Introductory History of the
Five Tibetan Traditions
of Buddhism and Bon
Alexander Berzin
Berlin, Germany, January 10, 2000
This evening I was asked to speak about the history of the five
Tibetan traditions of Buddhism
and Bon. The four Buddhist traditions are Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug,
while the pre-Buddhist
Tibetan tradition of Bon makes the fifth. Often we hear the syllable
"pa" at the end of these
names. It means a follower of that tradition; for
instance, Gelug
pa means someone who follows the Gelug tradition.
To survey the history, we need to go back to the seventh century of
the Common Era. At the
beginning of that century, a king from Central Tibet named
Songtsen-gampo conquered the Western
Tibetan kingdom of Zhang-zhung and created the first unified Tibetan
Empire. The custom in those
days to unify an empire was for the king to marry princesses from nearby
kingdoms - neighboring
kings were less likely to attack the palaces where their daughters
lived. Emperor Songtsen-gampo
married princesses from China, Nepal, and Zhang-zhung. These princesses
brought with them the
religions of their native countries. The Chinese and Nepali princesses
brought Buddhist texts and
the Zhang-zhung princess brought her Bon beliefs. Bon was the
Zhang-zhung native religion.
If we look from a Western historical viewpoint, Buddhism did not have
much of an impact in this
earliest period. The main development was that this first emperor built
thirteen Buddhism temples
in his domain. The map of Tibet was seen as a female demon lying on the
earth. Choosing thirteen
spots on the body of the demoness, like acupuncture points, the emperor
commissioned temples built
on each of them to subdue and control the energy of the demoness of
Tibet. That is how Buddhism
came to the Land of Snows.
To unify his empire further, Songtsen-gampo wished to have an
alphabet for writing the Tibetan
language. Thus, he sent his minister, Togmey-sambhota, to obtain
the alphabet from Khotan - not
from India, as is often explained in the traditional Tibetan histories.
Khotan was a Buddhist
kingdom north of Western Tibet in Central Asia. The route to Khotan that
the minister took passed
through Kashmir. When he arrived there, he discovered that the master he
was going to meet in
Khotan happened to be in Kashmir at the time. This is how the story evolved that the Tibetan
writing system came from Kashmir. Orthographic analysis reveals that the
Tibetan alphabet actually
follows features distinctive only to the Khotanese script. Afterwards,
there was much more contact
with Buddhism in China and Khotan then there was with Indian Buddhism.
The Bon religion, however,
remained stronger in Tibet than Buddhism during this earliest period. It
provided the ceremonies
used in state rituals.
In the mid-eighth century, another great emperor, Tri Songdetsen,
ascended to the throne. He
received a prophecy about future Buddhist teachings in Tibet and, in
accord with this prophecy, he
invited a great Buddhist teacher from India, Shantarakshita. Soon after
the arrival of the Indian
Abbot, a smallpox epidemic broke out. The court ministers, who were
against all foreign influences
in Tibet, blamed the smallpox on Shantarakshita and expelled him from
Tibet. Before leaving,
Shantarakshita advised the Emperor to invite Guru Rinpoche,
Padmasambhava, to come and subdue the
adverse conditions and problems. Tri Songdetsen
followed this advice, and Padmasambhava came and
rid Tibet of the interferences. The Emperor then invited Shantarakshita
to return. There were
already several Buddhist temples in the land, but now they built the
first monastery in Tibet, at
Samyay, just south of Lhasa. The Indian Abbot ordained the first monks.
Guru Rinpoche taught a little, but actually did not teach very much
in Tibet. He mostly buried
texts, thinking that the Tibetans at that time were not yet receptive.
These texts were of the
highest tantra teachings called
dzogchen, the great
completeness.
After this, many Chinese, Indian, and Zhang-zhung scholars worked
together harmoniously at
Samyay monastery, mostly compiling and translating texts from their own
traditions. Soon, Buddhism
was made the state religion. The Chinese had the largest influence at
this time. Every second year,
the Chinese emperor sent two monks to Samyay. The form of Buddhism the
Chinese monks followed was
Chan, the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen.
Shantarakshita predicted some conflict with the Chinese. Please keep
in mind that the religious
history did not happen in a vacuum; it happened in connection with the
political history and there
were a lot of wars between China and Tibet at this time. Shantarakshita
said that they should
invite his disciple, Kamalashila, to settle whatever problems might
arise.
Meanwhile, Emperor Tri Songdetsen sent more Tibetans to India to
bring back teachings and invite
more Indians to his land. More texts were buried. Because there were so
many wars with China and
Central Asia and because the ministers were against any foreign
influence in Tibet, it makes sense
that there was a persecution of the Bonpos in Samyay and at the
court. After all, the Bonpo faction
was primarily from Zhang-zhung.
There was also a Dharma debate between
Kamalashila, representing the Indians, and the Chinese
representative. The Chinese lost. Of course, there was no way that a
Chan master could defeat, in
logical debate, a master in logic from India. It was no contest: Chan
practitioners have no
training in logic. For many reasons, one could postulate that the debate
was a political move taken
to provide an excuse for expelling the Chinese and for adopting Indian
Buddhism as the main form of
Buddhism in Tibet. Of all the kingdoms and empires neighboring Tibet,
the Indians posed the least
military threat.
I like to present history not from the standard devotional Tibetan
point of view but a little
bit more from a Western, scientific viewpoint, since I do have that
training. I think it indicates
a little more clearly what happened. It makes more sense.
Many more translations took place after this. In the early ninth
century, under imperial
sponsorship, the scholars compiled a Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary and
standardized the translation
terms and style. It is quite interesting that the scholars did not
include any tantra terms in the
dictionary; tantra was already quite controversial.
In the mid-ninth century, the infamous persecution of Buddhism by the
Emperor Langdarma took
place. Rather than making Langdarma into the devil, as devotional
histories tend to do, it may be
more objective to see this persecution as a reaction to the abbots and
monks at Samyay who were
trying to assert too much influence on the government. Too much of the
taxes raised by the state
went for supporting the monasteries,
and the economic burden had become untenable.
Actually, what Langdarma did was shut down the monasteries; it was
not that he destroyed
Buddhism. He did not destroy the Buddhist libraries, because Atisha
found them when he came to
Tibet a century later. Buddhism continued outside the monasteries. What
had started before and
continued during this so-called "old transmission period" (old translation
period) later became
known as "the old tradition," the Nyingma tradition.
As already mentioned, a persecution of Bon had taken place many years
before the persecution of
Buddhism. Like Guru Rinpoche and other Buddhist masters at that time,
several Bon masters had also
buried texts for safekeeping. In the early tenth century, the Bonpos
started to recover their
texts, which were not only about tantra, but about sutra as well. The Bon
teachings are very
similar to those found in Buddhism. It is quite interesting that Bon
started the tradition of
revealing treasure
texts before the Buddhists began the custom.
Later in the tenth century, there was a lot of misunderstanding about
tantra in Tibet - this was
in the Nyingma tradition, as it had survived outside the monasteries.
People were taking the
teachings too literally - particularly the parts that seemed to be about
sex and violence. The
fascination with sex and violence is not something new in society; they
certainly had it at those
times as well.
As before, the king at that time sent scholars to India to bring back
the teachings once more
and to try to correct the misunderstanding. The misunderstanding came
about primarily because there
were no monasteries anymore to standardize the study and training. Now,
we get what is called the
"new transmission period" (Sarma, new
translation period). At this time, the Buddhist traditions
called Kadam, Sakya, and Kagyu began. These names did not
exist in India. They came about because
many different translators went to India and Nepal and returned with
different sets of texts,
teachings, and tantric empowerments
(initiations). Various Indian, Nepali, and Kashmiri teachers
also came to Tibet. The different Tibetan lineages derive from these
different teachers.
This phenomenon is quite similar to
what we find today. A large number of Tibetan lamas come to
the West. Hardly any seem to cooperate with each other and most of them
start their own Dharma
centers. Many Westerners go to India and Nepal to study with the
Tibetans in exile there, and many
of them also start their own Dharma centers when they return to their
homelands. Now we have things
like a Kalu Rinpoche lineage, a Shamar Rinpoche lineage, a Sogyal
Rinpoche lineage, a Namkhai Norbu
Rinpoche lineage, a Lama Yeshe lineage, a Geshe
Thubten Ngawang lineage, a Geshe Rabten lineage, a
Trungpa Rinpoche lineage: it goes on and on. None of them existed in
Tibet. There are Western
people saying, "I am a Kalu Rinpoche follower," "I am a Namkhai Norbu
follower" - we identify
ourselves with a teacher. The lineages in Tibet formed in the same
manner as they seem to be
forming now in the West. They were completely new; they did not exist
before.
Just as, today, many people have studied with numerous teachers, so
it was at that time. The
lineages crossed; people studied several lineages and they intermixed in
some way. Instead of
starting Dharma centers, they founded monasteries. What happened then -
and will hopefully happen
in the West - is that several of these lineages with their distinct
teachings and teachers combined
to form a sustainable number of schools. It is impossible for two
hundred different flavors of
Buddhism to survive. The transmission lines of various practices, texts,
and tantric empowerments
came together and congealed into the Kadam, Kagyu, and Sakya schools
during this new period. The
various lines that were in Tibet before this new phase congealed into the
Nyingma and the Bonpo
schools. Prior to this period, there had been only scattered
monasteries, not joined into any
organized schools.
The five Tibetan traditions do not have inherent
identities. They are just conventions, bringing
together different lines from different teachers - lines of teachings
and empowerments that
visiting teachers transmitted in Tibet. This is how the five Tibetan
traditions of Buddhism and Bon
came about, starting at the end of the tenth century.
The Kadam lineage derives from the Indian master Atisha. One of the
outstanding features of this
tradition was the
lojong teachings. Lojong is usually translated as "mind
training," but I prefer "cleansing
of attitudes."
This lineage split into three, then was reunified and reformed by
Tsongkhapa in the
late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries to become the Gelug
tradition.
One of Tsongkhapa's most remarkable achievements was that he read
almost the entire Buddhist
literature available in his day. Many texts had several versions in
Tibetan. Most had been
translated three or four times and had a wide assortment of
commentaries. Tsongkhapa read nearly
all of them - sutra and tantra - and compared everything. He went
through and wrote, "Concerning
this passage, this version translates it like this and that version like
that, and this commentary
explains it like this and that one like that. But, this translation or
this explanation is
illogical and makes no sense, because it contradicts this and that…"
In this way, Tsongkhapa reached a conclusion as to the correct
translation and understanding of
ALL the major texts. He did not just state his findings as "This is what
this passage means,
because I say so," he supported everything with logic and reasoning.
Moreover, he especially
focused on the most difficult passages of each text, the ones that
everybody else tended to skip
over. His works became the foundation of the Gelug school.
Tsongkhapa had many disciples. One of them was later called "The
First Dalai Lama," although the
name "Dalai Lama" did not come to that line until the third incarnation.
The Third Dalai Lama was
given the name by the Mongols. It was the Fifth Dalai Lama, in the
middle of the seventeenth
century, who gained political rule of Tibet, given to him also by the
Mongols. The Mongols did this
primarily to end the 150-year-long Tibetan civil war and to foster unity
and stability in the land.
The Dalai Lamas then became the protectors of all traditions in Tibet,
not just Gelug, although the
Dalai Lama line had come originally from within the Gelug school. The
Fifth Dalai Lama's main
teacher became known as "The First Panchen Lama."
The Sakya lineage came primarily from the Indian master Virupa. From
him, derives the teachings
known as
Lamdray, "the paths and their results," the main Sakya teaching
combining sutra and
tantra. The Sakya school developed through a line of five early masters,
all belonging to the same
noble family. One of them, Chogyal Pagpa, was given the political
regency of Tibet in the
thirteenth century by the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. This step
reestablished political unity in
Tibet for the first time during the new translation period.
The Kagyu tradition has two major lines. One is Shangpa Kagyu, the
lineage that the late Kalu
Rinpoche headed. It came from the Tibetan master Kyungpo Neljor, who
went to India at the beginning
of the eleventh century and brought back teachings, primarily from
Naropa and two great female
masters, the yoginis Niguma and Sukhasiddhi.
The other main Kagyu line is Dagpo Kagyu. This is the line that
passed from Tilopa to Naropa and
then to the Tibetans Marpa, Milarepa, and Gampopa. After Gampopa, the
line divided into twelve
lineages among his students and then the next generation of students. Of
the twelve, only three are
widespread today and known in the West. The Karma Kagyu school was started by the first Karmapa, a
direct student of Gampopa. The other two are Drugpa and Drigung Kagyu.
Traditionally, each Kagyu school was independent, without there being
a general head of all the
Kagyu lines. When the present Tibetan refugee community fled to India at
the time of the Lhasa
uprising in 1959, the most eminent of the Kagyu lineage heads that
escaped was the Sixteenth
Karmapa. To help with the resettlement process, he was provisionally
chosen as the leader for all
the Kagyu lineages. Nowadays, the various Kagyu traditions have resumed
their individual paths.
During the early eleventh century when the new translation schools
were emerging, Nyingma
masters started to uncover the texts that were buried earlier.
Longchenpa put them together in the
thirteenth century to form the textual basis for the Nyingma school. The
Nyingma tradition is
probably the least uniform of the various Tibetan schools; each of its
monasteries is quite
independent.
One more movement needs mention, the Rimey or "nonsectarian
movement." This began in the early
nineteenth century in Kham, Southeastern Tibet. The founding masters all
came from the Kagyu,
Sakya, and Nyingma lineages. Among them, perhaps the most well known was
the First Kongtrul
Rinpoche, Jamgon Kongtrul. The main reason for starting the Rimey
movement was to preserve lineages
and texts from all traditions, including Gelug, that had become rare at
that time.
Some Western scholars speculate an additional hidden political agenda
behind the establishment
of the Rimey movement. The Gelug school had become extremely strong and
was the main tradition in
Central and Northeastern Tibet (Amdo). Moreover, followers of that
school dominated the Central
Tibetan Government. The other traditions perhaps felt threatened and, by
working together, they
might have felt that they could not only preserve their identities, but
could also present an
alternative unifying force for Tibet. Thus, we get the Rimey movement.
This is perhaps enough of an introduction to the history of the five
Tibetan traditions.
Although there are many names, it is helpful to have some idea of the
history and who the main
figures are, such as the Dalai Lamas, Panchen Lamas, and Karmapas. This,
in turn, can help us to
avoid the pitfalls of sectarianism so that we can develop respect for
all the traditions of
Tibet.
Thank you.