Introductory Comparison of the Five Tibetan Traditions of Buddhism and BonAlexander Berzin

Bonas the Fifth Tradition of TibetMost people speak of Tibet as having four traditions:Nyingma,Kagyu,Sakya, andGelug, with Gelug being the reformed continuation of the earlierKadamtradition. At the nonsectarian conference oftulkus(incarnate lamas) and abbots that His Holiness the Dalai Lama convened in Sarnath, India, in December 1988, however, His Holiness emphasized the importance of adding the pre-Buddhist Tibetan tradition of Bon to the four and always speaking of the five Tibetan traditions. He explained that whether or not we consider Bon a Buddhist tradition is not the important issue. The form of Bon that has developed since the eleventh century of the Common Era shares enough in common with the four Tibetan Buddhist traditions for us to consider all five as a unit.Hierarchy and DecentralizationBefore we discuss the similarities and differences among the five Tibetan traditions, we need to remember that none of the Tibetan systems forms an organized church like, for example, the Catholic Church. None of them is centrally organized in this manner. Heads of the traditions, abbots, and so on are mainly responsible for giving monastic ordination and for passing on lineages oforal transmissionsand tantricempowerments(initiations). Their main concern is not with administration. Hierarchy mostlyaffectswhere people sit in the largeritual ceremonies(pujas); how many cushions they sit on; the order in which they are served tea; and so on. For various geographic and cultural reasons, the Tibetan people tend to be extremely independent and each monastery tends to follow its own ways. The remoteness of the monasteries, huge distances between them, and difficulties in travel and communication have reinforced the tendency toward decentralization.Common FeaturesThe five Tibetan traditions share many common features, perhaps as much as eighty percent or more. Their histories reveal that the lineages do not exist as separate monoliths isolated withinconcretebarriers, without any contact with each other. The traditions have congealed into five from their founding masters having gathered and combined within themselves various lines of transmission, mostly from India. Byconvention, their followers have called each of their syntheses "a lineage," but many of the same lines of transmission form part of the blends of other traditions as well.Lay and Monastic TraditionsThe first thing the five share in common is having both lay and monastic traditions. Their lay traditions include marriedyogisandyoginisengaged in intensive tantricmeditationpractice and ordinary laypeople whoseDharmapractice entails mostly recitingmantras, makingofferingsat temples and at home, and circumambulating sacred monuments. The monastic traditions of all five have the full and novice monk ordination and the novice nun ordination. The full nun ordination never came to Tibet. People normally join the monasteries and nunneries around the age of eight. Monastic architecture and dcor are mostly the same in all traditions.The four Buddhist schools share the same set of monasticvowsfrom India, Mulasarvastivada. Bon has a slightly different set of vows, but most of them are the same as the Buddhist. A prominent difference is thatBonpomonastics take a vow to be vegetarian. The monastics of all traditions shave their heads; remain celibate; and wear the same maroon sleeveless habit, with a skirt and a shawl. Bon monastics merely substitute blue for yellow in the central panels of the vest.SutraStudyAll Tibetan traditions follow a path that combines sutra andtantrastudy with ritual and meditation practice. The monastics memorize a vast number of scholarly and ritual texts as children and study by means of heated debate. The sutra topics studied are the same for both Buddhists and Bonpos. They includeprajnaparamita(far-reachingdiscrimination, the perfection of wisdom) concerning the stages of the path,madhyamaka(the middle way) concerning the correctviewofreality(voidness),pramana(valid ways of knowing) concerningperceptionand logic, andabhidharma(special topics of knowledge) concerning metaphysics. The Tibetan textbooks for each topic differ slightly in their interpretations not only among the five traditions, but also even among the monasteries within each tradition. Such differences make for more interesting debates. At the conclusion of a lengthy course of study, all five traditions grant a degree, eitherGesheorKhenpo.The four Tibetan Buddhist schools all study the four traditions of Indian Buddhist philosophical tenets Vaibhashika,Sautrantika,Chittamatra, and Madhyamaka. Although they explain them slightly differently, each accepts Madhyamaka as presenting the most sophisticated and precise position. The four also study the same Indian classics by Maitreya, Asanga, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Shantideva, and so on. Again, each school has its own spectrum of Tibetan commentaries, all of which differ slightly from each other.Tantra Study and PracticeThe study and practice of tantra spans all four or six classes of tantra, depending on the classification scheme. The four Buddhist traditions practice many of the sameBuddha-figures(deities,yidams), such as Avalokiteshvara, Tara, Manjushri, Chakrasamvara (Heruka), and Vajrayogini (Vajradakini). Hardly anyBuddha-figure practice is the exclusive domain of one tradition alone.Gelugpasalso practice Hevajra, the main Sakya figure, and ShangpaKagyupaspractice Vajrabhairava (Yamantaka), the main Gelug figure. The Buddha-figures in Bon have similar attributes to the ones in Buddhism for example, figures embodyingcompassionor wisdom only differentnames.MeditationMeditation in all five Tibetan traditions entails undertaking lengthy retreats, often for three years and threephasesof the moon. Retreats are preceded by intensivepreliminary practices, requiring hundreds of thousands of prostrations, mantra repetitions, and so on. The number of preliminaries, the manner of doing them, and the structure of the three-year retreat differ slightly from one school to another. Yet, basically, everyone practices the same.RitualRitual practice is also very similar in all five. They all offer water bowls, butter lamps, and incense; sit in the same cross-legged manner; use vajras, bells, anddamaruhand-drums; play the same types of horns, cymbals, and drums; chant in loud voices; offer and taste consecrated meat and alcohol during special ceremonies (tsog); and serve butter tea during all ritual assemblies. Following the originally Bon customs, they all offertormas(sculpted cones of barley flour mixed with butter); enlist local spirits for protection; dispel harmful spirits with elaborate rituals; make butter sculptures on special occasions; and hang colorful prayer flags. They all house relics of great masters instupamonuments and circumambulate them Buddhists clockwise, Bonpos counterclockwise. Even their styles of religious art are extremely similar. The proportions of the figures in paintings and statues always follow the same set guidelines.Tulku System of Reincarnate LamasEach of the five Tibetan traditions also has thetulkusystem. Tulkus are lines of reincarnate lamas, great practitioners who direct their rebirths. When they pass away, usually in a special type of death-juncture meditation, their disciples use special means to look for and locate their reincarnations among young children, after an appropriatetimehas passed. The disciples return the young reincarnations to their formerhouseholdsand train them with the best teachers. Monastics and laypeople treat the tulkus of all five traditions with the highest respect. They often consult tulkus and other great masters for amo(prognostication) about important matters in their lives, usually made by tossing three dice while invoking one or another Buddha-figure.Although all Tibetan traditions include training in textual study, debate, ritual, and meditation, the emphasis varies from monastery to monastery even within the same Tibetan school and from individual to individual even within the same monastery. Moreover, except for the high lamas and the elderly or sick, the monks and nuns take turns in doing the meniallaborrequired tosupportthe monasteries and nunneries, such as cleaning the assembly halls, arranging offerings, fetching water and fuel, cooking, and serving tea. Even if certain monks or nuns primarily study, debate, teach, or meditate; still, engaging in communal prayer, chanting, and ritual takes up a significant portion of everyone's day and night. To say that Gelug and Sakya emphasize study, while Kagyu and Nyingma stress meditation is a superficial generalization.Mixed LineagesMany lineages of teachings mix and cross among the five Tibetan traditions. The lineage ofThe Guhyasamaja Tantra, for example, passed through the translator Marpa to both the Kagyu and the Gelug schools. Although themahamudra(great seal) teachings concerning the nature ofmindare usually associated with the Kagyu lines, the Sakya and Gelug schools also transmit lineages of them.Dzogchen(the great completeness) is another system of meditation on the nature of the mind. Although usually associated with the Nyingma tradition, it is also prominent in theKarma Kagyuschool from the time of the Third Karmapa and in theDrugpa Kagyuand Bon traditions. The Fifth Dalai Lama was a great master of not only Gelug, but also of dzogchen and Sakya, and wrote many texts on each. We need to be open-minded to see that the Tibetan schools are notmutually exclusive. Many Kagyu monasteries perform Guru Rinpoche pujas, for example, although they are not Nyingma.DifferencesUsage of Technical TermsWhat are the major differences, then, among the five Tibetan traditions? One of the main ones concerns the usage of technical terms. Bon discusses most of the same things as Buddhism does, but uses different words or names for many of them. Even within the four Buddhist traditions, various schools use the same technical terms with different definitions. This is actually a great problem in trying to understand Tibetan Buddhism in general. Even within the same tradition, different authors define the same terms differently; and even the same author sometimes defines the same terms differently in his various works. Unless we know the exact definitions that the authors are using for their technical terms, we can become extremelyconfused. Let me give a few examples.Gelugpas say that mind, meaningawarenessof objects, is impermanent, while Kagyupas andNyingmapasassert it is permanent. The two positions seem to be contradictory and mutually exclusive; but, actually, they are not. By "impermanent," Gelugpas mean that awareness of objects changes frommomentto moment, in the sense that the objects one is aware of change each moment. By "permanent," Kagyupas and Nyingmapas mean that awareness of objects continues forever; its basic nature remains unaffected by anything and thus never changes. Each side would agree with the other, but because of their using the terms with different meanings, it looks as if they completely clash. Kagyupas and Nyingmapas would certainly say that an individual's awareness of objects perceives or knows different objects each moment; while Gelugpas would certainly agree that individual minds are continuums of awareness of objects with no beginning and no end.Another example is the word "dependent arising." Gelugpas say that everything exists in terms of dependent arising, meaning that things exist as "this" or "that" dependently on words andconceptsbeing able to validlylabelthem as "this" or "that." Knowable phenomena are what the words andconceptsfor them refer to. Nothing exists on the side of knowable phenomena that by its own power gives them their existence and identities. Thus, for Gelugpas, existence in terms of dependent arising is equivalent to voidness: the total absence of impossible ways of existing.Kagyupas, on the other hand, say that the ultimate is beyond dependent arising. Itsoundsas if they are asserting that the ultimate has independent existence established by its own power, not just dependently arising existence. That is not the case. Kagyupas, here, are using "dependent arising" in terms of thetwelve links of dependent arising. The ultimate ordeepest true phenomenonis beyond dependent arising in the sense that it does not arise dependently fromunawarenessof reality (ignorance). Gelugpas would also accept that assertion. They are just using the term "dependent arising" with a different definition. Many of the discrepancies in the assertions of the Tibetan schools arise from such differences in the definitions of critical terms. This is one of the major sources of confusion and misunderstanding.Viewpoint of ExplanationAnother difference among the Tibetan traditions is the viewpoint from which they explain phenomena. According to the Rimey (nonsectarian movement) master Jamyang-kyentse-wangpo, Gelugpas explain from the point of view of the basis, namely from the point of view ofordinary beings, non-Buddhas.Sakyapasexplain from the point of view of the path, namely from the point of view of those who are extremely advanced on the path to enlightenment. Kagyupas and Nyingmapas explain from the point of view of the result, namely from a Buddha's viewpoint. As this difference is quite profound and complicated to understand, let me just indicate a starting point for exploring the issue.From the basis point of view, one can only focus on voidness orappearanceone at a time. Thus, Gelugpas explain even an arya's meditation on voidness from this point of view. Anaryais a highlyrealizedbeing with straightforward, nonconceptual perception of voidness. Kagyupas and Nyingmapas emphasize theinseparabilityof thetwo truths, voidness and appearance. From a Buddha's viewpoint, one cannot possibly talk about just voidness or just appearance. Thus, they speak from the point of view of everything being complete and perfect already. The Bon presentation of dzogchen accords with this manner of explanation. An example of the Sakya presentation from the point of view of the path is the assertion that the clear-light mind (the subtlest awareness of each individual being) is blissful. If that were true on thebasis level, then the clear-light mind manifest at death would be blissful, which it is not. On the path, however, one makes the clear-light mind into a blissful mind. Thus, when Sakyapas speak of the clear-light mind as blissful, this is from the point of view of the path.Type of Practitioner EmphasizedAnother difference arises from the fact that there are two types of practitioners: those who travel gradually in steps and those for whom everything happens all at once. Gelugpas and Sakyapas speak mostly from the point of view of those who develop in stages; Kagyupas, Nyingmapas, and Bonpos, especially in their presentations of the highest class of tantra, often speak from the point of view of those for whom everything happens all at once. Although the resulting explanations may give the appearance that each side asserts only one mode of travel along the path, it is just a matter of which one they emphasize in their explanations.Approach to Meditation on Voidness in Highest TantraAs mentioned already, all the Tibetan schools accept Madhyamaka as the deepest teaching, but their ways of understanding and explaining the different Indian Buddhist systems of philosophical tenets differ slightly. The difference comes out most strongly in the ways in which they understand and practice Madhyamaka in highest tantra. As this is also a very complex and profound point, let us try here just to get an initial understanding.Highest tantra practice leads to gaining straightforward nonconceptual perception of voidness with the subtlest clear-light mind. Thus, two components are necessary:clear-light awarenessand correct perception of voidness. Which one receives the emphasis in meditation? With the "self-voidness" approach, the emphasis in meditation is on voidness as the object perceived by clear-light awareness. Self-voidness means the total absence of self-existent natures giving phenomena their identities. All phenomena aredevoidof existing in this impossible way. Gelugpas, most Sakyapas, and Drigung Kagyupas emphasize this approach; although their explanations differ slightly concerning the impossible ways that phenomena are devoid of existing in.The second approach is to emphasize meditation on clear-lightmind itself, which is devoid of all grosser levels of mind or awareness. In this context, clear-light awareness receives the name "other-voidness"; it is devoid of all other grosser levels of mind. Other-voidness is the main approach of theKarma, Drugpa, and Shangpa Kagyupas, the Nyingmapas, and a portion of the Sakyapas. Each, of course, has a slightly different way of explaining and meditating. One of the major areas of difference, then, among the Tibetan schools is how they define self-voidness and other-voidness; whether they accept one, the other, or both; and what they emphasize in meditation to gain clear-light awareness of voidness.Regardless of this difference concerning self-voidness and other-voidness, all Tibetan schools teach methods for accessing clear-light awareness or, in the dzogchen systems, the equivalent:rigpa,pure awareness. Here, another major difference appears. Non-dzogchen Kagyupas, Sakyapas, and Gelugpas teach dissolving the grosser levels of mind or awareness in stages in order to access clear-light mind. The dissolution isaccomplishedeither by working with the subtle energy-channels, winds, chakras, and so on, or by generating progressively more blissful states of awareness within the subtle energy-system of the body. Nyingmapas, Bonpos, and practitioners of Kagyupa lineages of dzogchen try to recognize and therebyaccess rigpaunderlying the grosser levels of awareness, without actually having first to dissolve the grosser levels. Nevertheless, because earlier in their training they engaged in practices with the energy-channels, winds, and chakras, they experience that the grosser levels of their awareness automatically dissolve without conscious further effort when they finally recognize and access rigpa.Whether Voidness Can Be Indicated by WordsYet, another difference arises concerning whether voidness can be indicated by words and concepts or whether it is beyond both of them. This issue parallels a difference incognitiontheory. Gelugpas explain that with nonconceptual sensory cognition, for example seeing, we perceive not only shapes and colors, but also objects such as a vase. Sakyapas, Kagyupas, and Nyingmapas assert that nonconceptual visual cognition perceives only shapes and colors. Perceiving the shapes and colors as objects such a vase occurs withconceptual cognitiona nanosecond later.In accordance with this difference concerning nonconceptual andconceptualcognition, Gelugpas say that voidnesscanbe indicated by words and concepts: voidness is what the word "voidness" is referring to. Sakyapas, Kagyupas, and Nyingmapas assert that voidness whether self- or other-voidness is beyond words and concepts. Their position accords with the Chittamatra explanation: words and concepts for things are artificial mentalconstructs. When you think "mother," the word or concept is not really your mother. The word is merely a token used to represent your mother. You cannot really put your mother into a word.Use of Chittamatra TerminologyIn fact, Sakyapas, Kagyupas, and Nyingmapas use a lot of Chittamatra vocabulary even in their Madhyamaka explanations, particularly in terms of highest tantra. The Gelugpas rarely ever do. When non-Gelugpas use Chittamatra technical terms in highest tantra Madhyamaka explanations, however, they define them differently from when they use them in strictly Chittamatra sutra contexts. For example,alayavijnana(foundation awareness) is one of the eight types of limited awareness in the sutra Chittamatra system. In highest tantra Madhyamaka contexts, foundation awareness is a synonym for the clear-light mind that continues even into Buddhahood.SummaryThese are some of the major areas of difference concerning profound philosophical and meditation points. We could go into tremendous detail about these points, but I think it is very important never to losesightof the fact that about eighty percent or more of the features of the Tibetan schools are the same. The differences among the schools are mostly due to how they define technical terms, which point of view they explain from, and what meditation approach they use to gain a clear-light awareness of voidness.Preliminary PracticesFurther, the general training practitioners receive in each of the traditions is the same. Merely the styles of some of the practices are different. For example, most Kagyupas, Nyingmapas, and Sakyapas complete the full set of preliminaries for tantra practice (the hundred thousand repetitions of prostrations, and so on) as one big event early in the training, often as a separate retreat. Gelugpas typically fit them one at a time into their schedules, usually after they have completed their basic studies. Practitioners of all traditions, however, repeat the full set of preliminaries at the start of a three-year retreat.Three-Year RetreatsIn a three-year retreat, Kagyupas, Nyingmapas, and Sakyapas typically train in a number of sutra meditation practices and then in the basic ritual practices of the main Buddha-figures of their lineages, devoting several months successively for each practice. They also learn to play the ceremonial musical instruments and to make sculpted torma offerings. Gelugpas gain the same basic meditation and ritual training by fitting each practice one at a time into their schedules, as they do with the preliminaries. The Gelug three-year retreat focuses on the intensive practice of just one Buddha-figure. Non-Gelugpas normally devote three or more years in retreat to one tantra practice only in their second or third three-year retreats, not in the initial one.Participation in the full monastic ritual practice of any Buddha-figure requires completion of a several-month retreat entailing repetition of several mantras hundreds of thousands of times. One cannot perform aself-initiationwithout having completed this practice. Whether Gelugpas fulfill this requirement by doing a several-month retreat on its own or non-Gelugpas do it as part of a three-year retreat, most monastics in all the traditions complete such retreats. Only the more advanced practitioners of each tradition, however, do intensive three-year retreats focused on only one Buddha-figure.ConclusionIt is very important to maintain a nonsectarian point of view with regard to the five Tibetan traditions of Buddhism and Bon. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always stresses, these different traditions share the same ultimate aim: they all teach methods for achieving enlightenment to benefit others as much as is possible. Each tradition is equally effective in helping its practitioners reach this goal and thus they fit together harmoniously, even if not in a simple manner. In making even an introductory comparative study of the five traditions, we learn toappreciatethe unique strong points of our own tradition and to see that each tradition has its own outstanding features. If we wish to become Buddhas and to benefit everyone, we need eventually to learn the entire spectrum of Buddhist traditions and how they all fit together so that we are able to teach people of different inclinations and capacities. Otherwise, we risk the danger of "abandoning the Dharma," which means discrediting an authentic teaching of Buddha, thereby disabling ourselves from being able to benefit those whom Buddha saw that the teaching suits.It is important eventually to follow only one lineage in ourpersonalpractice. No one can reach the top of a building by trying to climb five different staircases simultaneously. Nevertheless, if our capacities allow, then studying the five traditions helps us to learn the strong points of each. This, in turn, may help us to gainclarityabout these points in our own traditions when they receive less elaborate treatment there. This is what His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the great masters always emphasize.It is also very important to see that for anything that we do be it in the spiritual or the material sphere there are perhaps ten, twenty, or thirty different ways of doing the exact same thing. This helps us to avoidattachmentto the way in which we are doing something. We are able to see the essence more clearly, rather than becoming caught up in "This is the correct way of doing it, because it is my correct way of doing it!"What questions would you like to ask?QuestionsQuestion:Which tradition do you follow?Alex:His Holiness the Dalai Lama and one of his teachers, Serkong Rinpoche, my main spiritual guide, have always encouraged me to follow their examples, which is to study and practice all the Tibetan traditions as much as I can, while keeping the main emphasis on Gelug. I have tried to follow this guideline to the best of my ability.Question:Isn't it confusing to do meditation practices from many different traditions? Isn't it confusing even to do the practices of many different Buddha-figures within one tradition?Alex:There are different ways of approaching Buddhist practice, particularly tantra. One Tibetan saying goes, "Indians practiced with one Buddha-figure and were able to realize a hundred; while the Tibetans practice a hundred figures and are not able to realize any!" The import of this saying is that it is important to go into depth in one practice if we are to get anywhere with many. The extent of our practice depends on our individual capacities. To assess our capacities, we need both to look honestly at ourselves and to consider our teachers' advice.If we are capable of engaging in tantra practices from several Tibetan lineages, it is important, as His Holiness warns, not to make a stew out of them. We need to do each practice individually, according to its own tradition, in its own way. If we find doing many practices confusing, His Holiness advises that it is best not to put equal emphasis on all of them. If we have received empowerments and practices from many lineages or even for many Buddha-figures within one lineage and we find it confusing, we can just maintain the karmic connection with some of them by reciting the mantra three times daily. We can then go into depth with merely the practices for which we have the most understanding, and with which we feel the strongest links.I believe that the ability to engage in many practices depends on how well we understand the general theory of tantra. If we understand the theory correctly, we can see how each particular practice fits with the others. Otherwise, our practice of tantra runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic.Question:Can you please elaborate on His Holiness the Dalai Lama's advice against mixing practices?Alex:One reason for not mixing or adulterating practices is to show respect for lineage and tradition. To mix would be like to walk into a Catholic Church and make three prostrations to the altar, while everyone else was genuflecting and crossing themselves. The Fifth Dalai Lama is a good example of someone who mastered several traditions, but never mixed them. When he composed Gelug texts, he wrote them completely in Gelug style; when he composed Sakya texts, they were in Sakya style from start to finish; and when he wrote Nyingma texts, the style was totally Nyingma. In Nyingma texts, one praises Padmasambhava at the start, not Tsongkhapa.Another reason for keeping each practice pure is that within thesadhanavisualization practice of one tradition, for instance, the component parts of the practice, the vocabulary, and the manner of expression are all consistent. They fit harmoniously together like the component parts of a particular make and model automobile. Within the Sakya tradition of Hevajra practice, for example, the seven-limb prayer omits beseeching the Buddhas not to pass away. This is because the Sakya teachings oflamdray(the paths and its results) emphasize the Buddhas'sambhogakayamanifestations, which remain until every being has become free from all suffering, rather than thenirmanakayaappearances that teach impermanence by passing away. The sambhogakaya emphasis also reflects in the way one stabilizes the visualization of oneself as the Buddha-figure and receives the empowerments. To mix into a Sakya lamdray practice a Gelug-style seven-limb prayer, which includes beseeching the Buddhas not to pass away, would be like trying to fit a Volkswagen part into a Ford engine. It simply won't work.Question:Aren't there examples in which practices from different lineages have combined?Alex:In some cases when practices have been introduced into one lineage from another, they have been kept purely in their original forms. For example, the Gelug practice of Hayagriva Yangsang from thetreasure textsrevealed by the Fifth Dalai Lama is purely in the same style of practice as that of any Nyingma sadhana.In some cases, one part of a practice has been changed to that of the lineage into which it has been introduced. For example, the Vajrayogini practice brought into Gelug from Sakya shares most features in common with typical Gelug sadhanas. It merely substitutes Gelug-style voidness meditation for Sakya-style.Sometimes, however, we do find hybrids. The Karma Kagyu practice of Guru Rinpoche, for example, contains most of the components of a Nyingma sadhana, but typically Karma Kagyu terminology and approach to voidness meditation. In the sadhana practice of Karma Pakshi (the Second Karmapa), although Guru Rinpoche sits in Karma Pakshi's heart and one of the offerings resembles Nyingma style, most of the rest of the practice is typically Karma Kagyu. The main hybrid feature is visualization of oneself as a Buddha-figure in the form of a great lineage master. Someone must be a very great master with far-reaching wisdom, however, to make any synthesis. It is not taboo, but requires great care. For ordinary beings such as ourselves, making new syntheses will probably lead merely to confusion.Question:If our main practice is Gelug, but we also like to practice dzogchen, what would be the best way of doing this?Alex:The best way is to practice dzogchen as a separate meditation. It is like in school: when we do math we do math, when we do composition we do composition. We attend one class at a time, separately. In the end, everything we learn fits together in our own development.For many people, practicing a variety of methods is too much, so there is no need to do this. Better to stick to one style of practice, while appreciating the validity of the wide diversity of Buddhist methods. Otherwise, we might go to another Dharma center, meet other practitioners, and see that they are doing something slightly differently from the way that we do. As followers of a Tibetan tradition, for instance, we might go to a Zen center and see the way the members make prostration. Our ears go up like a rabbit in front of a car light and we gasp, "That iswrong! They have palms up on the floor, not down; they are going to go to hell!" Our shock and horror are the fault of not having a broad enough Buddhist education. Chinese Buddhists all prostrate that way. Although some Tibetan masters may take a fundamentalist stance regarding their traditions, there is no need to follow their examples.Question:How do we know which tradition suits us the best?Alex:It is not easy. In Tibet, people went to whatever monasteries and teachers happened to be in their valleys. Those who felt that was not enough and who wished to study further, went elsewhere after their basic Buddhist educations. One of my teachers, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, for example, entered a local Sakya monastery as a young child, but when he grew older, pursued his main studies in Gelug monasteries, first in his district and then far away in Lhasa.The situation here in the West is much different now. In many cities, a wide variety of options is available, so it is possible to shop around at the various Dharma centers. Eventually, however, we need to choose a lineage within which to focus our main study and practice. To spend all our time shopping and never to buy anything would be sad. If we automatically feel familiar and comfortable with a particular lineage or teacher, this is a good sign that we have a karmic connection. It "feels right."In choosing a lineage or a teacher, it is important to remain open-minded and not to have theattitude, "I am only going to go to my Dharma center. I am not going to set foot into any other center or listen to any other teacher." This, I think, deprives us of many excellent opportunities to learn more. On the other hand, it is not necessary to go to everything. Better to exercisediscriminating awarenessand follow a "middle path."If we live in a remote area, with very few options for Dharma study available, we probably need to follow the traditional Tibetan example. We can start by going to whatever centers and teachers are the closest and most convenient. If they suit us, this is wonderful. If we find them unsatisfactory, we respectfully learn as much as we can and, if the opportunity presents itself, we may pursue further study and practice elsewhere.If this is the pattern we follow, it is important to dismiss any feelings we might have that our going on to other teachers, centers, or even lineages is an act of disloyalty and betrayal to our home centers or teachers. Going from high school to college is not a betrayal of our high school or of its teachers. The same is true with transferring to another university if we find that the one we first entered does not provide the program or level of study we want. If we maintain respect and appreciation for the teachers we had and their instruction, there is no guilt or blame.Question:What is the best way to regard the refutations of the philosophical positions of other traditions that we find in the texts of each of the Tibetan schools?Alex:His Holiness the Dalai Lama and some of the greatest masters of the past have stressed that although the Tibetan schools and even within one school, the various monastic textbooks have differences of opinion on minor points, their positions are not contradictory regarding the most important issues. Moreover, as His Holiness also points out, several great masters of the past were not especially gifted in explaining their meditation experiences in a logical or a consistent manner. Yet, if we examine their practices and accomplishments impartially, we must conclude that they achieved authentic results.Many texts contain heated debates between various scholars, not only from one school to another, but also even within one school. Sometimes, rude inflammatory remarks punctuate the texts. We can regard these debates like battles betweenhostilesides, but such an attitude prevents us from benefiting from the contents of the debate. If we look from a moredetachedviewpoint, we can hear their words implying, for example, "If you say that mind is permanent, without clearly defining what you mean by permanent, then some people will understand the term with my definition. They will then become extremely confused, because this and that absurd conclusion and inconsistency follow when you define permanent as I do and ascribe that to mind." I think that this is one type of unbiased conclusion we can reach from these strongly worded debates.Question:Many Tibetan Buddhist lamas have spoken or written very negatively about the Bon tradition. Can you comment on that?Alex:Prejudice against the Bonpos stems back to the ancient conquest of Zhang-zhung, the homeland of Bon in Western Tibet, and its incorporation into the first Tibetan Empire in Central Tibet. Originally, the term "Bonpo" referred to ministers and other officials who came from Zhang-zhung, not to those who carried out the Zhang-zhung rituals at the imperial court. Prejudice against the Bonpos was originallymotivatedby politics, not by religious beliefs or practices. His Holiness emphasizes that this prejudice is divisive and negative. It would be best if Tibetan Buddhists worked to eliminate it from their mentalities.If we look from the viewpoint of Jungian psychology, I think we can gaininsightinto the historical development of the anti-Bon prejudice. Over time, the practice of seeing thespiritual teacheras a Buddha received growing emphasis. As the intensity of so-called "guru-devotion"increased, many practitioners who had not yet achieved stable levels of emotional balance were unable to digest the practice in a healthy manner. The more they stressed and projected the side of perfection onto their teachers, the more they empowered the hidden negative side what Jung called "the shadow." They projected this onto the so-called "enemies of the Dharma." Much of the projection fell on the heads of the Bonpos.As my good friend, Dr. Martin Kalff, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Jungian psychologist, pointed out to me, the account ofShakyamuniBuddha meditating under thebodhitree and being attacked by Mara, the embodiment of interference and negativity, indicates this psychological principle. Conscious focus on our positive sides brings unconscious focus on our negative ones as a counterbalance. Only when Shakyamuni demonstrated that Mara could no longer affect him, did he attain enlightenment.It is significant that the Buddhist lineages with the most fanatic guru-devotion often are the ones with the most ferocious and gory protector practices. The more they seemingly worship their gurus, the more fixated they seem to become on destroying the enemies of the Dharma. This polarization is very unhealthy. It is very important that, as Western practitioners, we take care not to fall prey to this tendency to make our lineage gurus into gods and the teachers of other lineages and religions into the devil.Question:Which Tibetan lineage is the largest?Alex:The Gelug tradition has the largest following in Tibet and Mongolia. Among the Tibetans in exile, Gelug also has the highest number of adherents. Among Westerners and East Asians who were not traditionally Tibetan Buddhists, Karma Kagyu seems to be the largest group. In the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, however, each of the Tibetan traditions has equal representation.Question:Has His Holiness ever expressed any thoughts about the usefulness of preserving the five Tibetan traditions or the benefits of combining them into one tradition?Alex:Neither the Dalai Lama nor any other Tibetan spiritual leader has the power or authority to make such changes. His Holiness always welcomes a diversity of spiritual traditions in order to suit people's varying tastes. Nevertheless, at the nonsectarian conference I mentioned earlier, His Holiness recommended establishment of a committee to select a body of common prayers from among the Tibetan translations of Indian Buddhist prayers for instance, Shantideva's prayer - that all Tibetan traditions could accept as a common liturgy when they meet together. The ability to pray together would not eliminate the traditions, but rather bring them closer together. His Holiness's suggestion would undoubtedly be helpful also for Buddhist centers in the West.Thank you.The Four Traditions of Tibetan Buddhism: Personal Experience, History, and ComparisonsSession One: Personal Experience and HistoryUnedited TranscriptTonight Ive been asked to speak about the four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. I was asked also to speak a little bit about my own personal experience with them as a way to start. So, lets do that.I have a bit of an omnivorous mind and Ive always been interested in almost everything and like to understand and study everything. When I originally became involved with Buddhism and studying it that was in university about forty years ago I became turned on by one particular lecture which spoke about how Buddhism went from one civilization to another and how it was reinterpreted and redefined in terms of the cultures of each of these civilizations. It sort of wentBoing!and I really was turned on very much by that and that was what I wanted to study and become involved with and I pretty much have followed that for the last forty years.And that led to studying a wide variety of Asian religions and philosophies. First I was involved with China and how Buddhism came into China, the whole process with which Chinese philosophy influenced it, and how after Buddhism became less prominent in China, how it influenced the philosophy that followed that. After that I wanted to fill in the Indian side: where did Buddhism come from? How did that fit into all the different philosophies that were going on at the inception of Buddhism and during the development of Buddhism in India? There is a lot of debate and interaction back and forth between the Buddhist and Hindu Schools. And then that led to Tibetan Studies, how Buddhism went there and what happened.So when I originally went to India back in 1969 on the Fulbright program to do my doctorate dissertation, I was not coming from a sectarian background, from one tradition of Buddhism. In fact, the whole approach that was followed at university in the sixties was that this was a dead subject, like Ancient Egyptian Studies, And here we have the commentaries and you learn the language, you learn the grammar and try to figure it out, like a grand crossword puzzle.I had met Geshe Wangyal a great Kalmyk Mongol Geshe, one of the first of the people from the Tibetan tradition in the United States earlier during my university times. But I never really had an opportunity to study with him, so I didnt identify with the Gelug tradition that he came from. But I went to India and, through connections from Geshe Wangyal, then I met with Sharpa and Khamlung Rinpoches, who had been with him in America and started eventually studying with their teacher, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey.Back in 1969, I met His Holiness and was very, very impressed by His Holiness Everything that I had studied was for real, this is what really struck me, and it wasnt a matter of guesswork and it was really a living tradition and you could really become involved in the practice, rather than just my own approach, which was to try to figure it out myself what the practice might be like; this type of thing. So I got involved in the practice and it was the Gelug tradition and I studied that; thats the main thing that I have studied.But eventually, when His Holiness built the Library in Dharamsala and invited Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey to be the teacher there and Sharpa and Khamlung Rinpoches to be the translators, then I asked if I could also be of help. And His Holiness said, Yes, but hand in the dissertation first and then come back. So I did that and moved over to Dharamsala from Dalhousie. His Holiness always encouraged me from the very start to study in all the Tibetan traditions. As I said, I have an omnivorous mind. And if that is something that you can deal with and handle without getting confused, its very beneficial and its certainly the approach that His Holiness has. His Holiness has trained and is quite an expert in all the Tibetan traditions.Even before I started studying with Serkong Rinpoche, I used to go to Bodh Gaya in the winters and there was a Karma Kagyu teacher, Beru Khyentse Rinpoche, who used to teach in the seventies, the early seventies, mid-seventies in Bodhgaya. Hes continued to do that. I dont know if he does that still today, but he used to teach there every winter and I would go every winter, for either His Holiness would teach there or usually Ling Rinpoche, the Senior Tutor, would teach in Bodh Gaya. And it was too cold up in Dalhousie anyway, or in Dharamsala. And Beru Khyentse Rinpoche was teaching, teaching mahamudra and various other Karma Kagyu things.And he asked me if I would translate for him, because he needed a translator for the classes. I think it was he who asked me, actually I cant remember so exactly. And I sort of checked it out and decided that this would be a great thing to do, to not only translate for him, but to be able to learn the Karma Kagyu side. And he was really a very, very wonderful teacher at that time, because he really was able to explain things in depth. I tend to ask lots of questions and want things pretty precise and he was able to help me with that. That was my introduction to the Kagyu side, starting to expand out beyond just one tradition.Then I started to study with Serkong Rinpoche, who became my main teacher, the late Assistant Tutor of His Holiness. Serkong Rinpoche also was a master, like His Holiness, of all the different traditions, particularly, like His Holiness, the second one after Gelug being Nyingma. Serkong Rinpoche one of his main responsibilities all along was to attend all the classes that His Holiness attended and be able to debate with him; and he also taught him and gave many lineages and initiations to His Holiness. But one of his main functions was to have the entire scope of His Holinesss teachings, so that there was at least somebody else who had as large a scope as His Holiness that His Holiness could bounce ideas back and forth with and so they could discuss and refine His Holinesss understanding.So this whole movement that is so important to His Holiness, which is the grand unified theory of all the Tibetan traditions, is the main framework in which my entire training and my entire work has been evolving from many decades already. Serkong Rinpoche continued to encourage me very much in this direction. His Holinesss part of the policy at the Library in Dharamsala had Geshe Dhargyey as well teach texts from other traditions besides Gelug. He taught GampopasJewel Ornament of Liberation; he taught a Nyingma text by Longchenpa.And from... even back in Dalhousie, His Holiness had had asked us as a team myself with Sharpa and Khamlung Rinpoche and Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey to translate little pamphlets for him. His Holiness wanted them from the various different traditions. And when he asked us to translate a particular dzogchen text of Longchenpa, that gave me the opportunity to start to study with Nyingma masters. And I worked some with Dudjom Rinpoche, the late head of the Nyingma tradition and was able to study privately with him to get a bit of the dzogchen side. I think thats where that started, but then later on I was able to do quite a bit of Nyingma and dzogchen studies with His Holiness, who teaches it quite frequently, and with Serkong Rinpoche as well, who was a great master of that tradition.It was very interesting with Serkong Rinpoche: he was very special in terms of giving advice, to me at least, in terms of not trying to rule anybodys life or anything like that, but he did point out two things. One was that I should study Tibetan astrology; he was the Kalachakra teacher of His Holiness and astrology is a big part of Kalachakra, or at least a significant part of Kalachakra, although you dont have to study it order to get into Kalachakra. But in order to be able to understand certain aspects of the texts and sort of esoteric things it makes your understanding a bit fuller; so he encouraged me to do that.And so I did, and in addition to that, he encouraged me that I must get the Sakya Hevajra empowerment and study in the Sakya tradition with Chogye Trichen. Dagchen Rinpoche and Sakya Trizin and Chogye Trichen are the heads of the three lineages of Sakya. So, he suggested that I really must do that. Serkong Rinpoche died in 1983 and he had told me this just some months or within a year of when he passed away. And so after he had passed away, I made a very strong effort to go to Nepal and to be able to study with him.Chogye Trichen was really wonderful, he gave the initiation privately to me; there were a couple other people who happened to be there that he invited in, but because it had been requested by Serkong Rinpoche for me, he did that quite especially, which was awfully nice. So, that was sort of my entry into the Sakya side. And I must say, with all of that and trying to practice as best I can, in a little bit, at least in the styles of the other traditions and working to try to fit them together and see how they go together, this has really, really been very wonderful and very rewarding.As His Holiness always says, even within one lineage, if you study different practices, theres going to be emphases placed in different areas. He is always talking quite specifically about anuttarayoga tantra practice, but in the different deity systems therell be more emphasis on clear light practice, or more detail on the four blisses, or more detail on the wind yogas, or this or that. And although all of them are complete; by studying different ones, you get more detail on a side that then you can somehow fit in and fill in. Also you get a different angle on your meditation if you can see many different angles of approaching it.This I found to be really, really the case, particularly in voidness meditation, because the style of doing voidness meditation is quite different in each of these traditions. So, you have in the Gelug tradition the four-point analysis and all of that. But in the Sakya tradition, for instance, you refine your understanding by working in the standard line of reasoning that you use in the short voidness meditation, like in a tantra sadhana. You start first with Chittamatra and the Chittamatra understanding, and then all appearances are cognitive appearances the mind gives rise to, all of that comes from karma, This is very much a Chittamatra type of thing, coming from the mind.And then the voidness of the mind and they have a slightly different presentation of voidness, of how you describe conceptual and nonconceptual understanding of voidness. Looking at it that way and meditating on voidness in that way is not contradictory at all to the Gelugpa way of doing it, but it makes it much more full, because youre approaching it from a different angle. This I found extremely, extremely helpful. There are many other examples, but I think one is sufficient to get the idea.The big project that Im doing now and for hopefully the rest of my life, unless my attention turns to something else is this Berzin Archives website. With that, one of the main ideas, of course, is to preserve all the teachings that Ive received. Ive had the good fortune to study with so many of the greatest teachers of the last generation, most of whom are gone almost all of them are gone, except His Holiness. And I have about thirty thousand pages of unpublished material, of all the lecture notes and the transcriptions of teachings that I translated for and my own teachings and extensive reading notes, and anything that I ever studied with my teachers I usually did a rough translation of the text. So theres tons and tons of material, and of course it keeps on growing from what Im doing now.One of the things that I want to do aside from preserving that because its much too much to put into books and it would be all be thrown away in the garbage when I die if something isnt done with it, because a lot is in my handwriting. But one of the things that I try very much to emphasize in it is the approaches of the different traditions. I really dont like whether were talking in terms of Buddhist traditions, or were talking in terms of cultures to be limited to one. Im a very, very international person. Ive traveled to more than a hundred countries and taught in about seventy countries or more. So Im very, very aware of different approaches; and when I teach, Im always trying to learn the culture of the people that Im teaching and I try to suit things to that. Similarly with the Dharma, I try to expand and give different approaches.Even now when Im teaching Shantideva in Berlin the ninth chapter of Shantideva were at in the moment, thats on the discriminating awareness of voidness, the wisdom chapter then it goes through the various tenets and I like to bring in the Theravada position as well in terms of the evolution. The Mahayanists dont address the Theravada in this context, but for a lot of people that is a background that theyre a little bit familiar with and they would like a little bit of clarity. Well, what do the Theravadins say about the two truths? What do they say about these various issues that are discussed? So, I like to bring all of that in and see how it all fits together.Because I think its very important to get the large picture, the grand context of everything, especially nowadays in the West, where we have a very unique situation in the history of Buddhism, which is that we have access to all the different forms of it. Almost anywhere you go you have access. And even if you dont have thirty centers in your city, which so many cities have now, from all the various traditions its almost like restaurants from the different cuisines, so you have Buddhist schools from different traditions you at least have access for that on the Internet. And so it is important, I think, to try to get some idea of how they fit together.Im always looking in terms of history; Im very fond of history and I think that history is essential, actually, for understanding the development of Buddhism. Not just the history of Buddhism itself, that is often studied out of context, but the whole history and evolution of Buddhism is very much influenced by the political and economic histories of the countries that it took place in and the histories of the interactions of the countries through which it was being transmitted. And unless you see that and fit that together with history of Buddhism, it doesnt really make sense.Similarly I look in terms of the future. History doesnt just end now, but its an ongoing process. So, I look at the future of Buddhism from a historical perspective of many centuries, because its just one little dot on the time scale. And it really is unsustainable the way that it is now in the West. It is absolutely doomed if the situation doesnt change, because you cant sustain three hundred brands of Buddhism far too fragmented. Its really very unfortunate that almost every teacher has to have their own center, their own organization, and their own party line, as it were. Peoples loyalties are much too limited just to that particular group and this is very, very unhealthy.And it doesnt bode well for the future, because how can you sustain that? New people come along and how do they choose? Its bad enough having to choose between four or ten brands, but how do you choose between three hundred? This is too much. The only way in which I think it can be sustained is for the different groups to combine in some way. It doesnt mean that everybody gets subsumed into one more powerful group like sort of East Germany being swallowed by West Germany and everything that was East German was bad and so it just now becomes a larger West Germany, which is rather sad. But a way of putting things together thats very respectful.There is a historical precedent for that in terms of how the Tibetan traditions well look a little bit at the history came together. Because there were no such things, no such entities in India as Gelug, Kagyu, Nyingma, and Sakya. But rather there were many teachers who came to Tibet, and many Tibetans who went to India and then went back and taught in Tibet, just as we have now maybe not as many as we have now, but certainly there were quite a lot. And they all started lots of different monasteries all over the place, and each particular teaching had its lineage and this tantra practice or that tantra practice, this sutra lineage or whatever. So you had all these strands and theywereput together and they did coalesce into these new groupings, these new clusters, as it were, of traditions.And it wasnt that if you had one line, it just went exclusively into one Tibetan tradition. Like the Guhyasamaja line from Marpa thats in both the Kagyu but it also goes into the Gelug tradition, so many of these lines were shared. So its not a simple process; if you had to map it graphically, it would be a very complex representation of all these hundreds and hundreds of different lines and how they went together in different combinations. And I think that its going to have to become that way in the West eventually. But it will take great figures like Tsongkhapa, or of that type of caliber, to put them together.And they will be put together undoubtedly in different combinations than they have ever existed before, particularly now when there are just so many brands of Buddhism available, its not just Tibetan. I think that there will be very interesting and exciting new combinations I hope there will be. In order to put them together though, it requires knowledge and understanding and meditative experience in them all, or at least a large number of them, to see how they all fit together and to see what can be put together in a meaningful type of way, or at least which groups can go together in a meaningful type of way.It really becomes pathetic when you have a number of different Geshes, for instance, from exactly the same monastery, teaching pretty much exactly the same thing, each having their own totally separate organizations and people not having anything to do with each other. So, the study of the different traditions, I think, is essential as a step in being able to preserve Tibetan Buddhism in the future in the West not only Tibetan, but all of the Buddhist traditions. This has been my experience, and so I try to do that with the website, various topics that Im writing about there and teaching.What I find very interesting through my development is to see how much of what I took for granted as being generic Buddhism Well, everybody must accept that the Prasangikas teach this or that, for example is Gelug-limited, Gelug-centric. Its the same process of leaving your country, like I left the United States, and you go start living in Asian countries and you learn that so many things that we took absolutely for granted and the most fundamental things like symmetry, just absolute basic things are ethnocentric, ethno-limited; thats not the word, but anyway you have some idea of what I mean by that, its ethnically specific.And by having that experience of living most of my life in Asia and traveling to so many countries and so many cultures in the world and always living in peoples homes I never stayed in hotels really learning that you cant take anything for granted as being generic to everybody. Different ways of doing things, even.One of the most astounding things was to learn a completely different way of doing arithmetic. The Tibetans, the type of math thats done in Tibetan astrology, the way they multiply, the way they add, the way they subtract is different from the way that we do. I remember when Serkong Rinpoche was teaching me that, and my reply, my offhand comment to it was Wow! This is really strange really weird is how I would have said it in English, but I used the Tibetan word strange. And he scolded me he scolded me all the time he scolded me and he said, Its not strange; its different. Dont be so arrogant. Its different, its not strange.So in the Buddhist teachings then as well, this experience has carried over. And Ive been very open to trying to learn as I was studying the Gelug tradition. And the way that it was presented was this is Buddhism. It wasnt even this is Tibetan Buddhism, this is Buddhism. And although the general topics are the same in all the traditions, theres many, many different ways of presenting them. So Ive been very excited to try to learn these different ways by either studying with Tibetan teachers or reading books, these type of things.Serkong Rinpoche encouraged me very, very much to learn how to read comfortably in Tibetan; I had studied Tibetan for many, many years. And his point was, and he said it very explicitly, was that Youre never going to find teachers who are going to teach you everything that you want to study. Thats unrealistic. The best that you can do is to ask various teachers to suggest to you what texts to read; you read them yourself; and then ask questions. See if they would be open to answering questions on the texts. That was very, very wise advice, and advice that I had the language background to be able to do that. And so I followed that type of approach in my studies.It still continues now, Im very interested to learn the different approaches and the different traditions to these familiar topics, perception theory and all of that. Because again, you get very different pictures. So I try to do that in the Archives on the website and this is mostly new writing.Thats why its becoming a bit hopeless, because I have thirty thousand pages of this old material and Im hardly getting to any of that, because Im constantly writing new stuff. And when I teach, I really dislike teaching the same thing that Ive taught over and over again; thats not only boring, but it doesnt really present an opportunity for adding new stuff to the website and the Archives. So, like I was saying the other day, working on this Archives project has helped me very much to become a person of initial scope motivation, finally, to at least start on a more sincere level of lam-rim, thinking in terms of preparing all this material for my next lifetime. I want to be able to access this in my next life, so that I can reconnect with Buddhism.But its been helpful not only in that respect, but also in terms of the Mahayana teaching that when you practice or when you teach, imagine that youre teaching to all sentient beings. So, now when I teach Im never thinking of just the people in the room. The people in the room, fine, but theyre just the people in the room. Im really thinking of the audience of people who would read this on the website. So, it becomes to me much more meaningful, whether I can visualize all sentient beings sitting in the bleachers on the side here of the ballpark or not.I dont think thats whats so crucial, your visualization of all sentient beings around you. If you can visualize it, great, but thats not the point. The point is really to have it sincerely be for a larger scope, as large a scope of beings as possible that you can see benefiting from what youre doing; and youre extending out the benefit to all of them. Working on this website has been really very, very helpful in that respect, in my teaching and sitting at the computer or whatever Im doing.And of course, anybody who likes to volunteer to help with transcribing or especially typing my handwritten stuff... because all of that is not so easy to do. And fortunately, theres one thing I can claim with confidence that Im the worlds expert in, and that is in reading my own handwriting. I think were all world experts in that. And so that needs to be done while Im still around to be able to correct it. Otherwise, theres just too much that could be undecipherable. So, volunteers are always welcome.Lets go to the main topic then; the main topic here is these traditions. Id like to speak a little bit about the history we dont have so much time left, so a little bit about the history. Lets try to exercise some self-control not to get passionate about the history, because its a very, very fascinating topic, to me at least. And then speak a little bit about the common features and the differences. So, Ill just go through the history a little bit briefly this time.In the seventh century of the Common Era, King Songtsen-gampo of Tibet I guess youd call him an emperor; I call him an emperor on the web site; I think thats more appropriate he established a huge empire in Tibet. He conquered Zhang-zhung, which was this kingdom to the west, which was where the Bon tradition came from, and he unified Tibet and made this enormous empire. And he had three wives among many, he probably had more but he had a Chinese wife and a Nepalese wife and a princess from Zhang-zhung as his wife. And that was the custom, of course, in ancient times. You conquered places and made alliances by marriage, so he did that. And these various princesses brought to central Tibet with them texts from their traditions.Usually the beginnings of Buddhism in Tibet are traced from that, although there is also a mythical thing that some text fell from the sky about 100 BCE, but this is more historically accurate. But there was very little influence from that early period.And he sent his minister Tonmi Sambhota to Khotan, actually, to get a written language. This is a kingdom which was a strong Buddhist kingdom to the north of western Tibet, where the high Tibetan mountains and plateau ends and the mountain range goes all the way down to below sea level from the Tibetan plateau its pretty high, a pretty drastic drop. And then you get into the Taklamakan desert taklamakanis a lovely Turkic word meaning go in and not come out. Ive been to this area; it is really quite formidable. So thats Xinjiang province in China now, East Turkistan. And just at the base of those mountains where the desert begins was Khotan; its a beautiful area.And this was a very strong Buddhist region, coming from basically Iranian influence, Iranian people; the language was related to Iranian languages. And they had a big influence on Tibet thats usually not emphasized so much or indicated in the histories. They had a big influence and the Tibetan alphabet actually comes from their script, their adaptation of the Sanskrit alphabet. It just so happened that the teachers that they were going to meet in Khotan were in Kashmir at the time. And you had to go through Kashmir to get to Khotan. That was the most convenient way of getting there. And Tonmi Sambhota happened to meet them there, so for that reason they say that the script comes from Kashmir it doesnt, according to analysis.Anyway, then the whole way of translating into Tibetan was very much influenced by this Khotanese way of breaking up words and giving the meanings of the individual syllables. But, as I said, not too much happened with Buddhism at that time; basically, they built some temples. But they built temples in thirteen places from the Chinese influence, Tibet was conceived as a demoness lying flat on the ground and in order to somehow quiet the harmful forces they chose acupuncture points on the body of this demoness and built temples on them like you would do acupuncture, so that it would somehow tame the wild spirit of Tibet, which I find really a far-out story. I would like it to be true; whether it is true or not, I dont know, but thats the historical account from various scholars.So they built these temples and it was over a pretty large geographic area. Thats all that you got in the very beginning: a couple of texts, a couple of statues that the queens brought. But afterwards there was a lot more contact with both China and Khotan, and then later contact with India. From India, that was coming from the Nepalese princess; the Chinese from the Chinese princess; and from the Zhang-zhung princess you got the Bon rituals for the state. I dont want to go too much into that, as I said, I can be quite passionate about the whole topic, but it was different from what we would call Bon today. Anyway, they had a lot of rituals that came from that area.Then, about roughly a hundred, hundred forty years later, in the middle of the eighth century, you had another great emperor, Emperor Tri Songdetsen. And he also was into expanding the empire and lots and lots of fighting with China and various Central Asian Turkic kingdoms and so on. And he invited Shantarakshita from India, a great abbot, to come. This was due to a prophecy that he invited him to teach in Tibet.And at that time you had a very conservative faction a lot of political factions in the government, thats why I say you have to look at really the political history as well to understand what was going on. And the conservative faction was very xenophobic, anti-foreign and so they didnt like at all this Shantarakshita coming. And there just happened to be a smallpox epidemic that broke out at that time, so Shantarakshita became the scapegoat for that, He brought it from India, and Get rid of it, get rid of him! So he was blamed and he was kicked out of Tibet.So, he went back to India and through the influence of the king, who was still very in favor of Shantarakshita, he invited Guru Rinpoche to come back up to Tibet. The standard story was that he came to tame the demons. Well, basically, it was to get rid of the smallpox epidemic to somehow tame the demons that were causing the interferences with the smallpox. So, all of this has historical references; its not just a story. So he came and did that and then they re-invited Shantarakshita and he came back up. And Guru Rinpoche and Shantarakshita and the king built the first monastery, Samyay.They had Buddhist temples before, but they didnt have a monastery. Monastery means monks, ordained monks. And Guru Rinpoche found people not so receptive, not quite ripe yet for the more advanced teachings, and so he hid buried in the wall of Samyay, or in the pillars, or in various other places around Tibet and Bhutan various texts dealing with dzogchen, the highest class of tantra teachings from his tradition. That was the Nyingma tradition that derives from him.So at Samyay monastery you had the three groups the Chinese, the Indians, and the Zhang-zhung people from West Tibet making various translations of their materials translating things into their language, out of their language, this sort of stuff. And Buddhism was made the state religion. And the Chinese emperor then sent two Chinese monks every other year to Samyay. And Shantarakshita predicted that there would be conflict that would arise over this. And he said that, In the future you must invite my student Kamalashila to help with these conflicts and controversies that will come.More teachers meanwhile were sent to India and more of them came to Tibet and many of them also buried texts there. Then this conservative, xenophobic faction was really becoming very upset about the whole development of what was going on and there was a big persecution of Bon, which again was not a religious persecution the way that its presented in the Buddhist religious histories, but was much more of a political persecution. Bon there was referring to a group of people actually in the state, so it was sort of an anti- Zhang-zhung faction. Thats a very important point that is needed to be stressed when you study history.One of the things that has just gone on the website is this book that I wrote that I never published, its in the e-book section, its calledThe Historical Interaction between the Buddhist and Muslim Cultures Before the Mongol Period. And one of the things that I point out in the introduction is that histories always have an agenda from the culture that writes it. So, for instance the British version of the history of India painted the Mughals who were before them as horrible, so All the Muslims and the Mughals were these horrible exploiters that just ruined your country and here we British are now on the scene to save you, in a sense to liberate you.And many peoples do that, communist Chinese liberate the Tibetans, they write their history like that. The British have their agenda in writing history, the Chinese had their agenda. The ancient Chinese as well, everybody was paying tribute to the emperor; any sort of trade that was ever done was described as tribute to the emperor from a vassal state it was just trade, thats all it was. Likewise the Buddhist histories, they have their agenda, the Islamic histories have their agendas, and so on. And one has to wade through all of that and factor out the baggage, the agenda that theyre trying to prove, to get down to the actual facts.So, its the same thing here, the Buddhist presentation of the history and the Bonpo presentation of the history was that this was a religious persecution it certainly was not. Because if you look at the rituals which were done in the state, they continued the same old so-called Bonpo rituals in the state afterwards, so it was a political thing. But these guys left and they buried texts as well, so obviously they felt very threatened a lot of things from their tradition.And they buried texts, not like the Nyingmas, which were just dzogchen texts, but they buried everything for safekeeping. Its interesting to look at that. I traveled in Tuva in Siberia. This is an area of Turkic people that followed Mongolian Buddhism; its just to the North of Western Mongolia. And they pointed out to me how they had, in fact, buried all their texts in mountain caves at the time of Stalin. So, one can get a little bit of an appreciation that these things of burying texts actually must have happened. Its not just a myth.So, the Zhang-zhung faction was kicked out. And then they had this debate everybody was very suspicious of the Chinese as well and itchy to get them away too and, lo and behold, the Indians won the debate and they chose Indian Buddhism. Well, if you look at it, the best debater of the debate logic tradition of India debating against a Zen monk who has no training at all in debate with a Tibetan as the translator who wanted the Indian side to win because everybody wanted to kick the Chinese out it was a pretty loaded decision as to who was going to win this debate. Anyway, the Indian won they had called Kamalashila up to debate as Shantarakshita had recommended and the Chinese left and the Indian tradition was adopted in Tibet.So, they did a lot of translations they continued, they had been doing some translations before already. Some texts had to be translated from Chinese, they werent there in Sanskrit, but most came from Sanskrit. And in the early ninth century they made a dictionary and they standardized the terms and the styles. One of the great kings, Emperor Relpachen did that. And in that early dictionary and style sheet, the king decreed that they wouldnt include any tantra material in this, because it was open to so much misunderstanding, And so the tantra stuff wasnt really standardized so much at that time, although some was coming in.Then what happened in the mid-ninth century, the same king that sponsored the dictionary project youd have to call him in objectivity a religious fanatic made like seven households responsible for supporting each monk. So instead of going into the government with taxes, all the money went to supporting the monks and supporting the monasteries; and he appointed monk ministers and all this sort of stuff. And the monasteries were becoming way too powerful and it was economically devastating for the country and for the government.And so the next king, Emperor Langdarma, the real horrible bogeyman of Tibet, instituted this persecution against Buddhism. Well, actually, if you look at it objectively, he only basically shut down the monasteries because they were too powerful and kicked the monk minister off of the government counsel, but he didnt destroy the libraries of the monasteries. Because when Atisha came, about a hundred fifty years later, he was very impressed by the libraries that were there, so thats clear evidence that it wasnt this type of severe religious persecution that the histories would make it out to be.But anyway, he pretty much closed the monasteries and he closed them all and that was very, very difficult for Buddhism. And then the country fragmented and there were difficult times.Question:Did he laicize the monks?Alex:Yes, he laicized the monks, so the monastic lineage was broken as well; that had to be renewed. It was that whole monastic institution had become just... it was going in the wrong direction, becoming too political and too economic and too powerful.So, the basic teachings and practices didnt have a monastic institution to support it and it was just sort of carried on a bit underground or privately. And a lot of misunderstanding arose and a lot of abuse, particularly concerning tantra, which the king had been cautious about to start with. They were taking a lot of the stuff terribly literally, particularly about the sexual aspect and the aspect of liberation of consciousness. They took it to get back into this whole sort of sacrifice number and assassination number, which often happens.And in the beginning of the tenth century, the Bonpos started to recover their texts and the Bon texts were buried in a lot of places where the Buddhist texts were buried; in the beginning of the tenth century they started to recover them. Thats quite interesting that that phenomenon began in the Bon tradition, not in the Buddhist tradition.In the end of the tenth century, then a more organized kingdom in western Tibet arose and they were interested in clarifying the teachings, because there was so much misunderstanding in Nyingma, and they sent more translators to India and Nepal to clarify. This was the beginning of the new translation period and from this new translation period its actually more the new transmission period, in many ways thats a better way of looking at it you get the Kadam and Sakya and Kagyu traditions.Often you hear the wordpaat the end Kagyupa, Gelugpa that is referring to a person who follows those traditions aKadampa but the tradition itself is Kadam and Nyingma and Kagyu and Gelug.The Kadam tradition comes from Atisha, a great master from Bengal let me just go fairly briefly through these if I can and it emphasizedlojongteachings. These are the teachings sometimes translated as mind-training, which is a terrible translation, because that sounds like training the intellect. It actually means cleansing of attitudes, its dealing with your attitudes.Lois attitudes andjongis to cleanse, to purify negative ones that we might have; its not how you learn to memorize or something like that, like mind-training. Anyway, it emphasized that very much. And some of the early debate things were developed very much in that tradition as well.It split into three separate lineages and was reunified by Tsongkhapa with much reform in the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century. Well speak about this a little bit later, but Tsongkhapa was really, really radical; he made the greatest, hugest changes of anybody. It wasnt a matter of reform in the sense of people werent following the monastic rules very well and so he got them back to following thevinaya, thats a very, very small aspect of what he was all about. But the whole interpretation of almost everything in philosophy he redid.What you find is that the other traditions Sakya, Nyingma, and Kagyu pretty much follow one style of interpretation of things with minor variations. But Tsongkhapa went in and he was incredible in terms of his scope of what he read and what he remembered; obviously he had an incredible photographic memory. And he would look at everything and all of the translations most things were translated many, many times and hed say, This translation is wrong and that translation is wrong and this interpretation of it is wrong, and hed prove them all by logic and by putting together various other scriptural sources.So, an incredible critical editing of things; and unlike any of the authors in the past, he didnt skip over the difficult pieces; the most difficult passages were the ones that he delighted in trying to figure out and explain. In this way he came up with a radically different interpretation of almost everything. This has been very mind-opening to me in my own studies, because it was always presented as though, This is what everybody in Tibetan Buddhism thinks, and The Prasangikas say this, and so on its absolutely not.So, Tsongkhapa was a great revolutionary. Among many disciples, from our point of view now, one big-name person was the master who later became known as the First Dalai Lama, although that name was given to him posthumously at the time of the Third Dalai Lama by the Mongols. Its a Mongol name;dalaimeans ocean, actually after the Dalai Khan, who also had the name of the ocean. Mind you, the Mongols never saw the ocean, so ocean is a pretty far-out thing from a Mongol point of view.The Fifth Dalai Lama there was a civil war for about a hundred and fifty years in Tibet, a terrible civil war and the Mongols came in and put an end to it thats a whole nother history of Buddhism in Mongolia and the interaction with Tibet and they made the Fifth Dalai Lama the political ruler of Tibet they made him the spiritual leader also. And his teacher at that time became known as the First Panchen Lama. So the line of Panchen Lamas comes from his teacher.Thats enough about the Kadam and then the Gelug tradition that came from that. The second tradition from that new translation period, coming from the end of the tenth century, was the Sakya tradition. The Sakya tradition comes mainly from Virupa and a few other translators. Their main teaching coming from Virupa is known aslamdraylamis the path anddrayis the result, so the path and its results which is a combination of sort of lam-rim type of stuff with Hevajra. A very special teaching.And you get a line there of five early masters, five great Sakya masters, and they form a family lineage; its within a family over several generations of uncles and nephews and that sort of thing. The Sakya line has always been a family-inherited type of thing. Originally they had the political rule of Tibet. This was when Tibet finally got reunified after this period of it being all broken up. This was in the thirteenth century with Sakya Pandita, who was probably the most well-known of the Sakya masters. Sakya Pandita and his nephew Pagpa, they became the tutors of Kublai Khan.The Tibetans, like the Uighurs, the Turkic people north of Tibet, were the only ones that didnt fight Chinggis Khan. So because they didnt fight Chinggis Khan, then they werent destroyed by Chinggis and the Mongols. The Uighurs gave the Mongols their first taste of Buddhism, but basically their writing system and administrative things and how to organize a state and so on, and the Tibetans gave them a more organized form of Buddhism.And they [Pagpa and the following Sakya lamas] were given the political rule of Tibet at that time. So, you get the Sakya lineage and that also has some sublineages, the Ngor and Tsar sublineages. So you get different masters of that.Within Kagyu, the other new translation period, there are two main lines. There is the Shangpa Kagyu and the Dagpo Kagyu.Shangpa Kagyu comes from a Tibetan by the name of Kyungpo Neljor, Garuda Yogi that translates as. Basically, he had gotten the lineages of youve heard of the six yogas of Naropa the word isnt yoga, its the six dharmas of Naropa, but there is a set of six and these have to do with highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga practices. And theres actually three sets of these: one from Naropa, but the other two are from great women practitioners, Niguma and Sukhasiddhi. So, the Shangpa Kagyu lineage transmits these three sets of six teachings from these three great masters and that came through this Tibetan master Kyungpo Neljor. The late Kalu Rinpoche, who was very well known in the West, was from that tradition.The other tradition, the Dagpo Kagyu tradition is the one that goes through the line of Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, Gampopa. Thats a much more well-known line to many in the West. And Gampopa combined mahamudra and lojong lojong were these cleansing of attitudes teachings from the Kadampa and mahamudra were teachings that came from various mahasiddhas, great accomplished beings like Tilopa and Naropa and there was a whole bunch of other ones as well in India. So he combined that. So you see that the lojong lineage didnt only stay in the Kadam, but it went into the Kagyu as well.And from Gampopa you get twelve lines of Kagyu; it divided into twelve Kagyu traditions from his students and the students of one of his students, Pagmo-drupa. So you get the twelve lines. And the most widespread of those are the Karma Kagyu that the First Karmapa was one of the major figures of and the Drugpa Kagyu and the Drigung Kagyu. Those are the ones that we find even in the West now as well.The Nyingma tradition, as I said, it was that old period, but they had buried the dzogchen texts and the other texts were sort of transmitted still through all this period, but it wasnt so totally clear, a lot of misunderstanding even there. And they started to uncover their texts in the early eleventh century; thats about a century after the Bonpos started to uncover their texts, unearth them. And this happened when the new teachers were arriving, this new wave of teachers from India.And it was pretty bewildering what all these texts were that were being uncovered and how they fit together and all of that. And they were codified which means put together and standardized in the thirteenth century by the great Nyingma master Longchenpa. And he really was the so-called father of Nyingma in the form that we find it now. And that is basically divided into a Northern Treasure Lineage and the Southern Treasure Lineage. And the Nyingma tradition is actually much more fragmented than the other three lineages, not as together in one sort of style.The other major thing in the history what needs to be mentioned is the Rimey movement (ri-med, nonsectarian). It was started in the nineteenth century by a number of different figures, but the most outstanding one was Kongtrul Rinpoche, the great Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Tayey was his name, but Kongtrul is sufficient to remember. And this was intended to try to preserve the obscure lineages that were dying out or not so available from all four traditions.But what was quite emphasized was the Jonangpa lineage, which was a minor Sakya lineage, that without going into great detail was persecuted and suppressed, from the Buddhist history point of view, for its doctrinal view. But if you look a little bit more objectively, I think it was for its political association with the other side in that big civil war that was going on. Anyway, they revived a lot of that tradition.And in many ways the Rimey movement was a political thing to counter the growing influence of the Gelug lineage in the central government. The Rimey thing was more in Kham and that whole history and the interaction and Pabongkas involvement and all of this and his very radical sectarian moves that he made were very much within the context of this rivalry in terms of political influence and paying taxes and all these sort of very mundane types of things.So anyway, thats a little bit of the history in brief; a lot more that one could look at.Session Two: ComparisonsIf we look at these four traditions, if we speak of them just in general, then if we ask what are the common features, theres a lot in common. First of all, the full and novice monk vows and the novice nun vows are the same, come from the same tradition in India. It had to be revived after Langdarmas suppression and so one line was revived from three refugee monks who had fled to eastern Tibet and another line was reintroduced from India. Both come from whats called the Mulasarvastivadin tradition of vinaya.There were eighteen different schools of Hinayana that had developed in India Hinayana being a derogatory term that was coined by the earlyPrajnaparamita Sutras, the Mahayana sutras. But there is no convenient term that really is used for covering those eighteen and you have to call them something, so we call them Hinayana. Because Shravakayana, that some people like to use, is also very misleading, because Mahayana presents a Shravakayana path and their version of what the Shravakayana path is is different from what any of the Theravadins or those eighteen schools would say what the Shravaka path is so you cant really call it Shravakayana either.So, one just has to say, This is politically incorrect, but were going to do it anyway, so dont take offense. There is no other word, unless we just make up a word. No need to be oversensitive about it, although of course one could argue back and forth on the whole political correctness of it. But anyway, we call it Hinayana for the moment.[See:The TermsHinayanaandMahayana.]Of those eighteen traditions, the main vinaya lineages that have survived are the Theravada, which you have in Southeast Asia, the Dharmagupta, which is sort of the Chinese line, and the Mulasarvastivadin, which the Tibetans have. So all the four traditions share that. Only the Dharmagupta has the full nuns ordination. In the Mulasarvastivadin and Theravada traditions, it was broken and is no longer extant. But they all have the full and novice monk and the novice nun. And all four traditions have monastics and lay practitioners.In the Nyingma tradition you have the ngagpa (sngags-pa) type of practitioner ngagpa is from the wordngag, which means mantra. These are tantra practitioners that are basically engaged in a lot of tantra ritual. There arent so many of them. It wasnt as though everybody can become a ngagpa, and then its a big lay movement. It wasnt; it was very specialized. They didnt teach everybody; they taught basically their patrons it went from big wealthy household to another and maybe taught the children in the household and got a