[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So welcome everyone to the second talk in the second series of our Padmasambhava and Tibet seminar.
We're holding five sessions this term, details of which you can find on our website.
All our talks are published as video podcasts, which are freely available from our website, from Apple Podcasts, and from various other sites too.
So please try not to interrupt during the recording.
However, the discussion period after the talks are open to the entire audience and will not be podcast,
so feel free to express ourselves and ask questions. So today we are really delighted to be able to welcome Doctor Sam Van Schaick.
Sam is very widely known for his remarkable scholarship and influential publications over the last 20 years,
and I think needs little introduction to anyone involved in Tibetan studies.
Currently, he's head of the Endangered Archives Program at the British Library.
He previously worked at the International Dunhuang Project as research project manager and lead researcher of various projects,
including Beyond Boundaries, religion, region, language in the state, funded by the Arc, Tibetan Zen funded by the British Academy,
Tibetan and Chinese Palaeography funded by Leverhulme and the Tibetan Tantric.
Manuscripts from Dunhuang, funded by the AhrC. Sam received his PhD in Tibetan Studies from the University of Manchester in 2000.
His publications include Approaching the Great Perfection of 2004, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts and Dunhuang in 2006.
Tibet A history, 2011. Manuscripts and Travellers in 2012, Tibetan Zen, 2015.
The Spirit of Zen, which in 2018 which which won the Tianjin Book Prize for Excellence in Chan Studies,
Buddhist Magic in 2020 and several others besides, not to mention his numerous articles.
So I'm very happy to be able to, uh. We're very happy to be able to host him today.
And, Sam, over to you. Thank you.
Rob. That's, uh, a very nice, uh, introduction. Uh, and and in fact, the the last book you mentioned, which was the last, uh,
book I published with this magic kind of leads into this topic that I'm going to be talking about this evening.
So, um, in in the book Buddhist Magic, the the main kind of focus of the book was a 10th century,
possibly ninth century, probably 10th century manuscript,
um, which contained a series of short rituals or spells, uh, and could be fitted into the later Tibetan tradition of the baboon or the the grimoire.
Uh, and in the book I also, uh, then sort of move forward in time a little bit to some of the early grimoires in Tibet.
And the probably one of the most famous and early of these is the, the Bari Bogomil, the the, the Grimoire of Bari, Lotso.
So, so this talk is about taking that journey a bit further.
I discussed it also in the when I gave the Harris Lecture in Oxford a few years ago, where I was talking about magic and,
and Buddhist ethics and, and in that talk, I was looking at, uh, Barry Lotso in terms of a story about him in his,
his nan, his, his biography, um, which relates to his practice of magic in the time he was in India and,
and the how he was kind of misused magic, essentially, and had to perform a penance for that.
And it was only after that that he then returned to to Tibet and became the kind of famous figure,
uh, that, uh, that he's known as in the Sakya school.
So, um, following that, then,
I thought it was interested by the fact that Padmasambhava was also a figure that appeared in Barrie's Book of Spells in the Barrie Bear album.
Um, initially I looked at one spell attributed to Tibetan, and then I realised there were actually several,
uh, and that he featured quite heavily in this, um, this grimoire.
So, uh, so this talk, uh, and I'll start showing my slides now is a just a sort of take you along with
that journey and show you where I've got to exploring Padmasambhava role in,
uh, in various Book of spells. To go back to the earlier references to Padmasambhava in the Dunhuang manuscripts to begin with.
Um. We see. So this is one that, um, been discussed by several people, including Rob, uh, and Cathy.
Um, and indeed, the whole, uh, volume has been dedicated to this, uh, manuscript in this text.
The review by Rob and Cathy. Um, but of great interest, of course, here is that it has a reference to.
Padmasambhava, uh, as a sort of addendum to this extent.
This is a rough translation of of what that says. And the main point here is that it's really we're seeing Padmasambhava in a, in almost a the same.
Sort of cosmic role that he has in the. In later in Tibet, we're more familiar with.
So um, as early as the 10th century, um, Padmasambhava is a is a kind of exemplar of, of enlightenment and also of,
um, somebody who sort of reveals the, the teachings of, of the Dharma in a kind of miraculous way.
Um, but then also in the, in the 10th century, there's another well studied Dunhuang manuscript, earlier Tibetan 44.
Uh, and this talks more about, uh, Padmasambhava in terms of, um, practice of, uh, I guess more magical, um, practices of a young astro cave.
Uh, and this, as this quote says here in Matthew Epstein's translation, he has, um, he's known he's known as, uh, performing all of the practices.
This is belonging to all of the classes of yoga from General Korea.
That is the lowest class of yoga. Through yoga. So, um, already by the 10th century.
Purpose and always felt to embody the practices of Korea.
That is the sort of. Ritualistic, um, magical, uh, practices through to yoga and education itself.
Uh, they're moving on a little bit further in time through to the, uh, the the testimony of bar.
This is a text which probably is somewhat composite and therefore dates to various, some points in history.
As it was, it was constructed. Um, but the earlier part about the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet in the time of trees on death Zen.
It's probably, uh, from the 10th century.
And here we see, uh, Padmasambhava again in the more sort of role of the, the sorcerer, the, the practitioner of magic.
And this quite just, is from the part of the story where he's on his way to Tibet,
and on his way he's subduing various, um, spirits or demons that are that are in the way.
So in this case, are a white Naga child and, uh, and somebody who is a neat seller,
which is in a way we could translate to somebody who is in their own personal [INAUDIBLE].
It's the kind of, um, a term for a, uh, a kind of demonic being who needs to be liberated through, um, through magic.
And, uh, and as it says, compassion must be shown because it's shown, um, by, uh, magical, uh,
means of, um, not, not not stated here, but implied with some kind of kind of violent, magical means.
Um, and then finally, uh, just going through some of this, the early presentations of, of Burma and of course,
very important is the Xang lingua, uh, By the death of Nyingma Nyima Özer from the 12th century.
And again here a couple of quotes just showing different ways of of understanding Padmasambhava.
On the one hand, he's an manikya uh, emanated by Amitabha Buddha himself.
On the other hand, uh, he is very much involved in the practice of magic.
So, as the second quote says here, uh, at dawn, the dakini subdue of Mara placed an iron nailed casket of rhino hide in the master's
permanent barber's hand and instructed him in the method to tame all demons and heretics.
Within the rhino casket, he found the subjugating mantras of the dungeons,
including the instructions on magical wheels uh, the yantra, that is, hailstorms and lightning.
And Master Padma then brought down a flash of meteors on the dwelling places of the heretical teachers.
So, uh, here, the kind of violent, magical, um, methods employed by Sundara are very explicit.
Okay, so, um, let's go to Padmasambhava in the bedroom.
So, uh, Luxor is, uh, associated with the new transmission of Buddhism, the sama, because he, uh, in the 11th century,
travelled to India and Nepal and studied, uh, for nine years with teachers there, um, including the famous Omega Vajra.
Uh, he compiled the collection of initiations and Sadhana was known as the Bari Gazza.
Um, a very important suddenly collection for the new schools of, um, Buddhism in Tibet.
And, um, later in his career, towards the end of his career, he held the position of Sakya in the head of the Sakya throne.
Uh, until Sachin Kunga Lingpa, the son of Kun Kun Gyalpo, was old enough to take the throne.
Um and, uh, and as I says in my notes, he was also known as a practitioner of aggressive magic.
And as I mentioned, I talked about this a bit before in the in the Paris lecture.
Um, and here the quote is from the, the Nam tar and it's the, um, the Dakini singer muka um, telling him that his, his magical practice has worked.
Uh, Barry was targeted by a a non-Buddhist teacher in Kathmandu, in Patan, actually, um,
in the story and, uh, he fled to, to pod Gaia and practised these magical spells to protect himself.
But he practised them, uh, a bit too much. And it caused the the teacher in, in Patan to die.
So that's the the story of of Barry.
So the association with the the the veil from the Book of Spells, uh, with Barry is kind of in line with the presentation of him in his own, his name.
And as you can see, his his dates are early. So he is a primarily active in the the 11th century.
So on to the the book itself.
Um, so the very I only know from one exemplar this is the found on uh can be found on the DRC website is part of the um,
1970s, uh, insider graphs that were made, uh, under Jean Smith in, in New Delhi.
Um, but the I discovered recently, the Björk website has the original manuscript from which that graph was made.
And that's what's pictured here. Um, but unfortunately, the low resolution, which you can see here is the actual the best resolution that,
uh, is available of this original manuscript. Um, and I would also suspect, just from what we can see.
But that is not a terribly old, um, manuscript in itself.
So it doesn't, uh, date anywhere near close to the time of of Barry himself.
Um, if we look at the contents, then, uh, you can see we've got here.
It's always very hard to to kind of, um, with these collections to decide what is the kind of, um,
part of the text or what is a subpart or what is its own kind of, um, compilation that's included in this.
But I think we can say, like a lot of these, um, these compendia, the the Barry album is a collection of collections.
And, uh, here we have about 15 textual units which themselves comprise many more spells.
Um, it's not terribly clear on my slide, but there's two, Um, only two of these have the.
As far as I've seen so far, um, spells that are associated with Padmasambhava.
And the first one is the second collection, the Soji damper.
Uh, Zalman, which is 38 folios of spells.
And the other one is the Vanguard Moga, which is a much bigger collection, 119 folios.
Uh, in fact, I think the longest, um, single section in the very problem.
Uh, and in general, the it's just a it's just a vast collection of hundreds of spells for all kinds of different things from,
uh, treating headaches to, um, bringing on hailstones, hailstorms or, um, subduing demons and all kinds of things.
Um, but we're just going to focus on the spells which are associated with Padmasambhava.
So the first one is in that, um, the second, uh, Bell book, the second, third spell book, the such a, uh, damper.
No profound instructions for physicians, for, um, for doctors, that kind of thing.
And it does have some medical contents, but certainly not all of it.
Um, so the title for this, uh, this text, the first one in this, um, sub collection is Padmasambhava method for destroying a wild man or Megha.
Um, and this on the screen here, we've got the very beginning of it.
So it begins. Homage to the Lama.
And again, Padmasambhava composed this ritual practice, the method for destroying a wild man for the benefit of future generations.
Uh, so we can, at least we see here something that's quite familiar from, uh,
other later into later presentations of practice and that he's doing something for the sake of the future generations of Tibetans.
And I'm going to come back to this one. Out of all of the spells, in a bit more detail and in the later part of this talk.
Um, the next one and I'm just going to go through them.
This we skip now to the that big spellbook, the manga Zamboanga sub spellbook in Barrie's Baobab.
Uh and the first one is a spell for headaches.
Um, and this contains them versus, uh, on Padmasambhava, born from inside of lotus, without the stain of a womb.
Subduing demons with your fierce power. Compassionate saint who is an accomplished mantra.
Adept. I prostrate at the feet of Padma Raja.
The second one in this collection is, um, just, uh, begins intended by Master Padmasambhava for powerful rulers in future degenerate times.
It begins thus. Homage to Padmasambhava and Master Padmasambhava intended this for rulers in future degenerate times.
These are the benefits of attaching this wild mantra of the great hero Apollo Temple, the all accomplishing Vajra amulet.
So this is a specifically a spell to be written on an amulet.
Next is a ritual for serious illnesses, and this begins.
This is the heart essence, energetic of the pith of faith in the three families of the lake borne Vajra and the
three families presumably being the Vajra Pema and the target families of Korea.
And this ends with the sacred seal words samaya agya, which are very familiar from Tamil literature.
Um, the fourth one in the in the second collection. The fifth one overall out of the seven.
The methods for overcoming incidental enemies, global or global?
Sorry enemies that just are incidentally appear. Um.
These begin with verses on why Padmasambhava, who is like me, Doug, Tara taught by the methods for these evil final days.
Padmasambhava, who is like me. Dugtrio only understands the ritual practice for these evil final times.
So ritual practice of the secret mantra in accordance with the texts.
And the fifth from the second collection is mantra rituals for protection from poison.
And this begins this unalloyed mantra from both karma and karma.
Interesting. And we'll say a bit more about, um,
about Tam uh was learnt and brought to Tibet by the Kashmiri Chandra natha and given by Padmasambhava to the ruler on Dec ten,
thus bringing the two of them into agreement.
So there's a little bit of, um, a version of the, um, the story of Buddhism coming to Tibet and, uh, kind of winning over, uh, treason debts in.
And finally, uh, really ending with, uh, not with a bang, but a whimper.
It's just a, a very small spell at the end of this collection for Illness in Sheep.
And it doesn't really. The link with Padmasambhava is less strong just because it begins with, uh, with an homage to Lope on Burma.
Uh. So that is, as far as I know, all of the spells that are associated with with Padmasambhava in the 11th century.
Very valuable. Um, let me now I'll look at a little more detail at the the first of these spells, the only one that's in that first collection.
The the one, the for, uh, physician's, uh, destroying a wild man.
Omega. Uh, and I just put in the, um, Dan Martin's, uh, definition of meagre here.
Uh, as he says, it's sometimes used for the kind of just like, uh, bandits or or ruffians,
but it also can refer to the so-called, uh, Abominable snowman or yetis.
So it's, uh, it's a word that can be a kind of, uh, human to human, um, threats, but also this kind of,
um, uh, almost, uh, this mythical or not mythical, uh, depending on, um, how you're inclined.
Um, Yeti, your abominable snowman.
So the beginning, which you see here on the screen, I've already said, uh,
it just says that Padmasambhava composed this ritual sequence and methods for destroying the wild man for the benefit of future generations.
Um, I haven't managed to translate the whole ritual.
It's very difficult. I find more, uh, difficult to understand than the ones from the the Dunhuang book of spells for me.
And more difficult than some later, later and spells that I've looked at like those of Nippon.
Um, but anyway, uh, I can show you a little bit.
So the this is from the beginning and just gives a sense of what, uh, what is going on?
Uh, with the White Mountain route, presumably, uh, uh, an ingredient, their orifices are opened.
Um, so it's interesting as a term, it in the later tradition of kind of,
I suppose one could say the shamanistic tradition refers to the way that the spirits,
uh, will enter the, the human through in the in the process of possession.
Um, then with the dying kidney beans of the Black Exorcist, they are swiftly made to vomit blood.
Um, again is, if you remember, that's something that, um, Barry Lazaro was said to have made his, uh, his enemy do inadvertently.
Uh, and then as the 21 fruits, uh, fall to the ground, this nice onomatopoeic, onomatopoeic, um, TikTok, they are driven down the slopes.
So it, um, in this kind of poetic and rather not very informative, uh, language, it refers to how the spell, uh, repels the the enemy.
Uh, then towards the end of the the spell, there's a list of the actual reagents that, uh,
it says don't teach them to anybody else, but I it's quite hard to identify what they are.
So I hope that this doesn't count as teaching them, but, um, but here they are.
So specific. Um, specific specific reagents or magical ingredients are mentioned in the spell to be used in the practice and in the end.
This is the sort of colophon that ends the spell again in the voice of purpose and data.
If the methods gathered here do not cause paralysis in your adversary, then I will have deceived future generations.
Again, the idea that he's doing this for future generations of Tibetans, um, but specifically in this case,
the methods for dealing with the mega, um, the adversaries and for paralysing them.
Uh, and then, uh, a set of, um, verses in praise of Padmasambhava, who is like me.
There is truly no one above you. Please grant this grimoire here.
The term is bo bu. I think only maybe partly a corrupted.
It may be a alternative version of this odd word.
Open. Please grant this grimoire that is like your own heart. If.
If I go astray through error and weaken, I smile. Please hold me close to your heart.
So, uh, again, interestingly, we're really seeing Padmasambhava as a sorcerer, but also as a saviour.
So both of these roles are present here. Um, I've mentioned a few times we got this phrase, uh, Dadra, Pema, Jugni, uh, Padmasambhava, uh, like me.
And that I found that quite odd and interesting. Um, and I had a little look about, um, what this might come from, what it might mean.
It does appear in another of the Padmasambhava spells.
Um, in the other, um, spellbook in In the Barbarian.
Uh, and here's the the verses here. Purpose and bhava, who is like me, understands the context, the conduct of these evil final times.
The conduct of the secret mantra, properly practised demons, great angry faced brutes in the strength of their arrogance need to be dealt with.
Wrathful magical displays are not enough. It is necessary for one with sincere vows to perform the special killing.
So one person who talked about this term is touchy in the religions of Tibet.
And here you can see the quote from the book.
It's in his chapter on the folk religion.
So he was talking about not the sort of practice in the the four main schools of Buddhism or the Burma is even.
But in the, the kind of, uh, folk or, um, you know, everyday ritual practitioners, uh, that he had observed in Tibet.
And he writes, the celebrant must make it known that he has accomplished the return to the initial state,
and nation, according to the example laid down at the beginning of existence.
In other words, he identifies himself with the teacher who introduced the ritual in question, e.g. doctor who is alike to me.
In order to achieve his full efficacy, the ritual must be performed by someone who has transformed himself into its first author.
So if, um. According to Tucci, it is indeed Padmasambhava who is like me,
or rather that I become like that person bhava in um, in order to make the spell effective.
Uh, a few other examples. So, um, John Gyatso mentioned this in her work on the autobiographical visionary accounts of Jigme Lingpa.
Uh, she said Padmasambhava complementary desire is represented in the prophecies
where the prophecies of the chick mating pair received in the long term genetic.
Where he refers to the discoverer as a person who is by emanation, natural or similar to me, doctor.
And we also see the title Doctor in Lima and in the Nyingma colophon.
Um, so this I found looking through the catalogue of the gung tang um manuscript by Rob Cathy.
Uh, Luke. Uh, and there's quite a few people who are actually given this, this, this epithet Dadra, uh, including Bharatha Sangha.
Yes. She sank Lingpa, Rinchen Lingpa and others, um, I think and also Doctor Pema Gemini.
So I don't know quite what that means. It's clearly that it's it's a kind of honorific that is not, uh, specific to you,
but based on the lava, although it seems to be strongly associated with it.
And of course, there's this famous, um.
Uh, looks like me, uh, monodrama image of Padmasambhava, which I've had at the beginning of this, uh, these slides.
Um, it's a different term, actually. So we've been talking about Dugtrio.
This is Leandra, and it seems to have a different context.
So specifically, it's in the context of portraits.
Um, and, uh, this is something from by Jeff Watt from his Himalayan Art website, where he says a class of portraits known as the Na drummer,
which means it looks like these are objects created during the lifetime of the person depicted.
These objects have met with the approval of the individual and are referred to as looks like me.
There are only a small handful of images that belong to this category. The majority of works reside in situ in the Himalayas and Tibetan regions.
The sculptures are often made of clay rather than metal, although both can be found.
Um, so I think this is a different thing, actually.
Uh, maybe there's a relationship, but, um, but, you know, drama and, uh, and dadra, I think, uh, our terms with which have different contexts.
So, um, so that's the sort of, um, as far as I've got, uh, with this work.
But one thing that's really stuck out for me, as I mentioned,
especially later in the collection in, in, not in the first sub collections that I mentioned,
but in the big one that comes later, uh, we start seeing the mention of karma, and, uh, this seems early to early, possibly.
So, uh, let me, uh, do a big reveal.
Um, one of the colophon. Uh, this is the ritual intended by master purpose and the powerful reaches.
Rulers actually mentions General Nyima Ursa. Um.
And this means that it can't be from the time of Barry.
Later. Um. You can see in my notes.
Um, the dates usually given to younger on Earth are 1124 to 1192.
Um, Barry, lots of those dates are. 1042 1111. Um, so this is a this is a I, I haven't looked for it anywhere else, but I presume this is a,
uh, the spell that was extracted from, um, something related to General Nema.
Ursa. Uh, and certainly the mention of him here means that it's been added to this collection, uh, after the time of Barry Locklear.
Um, now, the presence of this or, uh, for us critical.
Scholarly types means that the whole collection is cast into that.
Uh. Does any of that actually relate to the time of of Barry? That's always the question.
Um, I think that perhaps the earlier couple of, um, things do.
There's the the first, the one which contains the first, uh, ritual for purpose and the one about the Amiga that I went to in a bit more detail.
Um, and some other rituals. Uh, they have no mention of terma, and, uh, there's nothing otherwise to think of that later.
And there's also a collection following that that is similar.
Um, so I would suggest it's possible that the there is some sort of some parts of the Barry building that some were kind of spells collected by Barry,
who's known to be a collector of rituals. The.
The Barry Gyatso, the 100 Southerners, uh from um translations made in in Bodh Gaya are fairly well accepted to be by from the time of of Barry Power.
Um, in this collection, it's quite possible that there were perhaps after his death,
this kind of spells were collected and and Barry, lots of his spells were gathered.
But then the collection could well have been expanded over time.
Um, so that's what I would like to suggest.
But, uh, equally, one could equally argue the presence of, uh, of any later material makes it, um,
makes it dubious, uh, the, the attribution of any part of the text to, to the time of of of Barry part.
Nevertheless, uh, I do think, um,
the collection presents an interesting view on Padmasambhava and one that's a little bit different from what we see in other early materials.
Now, if we look at the how Padmasambhava comes across here, as I've mentioned but before,
he still has that dual role of, uh, of a saviour and a sorcerer.
But, uh, in particular, we see him as a role model for, for magic users, for for those using, uh, practitioners of spells.
Uh, into that he's um, there's a verses I showed you earlier where he, he is, uh, presenting the grimoire to the practitioner.
Uh, he's also like me, doctor Padma something which, as we see from the the Tucci, uh,
description of the folk religion, something which seems to have a continuity through to the 20th century.
Um, he's also a voice that repeatedly that justifies violent rituals,
or he's a figure that justifies violent rituals and said many times for these degenerate
times that he taught these violent rituals for the sake of future generations.
Uh, and we also see him in that role. Um, that becomes quite important as the protector of kings and kingdoms.
But as I said earlier, that is mainly in what, uh, must be a later addition because it's associated with the Turner tradition and,
and young role as a particularly um, and at the same time, simple rituals could be associated with the symbols.
So there's nothing that's too that's below his, um, blessing essentially, I guess, is one way of putting it.
So the, the spell for, uh, illness in in sheep also begins with a.
With a, um, homage to the Padmasambhava.
So, as I said, that's kind of a, uh, a work in progress that the journey, um, we're kind of taking you through as far as I've,
I've got the the discovery of the colophon, mentoring young, mentioning young or old Nyima Earth or something.
I only, um, came across a few weeks ago. Um, that really kind of confirmed my suspicions, uh,
that various mentions of terma might mean this was a or part of this collection were later than than Barry notes were himself.
Um, but as I said, I think there's lots of interesting material here for the study of,
um, the development and reception of Pandas and Diver into that.
So I hope that's been, uh, interesting enough to, to talk about.
Thank you.