About Padmasambhava
Historical Narratives and
Later Transformations of Guru Rinpoche
edited by
Geoffrey Samuel and Jamyang Oliphant of Rossie
Copyright by Garuda Verlag
First Edition 2020
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Cover Image: Padmasambha, Collection Berti Aschmann, BA120
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Table of Contents
Geoffrey Samuel
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Part One: Padmasambhava in Early Manuscripts . . . . . . . 27
1 Jacob P. Dalton:
The Early Development of the Padmasambhava Legend
in Tibet: A Second Look at the Evidence from Dunhuang . . . . . . . . . 29
2 Robert Mayer:
Geographical and Other Borders in the
Symbolism of Padmasambhava . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3 Lewis Doney:
The Lotus-Born in Nepal: a Dunhuang narrative and the
later biographical tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Part Two: Padmasambhava in the gTer-ma Tradition . . 121
4 Cathy Cantwell:
The Formative Impact of Guru Chöwang’s (gu ru chos kyi
dbang phyug, 1212-1270) Secret Embodiment of the Lama
(bla ma gsang ’dus) on the Padmasambhava Ritual Traditions . . . 123
5 Martin Boord:
An introduction to The Stainless Ornament Biography Of Guru
Padmasambhava revealed as a Dharma Treasure by
bSam gtan gling pa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6 Jue Liang:
Branching from the Lotus-Born:
Padmasambhava in the Extensive Life of Ye shes mtsho rgyal . . . . 169
Part Three: Padmasambhava: Other Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7 Lama Jampa Thaye:
Padmasambhava and His Legacy: Sa skya Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . 189
8 Jamyang Oliphant:
The significance of Padmasambhava in the bcud len tradition . . . . 199
9 James Gentry:
Historicism, Philology, and State-building in 17th-century Tibet:
Observations Apropos of a Text-critical Biography of
Padmasambhava . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
10 Nicolas Sihlé:
The social dimension of high deity worship:
Padmasambhava tsechu worship in Tibetan tantrist ritual culture 255
List of illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
10 The social dimension of high
deity worship:
Padmasambhava tsechu worship in
Tibetan tantrist ritual culture
Nicolas Sihlé:
(CNRS, Centre for Himalayan Studies)
Introduction: analytical dimensions of Buddhist ritual293
In the 1990s, two noted works of anthropological scholarship on strongly tantric Buddhist traditions appeared at one year’s interval: David
Gellner’s study of Newar Buddhist tantric priests and rituals (1992) and
Geoffrey Samuel’s synthesis on Tibetan religion (1993). In matters of
key structuring categories, both drew some of their inspiration from a
common precursor in the anthropology of Buddhism—Melford Spiro,
the author of a major study of Burmese Buddhism (1970)—but in interestingly different ways. Spiro understood Theravāda Buddhism to be
composed of (primarily) three “systems”:
– a normative soteriological system he called “nibbanic” Buddhism,
focused on achieving release from the wheel of existence;
– a second soteriological system he called “kammatic”, in which
293
My thanks go to the organizers (first and foremost Elena Pakhoutova) and participants of the
international seminar “Perspectives on Padmasambhava”, held in October 2018 at the Rubin
Museum of Art, where a first version of this paper was presented.
255
ordinary human beings do not actually pursue liberation, but more
modestly accumulate merit in the aim of obtaining a better rebirth;
– a nonsoteriological system he termed “apotropaic” Buddhism,
geared at protecting man from worldly misfortune (1970: 11-12).
Samuel chose to retain these three categories, under the names “bodhi”, “karma”, and “pragmatic”, albeit with at least one improvement:
rather than presenting the Buddhist religious field as composed of three
“systems”, a term which may suggest somewhat bounded (reified) sectors, he referred to the three categories in a more flexible way as “orientations” within Buddhism (Samuel 1993: 25-27). In passing, we may note
that both Spiro and Samuel produced here primarily emic-sounding categories that, however, are not properly emic, and are ill-fitted to become
shared analytical categories beyond the domain of Buddhist traditions.
Gellner’s approach innovated in two significant ways. First, he suggested a set of designations that might be made to work cross-culturally, distinguishing between “soteriology”, “social religion” and “instrumental religion” (1992: 5-7, 135-139). Second, and most importantly for
the present paper, he introduced a category that is absent from Spiro’s
and Samuel’s typologies: “social” religion, whose rituals “express the
solidarity of the group or incorporate individuals within it” (Gellner
1999: 142)—rituals that sanctify or reproduce the social order. (As for
Spiro’s “kammatic” system, it was included by Gellner within the larger
domain of “soteriology”.)
One might wonder whether there are good (say, comparative) reasons why social religion did not “make it” into Spiro’s and Samuel’s typologies. One factor may well be the relatively minor importance of this
domain (or orientation) in certain Buddhist religious fields, as suggested
indirectly by Gellner’s comment: “In comparative terms [as compared
to Newar Buddhism] Theravāda Buddhism provides for amazingly little
social religion and permits instrumental religion only on very restrictive terms” (1992: 338). It is, however, by no means absent in Theravāda
256
or Tibetan religion, as one can see for instance from rituals of Buddhist
statecraft, from the Kandyan Äsala Perahära pageant (Seneviratne 1978,
Holt 2017: ch. 2) to the Tibetan Mönlam Chenmo [sMon lam chen mo]
or “Great Prayer” festival. (On the latter, and more generally the great
rituals of Lhasa, the capital of the former central Tibetan state, see Richardson 1993, Rigzin 1993.)
The present paper focuses on rituals that are first and foremost rituals of worship of a supreme Tibetan Buddhist divine figure, and in that
sense are not primarily “social” in their orientation, in the sense of the
above-mentioned typologies.294 They do, however, manifest a particularly strong social dimension—a dimension that will be at the heart of
the present examination, as a modest contribution to setting the empirical and analytical record straight.
The sources: ethnographic data from northern Nepal
and northeastern Tibet
The main data from which I shall be drawing was obtained first-hand in
areas in which I have carried out relatively extensive ethnographic fieldwork: Mustang district in northern Nepal and Repkong [Reb kong]295 county in northeastern Tibet (or Amdo [A mdo], as this region is commonly
294
295
The primary orientation of these rituals of worship, which basically aim at nurturing relations with a key deity of tantric practice, probably depends on the practitioners’ individual
perspectives, characterized by a whole spectrum of possible mixes of soteriological and instrumental emphases—with the soteriological predominating in the rituals’ textual basis.
In order to render Tibetan terms as readable as possible for a diverse readership, they are
given here according to the simplified phonetic transcription of standard Tibetan proposed
by Germano and Tournadre (2003), even if the ethnographic data that will be presented here
comes from two societies where other dialects are spoken. At the first occurrence of a term,
I add within square brackets its transliteration, according to the system commonly known as
“Wylie” transliteration, in its version most commonly used in Europe, characterized by the
capitalization of root letters in proper nouns (cf. Cantwell and Mayer 2002). If context is not
explicit enough, Sanskrit terms are marked by “Skt.”
257
called), with approximately 17 months and 11 months of fieldwork respectively. In both cases the primary focus was the non-monastic component
of the Tibetan Buddhist, but also Bönpo [Bon po], clergy: “tantrists” (ngakpas [sngags pa]), householder specialists of tantric rituals who most often
constitute patrilineal family lines.296 This dual structure of the sangha, with
mostly cenobitic monastics on the one hand, and family lines of tantrists
on the other—an important distinctive feature of the Tibetan religious
field (Sihlé 2013b)—is particularly present within the Nyingma [rNying
ma] order,297 as well as the (religiously and sociologically very similar) Bön
tradition.
In Mustang the main focus was a small village community, with only
14 households, composed to a large extent of such families of tantric
priests. In this particular kind of village community, which is not common throughout Tibetan areas as a whole, the collective religious life
centers generally on a temple used by the village tantrists for their
ritual gatherings; other collective rituals, such as those to be examined in this article, are held more commonly in rotation among the village households. I call villages marked by this kind of strong priestly
presence “tantrist village communities”298 —a designation which ren296
297
298
On the term “tantrist”, see Stein (1987 [1962]: 65), Karmay (1998: 9 and passim), Ramble
(1984: 30), and Sihlé (2013b: 15-16).
None of the terms “order”, “school” or “sect” used in Western literature capture well the
institutionally sometimes quite loose Buddhist religious groupings or affiliations commonly
called chöluk [chos lugs, lit. “dharma tradition”] in Tibetan. The key distinctive feature, far
beyond doctrinal differences, is the set of tantric ritual cycles that lie at the heart of the
particular grouping’s ritual practice. The affiliation of a monastery or a family lineage of
tantrists need not be unique; one finds sometimes sectarian tendencies emphasizing “pure”,
exclusive affiliation, but also a great many composite traditions, possibly built around the
notion of one central affiliation, albeit quite commonly with an anti-sectarian stance and an
openness towards other teachings. The various chöluk orders or sub-orders may have certain
institutional manifestations, for instance regional “mother” monasteries and associated
“branch” subsidiaries, or much less institutionalized networks, or even quite dispersed followings, as in the case of tantrists.
See Sihlé (2001: 63, 2013b: 78). For earlier, unpublished work on this kind of communities, see
Clarke (1980) and Ramble (1984: 182).
258
ders quite well the term commonly used in Repkong for these villages,
namely ngakdé [sngags sde] (dewa [sde ba] being the usual Amdo Tibetan
term for a village). In the southern part of Mustang, known as Baragaon,
one finds two such communities, one Buddhist and the other Bönpo—a
notable presence for a small society which numbered in the 1990s approximately 3500 inhabitants.
Repkong, at the far other end of the Tibetan plateau (in the east of
Qinghai province), is a much larger demographic unit, with approximately 80,000 ethnic Tibetans. The villages are larger (a number of
them have more than a hundred houses) and the tantrist presence is, to
put things simply, massive: in a general cultural context already known
for its “mass monasticism” (Goldstein 2009), here we have a society in
which not only monks number something in the order of 5-10% of adult
males, but tantrists as well. The latter live in several dozen tantrist village communities, scattered across the county (see figure 10.1 page 260).
In addition, in Repkong (and to some extent in neighboring counties,
but not in other Tibetan areas, as far as I know) the current generation has known a striking, virtually new phenomenon: the development
of a massive female component in a part of the religious sphere—the
domain of the tantrists—that was traditionally almost exclusively male
(Sihlé 2016b). In the last two decades, the numbers of female tantrists,
ngakmas [sngags ma] (a term that until the early 2000s was unused and
virtually unknown in Repkong—and remains so in most Tibetan areas),
are said to have gone up from a few dozen to something of the order of
1500—roughly 5% of adult females. This unprecedented, powerful surge
has taken place in the tantrist village communities, although not necessarily in houses with a male tantrist presence. In at least one large village the ngakmas now even strongly outnumber the ngakpas. It should
259
Fig 10.1: Temple of a Repkong tantrist village community (February 2011).
be noted, however, that the village-based groups of ngakmas are currently still in a transitory stage: some ngakmas are being trained in ritual
leadership roles (tantric ritual master, chant master…) needed for those
groups to become ritually fully autonomous, and village-level institutionalized support for their religious activity (in the form of dedicated
temples, regular sponsored rituals…) is still unevenly developed.
The Repkong tantrist village communities are situated primarily in
side-valleys, while some of the monasteries of the historically politically dominant Geluk [dGe lugs] order—and, first and foremost, the famous, very large Rongwo [Rong bo] monastery—occupy key positions in
densely-populated parts of the central valley. The Geluk monastic sector is structured around centers such as Rongwo monastery: most other
260
monasteries are linked hierarchically to Rongwo as branch monasteries,
with educational and other relations. At the supra-local (in the sense
of supra-village-community) level, the tantrists constitute a much less
centralized and organized religious body. The main structuring feature
at this level is arguably the regular participation in supra-local annual
ritual gatherings, held for instance in half a dozen major temples of
their tradition—or, more precisely, traditions, as one should distinguish
between three main religious affiliations: there are both a very substantial minority of Bönpo tantrists and Buddhist tantrists of the Nyingma
order, the latter actually belonging to two different main ritual traditions (Sihlé 2013a: 168-170).
Beyond the differences in magnitude, and in the overall configuration
of the local religious fields, in both cases—Baragaon and Repkong—we
have a strong tantrist presence, in particular in these tantrist village communities, which will lie at the center of my discussion. In drawing on these
two cases, my aim is not to contrast two different situations but, rather,
to present some relatively common Tibetan patterns, basing myself each
time on the case in which I have documented them most precisely.
Tibetan Tantrists: a subculture focused on
Padmasambhava
In certain schools of Tibetan Buddhism, most notably the Nyingma, the
figure of the “Lotus-Born”, Padmasambhava, or Guru Rinpoché [Gu ru
rin po che], the “Precious Master”, as he is most commonly known in Tibetan, lies at the center of the religious tradition, in more ways than one.
At the mythico-historical level, Guru Rinpoché is known first and
foremost as the subduer of the worldly spirits and deities of Tibet that
were blocking the construction of Samyé [bSam yas], the first Tibetan
monastery. Their subjugation and their conversion to protectors of the
Buddhist dharma opened the way for the institutional establishment of
261
Buddhist civilization in Tibet and has remained one of the major mythicoritual themes in Tibetan Buddhist religious culture, with Guru Rinpoché
as the archetypal figure of the subduer of the mundane deities (Mumford
1989: 82-88, Kohn 2001: 197). The triad khen lop chö sum [mkhan slob chos
gsum] of the scholar-monk (khenpo [mkhan po]) Śāntarakṣita who was
initially invited to found Samyé, the tantric master (loppön [slob dpon])
Padmasambhava who was called to subdue the hindering spirits and deities, and the religious king (chögyel [chos rgyal]) Tri Songdetsen [Khri
Srong lde brtsan] who invited them is associated for all religiously educated Tibetans with a foundational moment of Tibet’s religious history.
Padmasambhava is also perceived as a key figure in the transmission of tantric teachings, most notably through the central position that
the divine master occupies in the terma [gter ma] tradition of revealed
teachings and objects: these are understood to have been concealed by
Padmasambhava (in most cases) and to have been discovered by later
incarnations of the master’s key disciples (Thondup 1986). A large number of key tantric cycles practised in the Nyingma order in general—and
among the Nyingma tantrists of Repkong in particular—are termas.
Padmasambhava is of course also a central divine figure—a “second
Buddha”, as he is known for instance within the Nyingma tradition. In
the key structuring triad of the “three roots” (tsa sum [rtsa gsum]) of
tantric ritual practice—lama [bla ma] (Enlightened master), yidam [yi
dam] (tutelary deity of tantric practice) and khandro [mkha’ ’gro] (high
female deity associated with tantric practice)—the supreme figure of
the lama is most often none other than the “Precious Master”. (For the
closely related Drukpa Kagyü [’Brug pa bka’ brgyud] order, see Beyer
1973: 38.) As with many important divine figures, Padmasambhava is actually present through a variety of manifestations, such as the widelyknown set of the “Master with the eight names”, Guru Tsen Gyé [Gu ru
mtshan brgyad] (Boord 1993: 115). These as well as a number of common
prayers to the “Precious Master”, such as the Barché Lamsel [Bar chad
262
lam sel], Dispelling Obstacles on the Path, all have their own iconographic
representations, and in tantrist village communities of Repkong the
temple assembly hall generally features several of those.
While most of the above applies also to the monastic sector of the
Nyingma order, one feature takes on a particular importance in tantrist
communities: the non-monastic tantric Padmasambhava is also an archetypal figure of the tantrist. The “Precious Master”, both as a central object of worship and as an ideal figure situated at the origins of
their tradition, is a key reference in tantrists’ discourses on what distinguishes them from their monastic counterparts (Sihlé 2013b: 159-160).
Tantrists often present themselves as “followers”, jenjuks [rjes ’jug], of
Guru Rinpoché. All of this makes the rituals of Padmasambhava worship
that will be discussed here particularly salient for our understanding of
this non-monastic sector of the Tibetan religious sphere.
Absence and presence of Padmasambhava
The theme of the absence or presence of Buddhas or Enlightened masters is common in scholarship on Buddhist cultures, from matters of
relics, stupas and statues (Schopen 1987, Ray 1994: ch. 11, Bentor 1996,
Schober 1997, Kinnard 2004) or amulets (Tambiah 1984: 5, 203-207) to
messianic trends such as the cult of Maitreya (Sponberg and Hardacre
1988).299 In the case of Padmasambhava, this theme comes up in manifold and striking ways.
A distinctively Mahāyāna formulation of the ontological varieties of
the Buddha’s presence is the theory of the three bodies (Skt. trikāya):
the transcendent principle of a “truth body”, the “enjoyment body”
which appears in Buddha fields and teaches to spiritually advanced be299
The meaning of the term “presence” may vary, however, quite significantly according to the
authors (Kinnard 2004: 117-119).
263
ings, and finally the “emanation body” which manifests itself in various
forms to sentient beings (Buswell and Lopez 2014). According to such
a scheme, in Tibetan historiography the (assumed) historical figure of
the Lotus-Born is considered as an emanation body associated with the
“truth body” Amitābha and the “enjoyment body” Avalokiteśvara.
Padmasambhava also has what one could call a narrative presence:
in some socio-religious environments, such as Nyingma tantrist village
communities in Repkong district, reading the Condensed chronicle, Katang
düpa [bKa’ thang bsdus pa], a short, 14th-century version of the Precious
Master’s biography, can be a daily practice, for instance for some female
practitioners.
Guru Rinpoché’s beneficial power is also sought and channeled,
sometimes daily—and across Tibetan society, far beyond the ranks of
people with Nyingma affiliation or sympathies—through the recitation
of mantras and prayers. All of this makes Padmasambhava an elevated
divine being that is present in people’s minds and whose power and
blessings are felt to circulate—a devotional and ritual presence in the
manner of, say, Avalokiteśvara or Tārā. In the case of Guru Rinpoché
there is an additional component of periodic actual presence; in the
fourth stanza of the famous and much-recited prayer The Spontaneous
Fulfillment of Aspirations, Sampa lhündrupma [bSam pa lhun grub ma], one
reads: “On the tenth day of the waxing moon, he comes in person” [yar
ngo tshes bcu'i dus su dngos su byon].300 This notion is echoed in many
other texts.
Thus the tenth day of the lunar month is strongly associated with
Padmasambhava, and of religious importance for Tibetans, particularly
for Nyingma practitioners. The Precious Master is actually said to have
been born on the tenth day of the monkey lunar month in a wood-mon300
The line is mentioned by Tucci (1980: 170) and Egert (1998: 418, 422)—incidentally, in both
cases with a translation error.
264
key year. Accordingly, that month—understood to be the fifth, sixth or
seventh month, depending on the calendrical system (Dudjom 1991: 99
n. 1393)—and the monkey (and especially wood-monkey) years are particularly important for the worship of Padmasambhava.301
In the sixth lunar month of 2004, the monkey month of a wood-monkey year (an occasion that occurs every sixty years—roughly, once in
a lifetime), an unprecedented seven-day-long collective ritual gathering centered on the worship of Padmasambhava was organized by Alak
Drolo [A lag Grol lo], a Buddhist master residing at Achung Namdzong [A
chung gnam rdzong], a historically important religious site in Chentsa
[gCan tsha] district, adjacent to Repkong. Over three thousand tantrists
of Repkong, Chentsa and other parts of Amdo participated. This may
well have been the largest ritual gathering of tantrists in Tibetan history; the numbers exceeded the expectations of Alak Drolo himself.
The basic structure of the ritual consisted in the daily repetition of one
same ritual sequence, culminating every day in a tantric feast offering
or, to keep Beyer’s (1973: 312) translation, “[ritual of the] multitudes”
(Skt. gaṇacakra, T. tsok [tshogs])302 —the ritual as a whole was known, in
short, as the “Great Hundred-thousandfold [Ritual of the] Multitudes”,
Bumtsok Chenmo [’Bum tshogs chen mo]. The sequence started every
day before dawn with a Prayer Calling [the One From] Oḍḍiyāna [= Padmasambhava] From Afar, Orgyen gyang-bö söldep [O rgyan rgyang ’bod gsol
’debs]. The entire assembly stood up, and the prayer rose in the darkness of the silent valley, borne by the three thousand voices, chanting
in unison in a deep tone, in a slow rhythm—a truly powerful, moving
moment not just for the foreign anthropologist standing in their midst,
301
302
For yet further associations of Padmasambhava with the tenth day of the lunar month, see
Tucci (1980: 148).
On Indic gaṇacakra and Tibetan tsok rituals, including the one mentioned here, see Sihlé
(forthcoming).
265
I believe. There was much more here than an abstract literary theme of
absence and presence.
The ritual started on the seventh day of the month, so that the tenth
day was in the middle of the week-long event. At the end of the tenth
day, while the participants were resting in and around the tents at the
foot of the slope on which the temple stands, the skies cleared (it had
been raining for several days). Suddenly cries went out: a rainbow had
appeared, haloing the temple. Some started reciting mantras, and I was
urged to take a picture. Padmasambhava truly was there on that day.
10th lunar day worship (tsechu): a key ritual in
tantrist culture
Let us now consider in more detail some of the modalities of the rituals of worship that are carried out on the tenth lunar day, starting with
the most common of these: those that are held on a monthly basis.
These rituals are commonly known as tsechu [tshes bcu], or “tenth day
[rituals]”. The tsechu is a particularly important ritual in tantrist circles,
and we shall focus on those contexts.303
One ritual, two types of communities: lay and religious
Analytically, in the case of tantrist village communities, two kinds of communities need to be distinguished. There is, first, the village as a whole,
with the houses (in the sense given to this term when we speak of “house
societies”) as its basic constituent social units. Although, as a “tantrist village” (ngakdé in Amdo), such a village has a partially religious identity, as
303
In some Repkong villages, the ngakmas gather on the twenty-fifth day—in other words, the
tenth day of the waning moon. These rituals are centered less on Padmasambhava, and more
on the female principle—a high khandro divine figure.
266
a whole the village corresponds most closely to what, in Buddhist sociology, is understood to be the “lay” community, in charge of the material
support of the sangha, or community of Buddhist religious specialists.304
The village, in effect, is the unit which organizes the rotation of, and provides material support for, the tantrists’ tsechu ritual. The second kind of
community is based on the same local territorial unit, but is religious in
nature: this is the “community” of the village’s tantrists—a loosely structured group, focused around the village temple, with its own rules, and
with ritual functions (tantric ritual master, chant master, disciplinarian…)
assigned for instance on a yearly basis.305
In some Repkong villages there are actually several religious “communities” of this type. Besides the male tantrists, their female counterparts (ngakmas) often constitute a distinct group, with its own, separate
ritual gatherings, distribution of ritual functions, etc. One also finds
slightly more complex situations. One locally renowned adept of “Great
Perfection”, Dzokchen [rDzogs chen], practices has become, over the
last decade, the master of a large following of ngakpas and ngakmas from
a number of villages. In one village where a substantial concentration
of male and female followers reside, on the twenty-fifth day of the lunar month they all gather together for a khandro practice (a ritual very
304
305
“Lay” is used here, in accordance with general usage in the sociology of religion, in the sense
of “non-specialist”. Numerous writers in Buddhist studies use this term to refer to the nonmonastic part of society (or more specifically to those within that part of society who recognize Buddhist values and share a sense of commitment to support the sangha). In the Tibetan
context, however, one needs to be more precise, as part of the sangha (or body of religious
specialists) are non-monastic: the tantrists. Rather than calling them “lay practitioners”, I
prefer to acknowledge their status as religious specialists and therefore do not refer to them
as “lay”, but only as “non-monastic”.
“Community” is used here in a somewhat weaker sense of the term than with regard to the
lay village community: the elements of co-residence and shared life that the term often
evokes (see Rapport 2002) are weaker in the case of tantrists living in a same village but not
necessarily seeing each other very often. The elements of shared meanings, sense of identity
and sense of distinctiveness are however definitely well present.
267
similar in form to the tsechu), in one or the other of the retreat houses
they have built above the village, rather than have the women among
them take part in the village ngakmas’ monthly ritual gathering, which
is held within the village, on the same day. Importantly for our present purpose, in all of these cases these ritual gatherings clearly have a
strong collective dimension: these are rituals in which various kinds of
communities collaborate in a common purpose and/or actually manifest by gathering for common activity. (As the final example illustrates,
these rituals may also, if not give rise to, at least reflect local conflicts
of allegiance—which is, after all, just another, more complex mode of
manifesting the socioreligious collective units.)
If we return to the ngakpas’ tsechu, village A, for instance, comprises
some 180 houses, which are organized, for the purpose of the ritual, in
twelve groups (of roughly fifteen houses each), one for each month. The
yearly rotation starts at the bottom of the village, and ends at the top in
the twelfth lunar month. In each group, every year a “host” is drawn. All
houses of the group take part in providing the (modest) material needs
for the ritual (they all bring contributions of bread as well as 10 Y—approximately 1,25 €—for the tantrists’ meals); the host provides whatever
else is needed in matters of beverage and food, as well as various edible
substances (biscuits, fruit, etc.) in large quantities for the “multitudes”
(tsok) ritual sequence that is at the core of the tsechu.
The tantrists congregate in the morning, in the courtyard which lies
at the center of the house. They take place in the domestic shrine room—
to the extent that they fit inside—or, more commonly, right outside the
shrine room, on a low platform that lines the sides of the courtyard, on
which carpets and low tables have been set up by their hosts (see 10.2
p. 269). (In most Repkong houses, the shrine room is a very small space,
which often contains not much more than the altar, and in such cases
can hardly be called a room. Prostrations towards the altar for instance
are often performed on the adjoining platform in the courtyard.)
268
Fig 10.2: Tsechu officiants in the shrine room and courtyard of a Repkong house
(April 2011).
The younger tantrists typically are in charge of preparing the torma [gtor ma] ritual cakes, with one or the other of the senior expert
tantrists sometimes providing indications to make sure the result is accurate. When the tormas are ready, they are placed on the altar and the
officiants take place, according to their relative age, in two rows facing
the low tables. The ritual begins; in many Repkong communities, the
basic text is the Rikdzin Dungdrup [Rig ’dzin gdung sgrub] or Sādhana of
the Lineage of Awareness-Holders, a “treasure” text (terma) revealed by the
great Rikdzin Gödemchen [Rig ’dzin rGod ldem can] (1337–1408).
At noon, an ample vegetarian meal is offered to the officiating
tantrists. (It was collectively decided to stop offering meat for the meals
served on the occasion of the tsechu rituals, following recent recom269
mendations made by the Dalai Lama to religious practitioners.) The
tantrists enjoy a leisurely break, and then the ritual resumes. A core
component of the ritual, occupying a substantial part of the afternoon,
consists in one or several sequences of tsok (ritual of the “multitudes”),
in which abundant food offerings are made to the assembled deities,
and the consecrated food items are then distributed among the officiants and the assembled laity (household members, with sometimes relatives or neighbors joining in) (see Sihlé forthcoming). This collective
commensality—even if, in practice, it is reduced to just a fraction of the
neighborhood in charge of sponsoring the ritual for that month—is a
clear reminder of the lay collective dimension of the ritual. A final meal
marks the end of the event; for the tsechu rituals, the officiants are not
remunerated, as this is considered a collective religious duty of theirs.
The tsechu and becoming/being a tantrist
The community of tantrists is strongly associated with the tsechu ritual:
all tantrists of a given village are supposed to take part every month.
This is enforced through a system of fines, which in Repkong may apply
even to absences due to illness. The level of the fines—for instance, 30Y
in one village—remains moderate, however. It is not uncommon that
economic pursuits, whether performing rituals for faraway patrons
or, for a number of younger tantrists, driving taxis for instance, take
precedence, as the economic benefits outweigh the cost of incurring a
fine. Thus, in practice, the number of officiants present at a given tsechu
ritual may not reflect accurately the size of the local ngakpa community.
Although the tsechus are more modest in size and in attention they
garner (both among the local laity and among academics) than many
yearly ritual gatherings, they are endowed with substantial religious
and symbolical significance. As regular ritual gatherings focusing on
Padmasambhava, founding figure of the tradition and archetype of the
270
ngakpa, and as ritual practices in which Tibetan tantrists engage very
widely (in some contexts, as we have seen, even normatively), the tsechu
ritual constitutes one of the associations surrounding the figure of the
tantrist (for data on the Baragaon case, see Sihlé 2000, 2013b: 198-199).
In Repkong, the association between the tsechu and the local community of tantrists is even stronger. Generally speaking, there is no established, formal procedure for becoming a tantrist, in the manner in
which monastic ordination makes one a monk or nun. Most commonly,
a boy or young man engaging in the path of the tantrist starts learning
with his father or grandfather, then gradually starts assisting one or the
other, first in minor ritual tasks; with time he will also start developing
his own, autonomous ritual activity. There is (generally speaking) no
rite of passage, just a gradual transition. In many Repkong tantrist village communities, however, there is a relatively clear moment at which
it is socially understood that one is joining the local ngakpa community:
the day one starts to take part in the monthly tsechu. This first participation implies that, from that point on, one is expected to continue to
participate in the monthly collective worship of Padmasambhava.
Considering that a core component of these tsechu practices is a ritual
of the “multitudes” (tsok, Skt. gaṇacakra), one finds here a striking echo
of what Davidson notes for the ancient communities of tantric adepts
(or “siddha communities”, as he terms them) of Indian Buddhism:
Beyond the irregular ritual moments of the consecration and the
individual or community meditations, siddha communities defined
themselves by a regular gathering of initiates (…)[:] the gaṇacakra (Davidson 2002: 318; emphasis added; see also Sihlé forthcoming).
Similarly, in Repkong, a local ngakpa community constitutes itself, at
least in part, by including new members into the regular, gaṇacakracentered ritual gatherings for the worship of the Precious Master.
271
“Great 10th-Day” (Tsechu Chenmo) and similar rituals
An important variant of the tsechu rituals are the ones held yearly on
the monkey lunar month,306 and commonly called Tsechu Chenmo,
“Great tsechu [ritual]”, or similar names, such as Treldé Tsechu Chenmo
[sprel zla’i tshes bcu chen mo], “Great tsechu of the monkey month”.
Depending on the case, these rituals may last for one day (just as the
usual tsechus) or extend over several days, which then typically spread
both before and after the 10th lunar day. They may also take the form of a
ritual gathering for tantrists of several neighboring villages, as they are
not organized by each and every tantrist village community.
In Meshül [dMe shul], a pastoral township just south of the presentday border of Repkong district, a Dünpé [bDun pa’i] Tsechu Chenmo or
“Great tsechu of the seventh [month]” is held yearly in rotation among
the nine dewas (“villages” or pastoral communities) of Meshül.307 It is the
only regular ritual gathering that brings together the tantrists of the
nine villages, who are known traditionally as the “eighty masters and
tantrists of Meshül”, Meshül la-ngak gyechu [bla sngags brgyad cu] (Guru
Tsering and Kalsang Tseten 2010: 190 sqq.). The religious community
and the ritual were actually created together, in Guru Tsering and Kalsang Tseten’s account. The third Drupwang [Grub dbang] incarnation,
the prestigious master of the Gönlakha [dGon la kha] Nyingma religious
community in Repkong, assembled the ruler of Repkong, the chief of
Meshül, his main disciples, and all the tantrists of Meshül. He founded
the “eighty masters and tantrists of Meshül” tantrist religious community—literally the “religious community of the long-haired white-clad
306
307
As mentioned above, the monkey month falls on the fifth, sixth or seventh month, depending on the calendrical system used in the local context.
The term dewa is the same as for agricultural villages. These pastoral dewas (as far as I could
tell from my limited exploration) consist of houses that are spread out on the community’s
grazing lands.
272
[ones]”, gökar changlö chödé [gos dkar lcang lo'i chos sde]. He gave them
initiations and teachings, and he instituted the tradition of each one
of the nine villages of Meshül holding the Tsechu Chenmo in turn, in
yearly rotation (ibid: 193-194).
The Meshül pastoral community has no permanent religious structures, and each year large tents are set up for the ritual on the land
of the village hosting the ritual. In 2003, when I observed the first two
days of the five-day-long ritual, it was held in Ngakpatsang [sNgags pa
tshang]—a village name that clearly references the presence of numerous tantrists. Ngakpatsang alone counted at that time some 80 tantrists
(out of 130 houses), with the figures for Meshül as a whole adding up
to more than 200. The ritual’s importance was signaled by the participation of all the local religious masters. Only roughly the senior half
of the Ngakpatsang tantrists participated in the ritual, though, as the
junior ones took part in the supporting tasks (serving the food, etc.).
The total expense was approximately 25,000 Y (or 3,000 €): a substantial
sum (at that time, the meals still included meat, a costly ingredient).
The expense was borne by the houses of the hosting village, roughly on
a per capita basis; voluntary individual donations also contributed to
the total budget. The ritual’s organization was in the hands of a group
of ritual managers, lenewas [las sne ba], hailing from most of the Meshül
villages (see figure 10.3 page 274).
So here again, just as in the monthly village tsechu, we find the two
kinds of community intimately linked to the ritual, but with a shift to a
larger scale: on the one hand, the lay village community as well as the
larger grouping of nine villages, all cooperating in the annual rotation
scheme, and, on the other hand, the tantrist religious community—in
the present case, the supra-village-level “eighty masters and tantrists
of Meshül”. And here again, we find a central religious and symbolic
emphasis on Padmasambhava at the center of the ritual: the tenth lunar
day is clearly the heart of the five-day-long ritual. It gives it its name,
273
Fig 10.3: Meshül Tsechu Chenmo: ritual managers and main tent (August 2003).
it is placed at the center of the ritual sequence, and it is marked yet in
further ways. Thus, I was told that on the tenth lunar day—the day that
is the most strongly associated with Padmasambhava in the entire year,
as this is the monkey month—the Meshül tantrists wear white clothes:
white shawls for senior tsalung [rtsa rlung], “channels and winds”, yogic
practitioners, and white shirts for the others. In honor of the Precious
Master, his followers are truly the “long-haired white-clad [ones]” on
that day.308
A variant of these large tsechu rituals consists in similar ritual gatherings, also held on the tenth day of the monkey month, and named
after what in the tsechu is already an important component, but which
308
Some brief notes on the place of white (or red and white) shawls among Repkong tantrists
can be found in Sihlé (2016a, 2018b).
274
here is the center of typically more extensive ritual activity: the ritual
of the “multitudes” (tsok, Skt. gaṇacakra). In and around Repkong, these
rituals are commonly called Bumtsok, or Bumtsok Chenmo, “(Great)
Hundred-thousandfold [Ritual of the] Multitudes”, as in the case of the
massive 2004 ritual gathering in Achung Namdzong, already mentioned
above. This week-long ritual gathering of more than 3,000 tantrists was
an exceptional ritual, held on a wood-monkey year (2004)—a conjuncture that would not occur again before 60 years and which, in that sense,
represented to all intents and purposes a once-in-a-lifetime event for
the participants.
Space precludes a detailed analysis of this ritual event, but a few words
should be said about its central purpose. Both publicly in front of the assembled tantrists and in a personal interview he granted me, the organizing master, Alak Drolo, referred to his profound faith in Padmasambhava as
the driving force behind his resolve to organize a Bumtsok on that special
date. However, it is also striking (from certain features of the ritual as well
as formulations by the master) that Alak Drolo drew inspiration from a
precedent: an early-nineteenth-century ritual gathering that constitutes,
in Repkong collective memory, the foundational event for the emergence
of what became known (at least throughout large parts of northeast Tibet)
as the prestigious “Repkong Tantrist Collectivity, the 1,900 Ritual Dagger
Holders”, Repkong Ngakmang Purtok Tong dang Gupgya [Rep kong sngags
mang phur thogs stong dang dgu brgya]. In effect, the 2004 Achung Namdzong ritual became—if not in a totally premeditated manner, at least in
the way the week-long ritual unfolded—a gambit that the master played
in order to attempt to found a new (even larger) collectivity: as he put it in
our interview, the religious site Achung Namdzong was now to be seen as
the “seat of the 10,000 ritual dagger holding tantrists”, ngakpa purtok tri-yi
densa [sngags pa phur thogs khri yi gdan sa].309 A biography of Alak Drolo
309
A fuller treatment of this ritual will appear in a book-length study in preparation.
275
was also distributed at the ritual, and the ritual ended with an elaborately
choreographed distribution of ritual daggers by the master: it was not only
the construction of a community, but the status of a master that were at
stake in the ritual.
Shared faith in a supreme—and emblematic—religious figure is, not
surprisingly, a potential source of cohesiveness. One might say that this
faith in the Precious Master can become a resource in itself, channeled
by actors such as Alak Drolo in directions that may go beyond the soteriological or devotional dimensions directed towards this supreme divine figure, and consciously include the creation of communities and
leaders.
Other Bumtsok (Hundred-thousandfold Ritual of the Multitudes)
gatherings, although of a lesser magnitude, remain sizeable ritual events. In Gönlakha (the seat of the Drupwang lineage of masters,
which under the present lama has become a mixed community of
monks and tantrists), the main annual gathering is a Purba [Phur ba]
(Skt. Vajrakīla) practice, known for its rigorous discipline, in which only
qualified tantrists and monks are allowed to participate; it is a rather
closed event. In contrast to this, somewhere around the early 2000s, the
master instituted a yearly Bumtsok, primarily as a ritual gathering for
the hundreds of ngakpas and ngakmas throughout Repkong that are affiliated with Gönlakha. The current Drupwang has actually been a key,
extremely influential elite figure of support for the recent development
of the Repkong female tantrists (Hyytiäinen 2011, Sihlé 2016b)—in some
of the villages close to Gönlakha they now actually outnumber the male
tantrists. The Gönlakha Bumtsok has thus been a way to include ngakmas in large collective ritual practice—an innovative move.310
310
For instance, at the Achung Namdzong Bumtsok Chenmo, the Repkong women practitioners
(at that time, hardly anyone in Repkong, let alone outside, was using already the term ngakma) faced substantial opposition when they requested to be admitted into the main temple
courtyard in order to participate. Due to their sheer perseverance, they were finally allowed
276
Yet further examples of tenth lunar day ritual gatherings and the integrative character they often display could be discussed: one could mention for instance the key cultural performances that large tsechu rituals
constitute in Bhutan (e.g., Dujardin 1994: 156-157, Pommaret 2015).
Conclusion: Padmasambhava worship and the social
dimension of religion
In this examination of various forms of collective worship of Padmasambhava, a number of recurring themes have emerged. If not fully
“social religion” in Gellner’s sense, in the sense of religious activity
aiming primarily at the sanctification or reproduction of social groups,
social statuses, etc., these tsechu rituals are definitely communal rituals,
for both lay village communities (or groups of villages) and religious
tantrist communities. They are collective undertakings, in which support and/or participation are expected from all houses and all tantrists.
These rituals of worship of Padmasambhava are also emblematic rituals
for tantrists, serving among the Repkong village-level tantrist communities as rites of entry for young men.
Beyond these traditional forms, the tsechu ritual time has also been
a point of cultural creativity. As the 2004 Achung Namdzong example
shows, the collective worship of Padmasambhava on and around the
tenth lunar day can be mobilized as a ritual gathering in which one
attempts to generate a new sense of community. In the form of large
gaṇacakra rituals such as Hundred-thousandfold Rituals of the Multitudes (Bumtsok), ritual gatherings of the tenth day can be inclusive rituals, more open than certain other tantric practices, and for instance sites
of gender inclusiveness, as we see in the Bumtsok rituals of Gönlakha.
in, after which the ritual disciplinarians realized that these women were actually (in some
cases highly) adept practitioners.
277
In diverse ways, the worship of a supreme divine figure lends itself, with
varying degrees of centrality or peripherality, to the reinforcement of
community bonds or the manifestation, reproduction or extension of
a religious collectivity. Although these dimensions of the rituals may
not qualify as their primary purpose, they are not just accidental social side-effects, but in many cases consciously pursued objectives; they
constitute important stakes in these collective enterprises. Would a
(village-level or larger) collectivity of male and/or female tantrists constitute a community (in the somewhat weaker sense of this term that
applies here, as we have noted) without these regular ritual gatherings?
As I have started arguing already elsewhere with regard to yet other rituals (Sihlé 2018a: 161-166), collective ritual gatherings are largely what
makes these Repkong tantrist communities.
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