Tibetan Buddhism

Vladyslav Nazarchuk

Among the different types of Buddhism which have developed in the various countries of Asia, the Buddhism of Tibet is often viewed as the most spiritual and vivid, and at the same time as the most debased. Humphreys, for instance, writes that “Nowhere save in Tibet is there so much sorcery and ‘black’ magic, such degradation of the mind to selfish, evil ends,” but also that “nowhere … are there so many men who, by becoming masters of themselves, are the spiritual masters of mankind.”¹ At the same time, the sheer magnitude and complexity of Tibetan Buddhism compels admiration, regardless of its truth or virtue. The great hall of the eleventh-century Sakya Monastery, for instance, contains a wall of shelves, sixty meters long by ten meters high, containing a library of eighty-four thousand scrolls of Buddhist texts and writings on other subjects.² The first four volumes contain pictures of the thousand Buddhas,³ and the monastery holds more than three thousand murals depicting religious, historical, and cultural themes. Such examples show that Tibetan Buddhism approaches in a way the fullness of the Christian corpus.

Thus, this essay will investigate some of the key and characteristic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. It will first give a brief history of how the religion came to be, and then discuss, in turn, the practice of tantra, the theme of repentance, and the bodhisattva ideal, concluding with a modest evaluation of the religion from the Orthodox Christian perspective. Illustrations from The Life of Milarepa, a fifteenth-century biography of the famous Tibetan saint by Tsangnyön Heruka, will serve as a uniting thread. It will be argued that, rather than representing a debasement of Buddha’s original teachings, Tibetan Buddhism can be viewed as a development, or even improvement of, some aspects of early Buddhism.

Development of Tibetan Buddhism

Part of the uniqueness of Tibetan Buddhism comes from its geography. Tibet sits on a large high-elevation plateau, and is characterized by wide open plains enclosed by tall mountains. Humphreys notes that the rarefied air, the silence, and the low density of human, animal, and plant life, all “lend themselves to introverted thought, to the development of abnormal ways of thought, to the practice of the best and the worst of the manifold powers of the mind.”⁴ Tibet’s geography also meant that, after Buddhism was brought to Tibet in several stages, it was preserved and developed largely in isolation from other cultures. For example, the Tibetan Buddhist canon, which was compiled starting in the seventh century, consists of more than three hundred volumes, and preserves many texts in Tibetan translation of which the original Hindu versions have now been lost.⁵

Before the introduction of Buddhism, the indigenous religion of Tibet was Bon: a shamanistic animism which originally served the needs of an agricultural population. Buddhism was first introduced into Tibet in the seventh century by the king Songtsen Gampo (d. 649), who converted to Buddhism at the behest of his two wives from China and Nepal, respectively; Gampo then began to preach and built many Buddhist temples in Tibet. Gampo’s Buddhism was of the Yogachara School, a tradition within Mahayana Buddhism with an emphasis on the practices of yoga, mantra, and meditation. Buddhism was introduced into Tibet a second time by the Indian Tantric sorcerer Padmasambhava in 747, who began the work of translating Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Tibetan, resulting in the Tibetan Buddhist canon having a tantric bias; Padmasambhava also founded monastic life in Tibet. Later, Buddhism was for some time suppressed by the Bon religion, until re-established a third time in the eleventh century by the Bengali scholar Atisha, who was also a practitioner of tantra within the Mahayana school. Atisha was the teacher of Marpa (1012–1097), who himself was the teacher of Milarepa (1040–1123).⁶

Thus, up to the time of Milarepa, Tibetan Buddhism was essentially grown out of successive iterations of Mahayana Buddhism with a heavy tantric element, along with the assimilation of the original shamanism of the Bon religion. Bon, whose practitioners (the Bonpa) were known as the “Black Hats,” was essentially the source of “black magic” within Tibetan Buddhism. However, the line between Bon and Buddhism in Tibet was very blurry: both religions influenced each other so much that the “Red Hats” (adherents of the Dugpa sect founded in the twelfth century by a spiritual descendant of Milarepa) came to be synonymous with the Bonpa and black magicians.⁷ Furthermore, as will be seen, Tibetan “black magic” and “good” Tibetan Buddhism essentially use the same magical tools, the main difference being the practitioner’s aim.

The situation shifted with the reformation of Tibetan Buddhism brought about by Tsongkhapa (d. 1419) a monk from Northwestern China. Tsongkhapa founded the “Yellow Hats,” or the Gelug school, which now dominates Tibet and includes the Dalai and Panchen Lamas: consequently, the Yellow Hats venerate him as second only to the Buddha.⁸ Tsongkhapa sought to reform Tibetan Buddhism using philosophical reasoning and an emphasis on the epistemology of “emptiness”; he also somewhat reduced the influence of tantra within his school. Still, these reforms happened only after Milarepa’s death. Meanwhile, the Theravada (“Way of the Elders”) school, which represents most closely Buddha’s original teaching and thus excludes the Mahayana additions of divinity worship, Pure Lands, mantra, yoga, magic ritual, and so on, never had much influence within Tibet.

Tantra

Tantra forms the main element of Vajrayana, the esoteric form of Buddhism which grew out of the Mahayana tradition and which characterizes Buddhism in Tibet. It is a set of magical practices which involves all the senses, using tools like yantra or mandala (sacred geometrical arrangements of symbols), mudra (bodily gestures), and mantra (spoken phrases). The goal of tantra is to develop a certain inner spiritual vision, in a “creative process of spiritual projection”⁹ which will have a transformative effect on the practitioner’s mind and on the world around him.

Etymologically, “Tantra” refers to “weaving,” reflecting the Mahayana theology which justifies this practice. First, the Mahayana view is that the mind and the external world are “only the two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads of all forces and of all events, of all forms of consciousness and of their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually conditions relations.”¹⁰ Second is the idea that “nirvana is samsara,” meaning that the material, phenomenal world is essentially connected to and is a manifestation of nirvana, the fundamental emptiness. Thus, since nirvana, the mind, and the external world are ultimately all part of the same fabric and connected through cause-and-effect relationships, the mind can use magical practices and objects in the material world to achieve nirvana through samsara. This interconnected worldview is also symbolized by the lotus: just as a lotus grows from the muddy depths to blossom on the surface of the water, so is the Buddhist saint “the living synthesis of the deepest and the highest, of darkness and light, of the material and the immaterial, … Samsara and Nirvana.”¹¹

Of particular importance for tantra is the use of mantras, which are sacred phrases (some of them lacking syntactic meaning) which have magical power. A mantra “calls forth its content into a state of immediate reality,” that is, “What the mantra expresses by its sound, exists, comes to pass. Here, if anywhere, words are deeds, acting immediately.”¹² A successful use of mantras depends not only on the form of the spoken phrase, but also on the spiritual attitude, preparation, and knowledge of the practitioner. This is because the words of the mantra do not have power in themselves, but instead work by accessing latent forces within the self.¹³ The effectiveness of mantras is also aided by certain mental associations—in particular, during the practice of “deity yoga,” which involves the visualization of a deity, its mandala, and its associated Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Another aspect of tantric practice is “transcendence through transgression”: doing acts which are considered repulsive or out of the norm, in order to demonstrate one’s transcendence and detachment from the material world. For example, when Milarepa first studied black magic under lama Yungtön Trogyal, the lama gave him and his companions a fine woolen cloak as a parting gift. Milarepa, instead, “gathered horse and donkey manure, cow dung, and dog droppings, filling the bottom of the cloak. I dug a hole in a fertile field owned by the lama and buried them inside.”¹⁴ Milarepa then brought this ruined cloak to the lama, as proof of his renunciation of material luxuries in the desire for esoteric knowledge. Interestingly, the Buddha himself practiced a similar form of transgression while he was still a Hindu ascetic: “for one period he fed on dung” and “frequented a place where human corpses were exposed to be eaten by birds and beasts, and slept among the rotting carcasses.”¹⁵ Buddha, however, found that these practices did not lead to any new knowledge or insight, but only developed in him a certain pride; he therefore abandoned this kind of asceticism, which led eventually to his enlightenment.

Repentance

The Buddhist theme of repentance is not a novelty of Tibetan Buddhism. A notable example is the Angulimala Sutta, a story within the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, which describes the conversion of Angulimala by the Buddha. The story relates that before meeting the Buddha, Angulimala (“Finger Necklace”) was a notorious bandit who was “constantly murdering people and wore their fingers as a garland”¹⁶—by that time, he had already collected 999 fingers. When the Buddha went out to meet him, Angulimala pursued him as his next victim, but was having trouble keeping up with the Buddha’s pace. Finally, Angulimala stopped and called out for the Buddha to stop as well, upon which the Buddha replied:

“Angulimala, I have stopped for ever,
I abstain from violence towards living beings;
But you have no restraint towards things that live:
That is why I have stopped and you have not.”¹⁷

Immediately, Angulimala responded, “Having heard your stanza teaching me the dhamma (“doctrine”), / I will indeed renounce evil for ever.”¹⁸ He then threw away his weapons and become a monk and a disciple of the Buddha, leading a virtuous life.

Angulimala’s story presents Buddhist repentance in a rather simple way: the mere contact with Buddhist teaching or with the Buddha himself inspires an internal decision to repent, upon which a person turns from a sinful life to a life of perfect virtue. Angulimala, however, still had to deal with the effects of karma, the mechanical law of cause and effect which rewards virtuous actions and punishes evil actions. After already becoming an arhat (one who has broken his cycle of reincarnation), Angulimala once went to gather alms, but was beaten by the people. When he came to the Buddha for advice, the Buddha replied, “Bear it, brahmin! You are experiencing here and now the result of deeds because of which you might have been tortured in hell for many years.”¹⁹ While Angulimala was forgiven by the civil authorities after becoming a monk, and thus did not receive the full punishment for his crimes, he nevertheless could not escape at least some of the effects of karmic law.

A final interesting episode in the Angulimala Sutta is Angulimala’s healing of a sick woman and her newborn child. Upon seeing them while collecting alms, Angulimala is filled with compassion for their suffering, thinking to himself, “How beings are afflicted!” The Buddha advises him to say the following to the woman: “Sister, since I was born with the noble birth (i.e. monastic initiation), I do not recall that I have ever intentionally deprived a living being of life. By this truth, may you be well and may your infant be well.”²⁰ When Angulimala says this, the woman and her child are healed; later Buddhist monks would repeat this statement to pregnant women in hopes of assuring a successful birth.²¹ As such, Angulimala’s statement is essentially a prototypical example of a mantra within the Theravada tradition: a spoken statement which, by the truth or reality contained in it, immediately manifests something in the world.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Milarepa himself provides the most prominent example of repentance. Like Angulimala, Milarepa was a murder: for the sake of revenge, he used black magic to topple his uncle’s house, killing thirty-five people. Then, Milarepa conjured up a hailstorm which ruined his home region’s harvest. However, Milarepa then repents of his deeds: “I felt remorse for the evils I had committed through casting black magic and hailstorms… I was so filled with world-weariness and renunciation that I was unable to sleep.”²² There is no discussion of what exactly caused Milarepa to change his mind. However, like Angulimala, Milarepa still needed to deal with the consequences of the negative karma he accumulated through harming other living beings, by undergoing certain trials like building and destroying three towers. The main difference between him and Angulimala in this respect is that Angulimala already achieved enlightenment before suffering from the effects of his negative karma, while Milarepa first needed to purify himself of negative karma before Marpa could teach him the dharma (“doctrine”).

Thus, Tibetan Buddhism largely follows Theravada Buddhism in allowing for the possibility of repentance from great sin, except that that existence of black magic greatly extends a person’s potential for evil. To cast his black magic, Milarepa used mantras as well as “oath-bound protectors of the teachings”²³ (wrathful deities which protect Buddhist practitioners)—the same magical tools used in regular Tibetan Buddhism, but here used for selfish and evil ends. Nevertheless, in a vision which Marpa’s wife received on the night before Milarepa’s arrival, Milarepa was compared to a “crystal stupa, slightly soiled on the outside,” which, when cleaned, “radiated light as dazzling as the sun and moon.”²⁴ Such a description is essentially a very charitable view of a sinner: even crimes as great as those of Milarepa only made him “slightly soiled” when compared with his intrinsic potential for good.

The Bodhisattva Ideal

In both Mahayana Buddhism and the Vajrayana Buddhism which grew out of it, a bodhisattva is a person or divinity who commits himself to not only achieving his own enlightenment, but also the enlightenment and liberation of all other sentient beings. “So boundless is their love and so pervasive is their compassion that they renounce their personal salvation and dedicate their lives for the lofty purpose of serving humanity and perfecting themselves.”²⁵ However, personal salvation and service to others are not mutually exclusive aims for a bodhisattva: one seeks to attain his own enlightenment so that he may serve others, and simultaneously acts of service help him attain this enlightenment; thus “to help others and to help oneself, go hand in hand.”²⁶ Some bodhisattvas therefore choose to delay their own parinirvana (the final state of nirvana achieved at death) and continue being reincarnated for the benefit of others, and some possess great magical powers that can assist their devotees.

The bodhisattva ideal forms the cornerstone of the Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) missionary ethos, as being “big enough to recognize the differences of all schools and ideals as necessary forms of expression of different temperaments and levels of understanding.”²⁷ Since a Buddhist aims to dissolve his ego and realize that all sentient beings are one, it is natural for him to work for the salvation of others as well as himself. This, in turn, provides justification for Mahayana Buddhism’s practice of assimilating the gods and religious practices of other nations in its missionary efforts, as a necessary part of “meeting others where they are” in order to teach them the dharma. Mahayana considers the bodhisattva ideal to be superior to that of the largely-solitary renunciant who only works for his own salvation, thereby differentiating itself from the Hinayana (“Small Vehicle”) tradition.

Milarepa, as a spiritual teacher, is a prime example of a bodhisattva in Tibetan Buddhism. For example, in a song to the deified Milarepa, Rechungpa, one of his disciples, describes him as follows:

“Lord, when you lived in the midst of great crowds
You were filled with a kindness that increased your enlightened attitude.
You led all those you met to the path of release.
You cared most for all those afflicted by misery.”²⁸

Also, upon his parinirvana, Milarepa leaves behind his relics of sugar and cloth, with the power that “whoever tastes the sugar or touches the cloth will be liberated from the lower realms”²⁹: he thus continues to serve mankind even after his death. Even Milarepa’s former use of black magic can be attributed to the compassion he had for his afflicted mother and sister, and the fact that he spared the lives of his uncle and aunt shows his sense of mercy even before his conversion.

Conclusion: Is Tibetan Buddhism “Debased”?

Many Western scholars, attracted by the simplicity, rationality, self-sufficiency, and atheism of Buddha’s original teachings, view Mahayana Buddhism as essentially a “debased” or “corrupted” form of Buddhism, due to its supernatural additions. This is even more so with Vajrayana Buddhism, which adds to the mix tantric practice and becomes essentially a form of sorcery. For example, Christmas Humphreys, who in 1924 founded the Buddhist Society in London, writes that the Buddhism introduced into Tibet in the seventh century “was certainly corrupt, and it has been described as Mahayana in tantric guise,” and that it was “contaminated” with Shaivite mysticism.³⁰ Durant, as well, blames the Mahayana tradition for the eventual defeat of Buddhism by Hinduism in India. He writes that “the Mahayana was Buddhism softened with Brahmanical deities, practices and myths,” with the consequence that “if Buddhism was to take over so much of Hinduism, … soon very little would remain to distinguish the two religions; and the one with the deeper roots … would gradually absorb the other.”³¹ Likely, such an outlook is influenced by twentieth-century perennial philosophy, which would regard Buddha’s original teachings as a good representation of universal religious truth, and the additions of Mahayana and Vajrayana as overly-particular and superstitious.

Proponents of Tibetan Buddhism, too, seem to be conscious of the fact that their version of Buddhism departs significantly from Buddha’s original teachings. For example, Anagarika Govinda, who lectured on Tibetan Buddhism in world tours during the 1960s and 1970s, argued that Buddha, in his teaching, was essentially limited by the conditions of his time, “because, though the Buddha’s doctrine was perfect, the people to whom he preached were not.”³² In particular, Buddha’s teachings as preserved in the Theravada tradition “were conceptually and linguistically time-conditioned formulations,”³³ and thus cannot be used in perpetuity in exactly the same form. Instead, for Govinda, it is normal for a spiritual tradition to grow and change, for its truths “to be re-formed and transformed, if they are to preserve their meaning, their living value, or their spiritual nutriment,”³⁴ since the essence of Buddhism is beyond a specific dogma laid out in words, but is a living method and experience, expressed in the totality of the religion’s historical development. Thus, spiritual tools like mantra, yoga, and the word “OM” that are common to both Buddhism and Hinduism do not represent a Hindu “corruption” of Buddhism. Rather, while originally the Buddha needed to avoid these tools to distinguish his teaching from Hinduism, they were later organically added in when Buddhism was mature enough to make use of them.

Orthodox Christians would agree that religion can grow and change in certain respects, but still would maintain that basic religious truth, as expressed in words in a statement like the Nicene Creed, cannot change. Regardless, from the Orthodox point of view, the main difference between Theravada on one hand, and Mahayana and Vajrayana on the other, is essentially that between atheism or secular philosophy, and devotional polytheism—it is not easy to unilaterally prefer one over the other. Although Orthodox Christianity would ultimately view Mahayana Buddhism as demon worship, and Vajrayana Buddhism as, in addition to this, esotericism and sorcery, some aspects of these traditions, as they appear in Tibetan Buddhism, are improvements over the Theravada tradition. Tantric practice correctly recognizes that the material and spiritual worlds are linked and can be used to influence each other; repentance in Tibetan Buddhism is more profound because the axis of evil is extended by the use of black magic; and the bodhisattva ideal reflects the Christian truth that personal salvation depends on, and is cultivated by, charity, compassion, and service to others.

Therefore, Tibetan Buddhism is not a “debased” or “corrupted” version of Buddha’s original teachings. Rather, it can be viewed as the natural result of Buddhist practitioners recognizing omissions or deficiencies in the early Buddhist system, and trying to address them as best they could while surrounded by polytheism and shamanism. Perhaps, by keeping to this more charitable perspective on Tibetan Buddhism—recognizing these positive aspects in an otherwise demon-infested religion—Orthodox Christians can be better equipped to understand and have dialogue with its adherents.