages that follow, I attempt to connect many different visions of the copper coloured mountain, 75 00:08:39,690 --> 00:08:43,330 noting how they differ and what they share in this process. 76 00:08:44,850 --> 00:08:49,370 The theme of death and separation has emerged as a central concern. 77 00:08:50,410 --> 00:08:55,550 The grief Voiced by disciples who watched Padmasambhava fly off to the southwest, 78 00:08:56,670 --> 00:09:03,990 the sorrowful longing of prayers for rebirth and the fulfilment of that longing found in the visions of the treasure, 79 00:09:04,390 --> 00:09:10,270 reveals who journeyed to the copper coloured mountain. But what is the object of this longing? 80 00:09:11,430 --> 00:09:18,430 In many ways, the copper coloured mountain provides a mirror, reflecting Tibet's own myth of itself. 81 00:09:19,470 --> 00:09:26,350 The land of demons, tamed by the great guru on the rocky slopes of the copper coloured mountain. 82 00:09:27,350 --> 00:09:33,870 The defining act in the drama of Tibet is played out eternally and perfectly. 83 00:09:35,510 --> 00:09:43,190 It is almost as if Padmasambhava became so intimately identified with the idea of Tibet that when he left, 84 00:09:43,870 --> 00:09:49,230 he took the real Tibet with him to the distant land of Rupa. 85 00:09:50,600 --> 00:10:02,080 Longing for this lost Tibet. Those left behind gain a fleeting glimpse through fragmentary reflections in the mountains of the Himalayan plateau, 86 00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:05,320 in the dreams of Padmasambhava children, 87 00:10:06,040 --> 00:10:13,120 and in the melodies of the recited prayers that will guide them to the copper coloured mountain at the moment of death. 88 00:10:14,760 --> 00:10:22,120 The copper coloured mountain is not the memory of a lost golden age, or the hope for a future perfect world. 89 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:33,520 Although it is both of those things, it is a kind of parallel universe, another, better Tibet, present in the here and now. 90 00:10:35,520 --> 00:10:41,800 So I go on from there to describe the outline of the book and the various chapters, 91 00:10:43,120 --> 00:10:51,340 and I'll spare you the reading of that outline, but I wanted to frame the overall project within these these broader concerns, 92 00:10:52,100 --> 00:10:56,060 in part because they are somewhat different, I think, 93 00:10:56,420 --> 00:11:04,220 than many of the other approaches to thinking about Padmasambhava that we've heard so far in this webinar series, and that we'll hear ahead. 94 00:11:05,340 --> 00:11:12,380 I, as fascinated as I am in the questions surrounding the historicity and the 95 00:11:13,460 --> 00:11:16,700 text that we may attribute to an eighth century figure known as Padmasambhava. 96 00:11:18,060 --> 00:11:22,820 My research has focussed much more squarely on Guru Rinpoche, 97 00:11:23,380 --> 00:11:32,460 as he developed in Tibetan cultural history after the writings of General Nima and the other Tibetans, 98 00:11:33,220 --> 00:11:43,820 who were not really concerned in the same way as we are with uncovering fragments in Dunhuang manuscripts and elsewhere. 99 00:11:44,500 --> 00:11:48,560 So this project has really come from, as I mentioned, 100 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:58,600 encounters with the centrality of guruma to Tibetan Buddhism in Himalayan communities in the world today, 101 00:11:59,080 --> 00:12:10,200 and as opposed to a project that's more narrowly defined by philological and historical concerns. 102 00:12:11,680 --> 00:12:17,440 That said, I use many of the same tools and methods to try to trace this cultural history. 103 00:12:18,960 --> 00:12:25,000 And here I'm going to focus particularly on the work that I've done, 104 00:12:25,560 --> 00:12:33,320 reading various accounts left by Tibetan travellers who travelled to the copper coloured mountain. 105 00:12:33,800 --> 00:12:42,920 And this is almost a requisite for the writings of a treasure revealer that at some point in their life 106 00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:50,250 story they experience and describe an encounter with Gorham directly at the copper coloured mountain. 107 00:12:51,450 --> 00:13:01,090 Um, so, um, I mentioned that aside from the textual tradition, I'm very much interested in the visual record, 108 00:13:01,490 --> 00:13:04,650 in Tonka paintings, in three dimensional sculptures, in architecture. 109 00:13:05,450 --> 00:13:11,930 This is a famous, uh, copper coloured mountain temple at Katok Dorji Den in eastern Tibet. 110 00:13:12,850 --> 00:13:15,650 Um, that is representative of that tradition. 111 00:13:16,930 --> 00:13:25,650 Um, and, um, these of the dozens of different accounts of journeys to the copper coloured mountain that I have, 112 00:13:26,490 --> 00:13:35,450 uh, studied, by far the most detailed is the one found in the writings of Cougar Lingpa. 113 00:13:36,290 --> 00:13:46,590 And, uh, we are very lucky in this case that this textual record is accompanied by a Talk. 114 00:13:46,910 --> 00:13:50,910 A painting that was composed at the precise time of the composition. 115 00:13:51,630 --> 00:13:59,350 So just a little backstory. And this is a shared this in the past, but it's the happiest accident of my scholarly career, 116 00:13:59,790 --> 00:14:05,110 so I like to rejoice in the memory of it from time to time, as I was becoming interested in this subject. 117 00:14:06,070 --> 00:14:07,790 One day I visited the Rubin Museum of Art, 118 00:14:08,670 --> 00:14:16,950 which is already dearly missed since it closed its doors and looking through storage there with Catherine Selig Brown, 119 00:14:17,230 --> 00:14:20,870 who was at the time a curator, I came across this depiction of the song. 120 00:14:22,150 --> 00:14:29,910 It was very, very different from the standard representations that I was more accustomed to seeing. 121 00:14:30,430 --> 00:14:36,950 And as I was looking at it, it happened that Jeff, the very knowledgeable art historian, 122 00:14:37,390 --> 00:14:40,550 was walking by and I said, Jeff, do you know anything about this painting? 123 00:14:40,870 --> 00:14:44,430 Can you help me understand? You know, it's such a different depiction. 124 00:14:45,370 --> 00:14:53,290 And he said, well, it must be the very particular vision of one particular territory, but which territory it would be? 125 00:14:53,490 --> 00:15:00,010 There's no way we can ever know. Like, how would we be able to find out? He said, you just have to look into a reading. 126 00:15:01,130 --> 00:15:08,530 That summer I was travelling in Tibet and at Zhongshan Monastery at Kinzie le Prang I saw this painting, 127 00:15:09,010 --> 00:15:16,530 which is the same composition, and I immediately recognised it and I thought, um, wow, here's another version of that same painting. 128 00:15:17,530 --> 00:15:23,090 And I asked the monks who were showing us around, do you happen to know anything about this painting? 129 00:15:23,490 --> 00:15:26,890 You know, do you know where it was from? And they said, well, we don't really know. 130 00:15:27,370 --> 00:15:31,610 It's, uh, beyond that, I'm not sure. 131 00:15:32,130 --> 00:15:34,730 They said, let's look on the back and they turned it around. 132 00:15:35,770 --> 00:15:42,250 And if you can see, uh, up in this little right hand corner, there's a small patch sewn into that corner. 133 00:15:42,930 --> 00:15:51,940 And if you look at it closely, it very helpfully identifies the name of the painter Tashi Wang from Ruo J. 134 00:15:52,500 --> 00:15:56,540 J. Tashi Wang um as the painter. And then it tells you the subject. 135 00:15:57,100 --> 00:16:00,700 Chuckling Senang uh. Goba. 136 00:16:01,140 --> 00:16:07,380 Right. So this is, uh, a depiction of Zhang, according to the visions of Lingpa. 137 00:16:07,900 --> 00:16:14,740 So, uh, with this, I was able to then go through Nam and, um, 138 00:16:15,580 --> 00:16:22,180 find a passage where he describes his visionary journey to the copper coloured mountain, and it matches up absolutely. 139 00:16:23,260 --> 00:16:27,260 Precisely. Scene by scene, uh, throughout the entire painting. 140 00:16:28,100 --> 00:16:34,700 Uh, so one of the articles that Rob mentioned that I published about this was a study of a part of that account, but there were no images there. 141 00:16:34,860 --> 00:16:40,420 So I wanted to spend a little time looking at the actual Tonga painting and describing it as well. 142 00:16:41,380 --> 00:16:49,400 So this, combines elements that we find in many, many different accounts of visionary journeys to copper clad mountains. 143 00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:56,320 So in the book, I translate this account and offer a commentary. 144 00:16:56,920 --> 00:17:02,720 It's the most sort of detailed explanation of the journey, and it really is an extraordinary text. 145 00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:09,040 And we're so fortunate to have these images preserved. I'll just mention that in the colophon to the text. 146 00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:17,960 Um, Shoghi Lingpa describes that, uh, after he returned from this, uh, visionary journey, 147 00:17:18,840 --> 00:17:30,520 he immediately sketched what he had seen, and he summoned painters and asked them to paint, according to his sketch. 148 00:17:31,280 --> 00:17:32,520 Uh, exactly his vision. 149 00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:42,900 And, um, uh, he was able to find, uh, patron to sponsor copies of this painting being made and distributed to all of the monasteries in calm. 150 00:17:43,420 --> 00:17:52,820 So the fact that, you know, I stumbled across two of them, we can trace that directly back to this action of Kruger Lingpa himself, 151 00:17:53,300 --> 00:17:58,140 right, in the 19th century, that that he, um, after the vision sketched it. 152 00:17:58,300 --> 00:18:04,740 He also mentions that when the painters completed the painting, he made corrections in his own hand to to areas that he thought needed correction. 153 00:18:05,260 --> 00:18:05,260 Right. 154 00:18:05,660 --> 00:18:19,140 So this depicts the the beginning of the visionary journey when he's invited, um, by, uh, Gramsci's messengers, who appear as a group of five deacons. 155 00:18:20,380 --> 00:18:28,660 He is in meditation at uh, the hut known as karma, um, in Nang chan. 156 00:18:28,980 --> 00:18:35,020 And, uh, early in the morning during his retreat, he hears music, smells incense, 157 00:18:35,620 --> 00:18:41,950 and sees through the mist of dawn, these five dakini flying towards his meditation hut. 158 00:18:42,310 --> 00:18:48,390 They explained to him that they've been sent by Padmasambhava, and that he's invited to come visit him at the copper coloured mountain. 159 00:18:49,670 --> 00:19:01,430 They ask him to sit on this crossed vajra, which you can see the detail depicted here as he sits in lotus posture across atop the crossed vajra, 160 00:19:01,990 --> 00:19:07,950 that they then lift up and start his flight towards the copper coloured mountain. 161 00:19:08,750 --> 00:19:10,950 As they're flying in the text it describes. 162 00:19:12,270 --> 00:19:18,990 They're flying across the landscape and he will see something from high above, like looking down from an aeroplane. 163 00:19:19,430 --> 00:19:25,390 And [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] say to the Dakini in a very kind of colloquial language. 164 00:19:26,990 --> 00:19:31,430 He keeps asking like, what's that over there? What's what's over there? And they explained to him. 165 00:19:32,030 --> 00:19:36,790 They say, oh, that is Samye Samaya Monastery. And, uh, he, um, 166 00:19:37,510 --> 00:19:42,490 as someone who spent his entire life in Qom at this point is delighted to be able 167 00:19:42,690 --> 00:19:48,970 to see it and so many of the sacred sites of Central Tibet he sees from above. 168 00:19:49,810 --> 00:19:58,450 He describes seeing the Five Peak mountain. In the article, I talk about some of the complexity around the geography and the location of these areas, 169 00:19:58,890 --> 00:20:03,410 but here I'll just mention that this is one part where he asks the dakini. 170 00:20:04,010 --> 00:20:07,770 He says, I'd really like to go down there to talk. 171 00:20:08,810 --> 00:20:18,490 Could we go, you know, can we get down for a moment? So they, um, they make a landing en route and he gathers soil from the earth there. 172 00:20:18,730 --> 00:20:26,370 So this is, um, uh, something that I see as a very interesting convergence of, uh, 173 00:20:26,570 --> 00:20:35,810 neoclassic literature and the actual, uh, conduct of pilgrimage in Tibet, um, mixed into this visionary journey. 174 00:20:36,170 --> 00:20:40,190 So there's no question that, uh, he's travelling in an extraordinary way, 175 00:20:40,550 --> 00:20:47,390 and yet he's still interested with the materiality of the earth, of the sacred sites and gathering some of it to bring back with him. 176 00:20:48,350 --> 00:20:53,310 Um, the geography gets more confusing and mixed as he leaves Tibet. 177 00:20:54,390 --> 00:21:00,310 And this is the spot here where they landed at Doc missionary. 178 00:21:01,070 --> 00:21:11,910 Then the sites of Buddhist India that are known um from a distance in 19th century Kham appear so Niranjan a river, 179 00:21:12,190 --> 00:21:17,310 of course, where Siddhartha had spent the years in fasting. 180 00:21:18,390 --> 00:21:21,950 Um. And that is then connected with Udayana itself. Um. 181 00:21:22,150 --> 00:21:32,710 And he identifies Udayana as being sort of located at the margins of Buddhist India. 182 00:21:33,830 --> 00:21:41,000 And he also identifies the Sindhu River, and that they have to cross that by a bridge in order to reach Chamunda. 183 00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:47,680 So one of the other articles that Rob referenced was an article I published in 184 00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:53,080 Himalaya Journal that looks at the location of the copper coloured mountain. 185 00:21:53,360 --> 00:21:56,320 And there's a chapter in the book that's a sort of expansion of that, 186 00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:01,560 considering all of these questions about geography and cosmology and how they come to 187 00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:06,120 be sort of mixed together in these different accounts of attempts to to locate that. 188 00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,360 But this detail from the painting highlights that very well. 189 00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:23,960 Right. Um, in terms of the narrative of the journey, they are prevented from crossing over the bridge from Udayana to comradeship by the, uh, 190 00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:36,200 the guard, the bridge, uh, guard, the sampan, uh, and, um, the Dakini need to make a sort of a payment to him in order to let them cross. 191 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:44,220 There's an interesting dialogue and interaction there. Um, before they get access, um, here's the bridge itself to enabling or. 192 00:22:45,740 --> 00:22:53,300 Um, and then in the painting it depicts what are called these 13 uh, sinu, the lands of the Rakshasas. 193 00:22:54,100 --> 00:23:01,620 And, uh, this is a fascinating aspect of the text where we get what I sort of refer to as an otherworld ethnography. 194 00:23:02,780 --> 00:23:11,820 Uh, he describes for each of these 13 lands, the architecture, the diet of the inhabitants, um, and their different activities. 195 00:23:12,340 --> 00:23:20,780 And these are all different forms of, of Rakshasa, um, who have been, uh, tamed by Padmasambhava when, when he lands there. 196 00:23:21,220 --> 00:23:25,500 So here is this nice detail of ascending up the mountain, 197 00:23:26,020 --> 00:23:33,380 finally moving up to the innermost part of the mountain along the Chandra Salam, the secret path of the Dakini, uh, 198 00:23:33,620 --> 00:23:42,990 and finally outside of the palace of Lotus Light itself is where they first encounter the retinue of Padmasambhava, 199 00:23:43,910 --> 00:23:50,310 and then at four temples in the four cardinal directions around the palace of Lotus Light. 200 00:23:51,150 --> 00:23:56,670 The four tantric activities are being performed by the most important figures from Nyingma history, 201 00:23:57,070 --> 00:24:06,230 so he names the various lamas and Tibetan who are engaged in the four activities um around, 202 00:24:06,750 --> 00:24:15,790 and this culminates in a charm performance that is able to join in in the wrathful section. 203 00:24:16,270 --> 00:24:25,070 So here is the the Palace of Lotus Light itself. Um, really, when we're talking about the copper coloured mountain as a pure land, 204 00:24:25,750 --> 00:24:31,950 uh, it might be more accurate, really, to talk about Pema itself as the place where, 205 00:24:32,830 --> 00:24:37,490 uh, Padmasambhava resides and as the Buddha, and that the copper coloured mountain is really the setting, 206 00:24:37,810 --> 00:24:42,250 the environment within which the palace itself is there. 207 00:24:42,490 --> 00:24:50,570 And in this particular vision of the palace, on the three floors, there are three different events taking place on the ground floor. 208 00:24:51,290 --> 00:24:57,410 Padmasambhava explains connections between sutra and tantra in many other representations, particularly in the temples. 209 00:24:58,090 --> 00:25:06,010 The ground floor is where you see a form of guruma representing the um tulku form, the Nikaya form. 210 00:25:06,890 --> 00:25:11,370 Um, in the centre here you have, uh, Guru Padmasambhava teaching again. 211 00:25:12,290 --> 00:25:19,570 Uh, this is more frequently, uh, where you encounter Ken Sieg as the lone Ku or the Sambuca Kai form. 212 00:25:19,930 --> 00:25:24,850 And then on the top floor here we have the five skull garlanded precious gurus. 213 00:25:25,570 --> 00:25:31,490 This is often Amitabha, representing the tulku, the Dharmakaya form, um, on this. 214 00:25:32,130 --> 00:25:36,390 So, um, the. I'll just pause for a moment here. 215 00:25:37,110 --> 00:25:40,230 Uh, the all of these different journeys. 216 00:25:41,390 --> 00:25:46,070 They have various amounts of detail about the travel to the copper coloured mountain, 217 00:25:46,470 --> 00:25:52,590 and there's a various ways of describing what happens when you actually arrive at the copper coloured mountain. 218 00:25:53,150 --> 00:25:58,670 So Sugarland is the one that I've already published about, and it's the most detailed, 219 00:25:59,990 --> 00:26:07,990 but I want to highlight quickly three other versions out of the dozens that I've looked at. 220 00:26:08,390 --> 00:26:16,310 One is of great interest and importance because it's one of the earliest, and this is found in the writings of Guru Tulku Wangchuk, 221 00:26:17,390 --> 00:26:28,590 the very important 13th century um successor to Niagara in terms of the project of the Apotheosis of Guru Rinpoche. 222 00:26:29,870 --> 00:26:43,280 And here in particular is a text. This is the version from the Bach Collection that is known as the Black Hat biography, 223 00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:50,600 and that is together with the Nilam Karma, the White Horse Dream. 224 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:57,840 This is also the same text is found within this published version from 1979. 225 00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:04,200 That is. And here it's called the Chuong Nam dilemma. 226 00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:06,520 Right. So the dream biography. 227 00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:18,320 Um, and part of what's very interesting about Guru Chung's version is that it very much emphasises that this takes place in dream, um, and the, 228 00:27:19,360 --> 00:27:27,520 uh, the text, I think, raises very interesting questions about the relationship between dream and reality and visionary experience itself. 229 00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:35,540 So the two different versions that I mentioned, the VDC version and the printed version. 230 00:27:36,620 --> 00:27:44,060 I have there's an interesting discrepancy which you know, we could be making too much out of a scribal error, 231 00:27:44,820 --> 00:27:58,740 but I find it quite interesting that in one in the manuscript we have this line of, um, uh, Muslim. 232 00:28:00,300 --> 00:28:06,260 Muslim. Right. So, um, it was, you know, uh, actual or a dream. 233 00:28:07,140 --> 00:28:12,260 Um, and then in the block print version, we have Mustang Milan. 234 00:28:12,900 --> 00:28:17,500 So this is describing the contents of the entire text. 235 00:28:18,260 --> 00:28:26,540 Um, and already we see some ambiguity around the relationship between something being actual and something being a dream. 236 00:28:27,140 --> 00:28:35,880 That's an ambiguity that Guru Chong as an author really explores and plays with in the way that he writes about this. 237 00:28:36,120 --> 00:28:44,040 So in his account, he begins the dream by saying that there are two different dreams he's going to describe. 238 00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:51,800 In the first dream, he's describing, um, the his actual family home where he lives. 239 00:28:52,320 --> 00:29:04,000 And in the dream, he's on the rooftop of the home and he describes, um, uh, moving down into the main living space. 240 00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,560 So the ground floor is for animals. The second floor is where the family lives. 241 00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:18,760 And he describes coming into that space, and he describes in detail the coverings of the windows, the items that are on the shrine. 242 00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:26,600 But all of this is described with the sort of wonder of a dream experience and some kind of ambiguity. 243 00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:35,930 He's not quite sure exactly what's happening, but he's describing his his own home, and I find it very interesting. 244 00:29:36,530 --> 00:29:39,890 At first I was really puzzled about what is this doing in this account. 245 00:29:40,330 --> 00:29:44,930 And there's a way in which I think the attention and the description, 246 00:29:45,930 --> 00:29:54,570 this dreamlike description of the mundane environment of his everyday reality is a very powerful but 247 00:29:54,930 --> 00:30:03,650 subtle way of sort of dislodging our unquestioned assumption in the veracity of the empirical world. 248 00:30:04,210 --> 00:30:12,290 He's actually making the ordinary day to day world seem very uncertain and dreamlike. 249 00:30:12,850 --> 00:30:18,970 And then in the second dream, when he shifts into similar to juggling but being invited, and there when he travels to Samaya, 250 00:30:19,370 --> 00:30:28,130 he has a direct encounter with Guru Dorothy Drusilla, who is the sort of gatekeeper to his journey to the copper coloured mountain. 251 00:30:28,770 --> 00:30:31,910 There he describes everything in a very different way, 252 00:30:32,510 --> 00:30:37,430 with much more sort of solidity and a matter of fact ness about everything that's being experienced. 253 00:30:38,150 --> 00:30:45,390 So the way that we might normally associate the narrative style of a description of our 254 00:30:45,910 --> 00:30:51,830 everyday surroundings that's challenged by this dreamlike experience of his own space, 255 00:30:52,230 --> 00:30:58,430 and then the precision and certainty with which he describes the dream experience gives a lot of power to that. 256 00:30:59,230 --> 00:31:07,430 Um, and this carries over throughout his journey into his actual experiences at the copper coloured mountain. 257 00:31:08,430 --> 00:31:14,230 Um, another account is from, uh, quite a bit later, the 17th century. 258 00:31:14,990 --> 00:31:19,550 Um, and this is in George's, um, writings. 259 00:31:20,470 --> 00:31:28,290 Um, and this is, uh, another very detailed account of a journey to the Copper Mountain. 260 00:31:28,610 --> 00:31:36,010 And here in my reading of this particular version, I'm primarily interested in two things that really stand out to me. 261 00:31:36,210 --> 00:31:42,370 One is the emphasis on the role of Yoshitsugu as central to the entire tradition. 262 00:31:42,850 --> 00:31:52,530 So in this version, he encounters a woman who he doesn't recognise as on the journey. 263 00:31:53,050 --> 00:31:56,130 And, um, he is. 264 00:31:56,850 --> 00:32:00,250 And she she's blocking his path and not allowing him to enter. 265 00:32:00,770 --> 00:32:10,130 And when he confronts her about this and asks the reason why, she explains that in a previous life he was a student of Retina Olympus, 266 00:32:10,690 --> 00:32:21,890 and while they were camped in Apo on their travels, she said at that time she was a beggar who was considered very unattractive and looked down upon, 267 00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:28,340 and she had come to the encampment to request teachings, and he ignored her and turned her way and she said, 268 00:32:28,580 --> 00:32:34,100 because of that, um, you know, you have these obstacles now that you're not able to enter. 269 00:32:34,660 --> 00:32:50,260 And he is sort of overwhelmed with a sense of regret, and he confesses before her and asks for forgiveness for this act in a previous life. 270 00:32:51,060 --> 00:33:03,380 She then reveals herself to actually be a Pomo, and as a Pomo, she eats him, and he then is sort of digested through daughter Pomo, 271 00:33:03,820 --> 00:33:14,420 and then is birthed from the lotus of of Dodge Pomo back out, and only then is he able to enter into the copper coloured mountain. 272 00:33:15,060 --> 00:33:22,220 This is a fascinating scene that I spent some time sort of reflecting upon in a number of different ways, 273 00:33:22,540 --> 00:33:26,400 but as he enters the copper coloured mountain for almost all of the Terrytoons. 274 00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:35,080 Yoshitsugu in some form is a guide, and and most of them describe not recognising her immediately, 275 00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,080 and at some point that suddenly dawns on them wait, are you? 276 00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:49,280 Yes. You know. And in this case, when Dumbledore, uh, realises what's going on, he has just been, you know, sort of birthed out of her at that point. 277 00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:53,680 So, uh, he's he's recognising that something is a little unusual. 278 00:33:54,240 --> 00:34:01,440 And, uh, but when they get inside, she welcomes him and addresses him and praises him and says, you know, we're so happy to have you here. 279 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,960 And he says, how could it be possible that that Yasuko could know me? 280 00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:14,440 You know, I'm this just, you know, uh, monk who's really has hasn't really amounted to anything, and he finds it inconceivable. 281 00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:20,480 And then she says to him, well, know, at the time when Padmasambhava was in Tibet, at that time, I was Yoshitsugu. 282 00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:28,260 She she says, that's not who I am anymore. And she lists five different names that she's known by at the copper coloured mountain, she says. 283 00:34:28,500 --> 00:34:35,020 At that time, I was Sylvia and you were in LaSalle. You were one of the 25 close disciples of Grimké. 284 00:34:35,460 --> 00:34:38,100 So of course I know you. She's saying, you know, she kind of corrects him. 285 00:34:38,260 --> 00:34:45,140 And so these relationships, um, and how they carry across the, the territories as a whole, 286 00:34:45,700 --> 00:34:55,900 generally are amazed to discover that they are known or that the teachings of other Tibetan lamas are known at the copper coloured mountain. 287 00:34:56,180 --> 00:35:01,820 They're saying this is a pure land of a Buddha, and they're chanting the prayers composed by Long Jumper. 288 00:35:02,220 --> 00:35:07,860 This is extraordinary. And then they're reminded and said, no, we were all together before, you know, at that time. 289 00:35:08,140 --> 00:35:18,140 So, um, those are some of the elements. One other, um, piece in this particular account that is somewhat unusual is that here we see the, 290 00:35:19,220 --> 00:35:23,910 uh, shadow of sectarian politics that has been cast throughout. 291 00:35:24,190 --> 00:35:27,910 So much of Tibetan history reaches even into the copper coloured mountain. 292 00:35:28,990 --> 00:35:33,230 When Dumbledore finally does encounter Padmasambhava himself. 293 00:35:34,710 --> 00:35:41,030 It's described just as a meeting of a lama and a disciple who haven't seen each other for a very long time, 294 00:35:41,470 --> 00:35:45,670 and Padmasambhava asks him and he says, how you know. 295 00:35:46,150 --> 00:35:51,750 Um, how are the genetic teachings going in Tibet these days, you know? 296 00:35:51,910 --> 00:35:57,030 Are people really teaching widely and how's it going? And he says, yeah, you know, it's pretty good. 297 00:35:57,230 --> 00:36:08,110 But, you know, he says there's there's some difficulties that there's this, um, a lot of people are praising this guy, and I don't really know. 298 00:36:08,270 --> 00:36:17,590 I'm not, not, not so sure about him. And he says, and then there's, there's someone else who is really denigrating the teachings of Lingpa, 299 00:36:18,430 --> 00:36:21,830 and he doesn't name any names in the text, but, um, 300 00:36:22,550 --> 00:36:33,450 it's clear that this is reference to the Fifth Dalai Lama and the fifth Dalai Lama's campaign against, um, and, uh, um, 301 00:36:33,770 --> 00:36:41,410 Dumbledore says, you know, he's kind of, um, telling giving an update to guruma about the situation back in Tibet. 302 00:36:41,850 --> 00:36:52,450 And he says, uh, you know, there are some people also who if the if the ruler of Tibet is praising Lingpa, they praised Lingpa. 303 00:36:52,810 --> 00:36:56,450 And if he denigrates Lingpa, they denigrate. And he says, but I'm not like that. 304 00:36:56,610 --> 00:37:04,890 I can't. I have to tell it like it is. And he says, you know, a guru was very, very clear about this situation to me. 305 00:37:05,050 --> 00:37:08,570 Padmasambhava gave me very, very clear instructions about them, but I'm afraid to write them down. 306 00:37:08,770 --> 00:37:10,490 So I'm not going to write them down here. Right. 307 00:37:10,850 --> 00:37:20,450 So there's a way in which in his vision and of course, this was a moment of immense, um, danger and political upheaval and violence. 308 00:37:21,210 --> 00:37:31,620 Uh, and at the sort of, um, uh, verge of a period of severe persecution of the more broadly and, 309 00:37:32,500 --> 00:37:38,220 um, is very concerned with these issues and seeking sort of help and advice. 310 00:37:39,180 --> 00:37:43,100 Um, even if he's afraid to, to, to share it specifically. All right. 311 00:37:43,580 --> 00:37:46,900 Uh, I'm going to wrap up with one more account. 312 00:37:47,780 --> 00:37:56,020 Um, and, uh, this is an account by a 19th century lama from Mustang, um, named Denzil Nima. 313 00:37:56,580 --> 00:38:02,900 And the thing that really stands out to me about this account is it's the first one that I have 314 00:38:03,100 --> 00:38:10,140 come across that locates the coloured mountain at an actual geographic site in the Himalayas. 315 00:38:10,900 --> 00:38:17,060 Here, the mountain known in Nepal as d'Algérie, which in Tibetan is called Malekan, 316 00:38:17,820 --> 00:38:21,840 so in Tanzania was account of his visionary journey to the copper clad mountain. 317 00:38:22,240 --> 00:38:31,640 He's in meditation at a cave near Mount Allegory, and when he's invited to travel there, he travels to this specific mountain itself, 318 00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:37,120 and a door opens up and the copper coloured mountain is located within that particular mountain. 319 00:38:37,720 --> 00:38:46,680 So I'm fascinated here by the way in which this entire tradition this is to borrow a chart from an article by Charles Ramble, a Charles Ramble, 320 00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:59,480 about the various genres that are included in the traditions of Tibetan pilgrimage, hagiography, biography, geography, tantric literature, travelogue. 321 00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:07,360 All of those converge in this material as well, and in Tanzania's account, where he's talking about a specific place that becomes very clear. 322 00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:16,960 So this is the page from the manuscript that I was consulting here. 323 00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:24,260 And just to look at a couple of lines. So here's a photograph of the mountain aerial photograph of the area itself. 324 00:39:25,580 --> 00:39:33,100 And this is where it's located. Um, here is an early map from David Snellgrove publication. 325 00:39:33,660 --> 00:39:40,060 And this, um, uh, Guang Shan is the mountain and the sun here. 326 00:39:40,420 --> 00:39:43,540 This is where Tanzania was meditating when he had this vision. 327 00:39:44,020 --> 00:39:50,020 And so he was very close to the mountain itself. Um, and, uh, here are photographs of the site. 328 00:39:50,300 --> 00:39:55,940 It is a pilgrimage site to this day. The cave, um, where Tenzin Nima had this vision. 329 00:39:56,780 --> 00:40:08,100 Um, and, um, these photographs, I think, are helpful in kind of bringing this discussion back to, uh, Himalayan communities even today. 330 00:40:08,340 --> 00:40:12,700 These are, uh, photographs. I can't see the name here, but. 331 00:40:12,860 --> 00:40:17,580 Sorry. Um, oops. Um, that, um. 332 00:40:18,100 --> 00:40:21,390 Oops, I did not. Sorry. 333 00:40:22,510 --> 00:40:26,990 I've lost the name of the photographer who a friend kindly provided to me. 334 00:40:27,390 --> 00:40:32,390 I have not been able to visit, but these were just taken last summer at the site that's still active. 335 00:40:33,070 --> 00:40:44,710 So in cinemas account there is, as you might expect, much greater attention to aspects of the landscape itself. 336 00:40:45,350 --> 00:40:54,950 He spends a lot of time, a lot more time than I've seen in any other accounts, by any other teardowns describing flora and fauna of the site. 337 00:40:55,870 --> 00:41:03,270 So here the Copper Mountain really is located within the physical geography of the Himalayas in a way that's that's very distinct. 338 00:41:04,470 --> 00:41:08,830 And that I think, um, provides an opportunity. 339 00:41:09,430 --> 00:41:16,510 Yeah. Here is a very clear expression of the identification of these two right from the outer perspective. 340 00:41:17,810 --> 00:41:27,810 um, uh, tiny Mulligan, right from the outer perspective, it's Mulligan and, uh, uh, young daughter with inner vision, uh, song Doc Bowery. 341 00:41:28,250 --> 00:41:39,610 Right. So, um, this is, um, the line where he claims most clearly the identification of these of these two, um, which is very interesting. 342 00:41:40,050 --> 00:41:47,450 And here is a slide that, um, shows that the outer and the inner, um, uh, together in this vision. 343 00:41:47,970 --> 00:41:55,410 So, um, some of the themes that I mentioned in, uh, Sugarland account where we see pilgrimage literature, 344 00:41:56,330 --> 00:42:05,410 uh, intersecting with this, uh, visionary experience. So accounts of travel to places we can visit ourselves in the Himalayan landscape, um, 345 00:42:05,730 --> 00:42:13,650 merge together with places that are only possible to vision, to, to visit through pure vision and with the in darkness. 346 00:42:14,650 --> 00:42:21,790 Uh, they are joined again here in Tanzania account where he sees both of them together in one site. 347 00:42:22,470 --> 00:42:26,670 And uh, the other aspect that I'll mention here, 348 00:42:27,070 --> 00:42:37,350 when he does encounter guruma in a lot of their conversation is focussed on the topic of the burial tradition. 349 00:42:38,310 --> 00:42:42,870 And that's something that also intersects more widely with this tradition. 350 00:42:43,270 --> 00:42:52,830 But this is the most exhaustive and focussed discussion of Bible and guruma prophecies, the opening of several burial in the vicinity. 351 00:42:53,470 --> 00:43:05,230 And he actually lays out a kind of, um, cosmology where, uh, Mulligan is at the centre of a whole network of different burial, 352 00:43:05,790 --> 00:43:13,670 and Mulligan itself becomes the centre of a new vision of the sacred geography of the Himalayas, 353 00:43:14,390 --> 00:43:19,560 with guruma at the very centre with, with Mulligan at the very centre. 354 00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:28,480 So this also raises interesting questions about centre and periphery in Tibetan Buddhist imagination. 355 00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:33,080 Of course the author is a lama from Mustang. 356 00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:42,080 This is around the time of the Nepal Tibet War, and his efforts to sort of place his own area. 357 00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:48,960 Mustang at the centre of Guru Vision are very interesting to consider within those contexts. 358 00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:54,200 Um, I don't want to take up any more time than that than I already have, 359 00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:59,440 in the hopes that we might have some opportunity to, um, reflect on these together. 360 00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:08,000 And I'm very happy to answer questions about what I've presented or other aspects of the project that I did not touch upon yet today. 361 00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:14,920 But thanks so much for your patience as I, uh, ramble through these different areas of the tradition.