The early days of the Great Perfection

The origins of the Great Perfection movement, so important in the later Tibetan tradition, have proved very difficult for modem scholarship to establish. The genuinely early texts available to scholars are like the few remaining pieces of what was once a large puzzle. Inquiries into the early history of the Great Perfection have, of necessity, been rather like placing these pieces into an arrangement that merely suggests the larger whole.

Because of the scarcity of pieces, a certain amount of guesswork has had to be employed in their arrangement. Here I hope to add some more of the puzzle’s lost pieces, rearrange the existing pieces somewhat, and produce an impression of the original whole. This arrangement will inevitably be refined or thoroughly reshuffled in the future, as further pieces are found.1

The earliest Great Perfection texts to be translated and made available in Tibet were those now known as the mind series (sems sde). Later developments in the Great Perfection brought far more complex doctrines and practices, but the early mind series texts stayed close to one central theme: the immediate presence of the enlightened mind, and the consequent uselessness of any practice that is aimed at creating, cultivating or uncovering the enlightened state.

David Germano has coined the useful phrase “pristine Great Perfection” to refer to this kind of discourse. The largest and most well known of these texts is the [[Kun byed rgyal po’i mdo, in which one finds a rejection of the elaborate imagery and practices associated with the tantras.

I would like to thank Jacob Dalton, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi for sharing their unpublished work with me, which contributed significantly to the development of this paper. Harunaga Isaacson provided some very useful references to the Indic tantric literature, and Jacob Dalton pointed out many significant Tibetan sources. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 27

As early as the ninth century, there was a recognizable form of the Great Perfection with much in common with the mind series. This is proved by certain Tibetan manuscripts found in the Dunhuang library cave, walled up in the early eleventh century. In the collection of these manuscripts at the British Library, Samten Karmay discovered two texts which looked very much like mind series literature: ITJ 594 and 647.

The first of these texts has the title sBas pa’i rgum chung; it includes a preamble in which the author is identified as Buddhagupta, and the category of the text as Atiyoga. The second text, Rig pa’i khu byug, employs terminology familiar in the early Great Perfection. These two finds seemed to confirm that the mind series, as we know it now, is a fair representation of the kind of thing that was being called rdzogs chen in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Karmay, however, suspected that the Great Perfection might have been more intimately linked in this early period with meditation techniques focussed on deities and their mandalas known as the development stage (bskyed rim) and sexual practices known as the perfection stage (rdzogs rim), in other words, the whole milieu of texts and practices known to the tradition as Mahayoga.

Karmay looked at a text from the bsTan ‘gyur called Man ngag Ita ba’iphreng ba, attributed to Padmasambhava, which discusses the practices of the deity yoga from the standpoint of the Great Perfection.

David Germano has also argued that the early Great Perfection derived in part from Mahayoga, and in part from a strand of thought represented by the early mind series texts. As evidence for the Mahayoga influence he cited passages in the one of the fundamental scriptures of the Mahayoga, the Guhyagarbha tantra, which employ the term rdzogs chen in relation to the idea of the immediate presence of enlightenment.

Thus both Karmay and Germano have suggested that the Great Perfection developed through the intermingling of the literature of two traditions. The first of these is the pristine ritual-free discourse of the authors of the earliest mind series texts, siddha-styXe yogic practitioners.

The second is the elaboration of the Great Perfection as the culmination of ritual practice by commentators on the Mahayoga tantras. In fact, as I will argue below, although we do find these two kinds of literature in the early days of the Great Perfection, this does not in fact entail the existence of two separate traditions.

In the following pages I trace the evolution of the rdzogs chen term itself, and the parallel evolution of “Atiyoga”, the scriptural category and so-called vehicle (they pa) which came to be synonymous with the Great Perfection.

Most of the sources for this discussion are texts from the library cave at Dunhuang, which date from before the cave was sealed at the beginning of the eleventh century. Though available to scholars for the past century, most have never been studied before.

I also examine the work of two Tibetan writers involved in the creation of the Great Perfection in Tibet, the ninth-century tantric exegete gNyan dPal dbyangs and the tenth-century redactor of teachings gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes. Through these enquiries I hope to shed some light into the obscure regions in which the Great Perfection scriptures were created.

rDzogs chen as a ritual moment

As far as we are aware, the earliest appearance of the term rdzogs chen being used in a similar way to the Great Perfection literature, is in the Guhyagarbha tantra. The term rdzogs chen seems to be used in the tantra in association with a specific ritual moment, the state of being at the climax of the sexual yoga of the perfection stage immediately following consecration with the drop of semen or bodhicitta.

In this context, the word rdzogs chen could certainly be interpreted to have the semantic content of a great (chen) culmination of the perfection (rdzogs) stage. This usage occurs in chapter thirteen of the tantra, spoken by the Tathagata from the state of sexual union, and in chapter fourteen, which is a further poetic discourse on that state. Furthermore, chapter nineteen, which deals with the commitments (samaya) associated with the perfection stage yoga, also uses the term rdzogs chen.

The use of the term in the sixth chapter is more general, speaking of the yogin who realizes the great perfection; yet on the evidence of the other occurrences of the term, this realization would be understood to come about through the practice of the perfection stage.

Given that rdzogs chen is closely associated in the Guhyagarbha tantra with the ritual moment of the culmination of perfection stage yoga, the question of what it signifies remains. In general, the significance seems to differ little from later Great Perfection traditions: all qualities (yon tan) and enlightened activities (’phrin las) — that is, the aims of the Buddhist practitioner — are complete (rdzogs) from the start (ye nas).

That is to say, in another phrase that is used in the tantra far more often, everything is spontaneously present (Ihun gyis grub).& Furthermore, there is an emphasis on the transcendence of concepts in a state beyond the reach of thought (bsam gyis mi khyab).

In spite of the association of rdzogs chen with these ideas, so familiar from the later Great Perfection texts, the phrase itself occurs only four times in the tantra, and is certainly not the defining term for this complex of ideas that it later became.

Certain texts preserved in the Dunhuang collections confirm that the term rdzogs chen was actually used in practice in the context of the ritual moment of consecration. For example, in PT 321, a sadhana based around a Heruka mandala, following self-consecration and the offering of the bodhicitta to the mandala of deities, the text mentions the mandala of the secret great perfection (rdzogs pa chen po gsang ba’i dkyil 'khor). which is associated with the purity of all phenomena.

Another piece of evidence for the association between the term rdzogs chen and the Guhyagarbha in this period is provided by an untitled poem from the Dunhuang manuscripts, PT 322B.11 This text, which has not been noticed before, takes rdzogs chen as its theme while remaining within the frame of reference of the Guhyagarbha and Mayajala tantras.

On reading it, one feels that the term rdzogs chen has begun to represent the complex of ideas surrounding it, as it does in the later tradition. Nevertheless, the author the setting of these ideas is clearly the universe of the Mayajala tantras, as the following verses demonstrate:

The teaching of the primordial, spontaneously present great perfection, This sublime experiential domain of supreme insight

Is bestowed as a precept upon those with intelligence;

I pay homage to the definitive counsel spoken thus.

Without centre or periphery, neither one nor many,

The mandala that transcends thought and cannot be expressed, Illuminates the mind of intrinsic awareness, wisdom and knowledge; I pay homage to the great Vajrasattva.

From the illusory three worlds [like] the limitless sky, Many millions of emanations are present everywhere, Surrounded by the net of insight in the expanse of sameness, I pay homage to you, the magical net (Mayajala).

The ten directions and the four times secretly have the nature of the great perfection,

Which itself is the suchness of the definitive essence,

Primordial and spontaneously present, cause and effect inseparable,

I pay homage to the supreme secret nucleus (Guhyagarbha) tantra, refers to the bodhicitta substance as “ the great perfection, the great self, the heart nectar” (f.l4r: [[rdzogs cen bdag nyid chenpo thugs kyi bcud]]).

The hand seen in this manuscript is identical to several others in the Dunhuang collection. A group of four manuscripts in the same hand are a syncretic explication of Chan and Mahayoga meditation practices (see van Schaik and Dalton 2004). Thus the scribe of PT 322B was certainly making use of Chan texts as well, although this is not apparent in PT 322B itself.

The term Mayajala tantra can be used to specifically denote those tantras with Mayajala in their title, such as the Vajrasattva mayajala tantra, or a more general group including the Guhyagarbha. The texts under examination here use the term in the latter sense.

The earliest known commentary on the Guhyagarbha tantra is the Rin po che spar khab by the Indian author Vilasavajra, was probably written in the 770s.14 The commentary does not give any special precedence to the term rdzogs chen, and does not employ it in any specific technical sense.

By contrast, the only other known Indic commentary on the whole tantra, the rGya cher ‘grel ba of Suryaprabhasasiµha, places far more weight on the term rdzogs chen, and uses it far more frequently.16 The status of this commentary is rather uncertain because of the author's obscurity, but we will have reason to return to Suryaprabhasasiµha later, since he may in fact have been closely involved in the development of the Great Perfection at the beginning of the ninth century.

The Man ngag lta ba’i phreng ba is a treatise on chapter thirteen of the Guhyagarbha attributed to Padmasambhava. If the attribution is correct, then the text would probably date from before or during Padmasambhava’s sojourn in Tibet in the 770s.

While the text touches obliquely on the actual practices, the commentary primarily develops the ideas of spontaneous accomplishment and primordial purity as the experiential climax of the practices. The author articulates the status of rdzogs chen as the

culmination of the three ways (tshul) of inner yogic practice: the ways of development (bskyed), perfection (rdzogs), and great perfection (rdzogs chen).18 These three ways are subdivisions of the vehicle of inner yoga (rnal ‘byor nang ba), and not considered to be vehicles in their own right. Thus rdzogs chen is rooted in the practices prescribed by the tantra: the visualization of deities and the experience of bliss through sexual union.

It primarily functions as an interpretive framework for these experiences: The way of the great perfection is to realize that all phenomena of saµsara and nirvana are inseparable and have always had the nature of the ma∞∂ala of body, speech and mind, and then to meditate on that [[[realization]]].19 One feels on reading these texts that there is some unresolved tension — why practice deity yoga at all if the deity and ma∞∂ala are already spontaneously present?

The existence of an early Tibetan treatise that addresses precisely these questions is evidence that the Tibetan recipients of these teachings felt the need to resolve this very tension. The title of the treatise is rDo rje sems dpa’ zhus lan (Questions and Answers on Vajrasattva) and it was written by an early figure in the Tibetan Mahayoga lineages called gNyan dPal dbyangs. We may provisionally date the writing of the Zhus lan to the early ninth century.