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The Legacy of the Eight Teachings: Revelation, Ritual, and Enlightened Violence in Classical Tibet - ( 05)

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The Key Tantras


Unlike the brief comments supplied in the Subsequent Tantras, the Differentiated Tantra, or Key Tantra (rgyud rab tu ‘byed pa, also known as the ‘byed par byed pa lde mig gi rgyud) provides detailed explanations of many features of Kabgyé practice.280 The Differentiated Tantra is thematically organized around different elements of tantric practice, includingaccomplishment methods” (sgrub thabs, or bsgrub), and explanations (bstan pa), on topics such as enlightened activity (phrin las) and action (las), particularly those of wrathful variety (khro bo). The Katok edition has the rab tu ‘byed pa as a single text; however, anthologists have


elsewhere managed to divide the seventeen chapters of this text into two discrete texts: the first dealing with practices for the peaceful deities in ten chapters (the ‘byed par byed pa lde mig gi rgyud le’u bcu pa), and the second focused on the wrathful in seven chapters (the ‘byed lde ‘khro bo’i rgyud le’u bdun). We see this bifurcation of the Differentiated Tantra mentioned by Ngari Panchen, and represented in Nüden Dorje’s Nyingma Gyubum, as well as in the Degé and Tsamdrak Gyubum editions. Unfortunately, the nomenclature is a bit confusing, as the titles ‘byed pa rgyud and lde mig gi rgyud are also sometimes applied to the Assembled Sugatas Tantra, and so there is no total coherence across editions regarding the order of the fifteen 280 “rgyud rab tu ‘byed pa (The Differentiated Tantra)” in Katok: vol. 2, text 1, pp. 1-278.


foundational tantras in regards to these specific materials. However, in general, it seems we can speak of a Differentiated Tantra in seventeen thematic chapters, most often divided into peaceful and wrathful parts, each supplying explanations and practices for the relevant Kabgyé deities.


Individuated Root Tantras

The individuated root tantras number ten: the root tantras of the Eight Herukas, plus the Root Tantra of the Assembled Peaceful Ones and the Root Tantra of the Unsurpassed Awareness Holder (bla ma rig ‘dzin). Little scholarly attention has been paid to these materials, with the exception of Guy Grizman’s forthcoming research on the root tantra of bla ma rig ‘dzin.281 In general, these tantras supply technical information required to practice the full suite of rituals and self-cultivational programs associated with each heruka. Common elements include extensive instruction in different types of maṇḍalas, visualization and mantric recitation manuals,


exposition on tantric conduct and the maintenance of samaya vows, and discourses on tantric buddhology, particularly in reference to the concept of the sacred purity of phenomena (rnam par dag pa). These tantras, then, richly supply the esoteric knowledge affiliated with the practices and iconography offered in the foundational tantras. In appraising the relationship between these highly doctrinal tantras and the praxical orientation of the King of Root and


Subsequent tantras, we may conclude that the corpus is designed to supply adepts with the resources needed to carry out tantric practice via the Root and Subsequent tantras, and exegetes the knowledge to instruct and comment on these ritual technologies by way of the Differentiated and individuated Root Tantras.


281 Guy Grizman has presented some fascinating research from his forthcoming doctoral dissertation on a unique funerary text found within the rig ‘dzindus pa tantra. International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, St. Petersburg State University, September, 2018.


Conclusion

Altogether, the Kabgyé cycle makes a strong statement about the nature of tantric practice: subjugative thaumaturgy is sanctified in this literature as essential Buddhist selfcultivation, with the mandalization of the Tibetan gods and demons recasting apotropaic and thaumaturgical practice into soteriological terms. In this, the gods and demons themselves are elevated to divine status, and the rhetoric of these worldly maṇḍalas is one of “demons taming demons”. In terms of Nyangrel’s oeuvre and the subsequent Treasure tradition, this demontaming motif is contextualized by the vision of adepthod advanced in Padmasambhava literature


and in a religious history that celebrated the foundations of the Early Translation tradition. The Kabgyé materials also participated in a broader architectonics of Tibetan religion which tended towards a ritual-centric orientation. The Kabgyé cycle functioned like a sourcebook for a ritualism that brought together apotropaic and soteriological functions of religious practice, undergirded by the wrathful idiom of Mahāyoga tantrism. If we are to proceed with the premise


that ritual practice, especially in its narrative foundations, is configurative of social and personal identities – that is, if we are to acknowledge the subject-constituting and identity-confirming potential of ritualism and its undergirding imaginaire – we can see how the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa would be of central importance to the development of a Buddhist civilization on the Tibetan plateau. Its advancement had real vocational implications for the ritualist-adepts who specialized in it, and it managed to articulate a daring vision for Buddhist soteriology that proved attractive to a broader religious culture not wishing to discard thaumaturgy and harm-aversion as central aspects of practice.'

We will now turn to a more detailed exploration of Kabgyé ritual practice, examining some prominent apotropaic ritual texts from the main Kabgyé Deshek Dupa ritual compendia, attending to their imagery, idioms, and ritual technologies to gain a sense for how the Kabgyé’s


practice regimes underwrote the articulation of institutional identities and the construction of agentive subjectivities for its adherents.

Chapter Six: Taming and Liberating the Enemy Obstructors We have thus far traced a cursory reception and publication history of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa, and have looked at some of the prevailing themes, idioms, and concepts articulated in the cycle’s foundational materials. We have seen how these tantric materials communicated a distinctive buddhology, a myth-history, and a ritual orientation that undergirded an emergent sense of Nyingma identity, particularly as it was channeled through the literary output of Nyangrel Nyima Özer and his lineal descendants. We have also observed how the Kabgyé was

leveraged in the efforts of Nyingma institutions and ecclesiastical figures as they reformed the Early Translation Ancient School in response to various kinds of extrinsic pressures. In general, as this reformative process unfolded, the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa took on an increasingly ritualcentric profile as it was incorporated into institutionalized iterations of Tibetan Buddhism. The ever-enlarging Kabgyé cycle came to be regarded as a main source for the apotropaic rites at the

heart of the tantric ritualist vocation, and for more comprehensive ritual programs that were at the basis of liturgical life in the Nyingma’s major temples. It is to this ritualism that we will now turn, examining some of the important ritual texts common to the Kabgyé ritual cycles at the main Nyingma temples. In this, we will interrogate how the Eight Teachings and its imaginaire of wrathful soteriology underwrote practice regimes which were contributive to emergent identities for members of the Early Translation Ancient School.

Broadly, we have seen how the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa inculcated a special vision of religious mastery that conjoined the apotropaic and soteriological dimensions of tantric practice. The Kabgyé advanced the portrait of the harm-averting ritual master as the paradigmatic Tibetan Buddhist adept: an image that was coordinated with Nyangrel’s treatment of Padmasambhava lore, and with his efforts to define the contours of Tibetan Buddhist history. The Eight Teachings


is distinctive for its emphasis on demon taming, contextualizing ritualized harm-aversion within esoteric Buddhist soteriology and within a broader historiographical narrative that prioritized the geomantic thaumaturgy which was the vocation of so many Early Translation priestly figures. Examples of this approach include the incorporation of Tibet’s autochthonous gods and demons into the center of the tantric maṇḍala, the conjunction of soteriological and apotropaic objectives in ritual practice, and the centrality of indigenous characters in the lore surrounding the activities of historical people like Nyangrel Nyima Özer, and mythologized ones such as Padmasambhava and the Eight Vidyādharas.

The rituals which stood at the center of the Kabgyé revelation cycle, and the ones which were accreted to the corpus over centuries of circulation, were important resources which undergirded the Kabgyé’s overarching contribution to Nyingma religiosity. They provided a regime of practice – of kinetic engagements, of performed narratives, of agentive experiences – that enacted the mythologies, buddhologies, and unique idioms upon which the Kabgyé hinged. Practice of these ritual programs was a way to carry out a specific vision of religious practice, contributing to distinctive collective identities and unique subjectivities. Just as the Kabgyé came

to represent taxonomies of tantric scripture (and, according to tantric doctrine, the very structure of reality itself), its activation in ritual practice tied together its doctrinal, narrative, and praxical dimensions to yield a venue for full participation in the unique imaginal world of this cycle. Participation in a Kabgyé rite – whether one’s role is that of the officiant lama, the ritual technician, a temple patron, or as a member of the attending public – was a matter of being

inscribed into an imaginal world within which one could be cast as a participant in ongoing histories, recursive dramas, and social relationships. The confluence of tantric Buddhist doctrine, mythological narrative, and ritual practice is thus activated in the Kabgyé’s ritualism, and we


might understand the ritual regimes which became so deeply associated with the Kabgyé tradition as a primary arena for the articulation of Nyingma identity and the achievement of Tibetan Buddhist subjectivities.

But of what did these practice regimes consist? Just how did ritual practices involving the murder of effigies, the offering of fire, smoke, and food, the performance of material sacrifices, and the creation, consumption, and deployment of magical substances facilitate the experience, or mediate the very subjectivity, of participants in concert with the Kabgyé’s doctrinal, mythological, and soteriological commitments? That will be the overarching interpretive concern as I highlight several ritual texts which have been particularly prominent in the institutional ritualism of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa tradition.

My interpretation of these materials will hinge on a narratological analysis of ritual text. That is, we will look not just at the procedural logic articulated in the prescriptive ritual texts, but also at these texts’ literary dimensions – their imagescapes and semiologics, their explicit narratives and tacit meta-narratives, their rhetorical patterns and multivocal idioms – to


interrogate how these texts might act on reader/participants, and how their practice facilitated participation in the overarching imaginal world of the Kabgyé. This narratological analysis, and some reflections on the performative and “subjunctive” function of ritual, will appear following an introduction to communal tantric practice, and a summary of selected Kabgyé ritual texts.282 282 The “subjunctive” function of ritual is articulated by Adam B. Seligman, Peter Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon (Seligman et. al., 2008). I will also draw on Christian Wedemeyer’s semiology of tantric antinomianism (Wedemeyer 2012), James Gentry’s appraisal of materiality in Tibetan apotropaic ritualism (Gentry 2014), and Vera Nünning, Jan Rupp, and Marie-Laure Ryan’s narratological analyses of ritual (Nünning et. al., 2013).


The Great Accomplishment: Institutionalizing the Tantric Community


To properly situate our exploration of Kabgyé ritual, a discussion of these texts’ participation in comprehensive ritual programs, and a brief account of the origins of this kind of ritualism, is in order. This account will touch on the development of Buddhist tantra in its communal dimensions, and briefly describe the transition to institutionalized iterations of such practice in Tibet. It will then outline the character and function of the Kabgyé Great Accomplishment (bka’ brgyad sgrub chen, Kabgyé Drupchen) ritual intensive as it is traditionally carried out at the Nyingma’s important temples.


Origins: The gathering circle

Buddhist tantrism has always entailed a communal dimension. From tantra’s initial development in the fragmented socio-political climate of sixth and seventh-century Northern India, to its apotheosis in the grand doctrinal systemizations which made their way to Tibet several centuries later, ritual practices undertaken by the esoteric community have always been central to Diamond Vehicle religiosity. If Ronald Davidson is correct in his argument that Indian Esoteric Buddhism developed through two general idioms – the “royal”, followed and supplemented by the “siddha” – we can see how Tantric Buddhism continued to revolve around sacralized social models.283

As Davidson’s argument goes, Tantric Buddhism first developed around an iconography of rulership, the esoteric master and mandalic cosmos modeled after king and kingdom. Psychophysical control over a ritualized socio-cosmic simulacrum (the maṇḍala) was redolent of a king’s sovereignty over the concentric dimensions of his social domain. This was a powerful image, according to Davidson, in a highly fragmented and contentious political context, which he 283 The following summarizes Ronald Davidson’s general argument in Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.


calls the “sāmanta feudalism” of the seventh century.284 Tantrism in this phase was “royal” in more than just its imagery and mythology: its very practice may have been reserved for sovereigns in their court temples. This royal iteration persisted in the Tibetan adoption of Tantric Buddhism, as the Tibetan emperors were known to have supported the translation and practice of the Mahāvairocanābhisaṃbodhitantra, a system paradigmatic of the royal mandalic idiom.285 By the early eighth century, Buddhist tantra developed in dialogue with Shaivite tantric and local ritual traditions, resulting in a “siddha” idiom centered on antinomian imagery, if not actual practice.286 Siddha tantrism drew on the horrific imagery of the charnel ground, and

sought self-cultivation through the pursuit of transgressive deeds inscribed within a soteriology of bliss. While the solitary ascetic immediately comes to mind – and individual yogic practice is indeed one element of siddhic tantrism – this religiosity maintained important communal dimensions. The main sacraments of siddhism unfolded as close disciples convened around the “vajra master” (vajrācārya), receiving initiation into the mandalic domain through bliss-inducing copulation and the ingestion of the master’s sexual fluids.287 The retinue engaged in deity yoga,

imagining themselves and their shared space in a semiotically refracted sacralized perception. Further sacraments included collective thaumaturgy and the sharing of the tantric feast (gaṇacakra, Tib. tshogs kyi ‘khor lo, “The Gathering Circle”), in which substances such as taboo meats and human fluids were supposedly ingested, demonstrating the community’s reclamation 284 Davidson 2003, chpt. 4, 113-168.

285 David Germano“The Seven Descents and the Early History of Rnying ma Transmissions.” In The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Helmut Eimer and David Germano, 225-64. Leiden: Brill, 2002, 230. 286 Davidson asserts that the earliest Buddhist siddha material comes into evidence around the 720-730’s, “give or take a decade”. Davidson 2003, 203. See Davidson 2003, chpt. 5, 169-235 for overview of the development of siddha tantrism.

287 Davidson 2003, 197-99.


of, and power over, social norms.288 This was the idealized picture of tantric practice according to the siddha literature that became systematized, particularly in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra (anuttarayogatantra) cycles bestowed to Tibet in the second dispensation of Buddhism, beginning in the late tenth century. It is also the case that a certain degree of antinomianism, particularly in the incorporation of sexual iconography and ritual violence, was present in the

Yoga and Mahāyoga traditions that entered Tibet in the initial dispensation of tantra there, but the siddha ethos and its charnel ground setting were likely rooted in later traditions. As suggested earlier in this dissertation, the influence of the erotic and antinomian imagery characteristic of the “Mother Tantra” (ma rgyud, Skt. yoginī) type of Unexcelled Yoga materials seems to have inflected Nyangrel’s revelations, as seen in the elevation of the dakīnī as a tutelary deity, and in the amplification of violence that underwrites the Kabgyé’s distinctive representation of tantric practice.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to know how literally antinomian modes of tantric practice were followed. One prevalent approach to interpreting these idioms argues that transgression and communal esoterism were essentially literary devices to establish productive tensions in practitioners of these traditions. Of course, antinomianism was a particularly salient idiom in a highly ordered and changing society such as medieval India’s. The very idea of normviolation,

even in strictly literary expression, would certainly be powerful, and efficacious for advancing the possibility of new agentive subjectivities within a highly structured social context. Western scholarship and traditional commentarial voices have both advocated for this kind of symbolic interpretation of tantric transgression.289 But such symbolic interpretations fall short of 288 Davidson 2003, 318-27.

289 Christian K. Wedemeyer, Making sense of Tantric Buddhism. New York: Columbia, 2013, 109-10.


fully accounting for the many antinomian propositions articulated in tantric sources, not to mention the visibility of transgressive traditions still practiced today. Christian Wedemeyer’s take on connotative semiotics offers a refined hermeneutic strategy for understanding the function of antinomian tantric language. Adapting Roland Barthe’s semiology, Wedemeyer suggests that the presence of antinomian injunctions, idioms, and iconography operated to “connote” a field of signifiers and relationships within which the

adept could be re-cast. In this, the injunction to consume taboo substances in the context of ritual practice demonstrates the transcendence of conventional categories of purity and pollution, signifying the attainment of an enlightened state.290 Such injunctions and imageries recall the background of normative significations vis-à-vis the suggestion of their violation, positioning the adept in a new relationship with the normative field. Thus, an injunction to “eat shit” cannot be said to be exclusively literal, nor deliberately encrypted. Alternatively, there is the possibility that the siddha tradition was indeed practiced much as it was described. One has only to look at

the Kāpālika communities such as the Aghorī in present day India and Nepal to see that deeply antinomian practices are still carried out, as adepts harness the power of transgressive sexuality and consumption in pursuit of gnostic soteriological objectives.291 The imaginal world of siddha tantrism lies at the heart of many of the cycles that were transmitted in Tibet. These were generally classified as “Unexcelled Yogatantra” (Anuttarayogatantra) according to the New Translation model. The content of these scriptures 290 Wedemeyer 2013, 122. For Wedemeyer’s use of Barthe’s connotative semiotics, see 117-132.

291 Andy Lawrence’s documentary films The Lover and the Beloved: A Journey Into Tantra (2011), and The One And The Many (2012) offer an unprecedented glimpse into the ritual life of contemporary Nāth and Aghorī ascetics. Footage includes stunning documentation of an Aghorī guru performing sādhana at the Tārāpīth cremation ground in West Bengal, including the consumption of human flesh from a funeral pyre. Davidson also connects the historical practices of the Kaula, Kāpālika, Nāth, and especially the Pāśupata traditions to the development of Buddhistsiddha tantrism”. See Davidson 2003, 177-86.


was not uncontroversial, as we know that the translation of such materials was restricted by imperial decree, and that these traditions were criticized by later conservatives bent on leveraging moral authority. But it is definitely the siddha ethos with its “blood drinker” (khrag ‘thung, Skt. heruka) and burial-ground iconography that informs much of Nyangrel’s work, especially as reflected in his Kabgyé cycle.

Siddha tantrism strongly retains the idiom of esoteric communality in its undergirding mythologies, buddhologies, and ritual programs. As we have seen, the Kabgyé’s tantric mythologies describe the spontaneous production of divine consortia out of the enlightened mind-state (dgongs pa) of the primordial Buddha, Kuntu Zangpo. This cosmogenesis is rooted in a conception of sociality, perhaps in retention of the “royal idiom’s” mandalic vision. The foundational mythology of the cycle also describes how eight masters of siddhic practice, the

Eight Vidyādharas, convened to receive the Kabgyé teachings and related Mahāyoga cycles in a veritable potlatch of collective revelation. Their convocation at Śitavana (and the mimetic gathering of Padmasambhava’s eight disciples at Samyé) simulates the maṇḍala of eight herukas at the core of the cycle. In this, the very structure of reality is social, and the homological assembly of tantric practitioners such as the Eight Vidyādharas, or a vajrācārya’s circle of tantric initiates, is decisively mimetic of the cosmogenesis described in tantric scriptures. Simply put,

these kinds of consortia are understood in terms of maṇḍala, a concept which at once suggests the structure of reality, the arrangement of divine figures, and the format for esoteric society. Thus, from the cosmogonic mythology at the basis of tantric scriptures, to the ritual prescriptions of esoteric practice, the tantric community is embedded in the fabric of Indo-Tibetan esoterism. During the initial dispensation of these tantras in Tibet, and especially in the period of fragmentation, the tantric community could persist in intimate formats, as the siddha lineages


were upheld by chieftain-priests at the center of small communities in lieu of imperial oversight. What we cannot know is whether these groups of initiates undertook the tantric sacraments in explicit terms, or whether the transgressive dictates had already been rendered palatable through symbolization and encoded language. The polemics of Yeshe Ö and his descendents express alarm regarding the abhorrent behavior of Early Translation practitioners, although we still don’t know whether his remarks truly indicate that such communities were taking tantric injunctions

literally.292 But over time, in the general trajectory of Buddhism’s institutional development, a certain incompatibility between this picture of siddhic sacramental practice and the increasingly institutionalized and public nature of religion in Tibet had to be negotiated. The esoterism of Buddhist Tantra – both in its transgressive injunctions and in the ideal of its intimate community of highly trained initiates – had to be adapted to fit institutions that sought to grow and command public resources. We thus see the inevitable transformation of tantric practice into the highly symbolized and encrypted semiosis still evident in the religion today. The course of this

transformation certainly deserves detailed research, but let us simply observe that it was the case that the institutionalization of Buddhist tantra from the tenth century onward in Tibet required significant adaptations. We see this, for example, in the format of the widely-bestowed initiation ritual (dbang skur), in which copulation with the master’s consort and ingestion of their sexual fluids is replaced by the showing of pictures (tsak li) and the consumption of blessed liquor (bdud rtsi, Skt. amṛta), medicine (sgrub sman), or ritually purified water. In some cases, the

entire initiatory procedure is reduced to the passing-around of an abstract representation of a deity or maṇḍala. Likewise, the tantric feast came to entail the sharing of painted barley cakes and tasty snacks rather than the consumption of human flesh, feces, and urine. Presumably, most 292 Karmay 1998, 3-15; Dalton 2011, 97-109.


participants in any such initiation or feasting rite do not know the original character of these procedures. If it is true that these rites were explicitly observed in Indian contexts, it is certainly the case that, over time, tantric practice was sanitized in Tibet to render it palatable for larger, more public audiences (and, importantly, for monastics). This is not to suggest that India only practiced tantric rites explicitly, and Tibetans only symbolically; in both India and Tibet there have been a range of strategies for engaging tantric antinomianism. However, the sanitization of tantric ritual was certainly a strategy that enabled tantric ritualism to be carried out in a wider set of contexts.

The communal dimension of tantric practice is preserved in the “Great Accomplishment” (sgrub chen, drupchen) ritual intensive, which is a bedrock of temple life in Tibet. Like the convening of initiates around the vajrācārya to partake in tantric sacraments, the drupchen sees the broader communitymonastics and laity together – gather around a presiding lama for the collective practice of staple tantric rituals: deity yoga, maṇḍala construction, initiation, harmaverting rituals, and feast. Just as the convocation of siddhas was meant to constitute a mandalic

retinue through which self-cultivational goals could be realized via the entire suite of tantric practices, so, too, does the drupchen entail a comprehensive gathering of the religious society in pursuit of the activation of esoteric forces. These ritual intensives have also come to include the ritualization of the patron-priest, or community-temple, economy, as the ritual action opens and closes with elaborate offerings to the presiding lama on behalf of the community of patrons, and the formal presentation of representatives of affiliated (or even rival) institutions. In Tibetan settings, the Great Accomplishment convocation can be as much a ritualized expression of governance as it is a strictly religious occasion.


Despite its overtly civic dimension, drupchen is generally considered to be of enormous soteriological value. The effects of self-cultivational practice are said to be magnified in group settings, especially in the presence of the perfected master. Once the space, anchored by a colorful sand maṇḍala or three-dimensional architectural rendering, is ritually secured and consecrated, and the visualized presence of the tutelary deity invoked, participants must

continually recite the deity’s mantra (and, ideally, maintain visualization) ceaselessly for up to two weeks. This is done in shifts so that the continuity is never broken when practitioners must, naturally, sleep. To conclude the intensive, the initiation ritual (dbang) is bestowed, protective and apotropaic rites such as fire offering (sbyin sregs), libation appeasements (gser skyems), and effigistic exorcism rites (gtor bzlog) are executed, and the group feast (tshogs) is enjoyed. All of this is observed by the mass of participants, although many come from the local lay community

only to attend the closing rites. The concluding hours or even days of a major drupchen are devoted to an extrapolation of the tantric feast to include choreographed exchanges of currency, foodstuffs, and blessed materials between monastic representatives and the laity. In many cases, the intensive concludes with the spectacle of ‘cham dances, in which monks wear elaborate costumes to enact mythic narratives of demon-subjugation.

All told, the drupchen represents the full scope of tantric practice and its traditional observance in the esoteric community. In drupchen, the maṇḍala of a deity is created to invoke the presence of enlightened forces, yogic and imaginative practice is carried out to effectuate communion with those forces, lineal continuity is ensured through the bestowal of initiation, and the array of “enlightened actions” (phrin las bzhi), or four modes of agentive compassion, are activated through supplementary rituals.


The execution of drupchen in institutional settings unfolds via entirely symbolic media. The ritual implements of the presiding master, the sacrificial offerings arranged upon the altar, the substances touched and ingested by the participants, the choreography and spatial arrangements: all of these constitute a semiotically thick environment that communicates full participation in tantric tradition. This ritualism is configurative of religious subjectivity, and of collective identity. We see in the Great Accomplishment ritual intensive an expression of social relations (between student and master, between ranks of students, between institutions, and

between temple and community), a recapitulation of specific religious identities, and an engagement with an ongoing denominational history. In the case of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa Great Accomplishment, the preponderance of wrathful imagery and violently apotropaic rites recalls the demon-taming at the heart of Tibet’s conversion to Buddhism. In carrying out the Kabgyé Drupchen, an institution confirms its connection to the enlightened forces behind Nyingma religiosity, defining itself by way of a specific imaginaire (wrathful), and mode of

praxis (apotropaic), and thus refreshing the memory of the founder’s (Padmasambhava’s) deeds. In the sections below, we will interpret some of the central harm-averting rites drawn from the Kabgyé ritual tradition to more closely understand just how this practice provides practitioners opportunities to articulate identity and author subjectivity.


Apotropaia in the Kabgyé Drupchen

While the drupchen is generally considered to be a potent format for soteriology, the Kabgyé Drupchen is especially associated with apotropaic goals. In general, the Kabgyé Drupchen is scheduled to commemorate the life and deeds of Padmasambhava, Tibetan Buddhism’s paradigmatic demon tamer, or at the end of the lunar year to avert obstacles for the new year. While the deity yoga focusing on the maṇḍala of Kabgyé deities is observed, the harm255 averting rites of effigistic sacrifice and exorcism take on particular importance in these

occasions. In general, these exorcising rites of subjugation (bzlog pa, dokpa, lit. “repelling”) utilize dough effigies, or torma (gtor ma), and are rooted in the tantric idioms of “taming” (‘dul ba) and “liberation” (sgrol ba), a multivalent signifier that is taken to mean both the murder of a sacrificial victim, and the liberation of consciousness into primordial gnosis. It is often suggested that the use of sacrificial torma has replaced the blood sacrifice common to Tibetan ritual culture before Tibet’s domestication by Buddhism. This idea is plausible, given that communities in remote Himalayan regions continue to offer the blood of goats, chickens, or bovines, even in celebration of the conclusion of ostensibly Buddhist ritual festivals.293

Within Kabgyé ritualism, there are several basic technologies for effigistic harm aversion. We will look closely at two texts which represent the principal formats for such tor-dok (gtor bzlog, lit. “scattering and repelling”) rites, representing the “taming” and “liberation” idioms of Mahāyoga ritual, respectively. In the first, the eight Kabgyé herukas and the harms to be averted are represented with tormas and sculptures. The contact between material representations of divine and harmful forces within one maṇḍala, and the application of the meditational power and commanding utterances of the ritual practitioner, is thought to neutralize the agents of disorder, harm, and inauspiciousness. This type of exorcism reflects the idiom of “taming through

mandalization” which is so vividly communicated in the King of Root Tantra’s narratives. In the other type of ritual which we will examine, the offiating lama or ritual specialist, through the power of meditation, gesture, and utterance, calls the sacrificial victim into an effigy torma, “liberates” the victim’s consciousness through mantra, mudrā, and the application of special instruments and substances, and destroys the torma by cutting, crushing, and distributing the 293 For example, see: Charles Ramble, “How Buddhist are Buddhist communities? The construction of tradition in two lamaist villages.” Journal of the Anthropological Society of OXford vol. 21, no. 2 (1990), 189.


remains in a prescribed manner. This is a “liberationritual in the full sense, as sacrificial murder is the main idiom around which the ritual action is organized. In either case, the divine power of the eight herukas is made manifest through material representations of the Kabgyé maṇḍala, and the ritual action unfolds through a matrix of materialization, meditative absorption, gesture, utterance, and the manipulation of substances.

The desired outcome of these rituals is for specific types of harm to be averted, although it is understood that this is a temporary solution to an ever-present threat posed by “enemy obstructors” (dgra bgegs). Such enemies include heretical people, military foes, people possessed by demons, the gods and spirits of the landscape, or other kinds of powerfully malevolent unseen forces. These threats must be continually and repeatedly dealt with through

ritual means, and such harm-aversion is clearly a central aspect of an overarching vision for religious practice in Tibetan tradition. This vision is, of course, grounded in lore about Tibet’s original demon-tamer, Padmasambhava, who set the stage for the propagation of Buddhism in Tibet through his subjugation of obstructing autochthonous entities. Despite rhetoric which suggests that harm-averting ritualism is supplementary to more formally soteriological goals, the

prevalence of this kind of ritual practice in Tibetan Buddhist tradition – and, particularly, in the Nyingma imagination – evidences the centrality of harm-aversion in the complex of practices which define Tibetan Buddhism. It is an absolutely central feature of Tibetan religious identity, and the ritualism of the Kabgyé provides a rich set of engagements to re-enact such deeds in recapitulation of the Mahāsiddha’s legacy.

Just as the Kabgyé mythology coordinates characters from Indian and Tibetan traditions, the dokpa format is quite hybridic. While the thaumaturgy of cursing through meditative trance (ting nge ‘dzin), gesture (mudrā), and utterance (māntra) was certainly part of the repertoire of


tantric siddhas in India, these Kabgyé ritual texts combine these techniques with distinctively Tibetan thaumaturgical concepts. For example, the sorcery of life-force manipulation and the interaction with personal protective gods are important elements of some Kabgyé liberation rites. This reflects Tibetan vernacular tradition’s great concern with the protection and maintenance of one’s personal life force, called the lá (bla, or bla srog). The lá can be lost or stolen, resulting in sickness, insanity, or death. Unseen autochthonous forces, such as the aquatic lú (klu) or the

vengeful tsänpo (btsan po) are sometimes said to be responsible for the theft of the lá. The lifeforce can also be stolen through sorcery and other kinds of intercessionary ritual means. The manipulation of the life-force is an operative feature of liberation rituals: a typical text enjoins the ritual master to “snatch the life force” (bla srog ‘gug ba) and “abduct the victim’s protective gods” (‘go ba’i lha dang phral ba). The victim is then “cast into insane unconsciousness” (dran med smyo ru ‘jug pa ) – i.e. is “liberated into the dharmadhātu”.294 I suggest, then, that the dokpa demonstrates ritual technologies drawn from Indian siddhism, but also reflects Tibetan ritual culture (and its underlying anxieties), especially in the procedures concerned with manipulation of the lá.


The Drupchen Manuals

The Kabgyé ritual cycles used at the principal Nyingma monasteries, both in Tibet and in exile, continue to serve as sourcebooks for annual ritual intensives, and also for ad hoc rites. As described, most of the Nyingma mother temples claim to uphold the drupchen tradition derived from Mindroling. While this claim is totally plausible, and we do have evidence of intellectual exchange between Mindroling and places like Katok, Dzogchen, and Shechen from the early eighteenth century onwards, it is interesting to notice the discrepancies between ritual cycles as 294 “Gtor ma la brten nas bzlog pa’i bsgral las don brgyad ma” in Katok: bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i chos skor, vol. 10, pp. 45-63. Quoted text pp. 46-47.


they are collated in the various compendia. A comparison between the Minling System and the ritual cycles of Eastern Tibet’s Mother Temples reveals a consistent structure to the ritual program, but a fairly wide discrepancy in actual materials. There is relatively little overlap between actual texts included in the ritual compendia, and we see each temple’s edition include many non-Nyangrel, or even non-Kabgyé, materials to supplement the texts drawn from Nyangrel’s terma corpus. I take this to reflect efforts at each temple to define unique ecclesiastical identities, as it is well known that each monastery proudly upholds its own unique traditions of emphasis. This observation bolsters my argument that ritual practice is an important vehicle for the articulation of institutional identities.

However, some texts do appear across multiple cycles, and stand at the heart of the ritual program. I have selected two of these for translation and analysis, with the goal of elucidating the role of ritual, as reflected in text, in undergirding identities and authoring agentive subjectivities. I will read these texts as special kinds of narratives, replete with imagery, idiomatic patterns, plots, and imaginal worlds that conscript participant/readers to provide a venue for working out agency, identity, and subjectivity. I will say more about this approach to the interpretation of ritual texts later. First, an overview of the texts, their ritual technologies, and the unique idioms entailed therein will anchor the discussion.

‘dul ba: The Exorcism of the Nine Types of Victory Banner: The Manual for the Impalement Effigy Exorcism

One effigy exorcism (tor-dok, gtor bzlog) ritual that appears across virtually every recension of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa, as well as being included in at least two ritual compendia, is called The Exorcism of the Nine Types of Victory Banner: The Manual for the Impalement


Effigy Exorcism (gtor bzlog gzer kha’i lhan thabs rgyal mtshan rnam pa dgu’i bzlog).295 This text is included in the Kyirong, Katok, and Tsamdrak editions of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa, and is thus a candidate for having been part of an early Kabgyé ritual tradition, or perhaps even part of Nyangrel’s original revelation itself. Interestingly, this particular text is not included in the seminal Minling System (smin gling lugs) compendium, which subsequent temples claim to rely on as the basis for their own ritual cycles. However, the Nine Types of Victory Banner does appear in the Katok sgrub skor as part of the sequence for their annual Great Accomplishment ritual intensive.296

Much like the root tantras of the Kabgyé cycle, the Nine Types of Victory Banner incorporates the array of Kabgyé deities, invoking the power of the Eight Herukas through mandalic imagery. But unlike a tantric deity-yoga in which visualization, meditation, gesture, and utterance are used to transform the mind of the practitioner towards soteriological goals, this exorcism uses ritual techniques to subdue agents of harm. In particular, as we will see in the distinctive imagery communicated in the liturgy, the harms of socio-natural disorder (‘dzings pa) are the ones to be averted through this tor-dok practice.

The text opens with a description of a mandalic arrangement of deity tormas (rten gtor), representing the nine principal Kabgyé deities, arranged in the cardinal and subsidiary directions. While liberation rituals typically use torma to represent the sacrificial victim, or “enemy obstructor” (dgra bgegs), tormas may also be used to symbolize (or, more precisely, manifest)

maṇḍala deities themselves. These elaborately decorated tormas are not destroyed or scattered in the manner of a sacrificial exorcism torma. Rather, the deity tormas materially anchor the power 295 “Gtor bzlog gzer kha’i lhan thabs rgyal mtshan rnam pa dgu’i bzlog” in Katok: bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i chos skor, vol. 10, text 17, pp. 313-322; Tsamdrak: vol. 10, text 15, pp. 431-440. Kyirong: vol. 3, text 3, pp. 39-45. 296 Katok: bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa (sgrub skor), vol. 2, text 14, pp. 301-310.


of the herukas, making present the transformative potential of the deities. In The Nine Victory Banners, miniature sculptures representing various types of harmful forces adorn the deity tormas. It will be through the proximity of these representations of “enemy obstructors” to the materialized divine forces in the deity tormas that harm-aversion will be effectuated. On top of the Chemchok torma in the center, arrange the form of a great garuda with a red flag in its beak. On top of the Yangdak torma in the east,

arrange a peacock eating a human corpse. Atop the Zhinje torma in the south, place a tigress eating a human corpse. On top of the Tamdrin torma in the western quarter, arrange the form of a lone red man, ablaze with confidence. Atop the Phurba torma in the north, arrange a three-headed iron wolf. On the mamo torma in the southeast, place ten stag antlers. In the southwest, on the Rigzin torma, arrange a mane of unkempt women’s hair. In the northwest, on the Drekpa torma, arrange a lion eating the enemy’s heart. On the Drangak torma in the northeast, position a black man with the face of a carnivorous animal. On a glorious command torma, place a crow riding an owl.297

The text then goes on to prescribe a liturgy which communicates a typology of threats to be neutralized:


With a clear state of meditation, say these words:

Hum: On top of the Chemchok heruka, by means of the great garuda, blue black, blazing, winged: with your countenance, avert evil signs of faced. With your wings, avert evil signs of the winged. With your talons, avert evil signs of the taloned. With your beak, avert evil signs of the beaked. With your horns, avert evil signs of the horned. Avert! Transform!’ Avert with the torma.

297 Mtshams brag, vol. 10, 432.1 – 433.3: dbus kyi che mchog gig tor ma’i steng du/ khyung chen ling kha mchur thogs pa’i gzugs dgod/ shar du yang dag gtor ma’i steng du/ rma bya mi ro za ba’i gzugs dgod/ lhor gzhin rje’i gtor ma’i steng du/ stag mo mi ro za ba’i gzugs dgod/ nub du rta mgrin gtor ma’i steng du/ mi reng dmar po sbar mo gdengs pa dgod/ byang du phur 433 pa’i gtor ma’i steng du/ lcags kyi spyang mo mgo gsum pa dgod/ shar lhor ma mo’i gtor ma’i steng du/ sha pho ru bcu pa dgod/ lho nub du rig ‘dzin gyi gtor ma’i steng du/ bud med ral ‘dzings kyi gzugs dgod/ nub byang du dregs pa’i gtor ma’i steng du/ seng ge dgra snying za ba dgod/ byang shar du drag sngags kyi gtor ma’i steng du/ mi nag gcan zan gyi gdong pa can gcig dgod la/


Hum: atop the Yangdak torma in the east, by means of the peacock eating a corpse: avert evil signs of the wandering peacock. Avert the bad signs of the strife of gods and demons, and the mixing of the poison by the mother. Whatever food has been poisoned: Avert! Transform!’ Avert with the torma. ‘Hum: On the mamo torma in the southeast, by raising a call to the stag, avert the disturbances of sickness and disease. Avert the bad signs of the disorder of antlered stags. Avert the disorder of the ritual drum. Avert the bad signs of the disorder of the blazing black lady, the hundred vixens of the charnel ground: Avert! Transform!’ Avert with torma. ‘Hum: in the south, on the Zhinje torma, by means of the tigress eating a corpse, avert the enemies that pounce like tigers. The evil signs at the root of discordance, all those summoned to the front, the spread of former enemies, the mind of the future enemies, those bound in the mouth of the demoness, those who are carried like a mouse by a weasel: Avert! Transform!’ Avert by torma. ‘Hum: on the Rigzin torma in the southwest, by the woman’s unkempt mane, avert the bad signs of the naked black woman. The ones who prepare the ten poisons and nine sicknesses, the arising demons of the thousand quarrels, the ones who have stirred the poisoned channels, the women who scorn husbands: Avert! Transform!’ Avert by torma. ‘Hum: on the torma of Tamdrin to the north,


by the blazing confidence of the lone red man: avert the eye of death that looks upon the living. The ones who call out from the grave, the ones who rise up and disturb the aged fathers, the ones who disturb mothers and sons, the ones who disturb little children, the evils of the dangerous signs of accidents and harm: Avert! Transform!’ Avert by means of torma. ‘Hum: on the torma of Choten to the northwest, by the lion eating the enemy’s heart, avert the evil signs of the descent of the mob upon great men. Avert the bad signs of the descent of the lion river. The evil signs of the disfavor of the king and minister, and strife between the venerable: Avert! Transform!’ Avert by means of torma. ‘Hum: on the torma of the Trinlay in the north, by the three-headed iron wolf, avert those who cast the malign torma of the phurba. The evil ones who incite and dispatch the blood torma, who shoot the arrow of the white mustard torma, the adorners of the mantric torma of the mantrin, the evil mantras of the sons of the heretics, and the eight sorceresses who do evil: Avert! Transform!’ Avert by torma. ‘Hum: on the torma of Drangak in the east, by the wolf-faced black man: avert the crying out of the black man. The jackal carrying a human corpse, the cry of the wolf, the sorcery of demons, and the arising of vampires and ghostly demons: Avert! Transform!’ Avert with torma. ‘Bhyo: on the glorious command torma, by the crow mounting an owl:

avert the bad signs of the conflict of the vulture’s talon. The wildness of the nighttime owl, the midnight friends of the crow, feathered ones mounting one another, the hundred and eleven bad signs: Avert, Transform!’

Avert with Torma. Bhyo.298

This recitation connects specific kinds of harm to the symbolism of the figurines displayed in the maṇḍala. To what degree these imageries were salient to practitioner-readers in their own contexts, we cannot know. We do not know exactly what the imagery of fiendish birds, wailing corpses, women with unkempt hair, black men, or pouncing tigers specifically meant to twelfth-century Tibetans (or, for that matter, eighth-century Indians). Comparative textual analysis can reveal the development of specific images, iconographies, and idioms over time. Robert Mayer and Cathy Cantwell, for example, trace Bönpo iterations of “the winged and the


298 Mtshams brag, p 433.3 – 436.6: de nas ting nge ‘dzin gsar zhing ’di skad do/ hum dbus kyi dpal chen gtor ma’i steng/ che mchog dbu la khyung chen ni/ mthing nag se’i gshog pa 434 gdong pas sdong can ltas ngan bzlog/ gshog pas gshog chags ltas ngan dang/ sder mos sder chen ltas ngan dang/ mchus mchu can ltas ngan dang/ rwa yis rwo can ltas ngan rnams bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ hum shar gyi yang dag gtor ma’i steng/ rma bya mi ro za ba yis/ rma bya yang pa’i ltas ngan bzlog/ mi’i dug gtong g.yos pa dang/ lha ‘dre ‘khrugs pa’i ltas ngan dang/ gang zos dug du song ba rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ shar lho ma mo’i gtor ma’i steng/ sha pho du ‘bod btsugs pa yis/ nad kha rim kha g.yos pa bzlog/ sha pho ru ‘dzings ltas ngan bzlog/ nya bo rnga ‘dzings ltas ngan bzlog/ nag mo sbar ‘dzings ltas ngan dang dur khrod wa mo brgyas pa rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ lho gzhin rje’i gtor ma’i steng / stag mo mi ro za ba yi/ dgra bgegs stag ltar ‘phyo ba bzlog/ sre mo byi ro khyer ba dang/ ‘dre mo’i kha nas sdom khyer dang / snga dgra dar ba’i phyi dgra sems/ mdun nas ‘gugs pa thams cad dang/ mi mthun 435 sbyor rtsa ba ltas ngan rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ lho nub rig ‘dzin gtor ma’i steng/ bud med ‘thab cingdzings pa yis/ nag mo sder ‘dzings ltas ngan bzlog/ ngan dgu gdug bcu bshom pa dang/ rgya ‘dre rbod btong ‘dre langs dang/ g.yos tshad dug du song pa dang/ khyol bud med ‘khu ba rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ hum nub kyi lta mgrin gtor ma’i steng/ mi reng dmar po sbar gdengs kyis/ gshin mig gson la lta ba bzlog/ dur nas ‘o dodbod pa dang/ pha khu’i rgan sri langs pa dang/ ma bu byur sri thams cad dang/ byis pa’i chung sri la sogs pa/ rkyen ngan gnodtshe slas ngan rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ hum nub byang mchod rten gtor ma’i steng/ seng ge dgra snying za ba yis/ mi chen dmangs phab ltas ngan bzlog/ seng ge klungs phab ltas ngan dang/ che btsun nang ‘khrugs ltas ngan dang/ rje blan bka’ chad ltas ngan rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ hum byang 436 phrin las gtor ma’i steng/ lcags kyi spyang mo btsugs pa yis/ phur pa’i dpal zor ‘phen pa bzlog/ khrag zor sbod gtong ngan pa dang/ yungs dkar zor mda’ ‘phen pa dang/ sngags kyi sngags zor rbud pa dang/ mu stegs spar bu ngan sngags dang/ phra man ma’i nye ‘khyed rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ hum byang shar drag sngags gtor ma’i steng/ mi dang spyang gdong brtsugs pa yis/ mi nag ‘o dodbod pa dang/ bcan zan mi ro khyer ba dang/ spyang gi ‘o dodbod pa dang/ bdud pas khram la bteb pa dang/ btsangong za ‘dre langs pa dang/ bzlog go bsgyur ro/ bhyo dpal gyi sdong gtor ma’i steng/ bya rog ‘ug pa zhon pa yis/ bya rgod sder ‘dzings ltas gnan bzlog/ ‘ug pa spo la rgod pa dang/ bya rogs brang ‘brad bskur ba dang/ ‘dab ‘chags gcig lag cig zhon dang/ ltas ngan brgyad cu rtsa gcig rnams/ bzlog go bsgyur ro gtor mas bzlog/ bhyo


fanged” in the iconography of Bönpo and Nyingmapa protective and tutelary deities.299 However, the specific images present in this text’s imagescape may evade our immediate interpretive abilities. But, for any reader, these surreal images are certainly evocative of the uncanny, the threatening, the wild, the strange, and the disordered. A structural appraisal of this imagery suggests that things like social and natural disorder; the mixing of food, poison, species, and physiognomies; and unstable transformations of social and natural phenomena, are the threats to be averted through this ritual practice. The fiendish birds associated with the

Chemchok torma (“evil signs of the winged, evil signs of the taloned, … of the beaked, … of the horned”); the poison and strife averted with the Yangdak torma (“the bad signs of the strife of gods and demons...the mixing of poison by the mother...whatever food has been poisoned”); the demonism and animal aggression of the mamo quarter (“the disturbance of sickness and disease, the bad signs of the chaos of antlered stags….the chaos of the ritual drum...the vixens of the charnel ground”); the threat of enemies and aggressors to be pacified by Zhinje (“the spread of former enemies, the mind of future enemies, those bound in the mouth of the demoness...carried

like a mouse by a weasel”); the sickness and toxic femininity referenced in the Rigzin stanza (“the ones who prepare the ten poisons and nine sickness...the women who scorn husbands”); the terrors of the undead averted by Tamdrin (“the ones who call out from the grave...who rise up and disturb aged fathers and uncles... mothers and sons...who disturb little children”); the disruptions of hierarchy in Jigten Chötö (“the evil signs of the descent of the mob upon great men...the disfavor of the king and minister, and strife between the venerable”), the black magic

associated with Dorje Phurba and Möpa Drangak (“those who cast the malign torma...the blood torma...the evil mantras of the heretics...the eight sorceresses who do evil...the sorcery of demons 299 Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, “The Winged and the Fanged.” In From Bhakti to Bon: Festschrift for Per Kvaerne, eds. Hannah Havnevik and Charles Ramble, 153-170. Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Religion in Human Culture, 2014.


and the arising of vampires and ghostly demons”), and the libidinous fiendishness of wild birds symbolized in the command torma (“the crow mounting the owl...the midnight friend of the owl...feathered ones mounting one another”): these are significations of natural and social disorders, expressed in idioms that may have been particularly resonant for contemporaneous readers.

These harms are neutralized by the materialization of these images into a sacred maṇḍala. This technique is resonant with the narratives of demon-subjugation in the tantras themselves, wherein demonic agents are conscripted into the heruka maṇḍala, and thereby tamed. As we have seen, this subjugation-through-mandalization was an important element of Yoga and Mahāyoga tantric mythologies, such as that of the Guhyagarbha’s fifteenth chapter. The idiom of taming through mandalization is operative in this tor-dok rite, expressed in the physical conjunction of the deity torma with the representations of harmful agents. The exorcism hinges on the effigistic materialization of the taming and subjugated agents, as well as the meditative trance (ting nge ‘dzin) and commanding vocalizations of the ritual practitioner, which activate the transformative power of the deities anchored in the torma representation.

The matrix of simulacric materiality, meditative absorption, and utterance, works to effectuate the apotropaic outcome. In this, we may observe the dual objective / subjective nature of ritual materials themselves. As James Gentry observes, the materials used in “object-basedrituals – specifically, the tormas and substances involved in apotropaic rites such as the dokpa exorcism, or those deployed in ritual initiation – exhibit a dual nature: ritual materials are at once objects to be manipulated, and are agentive subjects capable of acting upon “real” phenomena.300 300 James Gentry (2013) has advanced a sophisticated exploration of “object-power discourse” in Tibetan tantric tradition, with specific reference to Sog bzlog pa blo gros rgyal mtshan’s literary works. See Gentry 2014, 2-13 for an overview of Gentry’s approach, especially his use of Bruno Latour’s conception of agency as a subject/object


The mediational nature of these object-subjects allows for the non-material transformative force of a ritual master, and of enlightened forces themselves, to effectuate change in the material domain. This logic recognizes the qualitative gap between material and enlightened domains, and thus a mediational process is required that utilizes technologies and materials which can operate in both registers. Harm-averting rituals, then, must involve the subjectification of objects, and the objectification of subjects, to allow for mediation between unseen enlightened forces and the

apparent world. Thus, the deity torma does not merely “represent” the Kabgyé heruka. Rather, the transformative force of the wrathful deity is manifest in the presence of the rten gtor. The torma is at once a physical object, and also an agent capable of acting in prescribed, and perhaps even unpredictable, ways (and thus the great care taken in treating these materials during the ritual action). In this, the agency of ritual materials also relies on the activation afforded through a ritual master’s meditation, gestures, and utterances. Thus, multiple layers of subjective agencies are at play in the dialogue of objectivity and subjectivity upon which the dokpa rite hinges. As we will see in our interpretation below, Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, especially as it is interpreted by Gentry, will be a good method for analyzing the web of agencies that account for a ritual’s transformative power.

No further instruction for kinetic ritual action is specified in the Nine Victory Banners. Unlike liberation rites in which the torma is destroyed, this tor-dok does not call for the dismemberment of the tormas and the murder of a sacrificial victim. Rather, it seems to be the case that the mere materialization and mutual proximity of unseen forces in the deity tormas and in the adorning figurines manifests a transformative contact between the forces of good and evil. distribution (p. 19). Also see: Gentry 2014, Part II: Objects in Theory and Practice, pp. 201-415, esp. Gentry’s appropriation of Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects, pp. 295-99.


The final section of The Nine Victory Banners connects the disorders evoked in the liturgy to various kinds of gods and demons. This is a continuation of the liturgy, as the practitioner commands various kinds of demonic and threatening forces, which are here specified to be the “magical display” (cho ‘phrul) of the classes of gods and demons, to be averted by means of the great glorious torma (dpal chen gtor mas bzlog).

As for the aversion of bad signs: The black men with fearful appearance, the retinue of lepers encircling: these are the magical display of the deeds of the Lord of Death. Moreover, The black woman riding a mule, with a picture of the crossed vajra, The soaring red-beaked crows and so forth, which are the magical display of the mamos and dakinis: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The black men, the black dog, the black wolf and so forth, which are the magical display of the demons and heretics: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The white man, the white horse, the lion and so forth, which are the magical display of the White Lha: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The woman transforming into a black bird and so forth, who is the magical display of the Demoness Queen: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The hideous girls riding carnivorous beasts, the retinue of the black wrathful goddesses, which are the magical display of the blood-drinking vampiresses: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The white birds, dogs, and little children, The temple’s venerable images and instruments,

which are the magical display of the Dharma-Protector Kings: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The armored red youths and the red horses, dogs, and birds who are the magical display of the red Tsan: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The feathered pigeons, and the great darkness and clouds in dreams which is the magical display of the black Mu: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The black wolf running at the edge of the forest, the wrathful youth who is the magical display of Vajrasadhu, Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, Men adorned with animal skins, And the incineration of the body: this is the magical display of the Nöjin Lord of Death. Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The brandishing of the black flag, the black bon, and the black vase, the retinue consisting of black men, mothers and fathers, which are the magical displays of the enchanting Ghost Demons: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The tortoise, the snake, the nasty creepers, and the children, puppies, and envious elders and so forth: these are the magical displays of the Naga Earth Lords. Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The thousand donkeys, vultures, horses, wolves, and dogs, the foreigners, beggars, and familiar ones, these are the mother and father samaya-breaking demons. Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover,

The frost and hail that descends from above, the bursting catapults and arrows armies throwing spears and so forth: these are the magical display of the general who incites and dispatches sorcery: Avert with the great glorious torma! Moreover, The transformation of the enemy of the magical display of the eight kinds [of gods and demons], the hundred and eleven bad signs, the eight kinds of untimely death the fifty vases of bad dispositions the exorcism of the three hundred and sixty non-human spirits, Avert with the great glorious torma! Awful calamities befalling we yogins, fellow practitioners, breakages in general, and the breakage of the door; the bad signs, evil prophecies and divinations and so forth, Avert! Avert by the great red torma!

Transform! Transform the bad signs of the enemy.301

We see in this section a comprehensive list of bad signs, terrors, and harmful threats that may be averted through the power of the torma exorcism. This list includes not only patently malevolent actors, such as demons and vampiresses, but also animals, protector spirits, landscape gods,


301 Katok, vol. 10, p 318.3-321: ... ltas ngan bzlog pa ni/ mi nag ‘jigs pa’i cha byad can/ mdze pa’i ‘khor gyis bskor ba ni/ las kyi gzhin rje’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ nag mo dri’u zhon khram bam can/ bdud bya nag po lding ba sogs/ ma mo mkha’ ‘gro’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ mi nag khyi nag sbyang nag sogs/ bdud dang mu stegs cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ mi dkar rta dkar seng ge sogs/ dkar po lha yi cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ bud med bya nag sgra gur sogs/ ma bdud rgya mo’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ bud med mi sdug gcan gzan zhon/ nag mo khros bas bskor ba ni/ khrag ‘thung srin mo’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ bya khyi dkar po bu chung dang/ lha khang ‘bag sing btsun pa sogs/ cho skyong rgyal po’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ mi dmar skyes phran zhub can dang/ rta khyi dmar po bya dmar sogs/ dmar po btsan gyi cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ ‘dab chags phu ron ‘phur ba dang/ mun pa dag po ‘thib pa rmis/ nag po dmu yi cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ spyang ki nag po nyer zhing rgyug/ [illeg.] skyes phran khro ba ni/ rdo rje legs pa/i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ mi lus gcan gzan lpags pa gyon/ lus la me stag ‘phro ba ni/ gnod sbyin gzhin rje’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ ban nag bon nag dar nag ‘phyur/ mi dang pho mos bskor ba ni/ the’u brang ‘gong po’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ sbal sbrul sdom sdig ‘bu srin dang/ rgan sgon khyi phrug byis ba sogs/ sa bdag sklu yi cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ khyi sbyang rta rgod bong stong dang/ mon pa sprang po bsgom pa sogs/ dam sri pho mo’i cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ thog bab sad ser kha ba dang/ sgyogs dang mda’ dang shwa rdol dang/ dmag dpung mchon rtse tshur ‘phong sogs/ rbod gtong spyi yi cho ‘phrul yin/ de yang dpal chen gtor mas bzlog/ sde brgyad cho ‘phrul dgra la bsgyur/ ltas ngan brgya cu rtsa gcig dang/ dus min ‘tshib rnam brgyad dang/ gzhis ngan bum pa bco lnga dang/ ye ‘grogs sum brgya drug cu bzlog/ rnal ‘byor bdag cag ‘khor bcas kyi/ spyi chag sgo chag ltas ngan dang/ mo ngan pru ngan la sogs pa/ bzlog go dmar chen gtor mas bzlog/ bsgyur ro ltas ngan dgra la bsgyur/


foreigners, soldiers, and even naughty children. While some of these actors are not inherently harmful, it is clear that they are somehow associated with inauspicious or dangerous phenomena according to the imaginaire undergirding this text. This list of bad signs and their agents also demonstrates the hybridity which characterizes Kabgyé mythology in general: classical Buddhist divinities such as nāgas, ḍākinīs, and dharma protectors are listed alongside characters distinctive to Tibet, such as rdo rje legs pa (a protective deity, formerly a god of gamblers and war, conscripted by Padmasambhava at Samyé), the Red Tsān and Black Mú, as well as the White

Lha, who are the ancestral deities of the Tibetan emperors. The Eight Classes are themselves mentioned, and we might regard this list as a comprehensive account of all the unseen actors that can bestow harm, disorder, and inauspiciousness in the world of men. Notably, the Nine Victory Banners’ list of dangerous agents is somewhat similar to the list of dregs pa demons to be tamed according to the Deshek Dupa Tantra (bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i rgyud), which I have suggested may represent the older, “transmitted” Kabgyé tradition. Additionally, its template of taming-throughmandalization resonates with the orientation of the taming maṇḍalas of the Māyājāla tantras, as in the fifteenth chapter of the Secret Nucleus. The idea that the Nine Victory Banners represents the ritualism of the transmitted Deshek Dupa is a tantalizing possibility, bolstered by the fact that the Nine Victory Banners is included in the Kyirong edition of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa, which I regard as representative of an older layer of Kabgyé tradition. From this perspective, the Nine Victory Banners may be an early Kabgyé tor-dok ritual text, perhaps known to Nyangrel himself.


Diagram for a Shinje rten gtor.

The Imaginal World of The Nine Victory Banners

Regardless of whether or not we can understand the precise valence of the text’s images for Tibetan readers, the text is remarkable for the density of its arresting imagery. It provides a striking imagescape through which is communicated a world of disorder and threats which must be confronted. While it is certain that Tibetans then, as now, were committed to the reality of


entities like the Tsän, the Lú, and the Lha, we do not know whether they regularly encountered corpse-eating peacocks, zombies, black men, dreadlocked women, wrathful youths, lion-headed people, poison-mixing hags, charnel ground vixens, and the like. However, such a rich imaginal world acts to conscript a “reader” (or, in this case, a ritual practitioner) into a reality in which specific kinds of agencies can, and must, be claimed. In other words, a text such as this provides a “lifeworld” within which to experience oneself as an actor. This is a narrative environment in which reader/practitioners are called on to participate in a continual drama of harm-aversion, and in the triumph of enlightened forces. For Tibetans, and, specifically, for the Nyingmapa, control of the gods and demons constitutes a particularly resonant and recursive drama, as the lore of

demon-control remains at the heart of the Tibetan Buddhism’s story of its initial, and ongoing, success in the Land of Snows. Thus, participation in an imaginal world of threats and powerful divine forces naturally invokes the deeds that stand at the basis of the religion’s selfunderstanding. This is not to suggest that practitioners would have regarded the kinds of threats communicated in this ritual text as somehow imaginary. Rather, the text – and the execution of the ritual it prescribes – equips practitioners with an opportunity to experience and express agency in countering obstacles. This is afforded through the establishment of an imaginal world with its own agents, hierarchies, and outcomes that the practitioner, through a kinetic, vocal, and imaginative set of engagements, can participate in, and manipulate, to achieve a self-experience

of agency. In other words, I remain open to the possibility that the demons, ghosts, and fiendish animals described in the Nine Victory Banners operated as a connotative field, establishing an imaginal world within which a narrative identity of the agentive practitioner could be configured. As this ritual “plot” and “setting” advance the idiom of demon control and the superiority of divine Buddhist forces, execution of the ritual recruits the practitioner into specific, yet broadly273 defined, identities; by replicating the deeds of Tibet’s original demon-tamer, practice of the tordok confirms a vision of religiosity entailing an ongoing sacred history, the role of a specific community, and the celebration of a certain kind of ritual mastery undergirding the distinct identity of the Nyingma.


From this point of view, I conclude that it is productive to understand a ritual text such as this in terms of a special kind of narrativity – one that is potently activated in the kinetics of ritual practice – which drives agency and configures subjectivity for its practitioners. This narratological interpretation will be bolstered by an analysis of the “subjunctive” character of ritual practice, to be explicated following our exploration of another exorcistic ritual text drawn from the Kabgyé cycle.


sgrol ba: The Eight Modes of Liberation

In contrast to The Nine Types of Victory Banner, which appears in the Kyirong, Katok, and Tsamdrak editions of the Kabgyé Deshek Dupa, The Eight Modes of Liberative Action Based on Torma (gtor ma la brten nas bsgral las don brgyad ma) only appears in the Katok and Tsamdrak.302 As suggested earlier, the Katok and Tsamdrak editions are the comprehensive recensions allegedly derived from Gongra Lochen Zhenpen Dorje’s seventeenth-century editorial efforts. It’s absence from Kyirong thus raises the question of whether it was part of the elder Kabgyé ritual tradition. The Eight Modes of Liberative Action does appear in several ritual cycles, including Katok’s, and it is illuminating for its comprehensive format in regards to the technique of liberation (sgrol ba) ritual.

302 “Gtor ma la brten nas bzlog pa’i bsgral las don brgyad ma” in Katok: bka’ brgyad bde gshegs ‘dus pa’i chos skor, vol. 10, text 6, p 45-63; Tsamdrak: vol. 10, text 24, p 531-547.


This text begins with a preview of the rite’s conclusion, prescribing “the methods of pressing, incinerating, or flinging – whatever is suitable.”303 This presumably refers to the fate of the effigy torma, through which the enemy obstructor (dgra bgegs) will be neutralized. It also foregrounds the patently violent character of this sgrol ba rite.

The text then summarizes a general eightfold procedure for liberation rites in general: First, summon the enemy’s life force. Second, snatch its power and potency. Third, take away their protector gods. Fourth, bring the consciousness down into the form [of the effigy torma]. Fifth, impel it into the effigy without dissipating. Sixth, [the enemy] falls into insane unconsciousness. Seventh, demolish it into dust. Eighth, feed the heap [of demolished torma] to the mouth [of the heruka deity].304

These procedures reflect both the tantric technique of liberation, which was a central element of Indian Mahāyoga praxis, and also distinctively Tibetan ideas, such as the thaumaturgy of lifeforce manipulation, and intercession with personal protective spirits.305 This summary is then followed by another list of the eight procedures required to activate the outcome of liberation. These procedures are:

The invocation of the deity, the setting up of the place of the offering, the enlightened action of entrustment, the binding of the designated victim, meditative absorption, [arranging and deploying] the implements of violence,


303 Katok, vol. 10, 46.2: bnan bsgreg ‘phang gsum gang yang rung/ 304 Katok, 46.4-47.3: dang po bla srog ’gug pa dang/ gnyis pa mthu dang rju ‘phrul ‘phrog pa dang/ gsum pa ‘go ba’i lha dang phral ba dang/ bzhi pa rnam shes gzugs la dbab pa dang/ lnga pachor med byang du gzhugs pa dang/ drug pa dran med smyo ru ‘jug pa dang/ bdun pa gtun du brdung shing rdul du brlag pa dang/ brgayd pa phung po zhal du bstabs pa’o/


305 This text mentions the personal protector gods (‘go ba’i lha), a category which includes entities such as the mother and father lineal gods (pho and mo lha), as well as the gods of the body (sku lha). According to Tibetan lore, these entities abide on a person’s body, helping govern one’s fortunes in relationship with other related unseen entities. As is the case with the personal life force (bla srog), the personal gods can be abducted or interfered with, leading to physical and mental ailments. The King of Root Tantras’ section on Jigten Chötö includes reference to these specific entities in the context of the subjugation of worldly deities.


[executing] the mudras of preparation, and the cursing of the victim with the mouth.306

The bulk of the text is then devoted to a liturgy that describes the execution of these eight procedures under the auspices of each of the eight Kabgyé deities, beginning with Chemchok:

First:

Hum. From the maṇḍala of the dark red triangle, the deities of Chemchok of good qualities arises.

When enemies to the friends of the teachings spread, manifest the divine body from unfabricated space.’

Second: ‘I the yogin repel the allies [of the enemy]. In this place, by means of fierce actions, the enemy obstructors of black mind are quickly liberated by fierce actions.’

Third: ‘Hum. [I invoke] the assembly of deities of Chemchok of good qualities. When the time has come for fierce enlightened actions, the enemy obstructors that trouble the mind are summoned here in a single instant.’

Fourth: ‘The one with the hook captures them by the heart. The one with the noose ties up their limbs. The one with the shackles binds their senses. The one with the bell pushes them from behind. All the envoys, do this work! Om Badzra…...Dza Dza’307

Fifth:

From the mind of the great glorious one, the deities and protectors proliferate immeasurably. They grasp everything by the heart and fasten the noose around the neck. Having applied the wind of mantra, the enemies are helplessly summoned to the front. They are locked in the prison of the three realms of samsara. Consider that their existence is subdued, and they are not able to think.

306 Katok, 47: bskul ba;i lha dang/ gdab pa’i yul dang/ bcol ba’i phirn las dang/ gdags pa’i ‘phyang dang/ bsgom pa’i ting ‘dzin dang/ drag po’i rdzas dang/ bca’ ba’i phyag rgya dang/ zhal gyi dmod pa’o/ 307 At the request of the lamas who have assisted me in this research, I do not include the mantras as they are written in the ritual texts. While I have been encouraged by prominent lamas to undertake this project from a historical perspective, several have expressed the opinion that my work should not stimulate unqualified people to attempt the Kabgyé practices and rituals. Thus, I am committed to omitting critical elements of the liturgy, such as the cursing mantras.


Sixth:

At the iron throne, by the hook of actions, they will be stopped. Seventh: Summon the [enemy] by making the finger like a hook.

Eighth: ‘Ho. The retinue of the assembly of the great glorious deities, the wrathful males and females, emanating and emanating, the envoys and actions, along with the command protectors; the enemy that destroys the teachings, this vow pervertor, is tamed in this place, in one instant.’ Samaya Seal Seal Seal.308


The text goes on in similar manner under the auspices of each of the Kabgyé maṇḍala deities: Yangdak Heruka, Jampal (Yamāntaka), Padma Sung (Hayagrīva), Phurba Trinlay (Vajrakīla), Mamo Bötong, Jigten Chötö, and Möpa Drangak. The template of eight procedures is much the same under each heruka, with some differences in terms of special substances and ritual implements to be applied to the effigy, specific cursing mantras to be recited, and unique mudras and curses. For example, the section for Mamo Bötong reads:

First:


Hum. From the maṇḍala of the dark red triangle, the deities of Mamo Bötong [arise]. When enemies to the friends of the teachings spread, manifest the divine body from unfabricated space.’

<poem> 308 Katok, 48.4- 50.3: hum smug nag gru gsum dkyil ‘khor nas/ che mchog yon tan lha tshogs rnams bstan pa gyan la dgra dar na/ mi mngon dbyings nas sku bzhengs la/ nyis pa ni/ rnal ‘byor bdag gis ra mdar bzlog/ gnas ;dir drag po’i las la ywa. Yid la brnag pa’i [[[Tsamdrak]]: nag po] dgra bgegs rnams/ drak po’i las kyis myur du sgrol/ gsum pa

ni/ hum che mchog yon tan lha tshogs rnams/ drag po’i phrin las dus la bab/ yid la brnag pa’i dgra bgegs rnams/

skad cig gcig la ‘dir khug cig/ bzhi pa ni/ lcags kyu can gyis snying nas zungs/ zhags pa can gyis yan lag chings/

lcags sgrog can gyis dbang po sdom/ dril bu can gyis rgyab nas phul/ pho nya kun gyis las mdzod cig/ Om badzra…..phat/ Om badzra….ya/ ma ha yaksha….phat/ dgra bgeg...dza dza/ lnga pa ni/ dpal chen po’i thugs ka nas/ lha dang bsrungs ma’i tshogs grangs med pa ‘phros te/ de rnams kyis gang la bya ba’i snying ka nas bzung ste/ ske

nas zhags pas bcings/ rlung gi mantra la steng du bzhag nas/ rang dbang med par mdun du bkug ste/ srid gsum

‘khor ba’i btson khang du bcug la/ srid cing ‘gul mi nus par bsam mo/ drug pa ni/ gri lcags la byas pa’i lcags kyus

bgag go/ bdun pa ni/ lag pa’i mrdzub mo lcags kyu ltar byas la dgug pa’o/ brgayd pa ni/ ho/ dpal chen po’i lha tshogs ‘khor dang bcas pa/ khro bo dang khro mo/ sprul pa dang yang sprul/ pho nya dang las byed/ bka’ srung dang bcas pa rnams kyis bstan pa ‘jig pa’i dgra bo dam yams ‘di/ skad cig nying la gnas ‘dir khug cig/ sa ma ya/

rgya rgya rgya/


Second: <poem> ‘I the yogin repel the allies [of the enemy]. In this place, by means of fierce actions, the enemy obstructors of black mind are quickly liberated by fierce actions.’

Third:

Hum. [I invoke] the Assembly of deities of mamo with samaya. At the time of the fierce enlightened actions, immediately paralyze the enemy obstructors of bad mind.’

Fourth:

Scatter the pestilence of the mamo into dust ‘Om…..hum’. Recite thus.

Fifth:

By a poisonous rain, imagine the sense consciousness of the enemy falls into insanity

Sixth:

Demon poison, goat poison, the blood of an insane person, the extracts of datura: measure these out on top of the effigy.

Seventh:

Make the mudra of offering, with the fingers on end.

Eighth:

‘Ho. The assembly of the deities of the mamos of existence, wisdom and wrathful male and females who accomplish actions, emanations and emanations, envoys, actions, and command protectors: to this enemy obstructor who destroys the teachings and violates vows, make rain a shower of black blood and insanity’ Curse thus. <poem> Samaya Sealed Sealed Sealed.309


309 Katok, 57.6 - 59.3: dang po ni/ hum/ dmar nag gru gsum dkyil ‘khor nas/ ma mo rbod gtong lha tshogs rnams/

bstan pa gnyan la dgra dar na/ mi mngon dbyings nas sku bzhengs la/ gnyis pa ni/ rnal ‘byor bdag gi ra mdar bzlog/

gnas ‘dir drag po’i las la ya/ yid la brnag pa’i dgra bgegs rnams/ drag po’i las kyis myur du sgrol/ gsum pa ni/

hum/ ma mo’i lha tshogs thugs dam can/ drag po’i phirn las dus la bab/ yid la brnag po’i dgra bgegs rnams/ rengs

par khug la smyor chug cig/ bzhi pa ni/ ma mo’i dpal yams thal bar rdol/ Om…. phat/ Om badzra….ki la ya/ ma ha yaksha ….phat/ dgra bgegs….phat/ ces bzlas so/ lnga pa ni/ dgra bo la dug gi char pas dbang po rnam shes smyo zhing ‘bog par bsam mo/ drug pa ni/ btsan dug/ ra dug/ smyon khrag/ thad phrom pa’i khu ba rnams ling ga’i steng du brtig go/ bdun pa ni/ lag pa;i sor mo rnams gzings te/ ‘khrig ma gnyas sprad nas ‘khor lo bskor ba ltar bya’o/

brgyad pa ni/ ho/ srid pa ma mo’i lha tshogs/ ye shes dang las la grub pa’i khro bo dang khro mo/ sprul pa dang


Both this Eight Modes of Liberation and the Nine Victory Banners hinge on a conjunction of materialized agents with the meditation and efficacious utterance of the ritualist. However, the Eight Modes of Liberation is a far more kinetic rite. As in the Nine Victory Banners, the substantiated presence of operative agents in the effigy torma is a necessary feature of the rite. However, here the effigy is reserved for the sacrificial victim (the agent of harm), and the summoning of the enemy’s vital essence into the form of the torma effigy is an essential moment in the procedure, along with the anointing of the torma with special substances (such as various

kinds of poison, special food substances, and even blood), the performance of hand gestures and cursing vocalizations by the ritual practitioner, and the ultimate destruction of the effigy. These are all kinetic engagements that are essential for the effective execution of the liberation ritual. Whereas the Nine Victory Banners tor-dok relies on mandalization to tame harmful forces, this Eight Modes of Liberative Action is patently destructive: its goal is the annihilation of the consciousness of the enemy. The force of the Kabgyé herukas, invoked and wielded through the meditative visualization of the practitioner, is an operative feature of this subjugation, and results in a level of violence not seen in the Nine Types of Victory Banner.

Interestingly, the specific harms to be mitigated are rather different between the two texts. The Nine Victory Banners offers a thickly expressed imagescape to communicate the threat of various kinds of socio-natural disorder (‘dzings pa). These disordered forces are invoked through surreal and terrifying imagery, communicated in a field of signifiers that resonates on

specific cultural and structural registers. The target of the Eight Modes of Liberation, on the other hand, is clearly specified: “the enemies to the friends of the teachings...the enemy obstructors who trouble the mind...the enemy obstructor who destroys the teachings, the vow yang sprul/ pho nya las byed bka’ srung dang bcas pa rnams kyis/ bstan pa’i ‘jig pa’i dgra bgegs dam yams ‘di la/ smyo ‘bogs khrag nad kyi char ‘babs par gyur cig/ ches dmod bar bya ‘o/


corruptors....”. In short, heretics and enemies to Buddhism (mu stegs pa) are the ones to be “liberated” in the manner of the Eight Modes, and their fate is the decisive annihilation of their consciousness: “...break apart their senses, destroy their body and mind into insanity”. The differing conceptions of dangerous agents and their fates as communicated in these texts may reflect specific contexts within which these texts were incubated. However, disorder, heresy, and threats from the enemies of orthodoxy would be concerning to any tradition in any context, and we do see evidence of antagony between Buddhist and non-Buddhist communities

expressed in the ritualism of Indian Mahāyoga sources, such as in the Secret Nucleus’ fifteenth chapter, in which the gods of Indian religion are subdued by the heruka maṇḍala. More germane to our exploration of the texts, and to our goal of interrogating Kabgyé ritualism’s role in authoring identity for its practitioners, is the question of how these images of harm and its aversion were deployed in articulating imaginal worlds within the Kabgyé practitioner could interact. For this, I advance a narratological interpretation of these ritual texts.


The Narrativity of Ritual

Texts such as these may be narratologically interpreted to determine how they contributed to the articulation of identity and the configuration of agentive subjectivities for their practitioners. That is, we may interpret these ritual texts in terms of narrative features that act upon “readers” (or, in the case of ritual, “practitioners”) as they engage these texts in the practice of ritual harm-aversion. Imaginal worlds, resonant idioms, plots, narrators, characters, and

situatedness in meta-narrative discursive contexts are all entailed in these ritual texts, and we might regard the practice of these rituals as a potent, kineticized, mode of “reading”. Just as the reading of a literary narrative entails the transposition of the reader into the imaginal world of the narrative, and results in the transformation of the reader’s very subjectivity as she encounters the


story’s actors in an inhabitation of new dramas, participation in a ritual involves submission to the imaginal world of the ritual, and an experience of oneself cast within the intersubjective dramas, semiotic fields, and narrative engagements offered therein. It is possible, then, to interpret the ritual imagescapes of these texts as narrative settings within which reader/ practitioners may situate themselves to configure subjective agencies and collective identities. Despite clear structural similarities between the functions of narrative and ritual,

relatively little work has been done to explore their continuities, and the mutual contribution of their specialized disciplines of study.310 While studies in narratology and ritual theory have yielded complex and seemingly unrelated definitions of both narrative and ritual, Vera Nünning, Jan Rupp, and Gregor Ahn et. al. have attended to obvious similarities in the form, function, and outcomes of narrative literature and ritual practice. Nünning et. al.’s approach is generally

structuralist, but also sees concillience between “context-oriented post-classical narratology” and post-structuralist ritual theory, specifically in attention to the ways that narratives and rituals both communicate ideologies and negotiate positions of power.311 Thus, narratology and the study of ritual can richly converse from a variety of methodological perspectives which seek to understand the production of subjectivity through imaginal engagements.

According to Nünning et. al., the basic agreement between narrative and ritual lies in the subject-constituting capacity of engagement with semiotically-mediated and context-dependent subjunctive spaces. In other words, both reading and ritual participation involve a transposition 310 Vera Nünning, Jan Rupp, and Gregor Ahn’s 2014 edited volume Ritual And Narrative: Theoretical Explorations and Historical Case Studies traces some promising areas of conscillience between narrative and ritual theory. Especially see: Nünning and Rupp, “Ritual and Narrative: An Introduction”; Marie-Laure Ryan, chpt. 1: “Ritual Studies and Narratology: What Can They Do For Each Other”; and Vera and Ansgar Nünning, chpt. 2: “On the Narrativity of Rituals: Interfaces between Narratives and Rituals and Their Potential for Ritual Studies”. 311 Nünning et. al. 2014, 18.


of a reader/practitioner into an imaginal world – an alternative, or “subjunctive” spaceconstructed out of coherent symbols made intelligible through their situatedness in interlocking discursive contexts. Engagement in narrative, or in ritual, results in the redefined subjectivity of reader/participants. Nünning and Rupp write: “Both narratives and rituals create specific worlds; worlds which provide meaning as well as order…there is a performative quality to both rituals and narratives in the sense that they picture possible alternatives to the narratives’ or rituals

referential context, and thereby develop a transformative potential”.312 As Marie-Laure Ryan observes: “the practice of ritual and the creation of imaginary worlds through storytelling are universal human activities and essential factors in what Roy Rappaport calls ‘the making of humanity’”.313 Indeed, Nünning understands both narrative and ritual in terms of the broader category of “world-making”.314 In particular, the worlds of a narrative or a ritual are “set off from the everyday world”, and constitute settings which are not static, and which therefore imply transformation for participants.315 In other words, narratives and rituals both communicate

possibilities for change by establishing an alternative imaginal world, and emplotting events in a sequence suggesting some kind of development. Engagement with these alternative, imagined spaces and dramas configures the possibility for new kinds of agency. Ryan notes: “both narrative and ritual represent ways of dealing with what is perhaps the most important source of anguish, namely the randomness of fate. But they do so in very different ways: ritual by trying to 312 Nünning et. al. 2014, 15.

313 Ryan in Nünning et. al. 2014, 31. 314 Nünning et. al. 2014, 9. 315 Nünning et. al. 2014, 9.


eliminate this randomness from life, narrative by turning it into a plot”.316 In the case of the Kabgyé’s harm-averting ritualism, the mitigation of random fate is definitely a key objective: by executing the dokpa rites of taming and liberation, the practitioner claims agency over the world’s unwanted forces, yielding an experience of himself as an effective subject in the image of the traditionsvision for mastery.

From this interpretive perspective, narrative and ritual can be understood to share common features such as plot, temporal sequencing, character, narration, and interaction with meta-narrative context. In the case of the harm-averting rites explored above, the “plot” of these rituals is communicated in the procedural sequence of the rite: a series of prescribed actions set within a manifest storyscape (in this case, a materialized environment constructed out of effigies, implements, images, and substances), which results in a described change of state over time for

the actors. The sequencing of prescribed actions is an emplotment in as much as the sequence unfolds over time, implies development, involves the interaction and agency of imagined actors, and communicates a specific outcome.317 There is a beginning, middle, and, importantly, an end: in the case of the dokpa ritual, the outcome of averted harm is described and assured. In our case, the iterated result is the neutralization of harmful forces: “I the yogin repel the allies [of the

enemy]. In this place, by means of fierce actions, the enemy obstructors are quickly liberated by fierce actions”. The dokpa ritual thus tells a story, complete with resolution, rather than merely providing a recipe through which the desired outcome is hoped for, but not iteratively performed. 316 Ryan in Nünning et. al. 2014, 32.

317 Paul Ricoeur used the term “emplotment” to refer to the configuration of events into a sequence, yielding an intelligible whole (Paul Ricoeur Time and Narrative, volume 1. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984, 65). As McKinnon observes, “A narrative is, above all, a form of discourse with a beginning, middle, and end. While we can call this structure the ‘plot’ of the narrative, Ricoeur is much more interested in the activity of making plots, or, as he calls it, ‘emplotment’, which is his translation of Aristotle’s muthos; consonant with much of contemporary sociology, his emphasis is less on structure than on structuration (Ricoeur [1984] 1985: 48), in Andrew Mckinnon, “Ritual narrative, and Time.” Journal of Classical Sociology. Vol 18, no. 3 (2018), 221.


Like a narrative, the entirety of the “story” — with its beginning, middle, end, development, and outcome — is wholly available. Engagement with the whole thing is invited, and possibilities for transformation are intimated.

Of course, ritual practice is more kinetic than is reading, and the ritualized activity is supplemented with the imaginative engagement of the practitioner as inculcated through visualization, meditation, and utterance. As Nünning observes: “The degree of transformation that many rituals involve is frequently the product of multi-sensory experience, involving both

mind and body”.318 Thus, participation in ritual is akin to a kineticized mode of reading; it is a participatory engagement that collapses the distance between the reader and the narrativized action, resulting in the transformation of the reader/practitioner. Whereas the literary reader encounters the narrative from a distance, and must, to some degree, “read herself into” the narrative in order to elicit a transformative effect, in the case of ritual, participation is quite

direct. The ritual practitioner is cast as a character, included in the plot, and manifested as the implied recipient of the injunctions of the “narrator”. By “narrator”, I refer to the injunctive voice that, like a third-person omniscient narrator, stands outside of the plot and facilitates the reader’s engagement. In these rituals, carrying out injunctions aligns the practitioner with the authority secured in the narrator’s omniscient absence. Ritual texts thus breach the distance

between the reader and the narrative, incorporating the reader as the primary actor, and allowing for a dual affiliation with the narrative setting as a character, and also with the holistic perspective of a reader. In the case of both narrative and ritual, the text gains efficacy as the reader participates in the story, and emerges transformed through imaginatively (and, in the case of ritual, kinetically) engaging in its dramas. 318 Nünning et. al. 2014, 10.


Just as meaning is driven in the intersection of a literary plot with the meta-narratives and hermeneutic contexts brought to bear by the reader, these ritual texts are situated within the broader textscape of the Deshek Dupa corpus, which carries its own situatedness in the historiographical and doctrino-praxical horizons of Nyingma Buddhist tradition. Specifically, these rituals interact with contextual narratives of Buddhist demon-control, the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, the position of the Early Translation community, and an

overarching vision for the nature of tantric practice and ritual mastery. The meaning to be gained in these rituals is a function not only of the kineticized narrative that the ritual text communicates, but also in the concentric contexts within which these rituals are nested. Much like reading a text, participation in this ritual is characterized by an opportunity to “read oneself into” the action, inhabiting an alternative imagnial world in which one can effectively participate in the mitigation of threats and harms. The agency afforded in such engagement in this ritualism bleeds over into the subjectivity of its practitioners. Just as one

emerges from engagement with a narrative work potentially bolstered, transformed, or otherwise affected by the sustained association of oneself with the narrative drama, participation in these rituals can likewise effectuate transformations (or confirmations) of personal and collective identities. In the case of the apotropaic ritualism of the Kabgyé, the resultant identity is explicitly agentive: in performing the dokpa rites of taming and liberation, the practitioner confirms the potential for mastery over antithetical forces, demonstrating his participation in a specific vision of religious accomplishment and confirming his belonging within a specific religious community. Careful ethnography of Kabgyé ritualism as it is practiced in Tibetan temples would provide more detailed evidence for this narratological interpretation of ritual. While such research is beyond the purview of this dissertation, we may recall the tradition’s rhetoric


regarding the special power of the drupchen, wherein it is said that the soteriological and protective power of tantric ritual is magnified in the context of ritualized group practice. This sentiment confirms our understanding of ritual practice as a catalyst for subjectivity and identity, specifically in regards to the articulation of denominational identities. As Ryan states: “Both rituals and narrative make us human by building community. Ritual coordinates activity into a collaborative event, while narrative requires joint attention to the words of a storyteller”.319 Whether we are referring to the elaborate setting of the drupchen intensive, or to the

execution of a tor-dok liberation rite, the ritual establishes an alternative space within which new identities and agencies – ones that are commensurate with overarching ideas about the Nyingma denomination and the vocation of the religious adept – can be worked out. The narratological interpretation of these rituals is resonant with the so-called “subjunctive” character of religious practice. The subjunctive interpretation of ritual has been advanced by Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, Michael Puett, and Bennett Simon.320 In contrast to theories of ritual which depict ritual

as a way to activate ideal or transcendently-sanctioned orders of reality, Seligman et al. observe that rituals unfold within worlds that are inherently disconnected from reality. Much like the imaginative world of a child’s playtime, or even the social world of standard etiquette, the ritualscape provides an “as if” world: a domain that represents what the world might be, or could be, but is definitively not. <poem> ...we emphasize the incongruity between the world of enacted ritual and the participants' experience of lived reality, and we thus focus on the work that ritual accomplishes...ritual creates a shared, illusory world. Participants practicing ritual act as if the world produced in ritual were in fact a real one.

319 Ryan in Nünning et. al. 2014, 31.

320 Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simonson. Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, chpt. 1 “Ritual and the Subjunctive”, 17- 43.


And they do so fully conscious that such a subjunctive world exists in endless tension with an alternate world of daily experience.”321 It is in this alternative space that participants can experience themselves in terms of new agencies, bolstered identities, and in new relationships. The subjunctive theory of ritual does not contradict the post-Geertzian understanding that sees ritual as a space for the configuration and expression of power relations. However, Seligman et. al. seek to repudiate Geertz’s exclusive

commitment to ritual as a “model of / model for” reality, arguing against understanding ritual as an engagement that harmonizes orders.322 Rather, ritual establishes a different reality altogether in which the self-experience of the practitioner drives transformations and confirmations of agency, relations, and historicized identities. This approach seems indebted to the Pragmatism of Charles Peirce and William James, which locates truth in the experience of efficacious agency.323

From such a perspective, agency-defining engagements are more constitutive of subjectivity than are mere subscriptions to ontological conceptions. And while Seligman et. al. cite parallels with child’s play, ritual is not strictly imaginary. It is an essential force for configuring identity, agency, and sociality, produced out of inhabitation of alternative domains that stand in productive tension with conventional ones.

This is not to suggest that the narratological and subjunctive interpretations of ritual are the only ways to understand these rites and their textuality. It is undeniable that ritual performances such as the Great Accomplishment ritual intensive or the conferral of initiation are occasions which articulate myriad social relationships and activate ideal social models. I tend to 321 Seligman et. al. 2008, 25-26.

322 Seligman et. al. 2008, 20; c.f: Geertz 1993, chpt. 4 “Religion as a Cultural System” p 87-125. Also, Seligman et. al. suggest that the commitment to theorizing ritual as a force for harmonization is highly indebted to Protestant conceptions of religiosity and its reformulation of the role of ritual (p.31).

323 For the application of pragmatist perspectives to ritual, see: Michael L. Raposa “Ritual inquiry: The pragmatic logic of religious practice” in Schilbrack, ed. Thinking Through Rituals, 2004. 115-130.


be generally sympathetic to Geertzian interpretations which understand ritual as a force for articulating ideal modes of social reality via potent semioses associated with coherent symbol systems. In addition, attention to the materiality of ritual requisites is glaringly absent from my narratological method. This is a serious deficiency, and one which is rectified by James Gentry’s exploration of “object-power discourse” in Tibetan ritualism. Gentry’s aim is to interrogate how

ritual masters such as Sogdokpa understood the efficacy of ritual objects in explicit and implicit terms. Gentry does well in drawing on contemporary theoretical resources to think about the efficacy of ritual substances and objects, looking to Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory and his notion of agency as a force distributed between subject and object.324 This approach seeks to

locate efficacy in the joint influence of acting subjects and non-human objects, trace the flow of power between entities, and account for “how objects, persons, actions, and meanings are related”.325 Gentry also looks to D.W. Winnicott’s theory of transitional objects to understand how ritual objects mediate subjective and objective domains in a way configurative of agency.326 This approach parallels our narratological one in regards to the subjunctive character of religious engagement:

<poem> Transitional objects - whether these operate in the areas of childhood experience, religious rites, or artistic creation and appreciation - partake of a subjunctive as if modality, which involves playing with the permeable boundaries between self and other, subject and object often rigidly presupposed in the indicative as is modality of the quotidian world. The Personal and social implications of immersion in this as if modality are manifold. Just as the temporary suspension of disbelief during the frame of make-believe opens up a potential space for shared illusory experiences, the as if modality likewise creates possibilities for individuals to commune around their shared participation in worlds and worldviews that call into

324 Gentry 2014, 11-29. 325 Gentry 2014, 517. 326 Gentry 2014, 296-299.

<poem> question the boundaries between self and world, and more fundamentally, reality and illusion. The temporary erasure, bracketing, or blurring of such boundaries allows for participants to renegotiate, or recalibrate the terms of these divisions in the ongoing human struggle to strike just the right balance between individual agency, group identity and the world of things. By providing a third space to test out these balancing acts, the liminal zones of play and the quasi-subjective transitional objects that populate those regions become formative elements in the sense of personhood and communal identity that emerges.327

Gentry’s remarks precisely parallel my own in regards to the narratological dimension of ritual text. Indeed, a full treatment of ritual as an agency-defining and subject-constituting force requires attention to both the literary and material elements of ritual practice. After all, the kinetic engagement with objects is what differentiates ritual from something like reading. My

previous assertion that ritual practice is a “kineticized mode of reading” was not meant to divert attention from the material dimensions of ritual practice. Rather, I have restricted my attention to the textual and literary features of our ritual texts to develop a supplementary resource for understanding ritual practice and experience. The rich imagescapes of these ritual texts (and the recognition of my own inability to interpret them as medieval Tibetan readers would have done)

are what have led me to seek interpretive techniques to understand how these texts and their practices acted on practitioners, especially in the context of the overall Buddhist world proffered by the Kabgyé cycle. Future efforts to more deeply define the agency-bolstering, subjectconstituting, and identity-confirming potential of tantric ritual will do well to apply narratological insights to ritual textuality, and something like Latour’s Actor Network Theory and Gentry’s appropriation of Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects to the material dimensions of ritualism.

327 Gentry 2014, 297.



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