Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Review Articles
The Sa-skya Pa-/:uJita, the White Panacea, and Clerical
Buddhism's Current Credibility Crisis
Robert Mayer
In Chapter One, Jackson sets out some of the key offending items from
sGam-po-pa's writings, most notably from the chapter on Perfect Wisdom
(Ch.17) in his Thar-pa rin-po-che'i rgyan (translated into English by H.V.
Guenther as The Jewel Ornament of Liberation). This famous text comprises
a systematic stages of the path (lam-rim) type of presentation of the basic
Mahayana Buddhist teachings drawn mainly from the old bKa'-gdams-pa
tradition of Atisa, most of it quite uncontroversial; it is only one subsection within its Ch.17 that contains some ideas which were castigated
REVIEW ARTICLES 81
by Sa-pan as heretical. In fact, Sa-pan not only believed these ideas were
wrong in themselves: he also thought they represented the views of the
Chinese Buddhist master Ho-shang Mo-ho-yen, and for Sa-pan any
Buddhist doctrine of Chinese origin must be heretical by definition. In
other contexts, Sa-pan also accused sCam-po-pa of introducing substantial
doctrinal innovations: again, for Sa-pan, all substantial doctrinal innovations were heresy by definition. In general, Sa-pan thought that sCampo-pa had repeatedly transgressed boundaries between the distinctive
methods appropriate to the causal vehicle (rgyu mtshan-nyidlphyi'i theg-pa)
of sutra and those appropriate to the fruitional vehicle Cbras-bu theg-pa) of
tantra (d. Bentor 1992). These boundaries and distinctions were held to
be inviolable within Sa-pan's particular scholastic system. In Chapter 2,
Jackson illustrates how sCam-po-pa and his school of meditators maintained a somewhat rhetorical critique of any purely intellectual path to
enlightenment, and how this critique was sometimes prone to err into a
vulgar and provocative disparagement of Buddhist scholarship as a whole.
In Chapter 3, Jackson describes the figure of Zhang Tshal-pa, a more
controversial bKa' -brgyud-pa master who is often seen as a particular
target of Sa-pan's criticisms.
THE BKA'-GOAMS-PA QUESTION
The arguments given in the context of sCam-po-pa's treatment of Perfect
Wisdom in his Thar-rgyan are important for the entire dispute, and Jackson describes them in detail. On the one hand, Sa-pan has no quibble
with sCam-po-pa's main presentation on how to cultivate Perfect Wisdom,
where sCam-po-pa follows the standard Mahayana causal vehicle methods. The subsection Sa-pan objects to is the one concerned with rjes-thob
or post-meditation, i.e., the one which gives instruction on how the bKa'brgyud-pa meditator who has already achieved some direct insight into
reality should sustain that realisation after or in between periods of formal
practice. An interesting aspect of this dispute which (quite understandably) falls outside Jackson's remit is the question of the possible significance of bKa'-gdams-pa ideas within this controversy. So, although
Jackson had no need to deal with this topic in his book, and although I
am a non-specialist in this field, I would like to raise the issue here in a
highly preliminary fashion (even if with such little erudition), because I
suspect it might in due course transpire to be an issue of some interest
that will eventually need to be addressed comprehensively.
In his treatment of rjes-thob in Ch.17 of the Thar-rgyan,sCam-po-pa seems
on the face of it to give a somewhat similar instruction to those found in
surviving traditions descending from the old bKa'-gdams-pa tradition,
such as the Seven Points of Mind Training (blo-sbyong don-bdun). However,
sGam-po-pa seems to add something that I have not found in the Seven
Points of Mind Training (although, in the face of conflicting evidence and
with poor library facilities, I am not yet clear if it occured in other bKa'_
gdams-pa teachings or not). sGam-po-pa advises, " ... [between sessions],
by seeing all things as enchantment, merits such as liberality are accumulated
to the best of our power," compared with the Seven Point Mind Training,
which reads, more simply, "In between sessions, consider yourself a child
of illusion."l Of course, it is the additional gloss expressed in the second
part of sGam-po-pa's sentence which Sa-pan finds particularly dangerous.
Sa-pan is aware that sGam-po-pa evidently sees this context of rjes-thob
as one in which his students could or should move entirely beyond the
causal vehicle point of view, in which deliberate efforts are made to cultivate virtue. Rather, sGam-po-pa implies that during rjes-thob, they should
take up a truitional vehicle point of view, in which no such deliberate
efforts at cultivating virtue are made, but in which such virtues will arise
spontaneously as epiphenomena of absorption in the absolute. In keeping
with this view, then, sGam-po-pa quite explicitly identifies the meditation
on emptiness to be done during rjes-thob as meditation on the true nature
of mind (sems-nyid), which for him signifies the highest reality, or, more
importantly, which he sees as synonymous with the absolute bodhicitta.
Later on, this standpoint of avoiding deliberate efforts in the cultivation
of virtue during rjes-thob became even more vehemently supported by
later commentators of sGam-po-pa's school, such as Dwags-po bKra-shis
rnam-rgyal (1512-1587) (Lhalungpa 1986: 252).
So here we can discern the crux of the doctrinal dispute: in line with
the Tibetan yogic or meditational traditions in general (sgrub-brgyud), but
in sharp contrast to many of the more scholarly traditions such as Sapan's, sGam-po-pa believes that relative bodhicitta and absolute bodhicitta
(i.e., compassion and wisdom) are, from the fruitional point of view at
least, to be considered aspects or parts of a single undivided reality, an inherently indivisible union of wisdom and means, primordially united and
impossible to separate. Hence it is that sGam-po-pa concludes that from
direct absorption within emptiness in this fruitional context, which he sees
as identical to dwelling in the absolute bodhicitta or the nature of mind
(sems-nyid), all the virtues of the relative bodhicitta, such as generosity
etc., will emerge spontaneously. This is of course a view similar to that of
the tathagatagarbha doctrine, which sGam-po-pa strongly emphasises in the
opening chapter of his book. Thus sGam-po-pa believes that this absorption within emptiness from a strictly fruitional point of view (which is of
course made possible only in the context of the post-meditation experience
already having arisen), can become a self-sufficient practice within that
context (and that context alone): by maintaining this single practice of
REVIEW ARTICLES 83
REVIEW ARTICLES 85
REVIEW ARTICLES 87
"Do those who have realized the truth become Buddhas simply by meditating on the view of emptiness?" Drom Tonpa asked.
"Of all that we perceive as forms and sounds there is nothing that does not
arise from the mind. To realize that the mind is awareness indivisible from
emptiness is the view. Keeping this realization in mind at all times, and never
being distracted from it, is meditation. To practice the two accumulations as a
magical illusion from within that state is action. If you make a living experience
of this practice, it will continue in your dreams. If it comes in the dream state,
it will come at the moment of death. And if it comes at the moment of death
it will come in the intermediate state. If it is present in the intermediate state
you may be certain of attaining supreme accomplishment" (PatruI1994: 255-6).
Summing up this long quote from Atisa, dPal-sprul concludes that all
84,000 doors to the dharma taught by the Buddha" are all skilful means
to cause the bodhicitta-emptiness of which compassion is the very
essence-to arise in us." (Patrul 1994: 256). Obviously, the nub of dPalsprul's (and sGam-po-pa's) position is that wisdom and compassion are,
from the resultant perspective! indivisibly inseparable.
Within the generality of Buddhist doctrine, to see bodhicitta as having
the nature of both emptiness and compassion is not unusual, but the
sgrub-brgyud tradition of emphasising the absolutely inalienable and indivisible inseparability of wisdom and compassion within absolute bodhicitta might historically derive less from the earlier Prajnaparamita scriptures
than from tathtigatagarbha doctrine, or else from texts such as the Samdhinirmocana Satra, the original source of the distinction between ultimate
and relative bodhicittas, which defined ultimate bodhicitta as the radiant
mind of an enlightened being! possessed of compassion. As the Yoga carin
Sthiramati saw it (following the Samdhinirmocana SIUra), "bodhicitta is
equal to the dharmakaya as it manifests itself in the human heart" (Williams
1989: 203). Later, the understanding of absolute bodhicitta as the ultimate
nature of mind primordially complete with all enlightened qualities,
became one of the fundamental metaphors of early rDzogs-chen writings;
for example, the Sems-sde series is precisely named after such meditation
on bodhicitta as the absolute (sems = byang-chub sems);10 and of course,
the similarities of such Sems-sde doctrines to sGam-po-pa's teachings on
sems-nyid was not lost upon Sa-pan, who held the rDzogs-chen tradition
as deeply suspect in lacking an Indic pedigree.
The belief in the absolute indivisible unity of wisdom and means from
the point of view of ultimate truth, then, is what underpins the belief of
the sJs"fub-brgyud traditions that when yogins have developed through
intensive meditation enough realisation to actually practise from the fruitional point of view, then they are best advised to simply dwell continuously within sems-nyid (the absolute bodhicitta) during rjes-thob; this is
REVIEW ARTICLES 89
followers, but it certainly need not be for all of them: not only were these
texts included in the Kanjur but, as several authors including David
Snellgrove (1987: 436) and David Seyfort Ruegg (1989: 137) have pointed
out, not all Tibetan traditions have adopted such a uniformly hostile
attitude to Chinese Buddhism or even to Mo-ho-yen as Jackson's reasoning presupposes. On the contrary, writes Seyfort Ruegg, some "adopted
a noticeably more conciliatory stance toward the teachings they connected
with the Hva san." Could it not be that in using a token percentage of
Chinese-originated Buddhist sources in his Thar-rgyan (albeit sources
widely accepted in Tibet especially by rDzogs-chen-pas), sGam-po-pa was
consciously seeking both to associate himself with rNying-ma-pa colleagues, and to distance himself from what he saw as vulgar religious
bigotry? Certainly, several rNying-ma-pa masters have taken quite tolerant
positions towards Chinese Buddhism: while proudly identifying themselves as the heirs of Santaraksita and Kamalaslla,l'! they nevertheless
found the courage to defy the belligerence of popular prejudice by representing the Chinese Buddhist traditions as a partial virtue rather than
an absolute evil. Such a stand was for them a consciously adopted ideological position. Perhaps sGam-po-pa thus saw important spiritual reasons
to align himself with his rDzogs-chen-pa spiritual friends, who probably
regarded the traditions of Mo-ho-yen as possessing some definite worth,
even if much less than those of their own Indian masters, and who probably deplored as the sin of slandering bodhisattvas the unthinking and
unmitigated contempt widely levelled at Chinese Buddhism as a whole
and Mo-ho-yen in particular.
MEDITATORS AND SCHOLARS
Some of the most useful sections of this excellent book are Chapters Four
and Five, where Jackson sets out Sa-pan's precise criticisms of the bKa'- '
brgyud-pa, and what he calls Sa-pan's "principles of critical doctrinal
scholarship." Here we find a fascinating manifesto for Tibetan (or even
Buddhist) clericalism as a whole. As one might expect, the contrast with
sGam-po-pa's practice lineage is stark. While Sa-pan the statesman and
logician applies the law of the excluded middle to construct an invariable
set of rules about Buddhist doctrine which he aspires to see applied
globally, sGam-po-pa the hermit and spiritual physician is a pragmatist
who cares little for logical inconsistencies or academic categories, so long
as his remedies work for his own disciples locally. Once again, we have
a classic confrontation of the contrasting value systems of "respectability"
and "reputation" (d. Wilson 1973), which Geoffrey Samuel has so convincingly linked to what he terms the "clerical" and "shamanic" currents that
REVIEW ARTICLES 91
pervade all of Buddhism (Samuel 1993: 215-217). In this case, the confrontation was rendered more acute by historical factors: Sa-pan and
sCam-po-pa are widely seen as culture-heroes around whom were formed
(to a substantial extent) the clerical and shamanic poles of subsequent
Buddhism in Tibet. As prime exemplars for their currents, a degree of
polarisation in their self-representations was predictable, and (arguably)
even historically useful for Buddhism as a whole. Yet it is significant how
quickly the" contradictory" elements between the Sa-skya-pa and bKa'brgyud-pa paths (as expressed by these founding figures), were subsumed
within the much greater complimentarities which they offered each other:
unsurprisingly, it was not very long before most lamas following these
traditions transmitted teachings from both sides. Jackson graphically
alludes to such underlying complimentarities with his postscript, in which
he describes the interconnected legends of two Indian siddhas, the "mattock-man" Kotali and the great scholar Santipa.
REVIEW ARTICLES 93
India, Central Asia and China, and that the rNying-ma-pa uphold these
traditions within Tibet into the present day (gter-ma and dag-snang). In
general, the rNying-ma-pa found support and protection among the bKa'brgyud-pas. Now, modern philology powerfully supports their claims as
well. 17 Far from being the unreasonable and inauthentic Buddhist fringe
that Sa-pan portrays, to the modern sensibility they might increasingly
appear as Buddhism's still, small voice of truth about the real origins of
its own canonical scriptures, that somehow withstood centuries of propaganda and even occasional persecution from the more powerful and political clerics such as Sa_pan. 18 So the question must be addressed: if so
many rNying-ma-pa authors (including Sa-pan's contemporaries) correctly
understood the later, revealed nature of the Mahayana and Vajrayana
scriptures, by what special pleading must we make allowances for Sapan's error in attributing these texts to the mouth of the historical
Buddha, and moreover using this false claim as the main basis of his
attack upon the hapless but more correct rNying-ma-pa?
As well as putting an entirely different perspective on the principle of
ongoing scriptural revelation that Sa-pan rejected in the name of canonical orthodoxy, modern knowledge can also put a different colouration
on sGam-po-pa's specific doctrinal innovations that Sa-pan had singled
out for criticism. We cannot, of course, be certain if sGam-po-pa was
aware of the intertextuality of the scriptures he inherited from India with
particular Saiva traditions}9 but his introduction of Slltra and Essence
Mahamudra systems can nevertheless be seen as historically appropriate,
in that it completed the Mahayanisation and Buddhicisation of the Saiva
materials which in some respects remained as yet somewhat ill-digested
in the Indic Cakrasamvara source texts. The Essence Mahamudra in particular comprises a simple synopsis of basic Buddhist teachings, drawing
together the central doctrines of Hinayana, Yogacara and Madhyamaka in
a simple and uncontroversial way;20 by establishing this Essence Mahamudra fair and square at the heart or apex of the otherwise uncomfortably
Saiva-derived set of tantric methods taught in the Cakrasamvara cycle
(such as gtum-mo), sGam-po-pa and his followers can be seen as having
reinforced and completed the final historical Mahayana Buddhist overcoding of this otherwise potentially ambivalent Indic Tantric tradition (cf.
"taming," 'dul-ba). Especially for a sgrub-brgyud lineage that did not envisage years of training in Mahayana tenets before approaching tantric practice, such further Buddhicisation can be seen as a praiseworthy historical
achievement by sGam-po-pa's tradition.
Do the above observations mean that the central clerical Buddhist concern so ardently pursued over so many centuries by so many great figures
such as Sa-pan and Tsong-kha-pa, namely the quest to establish correct
REVIEW ARTICLES 95
Notes
1. Neither sGam-po-pa's Chapter 17, nor the various surviving versions of the
Seven Point Mind Training available to me, give any additional instruction
for the rjes-thob other than these. Unfortunately, Jackson does not quote the
Tibetan text of sGam-po-pa's opening keynote phrase that sums up and
introduces this sub-section on rjes-thob, nor do I currently have the Tibetan
text available; hence I can only quote Guenther's translation above (Guenther
1971: 218).
The equivalent phrase from the only Tibetan version of the Seven Points
of Mind Training available to me is: thun mtshams sgyu ma'i skyes bur bya I, "In
between sessions, consider yourself a child of illusion." dGe-'dun grub (Dalai
Lama I, 1391-1474), glosses this as follows: "In those times when you have
arisen from your meditation cushion, and consciousness and its objects seem
to truly exist, meditate on the thought, 'They seem to exist, yet they are like
an illusion and like things seen in a dream'." (trans. Mullin 1993: 134). Geshe
REVIEW ARTICLES 97
Rabten and Ceshe Ngawang Dhargyey give the same advice, adding that to
meditate on all phenomena as empty during the rje-thob phase protects the
mind against emotional afflictions (Rabten & Dhargyey 1977: 45-46). It seems,
then, that these dCe-Iugs-pa sources agree with sCam-po-pa that meditation
on emptiness is sufficient for rje-thob, while they do not say, as does sCam-popa, that generosity etc. are thereby spontaneously accomplished.
2. For example, Ratnagunasamcayagiitha 3.7-8; 4.5-7; 25.4-5; Astasahasrika. 3.4; 25.
3; Conze's The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, Chapter 59, page 470, here
quoting the Cilgit ms. of the Astadasasahasrika-prajr1aparamita (=Abhisamayalaqlkara V 5).
3. There is, however, a certain historical irony here: it is widely believed that the
long-lasting marriage of Zen with the samurai military arts might never have
happened, but for the extreme national trauma occasioned by the Mongol
attempts to invade Japan (Hoover 1978: 60). Yet at the very time of the
Mongol attempts on Japan (between 1268 and 1281), it seems to have been
none other than Sa-pan's direct successor and nephew 'Phags-pa (1235-1280)
who held the role of Qubilai's main tantric siddha or priest; and, as Sperling
has shown, a central part of this position lay in the propitiation of Mahakala
to assist the purposes of the state or monarch, be they military or otherwise!
This role had been taken over by the Sa-pan and 'Phags-pa from the
bKa' -brgyud-pas, in this specific instance quite possibly from the Tshal-pa
subsect (see next note; d. Sperling 1990: 147-148). The changeover was probably not entirely without acrimony, since there exists literary evidence indicating that some bKa'-brgyud-pas saw it as an unwelcome usurpation of an
important position that was to some degree the possession of the bKa'brgyud-pas by right (Sperling 1994: 806). The position of imperial priest had
originally been held by a succession of bKa' -brgyud-pa siddhas, at first on
behalf of the Buddhist Tangut empire, and then on behalf of its more warlike
Mongol successor state under Kaden (Sperling 1994), from where Qubilai
later adopted the institution into Chinese court circles too.
Be that as it may, we know beyond doubt that one of 'Phags-pa's official
dulies was to propitiate Mahakala in support of Mongol military and political
objectives (Sperling 1994: 805). It is therefore highly possible that 'Phags-pa
was requested by Qubilai to do Mahakala sadhanas to assist his invasion of
Japan, although 'Phags-pa had presumably already died before the catastrophic destruction of the Mongol fleet by the legendary kamikaze typhoon
in the early summer of 1281. Nevertheless it was this invasion which possibly
contributed to precisely the kind of distortion within Japanese Buddhism that
Sa-pan had apparently sought to prevent in Tibet.
4. Seyfort Ruegg, however, mentions sources that suggest the 'Bri-gung-pa's
dGongs-gcig teachings as well as Guru Zhang's tradition as being the target
of Sa-pan's critique (Ruegg 1989: 109), while Dan Martin sees the sDom-gsum
as more concerned to refute bKa'-gdams-pa doctrines than bKa'-brgyud-pa
(personal communication, 30/9/96. There is a little external evidence suggesting that the 'Bri-gung connection might be more significant than Jackson indicates. While the notorious revolt (gling-log) of 'Bri-gung against Sa-skya-pa
REVIEW ARTICLES 99
Tshal-pa tradition founded by Guru Zhang might at one stage have had a
very real chance of inheriting the coveted r61e of supreme patronage by
virtue of their association with Qubilai! However, this was not to be. Kaden,
who had a key r61e in placing Qubilai on the throne, seems also to have sent
'Phags-pa to live at Qubilai's court even before Qubilai's reign actually began
(Sperling 1994: 805); could the Tshal-pa have been displaced as Qubilai's main
priests at this juncture? Or were they displaced even earlier? I am unclear of
the chronology. Nevertheless, it follows that if Jackson is correct that Guru
Zhang's tradition was the specific target of Sa-pan's polemic, an interesting
political dimension emerges: the Sa-skya-pas of that period, with the help of
Kaden (Sperling 1994: 80S), seem to have succeeded in ensuring that 'Phagspa was able to take over the incomparably politically desirable job as Qubilai's chief priest, with all the privilege and patronage it implied, precisely from
the followers of Guru Zhang, the principal target of Sa-pan's polemic, written
so shortly before!
Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that it seems to me (at first glance at
least) that if one looks at Sa-pan's polemic from a strictly Chinese point of
view, one sees that the gist of his critique coincides very closely with the
stringent bibliographic criteria of Buddhist heresy (i.e., non-Indic origins) that
had become increasingly well established and normative within the successive Chinese states from the time of Emperor Liang Wu-ti (502-549) (Strickmann 1990, Buswell 1990: 1; Mayer 1996: 12-14). Of course, I am not at all
suggesting that Sa-pan inherited these criteria from China: rather, that the
criteria coincided for doctrinally similar reasons inherent to a certain strand
of Mahayana Buddhist thinking. Nevertheless such reasons might have
looked even more persuasive from a Chinese perspective than they did in
Tibet, and this might have reinforced Sa-skya-pa prestige at Qubilai's court.
In other words, Sa-pan's critique of the bKa'-brgyud-pa and rNying-ma-pa
alike as non-Indic was one eminently comprehensible to the official Chinese
Buddhist establishment. This might have made difficulties for figures such as
Karma Pakshi, depending as they did in almost equal measure on the traditions of both sGam-po-pa and of the rNying-ma-pa.
Thus, while I have no doubt at all that Sa-pan's motives in writing his
polemics were religiously sincere, I nevertheless feel that the important and
complex political dimensions to his struggles with the Tshal-pa (and other
subsects) do need investigation and clarification.
5. Once again, I regret not having the' Tibetan text available, and so I must rely
on Guenther's translation.
6. These statements attributed to Atisa are here introduced by dPal-sprul to
enlarge upon briefer previous quotations of similar sentiment attributed to
Naga~una and Saraha (Patrul 1994: 255).
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
forms, in those of the extraordinary or esoteric scriptures that constitute the Bhairava, Kaula and Trika divisions of the canon; see, e.g.,
Somasambhupaddhati (Brunner-Lachaux 1977: 130); Abhinavagupta,
Tantrtiloka 31.l1c-12b; Sanderson 1988, p.687 (p.155); Goudriaan and
Schoterman 1994, p.73, n.3. Phem, which is the seed-syllable of Kalacakra's consort Visvamata, is, with many variants and elaborations,
that of the Mothers in Esoteric Saivism; see, e.g., Tantrtiloka 31.45c-49
and -viveka ad lac. (phem, phrem, khphrem, hshrphrem) (thanks to
Alexis Sanderson for these references) (Mayer 1996: 59-60).
For a comprehensive review and analysis of this, see Mayer 1996: 1-153.
Of course, such a popular modern perception of the rNying-ma-pa can be
seen as containing an element of romanticism: notwithstanciing the truth of
their historical understanding, it is also relevant that the rNying-ma-pa gterstan culture had an obvious vested interest in promoting the ongoing-revelation model of Buddhist scriptural history.
A number of Indic Tantric texts, both Buddhist and Saiva, do indicate an
awareness of such intertextuality (Sanderson 1991, 1995; Mayer 1996). More
specifically, the well-known story of Rechungpa's third visit to India gives
some indication that an awareness of the problem existed in early bKa'brgyud-pa circles in Tibet. In this story, Milarepa burns some scriptures
brought back from India by Rechungpa on the grounds that they are in fact
non-Buddhist mantra texts, and not Buddhist ones as Rechungpa had supposed. The implication is that the difference between the two is not obvious
even to an advanced yogin like Rechungpa.
For a useful English-language expositions of Essence Mahamudra, see Kongtriil: 1992. Sa-pan specifically objected to the methodolOgical conflation of
Mahayana and Vajrayana this system implies, especially to sGam-po-pa's
application of the yogic methods of "introduction to the nature of mind"
(sems-kyi ngo-sprod) within a sutra context, but I doubt if he could have had
any objection to the rather elementary and uncontroversial doctrinal statements contained in most formulations of this synthesis.
.
My understanding of the importance of the clerical current is also strongly
supported by Geoffrey Samuel's analysis of the interdependence of "clerical"
and "shamanic" Buddhism. One can also look at supporting evidence from
various states in contemporary Asia: where modernisation and secularisation
have eroded or reduced the traditional gravitas of clerical Buddhism, a plethora of sectarian developments have occurred, not all of which can be seen as
useful (d. several developments in modern Japan, or Sri Lanka as described
in Gombrich & Obeyesekere 1988).
David Jackson seems to take a different position, which I think hinges on his
unprotesting deference to the popular misperception that to be "political"
within the religious sphere is necessarily to be ethically suspect. In his book,
Jackson thus entirely omits any mention whatsoever of the political aspects
of bKa' -brgyud-pa/Sa-skya-pa relations (see notes 3 & 4 above), as though it
were established a priori that these could have no possible bearing whatsoever on the dkar-po chig-thub debate. Presumably, Jackson hopes this strategy
References
Beckwith, Christopher I., 1987, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, Princeton University Press.
Bentor, Yaet 1992, "Sutra-style concecration in Tibet/' IATS 5, Narita.
Buswell, Robert E., 1990, ed. and introduction, Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.
Conze, Edward, 1984, The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, Berkeley, University of
California Press.
Dayat Har, 1978 (reprint), The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature,
Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, First published 1932.
Dudjom, Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje, 1991, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Its
Fundamentals and History (transl. and ed., G. Dorje & M. Kapstein), Boston,
Wisdom Publications.
Gombrich, Richard and Gananath Obeyesekere, 1988, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Guenther, HV. 1971, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, (Reprint) Boulder, Shambhala, The Clear Light Series, First published London 1959.
Gyatso, Janet, 1994, "Guru Chos-dbang's gTer 'byung chen mo: an early survey of
the treasure tradition and its strategies in discussing Bon treasure," in (Per
Kvaerne, ed.) Tibetan Studies. Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International
Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992, Vol.1, Oslo, The Institute for
Comparative Research in Human Culture.
Hoover, Thomas, 1978, Zen Culture, London & Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kongtrul, Jamgon III, 1992 (ed. and trans., Drasczyk & Drasczyk), Cloudless Sky. The
Mahamudra Path of the Tibetan Kagya Buddhist School, Boston & London, Shambhala Publications.
Lhalungpa, Lobsang P., trans., 1986, Mahamudra. The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation, Boston & London, Shambhala.
Martin, D., 1992, "Crystals and Images from Bodies, Hearts and Tongues from Fire:
Points of Relic Controversy from Tibetan History," IATS 5, Narita.
Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies,
Fagernes 1992, VoL2, Oslo, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human
Culture.
Strickmann, Michel, 1990, "The Consecration SzUra: A Buddhist Book of Spells," in
Buswell 1990.
Tenzin Gyatso, 1979, A Meditation on Compassion, (Bound withAryasura's Aspiration),
Dharamsala, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives.
Williams, Paul, 1989, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London,
Routledge.