The history of Buddhism in Tibet is generally divided into three periods:
- Early period(632-1042) – period Early Spread of the Teachings;
- Middle period(1042-1409) – the period of reformation (Atishi, Tsongkhapa), differentiation of Buddhism into various schools;
- New period(from 1409 to the present day) – dominance of the school Gelugpa.
The first two are also called the period " old[translations] » ( nga-gyur, nyingma) and period " new[translations] » ( sar-gyur, sarma), since Buddhism came in two waves, each accompanied by its own translations of Buddhist texts.
Reign of Songtsen Gampo
According to Tibetan sources, the first appearance of Buddhism in Tibet is associated with a miracle: during the reign of King Lhatotori (IV century?), a casket containing “ Karandavyuha sutra"and sacred objects. Thanks to this, the kingdom began to prosper. This event is called The beginning of the holy Teaching. This legend perhaps indicates that Buddhism and its texts somehow penetrated Tibet before the 7th century. According to G. Tucci, we need to talk not about Indian, but about Chinese or Central Asian penetration. Typically, the initial distribution Dharma in the Land of Snows is associated with the thirty-third king of the Chogyal dynasty named Songtsen (Srontsang) Gampo (617-698), who was one of the three great Dharma Raja (« King of Faith") in Tibet. Tradition considers him to be the embodiment bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara. According to legend, another head was hidden in his hair - the head of Buddha Amitabha. He was the son of Namri Songtsen, the prince of Chyingwa-taktse in the Yarlung Valley in northeastern Tibet, who laid the foundation for the Tibetan state. It fell to Songtsen Gampo to complete the unification of Tibet, which became a powerful state that China had to reckon with. Songtsen is credited with creating the first set of laws, as well as founding the capital of Tibet, Lhasa. The main merit of this king was that he was destined to bring Indian Buddhism to his country. Although, as B. Kuznetsov writes, the opinion of Buddhists about the spread Dharma Songtsen Gampo, not confirmed by ancient documents). G. Tucci also believes that there are no sufficient grounds for “even his professing of this religion or its active support.” Despite this, we can say with confidence that in the 7th century, and possibly earlier, Buddhist monks had already penetrated into Tibet.
Songtsen Gampo
The fact that Songtsen Gampo and part of the nobility were supportive of Buddhism caused discontent among the aristocracy, which mostly consisted of adherents of the Bon religion. The confrontation between the elites continued until the 9th century, ending in a coup that led to the destruction of the country and persecution of Buddhism. To strengthen his position, Songtsen Gampo entered into two dynastic marriages: with the daughter of the Chinese emperor of the Tang dynasty Tai Tsung named Wen-chen (which speaks of the military power of Tibet, since Chinese emperors only married their daughters to barbarian kings in extreme cases), and also with the daughter of the Nepalese king Amsuvarman, Bhrikuti. Both spouses were Buddhists (therefore tradition believes that it was they who converted the king to Buddhism) and subsequently began to be considered the incarnations of the green and white hypostases bodhisattvas Tara. They brought with them many sacred objects, of which the most important (brought by Wen-chen) was a golden statue of Buddha ( Jowo Yijin Norbu), which is now considered the main shrine of Tibet and is located in the Jokhang Monastery founded by Songtsen Gampo in Lhasa.
The reign of Songtsen Gampo is also associated with the emergence of Tibetan writing. Sometime around 632, the king sent thirteen Tibetans to Kashmir, of whom only Thonmi Sambhota returned in 647, bringing a new Tibetan alphabet and a Tibetan grammar modeled on Sanskrit, and many translated Buddhist texts. In compiling the alphabet, which dates back to the Central Indian (Bengali) letter of the 6th-7th centuries, he was helped by pandit Devavitsimhi. It should be noted that there is an opinion about the presence of writing in Tibet even before the 7th century. B. Kuznetsov believes (this is confirmed by non-Buddhist sources) that the Tibetans used the “Persian letter” (a type of Aramaic (Syrian) alphabet). It should be noted that the generally accepted Tibetan alphabet includes several Persian letters from the Sassanid era (224-651). After Thonmi's return, efforts to translate Tibetan texts began in Tibet. Thonmi Sambhota's assistants were Indian Brahman Shankara, Nepalese scholar Silamanju and Chinese monk Mahadeva Tse.
Under Songtsen, Tibet, thanks to its military power, significantly expanded its geographical position. By 680, the Tibetans entered the Chinese province of Sichuan - in the east, in Kashgar, Kucha, Yangl-Gisar, i.e. Eastern Turkestan - in the northeast, and also approached the border of modern Mongolia - in the north. This expansion led to close contacts with Central Asian Buddhist countries. During the reign of Tide-tsuktsen Meagtsom (705-755), Buddhist monks arrived from Khotan to Tibet, whom the king warmly received. For such favor, the dignitaries Bala and Lana, adherents of the Bon religion, made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the king's son Tisondetsen. During a smallpox epidemic, which resulted in the death of the queen, the monks were expelled from Tibet in 740/741. Apparently, the monks were blamed for this disaster, which, apparently, was seen as punishment for the emergence of a new religion and the betrayal of ancient traditions.
Reign of Chisondetsen
During the reign of Tisondetsen (755-797), the second Dharma-raja, which is considered the embodiment bodhisattvas Manjushri, the “golden age” of Tibetan Buddhism begins. Spreading Dharma took on a more significant scale (in particular, monasteries were actively built). Tisondetsen also made an attempt to spread the new faith not only among the elite, but also among the rest of the population. The establishment of a new religion in Tibet also had a political background, because in Central Asia, Buddhism had a strong position, which would help strengthen central power in non-Tibetan areas. Although Tisondetsen is called Dharma Raja, there is information that he was inclined to worldly pleasures, not wanting to earn merit through asceticism. Perhaps this explains his agreement to invite Padmasambhava to Tibet, who did not preach an ascetic lifestyle.
Statue of Tisondetsen in Samye
The active inculcation of the new faith naturally led to an increase in resistance from the Bon nobility. The anti-Buddhist movement was led by the king's minister Mashan. However, the Buddhists achieved his expulsion. According to another version, he was walled up alive in a tomb. Such reprisals were apparently explained by the fact that killing is a sin. Subsequently, the doctrine of dharmapalah, keepers of the faith, sacrificing their lives and karma behind Dharma. Buddhist sacrificing himself and his future bliss for today's victory Law, worthy of veneration. He was allowed to shed blood and much more.
The Buddhist scholar Shantarakshita was invited from Nepal from the Nalanda monastery-university, but his arrival caused unrest (according to legend, he could not resist the Bon demons), and the king was forced to ask him to leave Tibet. Shantarakshita advised the king to invite the tantric and magician Padmasambhava (“ Lotusborn") from the kingdom of Uddiyana, who could defeat the demons hindering the spread of Buddhism. Padmasambhava is credited with great merit in the spread of Buddhism in Tibet. However, G. Tucci states that his role was more modest, and everything that concerns his personality is too controversial. His fame in Tibet is so great that he is even called the second Buddha. He is especially revered in the “unreformed”, so-called. "red cap" schools. If Shantarakshita spread the teachings of classical Mahayana (madhyamaka, yogacara), which apparently was alien with its philosophical subtleties to the Tibetans, then Padmasambhava taught Vajrayana (« diamond chariot"), the tantric branch of Buddhism, which at least outwardly reminded the Tibetans of their shamanic religion. To understand the specifics of Padmasambhava’s teachings, according to Kuznetsov, one must pay attention to the religious state of Uddiyana, his homeland Guru Rinpoche (« Precious Teacher", as the Tibetans called him). Uddiyana was located in the valley of the river. Swat between the territories of modern Afghanistan and India (scientists cannot accurately determine the location of Uddiyana. Opinions range from Orissa in India to Central Asia). Here Buddhism, Shaivism, and Iranian cults came into contact with each other. This led to the emergence of a new form of Buddhism with its teachings about the Absolute and its manifestations (an analogue can be found in Zoroastrianism), about the future savior ( Maitreya), O Three Bodies of Buddha, spells of demons and rituals of veneration of various deities. Earthly Buddhas came to be seen as manifestations of the eternal heavenly helpers of the Absolute, God.
Padmasambhava
In 799, near Lhasa, the famous Samye monastery was consecrated, the “cornerstone” of which was laid by Padmasambhava and Shantarakshita. It was symbolic that each of the three floors of the building was made in different styles: the first - in Indian, the second - in Tibetan, the third - in Khotanese. This may point to three sources of Tibetan Buddhism. It is noteworthy that temples of the Sun and Moon, as well as statues of Bon deities, were built on the territory of the monastery. According to Kuznetsov, this phenomenon speaks of the manifestation of religious tolerance, but it seems that the main motive was the desire to put a Buddhist interpretation into the Bon “form” and thereby not so much to reconcile traditions as to assimilate one another. In this case, the Bon deities would be interpreted as protectors Buddhist faith (dharmapala). Also “in the Tisondetsen inscription it is mentioned yundun, Bon swastika, and namchoi- the law of heaven, - characteristic concepts of bon."
Under Tisondetsen, such an important event for Tibetan Buddhism took place as the dispute in Samye. It must be recalled that Buddhist influences in Tibet came from different sources. Indian form of Buddhism ( Mahayana, Vajrayana) and the Chinese form of Buddhism ( chan) had their followers in Tibet. When the contradictions between them became extreme (even leading to murders and suicides), the time came to decide which form was more true. The motives for this confrontation, according to G. Tucci, were not only spiritual, but also political. They also had “an economic background, implying rich gifts to monasteries.” Thus, around 790, a debate took place at which the form of Buddhist orthodoxy in Tibet was to be determined once and for all. The apologist of Indian Buddhism is Kamalashila, a disciple of Shantarakshita, and the representative of Chinese ( chan) – Heshan Mahayana.
Let us present the positions of the two opposing sides in the following table:
| Heshan Mahayana | Kamalashila |
| 1. Awakening and gaining a state Buddha happens instantly. 2. Paramitas have no value, they are only earthly virtues (except prajna—paramitas), which improve karma, but do not lead to awakening. One must overcome any karmic activity ( both the white cloud and the black cloud equally darken the sunlight). 3. The main thing in practice is contemplation, aimed at completely stopping the thought process, and gaining “ not thinking"(Chinese) at the nannies), when nature Buddha opens up unhindered and instantly. |
1. Set on the path bodhisattvas, must ascend the nine stages of cultivation during three immeasurable world cycles through the practice of six paramita(perfections). 2. Only through the accumulation of wisdom and merit and the fulfillment of moral precepts can one achieve the state of awakening. 3. This method is purely negative and does not lead to awakening. |
According to traditional Tibetan sources, Kamalashila was victorious, which led to the banning of Chinese Buddhist preaching. Despite this, chan was not eradicated until the 10th century, before the persecution of Buddhism under King Langdarma. However, one Dunhuang document, which is an older source, claims the victory of Heshan. After the dispute, Kamalashila appears to have been killed. Tibetan sources blame the Chinese, but most likely the Bon circles are involved. As a result, the Indian form of Buddhism of the Shantarakshita school was established in Tibet. It is interesting to note that the teachings of Heshan are in many ways close to tantric teachings siddhas(tradition Mahamudra), which was based on the concept Tathagatagarbhi(“our own Mind is the Buddha”), and which Padmasambhava preached. Siddhi placed significant emphasis on the practice of yoga and magic. Later in schools jonan And dzogchen Heshan's ideas mixed with ideas siddhas have found their application. School nyingma also absorbed some aspects chan, and Nyan Tingnedzin, a supporter of Heshan, is considered by them to be one of the teachers to this day. The teachings of Shantarakshita and Kamalashila differed significantly from the teachings of siddhas, and with chan. From this we can conclude that the dispute was not between Indian and Chinese Buddhism, but between two approaches Mahayana To Dharma-monastic Buddhism and Tantrism, which later spread in China and Tibet. Perhaps the victory of monastic Buddhism also had political reasons, because it implied greater orderliness, which facilitated effective social control. According to Heshan's ideas, the intellectual and moral side of teaching is unnecessary and in some cases even harmful. Here the gradual accumulation of merit and the world itself become insignificant. This interpretation of the path seemed to be dangerous, since it could ultimately lead to an "individualization" of the spiritual path that threatened the existence of sangha(community).
Persecution of King Langdarma
Confrontation within the elites (Bon and Buddhist) led to the removal of Tisondetsen from power in 797. The throne was taken by his son Mune-tsenpo (797-799), who suffered the same unfortunate fate. The tsar sought to redistribute the country's wealth, which did not suit the once privileged strata. As a result, due to a conspiracy by the local nobility, the king was imprisoned by his mother. According to other sources, he was poisoned by her because he took his father’s concubine as his wife. The next king, Mune-tsempo's brother, was killed by a dignitary two years into his reign. In his place ascends King Ralpachan (817-839 (836)), the third and last Dharma-raja, who actively began to support the cause of Buddhism. In addition to the opening of monasteries, Ralpachan distinguished himself with literary activities and the codification of the Buddhist canon. Subsequently, he began to be considered the incarnation bodhisattvas Vajrapani. Under him, Buddhist texts began to be actively translated. Both Indian scientists participated in this case - pandits, and Tibetan pilots(translators). Not all texts were given preference. Ralpachan forbade the translation of Hinayana texts (except for school texts sarvastivada) and “secret spells” (apparently a group of some tantric texts). Ralpachan became a monk and supported the activities of monasteries in every possible way. He "required that each family pay one-seventh of the expenses required to support one monk." The pro-Buddhist position of the king caused the growth of a powerful conflict between the Bon nobility and the Buddhists. Open insults to the monks in Lhasa began, which required action. Ralpachan forbade contemptuously pointing a finger at the monks and insulting them, for which he ordered that their fingers be cut off and their eyes gouged out. Ultimately, the king and his entourage were killed, and his brother Langdarma, the Tibetan "Julian the Apostate", ascended the throne, whose reign unleashed a brutal persecution of Buddhists. The reasons for this conflict were also supported by non-spiritual reasons. Tibet VII-VIII centuries. lived largely due to wars, but after the peace treaty of 821 with China, expansion stopped, while the Buddhist community required large expenses for the construction and maintenance of temples and monasteries. This, naturally, did not suit the Bon aristocracy.
There is a complication regarding Langdarma's religious affiliation. Only later sources speak of his adherence to the Bon religion. According to some texts, Langdarma was involved in heresy by four Indian brahmins. There is a version that he came under the influence of Shaivite schools. This, by the way, could be the reason for the preservation of the tantric tradition in the country during persecution. Considering the possible Shaivite influence on the Bon (as mentioned earlier), one can still consider Langdarma to be a Bon.
The new king restored the privileges of the Bon nobility, which they had lost under the Buddhist kings. The old royal nobility was ousted, but continued to rule in the person of feudal rulers in Western Tibet (Man-yul, Guge, Purang), in Kham and Tsang. The Buddhist community completely lost its power and property. Its spiritual institutions, libraries and monasteries were destroyed, and the monks were forced under threat of death to return to secular life, forced to marry, become hunters and butchers, and also accept the Bon religion. Severe persecution continued for five years, until a monk named Paldorje killed the king out of “compassion” (842). Indeed, from the point of view of Buddhism, by his action Paldorje accomplished a feat compassion and self-sacrifice - he saved the king from being born in the worst hells, preventing him from committing even more evil deeds, and for the sake of Dharma And Sangha worsened his karma, having committed one of the “black deeds”. This event is celebrated to this day in Tibet. However, Buddhism remained banned for almost a century, forcing Buddhists to flee to the outskirts of Tibet. After the overthrow of the king, Tibet disintegrated, leading to anarchy and internecine wars. A similar picture lasted for about one hundred and fifty years (the unification of the country occurred even later - in the 17th century).
There is one version of the origin of the custom of sticking out your tongue when meeting. According to legend, the persecutor of Buddhism, King Langdarma, was not only terrible inside, but outwardly, possessing horns and a black tongue. By sticking out the tongue, a person demonstrates the absence of bad intentions and connections with demons and this king.
The state of Buddhism at this time was very deplorable. In the remaining monasteries the tradition has practically disappeared Vinaya(monastic charter), and monasteries became places of residence for family clergy. Due to the loss of power by the monasteries, Buddhism increasingly deviated from the classical tradition Mahayana. Despite the former intense preaching Dharma, by and large, only the top of the Tibetan population became Buddhist. Folk beliefs were still very strong, so they were mixed with Buddhism. During the persecution, many adherents tantra continued to practice under the guise of laymen, and the famous tantricist Nubchen Sangye Yeshe even made the king promise not to harm the tantrics and their texts. So Tantra, freed from the pressure of monasteries, was realized in its most frightening forms for monastic Buddhism. It's about practice panchamakara, « five MA": ritual use of meat ( mamsa), roasted grains ( mudra), alcohol ( madra), fish ( Matsya), sexual intercourse ( maithuna). Rough magic and orgiastic practices became widespread. Offerings were made to the gods with sperm, blood and excrement. A letter from Lha Lama Changchup-od has been preserved, in which he protests against such practices: “Those who offer meat, blood and urine to the Three Jewels should be pitied, for they will undoubtedly be reborn among the dirty demons. If Buddhahood could be achieved through such practice, then the hunter, fisherman and butcher could also achieve Enlightenment. Village troublemakers, give up your claims that you are followers of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana), and follow the pure Teachings set forth in the Tripitaka! .
In the 10th century Attempts were made to revive the Buddhist tradition. Sometime in 948, a group of monks known as the "Six of Uy and Tsang" proclaimed the Renaissance Dharma, but unsuccessfully . The next attempt took place in Western Tibet in the Ari province (Ladakh, Zanskar, Puran, Guge). The former nominal king of Tibet who became a monk, Khorde (monastic name Yeshey Od), sent Rinchen Zangpo (958-1055) and several other monks to study in Kashmir. Rinchen with pandits translated many texts, especially yoga tantra, and also checked the previously made Tibetan translations tantra. Rinchen Tsangpo also built 108 small temples. Thus Buddhism spread throughout Western Tibet and even penetrated into the Bon community. The next and final revival was associated with Atisha, who ushered in a new era of Buddhism in Tibet.
Tibetica. Digest of articles . – St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 2003.
Zharinov Semyon
V. P. Androsov
At the beginning of the 7th century. next to the great and ancient Indian civilization The Tibetan state arose, which for more than two centuries was the largest political force in Central Asia. The formation of a new power was accompanied by the spread and strengthening of Buddhism in it. By the middle of the 9th century. In Tibet, the foundations of that spiritual organization were laid, which began to determine the further development of culture until the twentieth century. not only for the peoples of the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayas, but also of Mongolia (External and Internal), as well as those living in the territory modern Russia Buryats, Kalmyks, Tuvans.
Conscious choice by Tibetans of the Buddhist culture of India
The main teachers of the Tibetans were Indian Buddhists of different directions and schools. Both in the distant past and today, India and Tibet, ethnoculturally, represent completely different historical communities. Ethnolinguistic differences are aggravated by climatic and geographical features, which affect everyday life, psychology, work and other aspects of life. Nevertheless, the Tibetans turned out to be a society, although archaic, but very open to the perception of foreign and specifically Indian culture, borrowing from it writing, literature, science, and religion.
It must be emphasized that the choice of cultural orientation and religion of the country was fully conscious and consistently implemented by the central government. The inhabitants of the mountainous country were well acquainted with the spiritual culture of the peoples of Eastern Turkestan, which was part of the Tibetan kingdom, Western China, Nepal, Kashmir, Bhutan, North-Eastern India - all these countries for a long time were tributaries of the powerful king of Tibet and had military garrisons in them army.
In the VII-VIII centuries. In all these countries, Buddhism flourished and coexisted well with other faiths. Numerous Buddhist missionaries from these countries operated in Tibet, representing a variety of sects, schools and directions of this religion. Preachers of Chinese Buddhism were especially active, whose mission and temple appeared in the capital Lhasa already in the 40s. VII century It would seem that the ethnolinguistic kinship [Roerich 1961: 19] of the Tibetans and the Chinese (Tibetan is part of the Tibeto-Burman group of the extensive family of Sino-Tibetan languages), the high level of Chinese civilization, the relative simplicity of the already adapted Chinese forms of Buddhism, as well as the dynastic marriages of Chinese princesses with Tibetan kings were supposed to make the work of Chinese missionaries as easy as possible.
However, events began to develop according to a different scenario. This may seem strange, but the Tibetan tribes consciously chose as the state religion the most complex form of world Buddhism of all known - both from the point of view of mythology, ritual, ritual, and from the side of yogic-meditative practice, philosophical theories, and ethical doctrines. We are talking about the North Indian syncretic unity of Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana (Buddhist Tantrism), which found its expression not only in the secular, monastic culture, but also in the state policy of early medieval India.
Obviously, the perception of just such Buddhism is the most difficult possible path for Tibetan culture. Nevertheless, the Tibetan kings first repeatedly sent their people to India to study, then invited Hindu-Buddhist monks to the court, allocated funds from the treasury for the construction of Buddhist temples and monasteries, for the maintenance of translator schools, for the publication of handwritten and later printed documents for translations Buddhist canon from Sanskrit to Tibetan, etc. As a result, Tibet became the custodian of a huge Buddhist written heritage, including some that was not preserved in the original.
In order to understand how much difficult work done by Indian teachers and their Tibetan students, it is enough to compare it with modern scientific Buddhology. For more than two centuries, Europeans have been studying Buddhism, its traditions, practices, texts, trying to write the history of the development of its doctrines, translate its works into European languages, but still experience enormous difficulties in understanding the realities of both ancient and modern Buddhism. This is especially affected when conveying the meanings and meanings of technical concepts, categories, ideas of philosophy, tasks and procedures of Buddhist contemplative-ritual practice, etc.
Until now, scientists are discussing the principles of translation, their philological and philosophical specifics. Even the “smallest” of the Buddhist canonical collections, the Pali Tipitaka, has not yet been fully translated into European languages. And a very small number of translations were made from the Tibetan canon, and these are 108 volumes of the encyclopedic format “The Word of the Buddha” (Kangyur) and 225 volumes of commentaries on the “Word” (Tengyur) of Indian authors and other texts.
But if the problem of perception faces even the bearers of a developed European civilization, then one can imagine how complex Buddhism seemed to the bearers of tribal ideology and how alien it was to the priests of Bon - Tibetan shamanism. However, the Tibetans relatively quickly overcame all obstacles and embarked on the path of creating a textual culture (one of the peaks of humanity), in which a Buddhist book is a sacred subject even for an illiterate person, and mastering Buddhist knowledge in a monastery is the most honorable duty of at least one of the members each family of farmers and pastoralists (see interesting study [Ogneva 1983]). It is curious that at the same time, Buddhism was actively being introduced into Japan under socio-political and cultural-religious prerequisites similar to those of Tibet [Meshcheryakov 1987; Meshcheryakov 1993]. But how different were the results of these two penetration processes. The mediation of Japanese Buddhism by Chinese played an important role in establishing differences.
Despite the vastness of the topic of the penetration of Indian Buddhism into Tibet, the main focus in this work is on considering only the first steps of Buddhism in the Himalayas and how the local population and rulers perceived this highest spiritual heritage. Apparently, the level of perception of certain phenomena of a foreign culture, as well as the degree of “compliance”, i.e. "adaptability" and interpretability of these phenomena are necessary conditions intercultural dialogue and largely determine the nature of the established relationships. These relationships may reveal spiritual affinities between, first, Brahmanism, Hinduism and Buddhism; secondly, between the pagan religions of autochthonous peoples and Buddhism, thirdly, between Taoism and Buddhism. But in a number of cases, this forced proximity turns out to be tense and unpleasant for all parties - as, for example, when Judaism, Christianity and Islam coexist in the same region (although originating from the same root, like Indian religions) or paganism and Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.
In this regard, it is extremely interesting to consider the strategy of the carriers of Indian culture, which had a decisive impact not only on the spread of religion, but also on the formation of mechanisms for transmitting culture. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why the Tibetans, being ethnically and linguistically related to some extent to the Chinese and constantly in contact with them, did not accept the developed ancient Chinese culture, despite their long stay in the field of its influence. And the reason here is not only that the Tibetans, who lived in the harsh conditions of mountains and deserts, differed from the Han tribes in their way of life. In the 7th - 8th centuries, there was nothing in common between India and Tibet - from any point of view.
It is well known that Eastern societies are very jealous of traditional forms of community life and the ideological and cult systems inherent in them. Therefore, any undertaking or new enterprise in the field of culture must either somehow displace the traditional institution or include it in the orbit of its functioning. In this regard, Tibet is an example of a typical Eastern society. From the very beginning of statehood in the 7th century until the 50s of the 20th century, Tibet actively participated in the political life of Central Asia and China, and at the same time, socio-economic relations, the patriarchal way of life, forms of production activity, technical equipment, etc. .d.
At the same time, the conservatism of these aspects of the historical existence of the Tibetans did not hinder religious and historical innovations, the formation of a different religious system that extended its influence to all aspects of society. Moreover, in contrast to the socio-economic system, the religious system was repeatedly modernized; its fundamental changes primarily concerned the degree of participation of religious institutions in state building, up to the transfer of supreme power in the country into the hands of spiritual hierarchs.
The prominent role of the Buddhist religion in Tibetan culture was determined by many factors; the conditions for their action were created during the period of intercultural dialogue between India and Tibet from the mid-7th to the mid-13th centuries. Here we will limit ourselves to analyzing only the first stage of this dialogue, which ended with several significant events preceding the reign of the Tibetan tsenpo (king) Trisong Detsen (755 - 797), who proclaimed Buddhism as the state religion in 781.
Unlike Tibet, which reached the peak of military-political power in the 7th – 8th centuries, numerous principality-states of Hindustan entered a period of incessant internecine wars during this period. As a result of the latter, at the beginning of the 8th century. The regions of Sindh lost their political and cultural independence, falling under the rule of Muslim Arabs, and from the beginning of the 11th century, hordes of Islamic warriors poured from the north, who moved from raids to conquests, and by the beginning of the 13th century, all of Northern and Northeastern India was conquered.
Tolerance, peacefulness and philanthropy, and reliance on the internal self-improvement of individuals did not evoke either understanding or respect among both Hindus and Muslims of that time. In the conflagrations of constant wars, all universities, monasteries and temples, monasteries, which were not just the basis of the church organization of Buddhism, but also the core of the system of reproduction of the Buddhist culture of India, were burned and looted. The existence of monasteries and temples of Buddhism was ensured, first of all, by the right of ownership of large lands received as gifts from wealthy patrons and adherents. This allowed the monasteries to become repositories of material and cultural values accumulated mainly during the heyday of Buddhism in India from the 4th to the 7th centuries, and in the Palov state (i.e. in the territory of present-day Bihar, Bengal and some adjacent lands) - until the mid-12th century.
The change in power of the feudal overlords deprived the monasteries of their former rights. The last Buddhist university in India, Vikramashila, was plundered and destroyed by Muslims in 1203. All the monks were killed, and handwritten books were burned and destroyed. VIII - XII centuries - this is the time of half a thousand years of exodus of Buddhist teachers and monks from Hindustan, mainly to the Himalayas and Tibet, as well as to South and Southeast Asia, sometimes even by sea to China.
The contribution of Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota to the formation of Tibetan culture
The first historical news of the penetration of Buddhism into the Tibetan mountain state coincides with the reign of King Songtsen Gampo (613 - 649). V. P. Vasiliev and R. E. Pubaev expressed an opinion about the penetration of Buddhism into Tibet before the 7th century, based on the Tibetan historical tradition, dating its beginning to the 4th century [Pubaev 1981: 17, 187 – 188]. Living surrounded by several Buddhist civilizations, the Tibetans, of course, could have known about Buddhism before, but, probably, they could have known just as much about Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Taoism, Confucianism and many pagan cults of neighboring tribes and peoples.
The historical meaning of the penetration of religion is probably the emergence of a need for it in a particular society or state (for example, as an ideology uniting various tribes and peoples), as well as in following it. The latter consists in borrowing a certain religious paradigm, in creating a mechanism for the reproduction of religious institutions and relations on local soil. The first steps of Tibet in this direction can only be judged from the reign of Tsenpo Songtsen Gampo. Moreover, even later, when Tibetan military detachments and Tsenpo envoy officials lived for decades in the conquered cities among the population professing Buddhism, even then the Tibetan conquerors of East Turkestan in the 7th - 8th centuries continued to adhere to traditional beliefs. [Vorobyeva-Desyatovskaya 1992: 187 – 188].
Only in the 8th – 9th centuries, after the victory of Indian Buddhism in the religious-ideological confrontation in Central Tibet and at the royal court, the Tibetan authorities of East Turkestan, as M.I. convincingly showed. Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya, moved to active support of Buddhist monasticism and the allocation of land for monasteries. It was then that schools for translating Mahayana and other Buddhist texts into Tibetan were created, the reception and placement of refugee monks from the Buddhist centers of India, Central Asia and even China was organized [Ibid: 189-193], as evidenced by the earliest Tibetan manuscripts [Vorobyova –Desyatovskaya 1988: 329 – 333, 338, 346 – 348].
The first examples of weather chronicles and chronicles of royal genealogies in the Tibetan language (well known to the Chinese tradition) appeared in the monasteries of East Turkestan and Dunhuang. There is reason to believe that in the 8th – 9th centuries there existed other Tibetan historical literature in the Tibetan language [Vostrikov 1962: 19 – 22, 51 – 52]. We can judge the development of Tibetan historical genres proper from works that have survived only from the 12th – 14th centuries. Although there are some problems in science regarding the historical reliability of data from these books, as well as chronological discrepancies (see, for example,), but for our purposes they are not so important.
According to the historical chronicles of Tibetan scholars Budon (1290 - 1364) - and Shonnubal (1392 - 1481) -, King Songtsen Gampo completed the unification of the Tibetan tribes under his rule, built the Lhasa fortress, where he moved the capital of the state. And already in 632 - the third year from the beginning of his reign - he sent a group of young Tibetans led by the dignitary Thonmi Sambhota to India (Kashmir) to receive a good education. Under the guidance of Indian mentors, they studied Sanskrit and became acquainted with Buddhist works and literary monuments. Returning to their homeland, the Tibetans created their own written language, compiled grammar manuals, and, together with Buddhist scholars invited from India, began translating various Indian works. The first literary experiments in the Tibetan language were transcriptions of Buddhist sutras.
One could doubt the reports of tendentious Buddhist authors, knowing what needs for writing were experienced by the office work and legal system of the young Tibetan state [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 34 – 35]. However, some facts do directly or indirectly indicate the early interest of Tibetans in Buddhism. Thus, apparently in the 7th century in Khotan, a Tibetan translation from Sanskrit of the original collection of Jataka and Avadan “Sutra on Wisdom and Folly” was prepared. [Wisdom Sutra 1978: 9; Vorobyeva-Desyatovskaya 1988: 332].
Moreover, the need for knowledge of Buddhism at the Tibetan court was constantly fueled by the dynastic marriages of Tsenpo and his sons with princesses from neighboring Buddhist states. This process was also started by Songtsen Gampo, among whose several wives were probably the Nepalese princess Bhrikuti and, undoubtedly, the Chinese princess Wen-cheng [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 36 – 38]. Their stay obliged the authorities to build temples for statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, as well as other Buddhist relics brought with them by brides and wives [Pagsam-dzhonsan 1991: 216 – 217; Sankrityayan 1984: 18 – 20].
Scientists do not share the opinion of Tibetan chroniclers (see, for example, [Bright Mirror 1961: 22 – 23]) that Songtsen Gampo was converted to Buddhism. Moreover, scientists prove that Songtsen Gampo followed ancient pre-Buddhist beliefs. Among them, the idea of a divine king was popular, after whose death the corresponding royal rituals were performed and blood sacrifices were made.
The Dunhuang Chronicles say that Songtsen Gampo himself promised to sacrifice at least one hundred horses in the event of the death of the devoted minister; Moreover, bloody rituals existed back in the 10th – 11th centuries [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 167]. Under this king and subsequent ones, animal sacrifice was an important component of royal rituals, and was also part of the ritual side when concluding various state acts [ibid.: 168 – 169; Bichurin 1833: 66].
Despite the problematic nature of assessments of that distant era, one should in no way diminish the achievements of Songtsen Gampo, Thonmi Sambhota, as well as the latter’s Indian and Tibetan associates. They did an enormous amount for the culture of the mountain people. King Songtsen was also obliged to participate in Bon rituals (and not simply tolerate Bon, as medieval Buddhist historians of Tibet wrote). It is possible that in the first capital temple of Ramoche and others, built specifically for Buddhist shrines - images of Buddha Shakyamuni, Buddha Akshobhya, Maitreya and Tara - Bon rituals were also performed [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 169].
This fact should not be surprising. Moreover, it is significant for the new Tibetan culture, in which the coexistence of two religious systems continued to be expressed in the interchange of entire ritual and mythological complexes. During the period of penetration, Buddhism even acted in an advanced rhythm: creating ideological and organizing nodes of the monastic system, it sought to include (and not change) existing customs and cults.
In fact, Thonmi Sambhota is the first outstanding cultural figure of Tibet. He compiled eight manuals on Tibetan writing and grammar, and participated in the translation of such Mahayana sutras as Karanda-vyuha, Ratna-megha and others. He also created a school for training competent officials, became the first “Minister of Education and Culture,” and was a skilled diplomat in concluding marriages between the king and the Nepalese and Chinese princesses. After the death of Songtsen Gampo, Thonmi apparently took over as regent.
Regarding where Thonmi studied (in Kashmir or Nalanda), with which teachers, and which of the Indian writing systems he used as the basis for the Tibetan one, opinions differ both among Tibetan authors and among Tibetan scholars. Thonmi himself wrote that he used a form of letters of the Nagari alphabet used in Magadha (the modern Indian state of Bihar and adjacent lands of other states). However, Budon believed that Thonmi studied in Kashmir and the first Tibetan alphabet resembled the Kashmiri Sharada script.
Modern scholars name all sorts of known variants of Sanskrit writing. The position of Russian orientalists J. Schmidt and M.I. seems justified. Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya, who believe that the Tibetan script was based on the Brahmi variant, attested by inscriptions discovered in the Gaya caves, as well as manuscripts from the territory of Kashmir [Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya 1988: 31, 328, 336 – 338]. Since the Brahmi script was also common in the monasteries of East Turkestan, it is obvious that its choice as a model of Tibetan writing was the most preferable option. Later, in the 8th – 12th centuries, when Buddhist manuscripts on palm leaves poured into Tibet from various cultural centers of India [ibid: 39 – 40], other writing systems arose. From Brahmi came Deva-Nagari.
The main thing is that Thonmi modeled phonetic writing, the alphabet, the science of grammar and the very form of the book on palm leaves and birch bark (pothi), tied with thread (sutra) [ibid.: 36 – 41]. He adopted all this from Indian teachers, and it was radically different from Chinese writing and from the Chinese scroll book. Thus, he simplified the task for many generations of Indian and Tibetan translators, as well as Tibetan authors, for whom Sanskrit literature became a high example, an artistic and scientific norm of literature. The language of the early Tibetan books is called Lhasa Sanskrit.
What forms of Buddhism were the first to be adopted in Tibet?
The question of where the Tibetans studied is not at all idle, since the answer to it would tell the researcher what directions, schools and forms of Buddhism the Tibetans in India could become acquainted with. Of course, Thonmi could not bypass Kashmir, the main intermediary between the civilizations of India and Central Asia, both geographically and in trade and economic terms. But the cult texts brought by the Tibetan from India testify to the special influence of Nalanda on the religious views of Thonmi Sambhota.
The Nalanda Monastery University, where the best Mahayana teachers taught, had by this time acquired fame as a center of Buddhist learning. At the same time, in the 30s of the 7th century, the famous Chinese monk Xuan Zang (602 - 664) studied in both Kashmir and Nalanda, leaving a detailed report on the Indian monastic education system, which a century and a half later began to be actively introduced in Tibet.
Judging by the Mahayana sutras translated by Thonmi, as well as by later Tibetan sources, which unanimously call Songtsen Gampo “the only son of Avalokita, merciful, who guided sinners on the path of faith, the patron of all living beings, the incarnation, the patron of faith” [Bright Mirror 1961: 22], it is possible to assert with a great degree of confidence that the very first Buddhist cult that appealed to the Tibetans from the Indian group of Thonmi Sambhota and established by them in Lhasa was the cult of the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteshvara.
Indeed, later in legends Tibet was sung as the “holy country of Avalokiteshvara,” whose incarnations were Songtsen Gampo and all the Dalai Lamas, as well as the Karmapas. According to Buddhist myths, from the tears of compassion of Avalokiteshvara, Tara appeared - the “Savior” - his spiritual wife. Tibetans call her earthly incarnations the Nepalese and Chinese wives Songtsen Gampo. The opinion of modern Indian Tibetologist Ramachandra Rao seems extremely controversial. He collected a lot of evidence from Sanskrit tantric literature that Tara is the “goddess of the mountains”, the “deity of the north” and, moreover, that Nagarjuna is one of the siddhas, the “perfect” masters of the Vajrayana, who left a huge written legacy and lived around VII – VIII centuries, – discovered the ritual text “Ekajata-Tara” in Tibet (Bhota).
The veneration of the many forms of Tara is especially popular in the Diamond Vehicle (Vajrayana), and it was the teachers of Nalanda who compiled many ritualistic manuals (sadhanas) for the worship of Tara, including elements of magic and witchcraft [ibid: 12 – 13]. During the excavations of Nalanda, the earliest image of Tara was found, on which a mantra prayer was recorded calling to her: “Om tare tuttare ture svaha,” and the earliest inscription mentioning Tara [ibid.: 14; Rao 2002: 144].
Tibet at the beginning of the journey
to Buddhist morality
To understand this issue, it is useful and necessary to become familiar with the contents of the very early Buddhist charter for the Tibetan lay people. This will make it possible to present the initial requirements for morality and worldview of mountain residents who intend to follow the teachings of the Buddha. It is traditionally believed that these twenty rules were compiled by Thonmi Sambhota with his Indian mentors, and Songtsen Gampo obliged them to apply [ Li An ‑ che 1948: 144–146; Rao 1977: 14–15]:
1) seek refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha;
2) practice the Dharma constantly;
3) be respectful to your parents;
4) testify to your respect for elders and elders;
5) help your neighbors and those who are helpless;
6) improve mental abilities;
7) observe and adopt the behavior of those who are kind, wise and superior to others in good qualities;
8) do not go to extremes in relation to food, as well as in personality manifestations;
9) do not harbor envy or evil intentions towards anyone;
10) do not forget about the favors others have done to you;
11) do not forget to repay debts when due;
12) do not interfere in the affairs of others until they turn to you for help;
13) follow the law of cause and effect and be ashamed to do evil;
14) be responsible and effective in important and righteous accomplishments;
15) do not resort to prohibited and dishonest means;
16) he who kills deserves to be killed;
17) the one who steals must not only return the stolen goods, but also pay eight times the price of the stolen goods;
18) one who is guilty of adultery should be deprived of certain limbs and banished;
19) strive to help relatives and friends without thinking about personal gain;
20) sincerely pray to the deity (asking him for advice) when you are not sure of the correctness of your plan.
For a student of cultures and religions familiar with Buddhism, this text is extremely interesting and revealing. It can be stated with confidence that this moral code is addressed to persons completely ignorant of Buddhist teachings, and especially of Mahayana, which were the Tibetans in the 7th - first half of the 8th century. It is composed quite subtly, in compliance with the measure and due consideration of the abilities of perception of the archaic tribal consciousness.
Only points 1, 2, 5, 9 and 13 of the list can be classified as Buddhist positions. Moreover, the practice of the Buddhist Teachings, proclaimed in the second rule, consists of observing the eighteen rules that follow it, most of which are family and kinship norms of community life with Buddhist ideas latently introduced into them.
Thus, the role models are not the epic and legendary heroes of the tribes, not even their living leaders-successors, but kind, wise and beneficent people (7). The root Buddhist idea of the middle as avoiding extremes in the search for the Path of salvation is interpreted even more clearly and simply than in the first sermon of Buddha Shakyamuni - “turning the wheel of the Teaching” 1. In Songtsen’s code, “middle” is equal, calm behavior of an individual with abstinence from both gluttony and fasting - (8).
Thonmi Sambhota and King Songtsen did not consider it possible to include in the charter under consideration the five immutable Buddhist laws for everyone: “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not steal,” “thou shalt not commit adultery,” “thou shalt not lie,” and “thou shalt not get drunk,” although the first three of them are given (16–18), but in a form that cannot be called consistent with Buddhist ethics. Apparently, the absolute moral authority of Buddhist ideals was impossible in the then Tibetan society. As for rule 10, it can only be regarded as “partially Buddhist”, since it does not apply to all living things, as the spiritual teachers of Buddhism have always taught.
Rule 19 did not correspond to the Mahayana ideas of Ancient India. For example, in the 2nd–3rd centuries. Nagarjuna Madhyamik (holy person - Bodhisattva for the Tibetans) wrote in the “Instruction to the King, called Precious Verses” (Ratna Avali Raja Parikatha, IV, 32):
Compassion needs to be experienced especially
to the villains
Those who have committed serious crimes,
For in great individuals (maha-atma)
It is the fallen who evoke compassion.
(Theseand other advice to kings, see: [Androsov 1990: 145–159; Androsov 2000: 229]).
Such lofty spiritual ideals were apparently still inaccessible to the Tibetans. It is difficult to say to what extent they could have been perceived and understood even by Songtsen Gampo and his Minister of “Education and Culture” Thonmi Sambhota. It seems that the twenty rules they introduced are the real maximum of the transformation of archaic consciousness possible at that time. This was the maximum of favorable acceptance of another culture, which otherwise might have been rejected as a “foreign influence.” This compromise list of rules turned Buddhism into a phenomenon familiar to the Tibetans, since in this presentation the high Teaching differed slightly from the usual views of the inhabitants of the mountainous country.
Here I fully subscribe to the considered opinion of the German Tibetologist H. Hofmann that the king introduced not so much Buddhism to the Tibetans as higher cultural values and norms, striving for the development of his own people [ Hoffmann 1950: 215].
In this process of penetration of Buddhism into Tibet, Kashmir played a prominent role. Many names of Kashmiri scholars (pandits) have been preserved who came to Tibet during the time of Songtsen Gampo and subsequent centuries, participating in translation and teaching activities [ Khosla 1972: 143–155]. Although Tibetans also studied in Nalanda [ Mookerji 1974: 5 74], but still, Kashmir, having a rich experience of mediation between the civilizations of India and Central Asia, due to its special geographical location, made a tremendous contribution to the formation of Tibetan culture, including in the pre-Buddhist era.
Bon and pre-Buddhist
Tibetan religion. On the question of the origin of the bond
The task of determining the pre-Buddhist religious and ideological views of the Tibetans is extremely difficult. It is known that the general name of their tribal religion is Bon 2. It still continues to function in Tibet and the Himalayas as a functioning religious institution with its own temples, monasteries, clergy, written collection of sacred texts, regular ritual activities, etc. [Roerich 1967: 57–0; Roerich 1982: 225 et seq.].
The collections of Bon sacred literature are amazing. Their written heritage exceeds the classical collections of the Tibetan Buddhist canon in quantity, but is quite comparable to the collection of sacred texts of the Nyingma, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism. Monuments of Bon literature include not only their colossal canon, divided according to the Buddhist model into the Kangyur and Tengyur, but also the folk epic about King Kesar (Geseriad) in 16 handwritten volumes, which in Tibet have the same religious function as the Mahabharata in India. and "Ramayana". In addition, some folk chants, as well as manuals for performing magical rituals, books of spells and sorcery compiled by priests, became sacred in Bon.
The Bon sacred collection has several editions and versions. Thus, Yuri Roerich discovered in Tibet two complete handwritten collections, consisting of 140 volumes of the Kangyur, which described the life, deeds and teachings of the founder Bon Shenrab. He also found the Bon Tengyur in 160 volumes containing interpretations of the Kangyur tantras discovered by Shenrab the Savior, as well as presentations of some essential subjects of Bon teachings [Roerich 1967: 61–63].
A prominent modern Tibetologist, the Norwegian P. Kverne, writes that in the east of Tibet, as well as in Amdo, since the 19th century. There are printed complete collections of Bon scriptures. The one he examines consists of 306 volumes: 175 - Kangyur and 131 - Tengyur [ Kvaerne 1974: 19−25].
However, information about its own origins in this religious tradition is so heavily mythologized and presented in such a contradictory way (and clearly copying Buddhist models) that it is impossible to extract grain from this huge but late heritage real story extremely difficult. Unlike other tribal mythological and ritual complexes, Bon turned out to be capable of development, of creating a religious system more or less autonomous from Buddhism. However, he acquired this systematicity while already in direct contact with Buddhism.
Moreover, the Bon began to systematize its written heritage later than anything else. This happened in parallel with the compilation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Thus, twelve volumes of Zijid, containing a description of the life, spiritual path and teachings of the founder of Bon Shenrab, were written down only at the end of the 14th century. and are considered the main part of the Bon Kanjur [ Snellgrove, 1967, 3−4].
Information about pre-Buddhist beliefs and the early Bon (“royal” period of Tibetan history) is contained in various historical books of Buddhist lamas, including those from Dunhuang. The study of this issue is further complicated by the fact that, according to Tibetan sources, Bon is not the autochthonous beliefs of the Qiang tribes and tribes related to them, but a religion that also “came” from the West, like Buddhism [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 166; Pubaev 1981: 161–164; Gumilyov 1996: 219, 283–287].
After the murder of the legendary king Drigum with a sword, sources say, the Tibetans, who did not know the appropriate funeral rites, invited priests from Gilgit and Shanshung. They were followers of Shenrab and enriched local cults with funeral ceremonies, royal rituals, the mythological complex of their founder, a three-part cosmological picture of the universe, consisting of the spheres of sky, air and earth (the Qiang most likely adhered to a two-part division of the universe into “up” and “down” ), and other innovations.
Probably, such a religious merger, which clearly reflects the socio-historical processes of the unification of the tribes of Western and Southern Tibet, led to the division of the Bon clergy into two large classes. Some are called bonpo, or “spirit charmers,” while others are called shen, who “knew how to worship the gods, tamed demons and could perform the ritual of cleansing the hearth.”
Regarding the origin of Bon and its early history, there are many versions among both past Tibetan historians and modern scholars. For example, the Tibetan Sumpa Khenpo (1704–1788), the Danish scientist E. Haar and R. E. Pubaev, following the early Tibeto-Buddhist historical tradition, considered it necessary to distinguish between the Do-Bon religion of the Tibetans and the pre-Buddhist Bon.
Firstly, the bearers of these two cult systems buried the dead in different ways: the first threw the corpses into the river, the second put them in a tomb and, closing it, ritually separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. Secondly, these two religions had completely different worldviews, differing in cosmogenesis, in views on the origin of the Tibetans and royal power, etc. Thus, according to Do-Bon ideas, the king descended from heaven on a rope, and the Bonpo priests believed that the first king of Tibet belonged to the great Indian dynasty of divine origin [Pagsam Johnsan 1991: 11–17; Pubaev 1981: 153–167].
Medieval Tibetan historians of this persuasion considered Bon a variant of Indian Shaivism .
Probably, the position of the largest German Tibetologist H. Hofmann, shared by many researchers, including N.L. Zhukovskaya, is directly contradictory to the above opinion. “Originally, Bon was a nationally Tibetan manifestation of ancient animistic-shamanistic religiosity, which dominated the minds not only in the vastness of Siberia, but also throughout Central Asia, East and West Turkestan, Mongolia, Manchuria, the Tibetan Plateau and even China. This type of religiosity spread further - to Iran, at least to its eastern part, and I would like to point out that the proclamation of Zoroaster was also caused by shamanism, but I do not expect that the latter opinion will prevail." .
In his other book, H. Hoffman examines in detail the sources, rituals, history, pre-Buddhist religious nature of Bon, as well as the ancient features of animism and shamanism noticeable in it, which make it similar to modern Siberian folk beliefs. The author comes to the conclusion that there can be no talk of any introduction (neither from India nor from Iran) of Bon into Tibet, since this is the oldest primitive religion of the Qiang and other tribes of the mountainous country. The idea of bringing Bon from the West was a late borrowing, when the Bon written tradition used Buddhist historical science as a model [ Hoffmann 1950: 210–211].
A special place is occupied by the position of Yu. N. Roerich, who saw in Bon “a complex doctrine in which ancient forms of shamanistic ideas of ancient Asia were mixed with the views and practices of deification of nature of the primitive population of northwestern India. Whether this primitive cult goes back to Indo-European antiquities or, as I am inclined to think, to the pre-Aryan population, cannot yet be decided definitely.” [Roerich 1967: 58]. The question of Indo-Eurasian elements in the Bon religion was developed in detail in his works by S. Hummel .
The above brief historiographical review clearly demonstrates the inconsistency and diversity of possible interpretations of the pre-Buddhist religious situation in Tibet (precisely due to the bias of later sources). However, none of the major researchers in Europe, Russia, India, or Tibet provides any arguments in favor of Chinese influence on the pre-Buddhist culture of Tibet.
Chinese influence
and Chinese culture
The Tibetan tribes were constantly in tense political relations with China. Tibet was always under pressure and was the object of constant expansion of the Chinese Empire. Although the Tibetans - the authors of medieval treatises - either remain silent about contacts with China or speak negatively about relations with it, this should not obscure the main thing: there was Chinese influence, but it was of a special nature. China influenced Tibet, various aspects of social and state life Tibetans. But the strength of this impact was negative, i.e. The very presence of China “in the neighborhood” encouraged the Tibetans to create a power and culture capable of resisting Chinese civilization, which, naturally, was not part of the latter’s plans.
Political events could serve as confirmation of this thesis. For one of the reasons for the unification of the Tibetan tribes was the forced resistance to the capture by the Chinese historical homeland Tibetans in Amdo and Kham. A similar situation has developed in the culture of Tibet, in which its conscious anti-Eastern, anti-Chinese orientation is clearly visible and, on the contrary, a readiness to perceive Western trends in religion and ideology, in literature and art.
In a certain sense, the plots of the superiority of the Tibetans over the Chinese in a variety of areas, constantly played out in the historical and literary tradition of Tibet, are indicative. They seem to confirm and legitimize the correctness of the anti-Chinese choice of Tibetan civilization. Historical descriptions of the reign of Songtsen Gampo are “colored” not only by episodes of Tibetans learning writing, Buddhism, etc. from Indians, but also by the victories of Tibetan troops in the east, which culminated in long matchmaking and the actually forced marriage of the Tibetan king to a Chinese princess. The latter is presented in the texts as the triumph of Tibet and the humiliation of the Tang Empire [Kychanov, Savitsky 1978: 35–37], see also .
Under these conditions, the mythological attitude that arose among the Tibetans that everything good and favorable for Tibet can only be expected from the West seems quite natural. This is probably why the very first Buddhist cult of Tibet was the cult of Amitabha - the Buddha of the western paradise of Sukhavati, as well as his Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who, out of compassion and mercy, helps people find this paradise. Before Buddhism, the Bon prophet Shenrab also came from the west.
Amitabha and Avalokiteshvara
in Tibet
Important information is contained in Chinese sources, which report that “in 649, the new Chinese emperor Kao-tsun, who was an ardent supporter of Buddhism, granted Songtsen Gampo the title of Pao-wan. In Chinese Buddhism, "Pao-wang" ("Precious King", or "Jewel King of Buddhism") is an epithet for the ruler of the West, and also appears to be a title for the Buddha Amitabha, whose celestial region was imagined to be in the west when viewed from China. Moreover, it is known that Songtsen Gampo was identified with Amitabha in very early times. It seems likely that Tibetan Buddhism began as a religion of the royal court, favored by the Chinese and Nepalese princesses and their attendants, as well as by embassies, merchants and some ministers." [ Beckwith 1987: 25–26].
In the notes to the last sentence, the American scholar writes: “The hat of the statue of Songtsen Gampo in Lhasa shows Amitabha. I wonder if this identification could be one of the sources of the later identification of the king with the emanation of Amitabha - the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who in the late Middle Ages was considered the patron saint of Tibet." [Theresame: 26, note 73].
Regarding the latter, it should be noted that although Amitabha and Avalokitesvara belong to the same cult, the same circle of ideas and related cycles of Mahayana sutras, nevertheless, their interpretations in India (and then in Tibet) and China do not coincide at all. In India, especially in the pre-Vajrayan period (that is, until approximately the 6th–7th centuries), the subordination of Bodhisattvas to Buddhas is relative. Moreover, the highest Bodhisattvas are equivalent in abilities and powers to Buddhas and are equally revered, and Avalokiteshvara is declared the “Buddha-maker” (buddha kara), since he helps others achieve Buddhahood, while remaining forever a Bodhisattva . Nagarjuna Madhyamik in the third of the “Four Hymns to the Buddhas” (“Chatuh-stava” III, 31) calls the Bodhisattvas “incomparable lords of the world” (loka natha) .
Under Songtsen Gampo and his advisor Thonmi Sambhota, the main Buddhist text was the Karanda-vyuha Sutra translated into Tibetan. This ancient Mahayana work is dedicated almost exclusively to Avalokiteshvara, who appeared either as Buddha or as one of the Hindu gods - Brahma, Indra, Shiva.
“Karanda-vyuha” is extremely saturated with mythological content and stories about the miracles performed by Avalokiteshvara. It contains absolutely no polemical passages, so characteristic of Buddhist sutras. Here the authors do not argue with Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist ideas preached by Mahayana's rivals.
The choice of this text was perhaps most suitable for translating Mahayana ideas into the cultural environment of Tibetans familiar with Kashmiri religions. The ideological setting of the sutra is also missionarily beneficial, allowing it to include among the admirers of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara persons and beings of any religion, and identifying Him with Shiva in some functions, primarily cosmological.
The Chinese cult of Amitabha, which began with the school of the “Pure Land” (jing tu), or “Western Paradise”, founded by Hui Yuan (334–417), was based on the cycle of sutras “Sukhavati-vyuha” and “Amitayur Dhyana Sutra” (see translations , and ). In these texts, the role of Avalokitesvara is almost invisible - only in the last sutra is he mentioned among the objects of meditation. This Bodhisattva gained much greater popularity in the “folk” Buddhism of China in the 5th–6th centuries, where he was called Guan Yin (or Guan-shi-yin) [Ermakov 1993: 373–384].
The image of Avalokitesvara received further doctrinal development in the Tiantai school, founded in the 6th century. and based on the “Lotus Sutra” (“Saddharma-pundarika”), one of the chapters of which is entirely devoted to this character (see in Russian translation from Chinese [Lotus Sutra 1998: 282–288]). According to experts, the actual cult of Avalokiteshvara - Guan Yin - was formed in China later. In this cult, the gender of the Bodhisattva was changed to female, and this female hypostasis acquired the functions of the goddess of mercy, the patroness of childbirth, which was not among the 32 images of the Indian Avalokiteshvara [Myths , 1991, vol. I: 23–24, 338–339; Plaeschke 1970: 108–118; Williams 1989: 231– 234].
Thus, the circle of the Chinese wife of Songtsen Gampo could accept the cult of Avalokiteshvara, already established by Thonmi and Indian teachers. This cult and its central image were painted in new colors in Tibet, new legends were formed here, including about the miraculous appearance of “Karanda-vyuha” in Tibet long before the 7th century, and about the spiritual connection of Avalokiteshvara with King Songtsen Gampo [Kychanov, Savitsky 1978: 199–205]. Avalokiteshvara incarnated as Songtsen Gampo, and therefore the latter’s wives were included in their joint cult: the Nepalese one became the Blue Tara, and the Chinese one became the White Tara [Theresame: 38].
True, regarding the Nepalese wife, there are certain discrepancies in the sources and doubts among scientists: is her image not a later legend? J. Tucci dedicated a separate work to the wives of Songtsen Gampo, in which he showed the doctrinal dependence of the image of Avalokiteshvara Kvasarpana, identified with the king, with his two divine friends: Shyama, or White, Tara - the Chinese princess and Bhrikuti, or Green, not Blue, Tara - Nepalese princess .
In principle, in Tibetan sources discrepancies can be found on almost any issue tsarist period history of Tibet. As an example, I will give excerpts from a historical essay Shadpas of Jamjyang (1648–1722). It says that Songtsen Gampo “in the year of the dog fire (626), when he reached ten years of age, took the royal throne, brought the Nepalese princess Bhrikuti to the palace, delivered a statue of Buddha to Mikyo Dorje (Akshobhya - IN.Androsov) and Maitreya's prayer wheel, and also ordered the delivery of a self-arisen sandalwood statue of the goddess Tara.
When King Songtsen Gampo reached twenty years of age, the Chinese princess Gongjo (rgya bza' gongjo) delivered the sutras - "Karuna Pundarika Sutra", "Ratna Megha Sutra", "Four Supreme Dharanis from the Precious Collection of Tantras" ('dus po rin po che'i tog gzungs bzhi) and the miraculous statue of Buddha Jowo (i.e. Lord, Teacher - IN.Androsov). At the time the Ramoche Temple was erected, Thonmi Sambhota in Tibet invented writing.
This king guarded royal power for sixty years, established a good law of the highest teaching, at the age of eighty-two, in the year of the earth of the male dog (698), simultaneously with two queens he plunged into the heart of the self-arisen Avalokiteshvara - he died” (quoted from [Pagsam Johnsan 1991: 216–217]).
Tibet between the reigns of Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen
The first stage of the early, or “royal” period of the penetration of Buddhism into Tibet, discussed above, ended shortly after the death of Songtsen Gampo. The next hundred years of Tibetan history were not distinguished by the successes of the Buddhist religion, but Bon became very strong, as evidenced by subsequent events. The Tibetans were still not attracted to monastic life, and without a community (sangha), this denomination could not exist and transmit the Teaching (Dharma) from generation to generation.
Although the Tibetan empire included Buddhist countries, and the kings of Tibet continued to enter into dynastic marriages with princesses from the states of the Buddhist world, although the capital of the power was often visited by Buddhist missions, this did not bring any tangible changes to the spiritual life of the Tibetans. Buddhist pilgrim Hui Chao, returning to China from India through East Turkestan, visited Tibet in 727 and found neither monasteries there nor knowledge of Tibetans in Buddhism .
Even unbiased authors of Buddhist historical chronicles mention only isolated events, indicating, rather, a decline in interest in Buddhism at the royal court. Attention to Buddhist culture was again paid only under the tsenpo Tride Tsugten (704–755), more often called Meagtsom. The credit for this belongs mainly to his Chinese wife, Queen Jin Cheng, through whose care abandoned temples and ritual images were restored, as well as new temples were built, new texts were delivered, etc. [Kychanov, Savitsky 1975: 42–44].
This queen also performed a number of other charitable deeds noted in the chronicles. In the late 20s - 30s of the 8th century. Buddhist monks appeared for the first time in Tibet, refugees fleeing the Islamic conquerors of Central Asia. In search of refuge, the Khotanese monks were the first to turn to the queen for support, then the monks from the countries of the Tarim Basin and Tokharistan. Having accepted them, Jin-cheng also invited Buddhist scholars from Gilgit and China. All of them were given equal protection, and seven monasteries (viharas) were erected for individual groups of monks. [ Beckwith 1983: 7; Snellgrove 1987: 352–354].
These reports of monks from Central Asia finding shelter in Tibet have a high degree of historical authenticity, since they are attested both by texts from Dunhuang in the 8th–9th centuries and by the oldest original Tibetan writings. Of these, we can name those included in the Tengyur “Prophecy of the Arhat Sanghavardhana” and “Prediction about the country of Li” (i.e. about Khotan), which Professor A.I. Vostrikov was considered one of the oldest in Tibetan historical literature [Vostrikov 1962: 19–21]. These sources describe how the destruction of the monasteries took place, how the surviving monks wandered and how they finally arrived in Tibet .
The arrival of a large number of Buddhist monks, the active participation in their fate of both the queen and her retinue and some members of the government, the arrangement of temples and monasteries - all this could not but affect the cultural life of the court and the capital, and could not help but attract interest. The sources do not report the specifics of the teachings and the affiliation of the arriving Buddhists to particular schools. However, knowing the Buddhism of Central Asia, well studied in Russian and world science (for the latest essays and bibliography, see [East Turkestan 1992; Monuments 1990; Litvinsky 1983; Snellgrove 1987; Litvinsky 1968] etc.), it can be assumed that among them there were highly educated monks of both Mahayana and Hinayana. In addition, in all these countries the languages of Buddhist culture were Sanskrit and Prakrits of India, although the learned monks of East Turkestan had already begun to translate Buddhist books into local languages [Vorobyova Desyatovskaya 1988: 316–328].
The Khotanese Buddhists who came first played an important role. In the 7th–8th centuries. Khotan influenced not only Tibetan culture, but was also one of the largest centers of Buddhist learning in Central Asia, as well as a conduit of Indo-Buddhist texts to China. B. A. Litvinsky, relying on numerous sources and research, concludes about the deep interest of the Khotanese in the Diamond Chariot, in tantric books and about the transition of Khotanese monks from classical Mahayana to tantric [East Turkestan 1992: 452–462](see also ).
For the spread of Buddhism in Tibet, the traditionally close ties between the secular authorities and the Buddhist sangha, which developed both in the Mahayana-Vajrayana south and in the Hinayana-Mahayana north of East Turkestan, were also essential. The princes took an active part in the construction and decoration of temples and monasteries, in supplying the monks with everything necessary [East Turkestan 1992: 463–476]. In this region, other forms of participation of individual monasteries and monks in the socio-economic structure of life in early medieval society also developed. [Ibid: 482−489]. Such experience of the monks, for which no direct indications can be found in the canonical literature of Buddhism, was simply necessary for the organization of monasteries in Tibet.
From Central Asia to the Land of Snows, most likely, monks of the Hinayan school, which prevailed in those parts, arrived [Ibid: 431–438; Litvinsky 1983; Snellgrove 1987: 346–350]. In the additional attraction by the queen of monks from China, and even more so from Gilgit, one can see a desire to balance the influence of Hinayana and Vajrayana among refugees, since the latter two countries were examples of classical Mahayana.
So, in the late 20s - early 40s of the 8th century. Through the efforts of the Chinese wife of King Meagtsom, a kind of Buddhist “reserve” was created in the center of Tibet, in which monks from neighboring countries continued their spiritual studies. However, the sources do not report anything about the influence of these seven Buddhist abodes and their inhabitants on the indigenous Tibetans. Interest in Buddhism was limited to those around the queen and the tsenpo.
This hobby caused concern among the clan nobility and bons, which resulted in suspicion and hostility towards outsider Buddhists of all directions and countries. Erupted in Tibet in 740–741. the terrible epidemic of black smallpox, one of the first victims of which was Queen Jin Cheng, was declared by the Bon priesthood to be a punishment sent by the gods for preferring foreign preachers to Bon clergy. Popular outrage forced Buddhists to flee Tibet, and they went to seek refuge in Gandhara .
D. Snelgrove explains the opposition to Buddhism under this and subsequent kings simply by the presence of a large number of infidels, for whose maintenance considerable money was spent, as well as a threat to the interests of the local priesthood, who turned for help to tribal leaders “not inspired by the new faith” [ Snellgrove 1987: 389].
The true defender of the Buddhist religion was King Trisong Detsen (755–797), who, in addition to an active foreign policy, numerous successful military campaigns, one of the results of which was the capture for some time of the capital of the Chinese Empire, Chang'an [Bichurin1833: 176–206], carried out effective cultural education of his subjects. But if no one opposed Songtsen Gampo in “grafting” Buddhism in the country, then Tsenpo Trisong faced strong resistance from the influential heads of clans and bons. However, this already refers to the next stage of the spread of Buddhism in the mountain citadel.
Close ties between Tibet and India, which arose under King Songtsen Gampo, strengthened under Tsenpo Trisong Detsen and continued until the 13th century. - the time of the complete decline of Buddhism in India, contributed not only to the cultural development of the mountain power. Indian Buddhism found in Tibet fertile ground for its cultural tradition, as well as for the further development of Mahayana and Vajrayana.
Valery Pavlovich Androsov,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
Professor
1 “O mendicants of the spirit, there are two extremes to which one who has decided to withdraw from the world should not approach.
Which two?
One - it is a life devoted to the gratification of sensual desires, which is low, vulgar, ordinary, undignified and aimless.
Other - it is self-torture, which is painful, undignified and pointless.
Not being attracted by these two extremes, the True One discovered the Middle Path, which bestows insightful vision, true comprehension, leading to peace, higher knowledge, Enlightenment and final liberation from the series of births - Tonirvana." -"Mahavagga", I, 6, 17 / Translation by the author from Pali from Vinaya Pitaka, see also the full translation of the text of the sutta [Androsov 2001: 113–116; Androsov 2008: 34–43]. For the differences between this understanding of the middle and the Mahayana, see [Androsov 2006].
2 WordbondTibetans pronounce it likeMon, and in some dialects evenpin, but in this case I am forced to make an exception to the rule (see note 3 above), since the pronunciation of bon is generally accepted in world and domestic science.
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Bongard-Levin and M.I.
Vorobyova-
Desyatovskaya. M.
Pubaev 1981. - Pubaev R.E. "Pagsam-Jeongsan" - monument of Tibetan historiography XVIII century. Novosibirsk
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Bell 1968. - Bell Ch. The Religion of Tibet. Oxford.
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Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts. Transl. by
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Max Muller, J.
Takakusu. Delhi.
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Hoffmann 1956. - Hoffmann H. Die Religionen Tibets. Freiburg/München.
Hoffmann 1990. - Hoffmann H. Early and Medieval Tibet. - The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Ed. by D. Sinor. Cambridge.
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Hummel 1959. - Hummel S. Eurasiatische Traditionen in der tibetischen Bon-Religion. - Opuscula ethnologica memoriae Ludovici Biro Sacra. Budapest.
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Khosla 1972. - Khosla S. History of Buddhism in Kashmir. Delhi.
Kvaerne 1974.- Kvaerne P. The Canon of the Tibetan Bonpos. - IIJ, vol. 16, No. 1–2.
Li An che 1948. - Li An che. Rnin-ma-pa: the Early Form of Lamaism. - The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. L., No. 1.
Lindner 1982. - Lindtner Ch. Nagarjuniana. Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of NAgArjuna. Copenhagen
Litvinsky 1968. - Litvinsky B.A. Outline History of Buddhism in Central Asia. Moscow.
Mookerji 1974.- Mookerji R.K. Ancient Indian Education. Delhi.
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Tibetan form of Buddhism
The first letter is "l"
Second letter "a"
Third letter "m"
The last letter of the letter is "m"
Answer for the clue "Tibetan form of Buddhism", 7 letters:
lamaism
Alternative crossword questions for the word Lamaism
Mongolian Buddhism
Tibeto-Mongolian form of Buddhism
One of the movements in Buddhism that arose in Tibet in the 7th century, in the 16th-18th centuries, and became widespread in Mongolia, among the Kalmyks and Buryats
Tibetan-Mongolian form of Buddhism
A direction in Buddhism characterized by many household rituals, magical techniques and spells
Direction in Buddhism
Form of Buddhism
Definition of the word Lamaism in dictionaries
Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998
The meaning of the word in the dictionary Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998
Tibeto-Mongolian form of Buddhism. Originated in Tibet in the 8th century. Distributed in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Inner Mongolia (China), in Mongolia, as well as in certain areas of Nepal and India. In the Russian Federation he has followers, mainly in Buryatia,...
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The meaning of the word in the dictionary Great Soviet Encyclopedia
one of the movements in Buddhism; distributed in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Inner Mongolia (PRC), MPR, as well as in certain regions of Nepal and India. In the USSR, L. has a number of followers in the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Tuva Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Ust-Ordynsky...
New explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.
The meaning of the word in the dictionary New explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.
m. A form of Buddhism that arose in Tibet in the 7th-8th centuries, and in the 16th-18th centuries. widespread in Mongolia.
Examples of the use of the word Lamaism in literature.
In 1741, the Russian government first drew attention to the spread Lamaism among the Buryats, having discovered 11 temples and 150 llamas beyond Lake Baikal, and ordered all available llamas to take an oath of allegiance to Russia and take from them an obligation not only not to cross the Russian border, but not even to have relations with foreign people.
At later cultural and historical stages, in the bosom of highly developed religions, many movements and schools touched on this issue in one way or another: Pythagoreanism, Kabbalah, Eastern Christian monasticism, Taoist monasticism and Lamaism.
Tribal cults in the ancient East and Hellas have very little in common with world religions: Christianity, Islam and theistic Lamaism.
AND lamaism fit well with Buddhism, which was already dissolved in Hinduism and did not have its fanatical fans.
And what would it cost lamaism without Tibetan Tantrism at all, which underlies Bonpo?
Let us recall that at the end of the 1st millennium AD. Buddhism was almost ousted from the territory of India, and finally disappeared from there at the beginning of the 2nd millennium under the onslaught of Muslims. In India itself, Buddhism withstood long-term competition between teachings and schools that were typologically close to Buddhism. During this competitive struggle, Hinduism underwent significant changes, borrowing from Buddhism the “creative” development of the “philosophy” of Buddhism and basic psychotechniques. Hinduism won in India due to its support of class, while Buddhism became the “religion of the people” - especially Mahayana.
Tibetan Buddhism - Lamaism(from the word « lama» - monk; Supreme ) is a generally accepted term for a variety of Buddhism organized primarily in Tibet at the end of the 7th - beginning of the 8th centuries. AD Lamaism represents a synthesis of Mahayana, Vajrayana and the archaic pre-Buddhist set of beliefs of the local population of the Himalayan region.
At the beginning of the spread of Buddhism, Tibet was a young but strong state that caused a lot of concern to its neighbors, primarily the Chinese Empire. Tan (618-907), some border territories of which constantly changed hands in the 7th-9th centuries.
The predecessor of Buddhism in Tibet was a local religion bond (bon-po ) with its predominantly animistic cult of deities, spirits and forces of nature. The new modification of Buddhism that took shape on this primary basis was lamaism - absorbed a lot from this primary source. This, in particular, is clearly visible when getting acquainted with the Lamaist pantheon and various cults, some of which go back to the primitive shamanic beliefs of the ancient Tibetans and Mongols.
Lamaism in Tibet was initiated by preachers from India, in the same way as in many other regions of the spread of Buddhism, and finally took shape in the period of the 7th - 15th centuries. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. Numerous remnants of monks from the Buddhists of India persecuted by Muslims rushed to Tibet, bringing with them “precious” manuscripts of scriptures - thereby strengthening the “personnel base” of teachers-gurus of Tibet.
In general, Tibetan Buddhism does not represent anything particularly unusual (in relation to other varieties of Buddhism). The attractiveness of Tibetan Lamaism lies in its predominantly high mountain localization, monastic hierarchy and social organization , which made it possible to preserve most of the ritual side to this day. That is why many fans of Buddhism turn to Tibet for religious experience, which has long been the subject of mystical interest and mythical stories.
Lamaism has absorbed almost all the most important directions of Mahayana and Vajrayana: yogic practices, meditation, tantrism, guru mentoring, magic (mantras, mudras, mandala), esoteric directions, cults of bodhisattvas, shakti, pantheon. We already know that the spread of Buddhism was accompanied by difficulties associated with frequent clashes of religious interests between local cults of polytheism and Buddhist teachings. From the 7th century Tibet became the area where Vajrayana Buddhism spread. Overcoming the resistance of tribal “elites”, “priests” and shamans of local cults, Buddhism was transformed, adapting and being influenced by local religious systems.
That is why Tibetan Buddhism acquired various pantheons, among which Vajrayana dominated Adibuddha and his several incarnations - “patrons of the Universe” - with numerous retinues and obligatory companions shakti . Buddha Gautama was conceptualized as the Buddha of the modern cosmic era, Buddha Maitreya - as the future Buddha-messiah.
It’s amazing: being initially a purely atheistic religious branch of Hinduism (Buddha Gautama, according to Buddhist tradition, answered “noble silence” to all questions about the nature of the world and its origin.” ), Buddhism has historically acquired cults of deities and pantheons. However, all this external ritualism was just a tribute to the understanding of the crowd demanding “incarnations” behind which the main mysticism of Buddhist rituals was hidden.
Over time, as the number of “enlightened” magicians became more and more, “outstanding” spiritual leaders began to be deified. This is how the first “great preacher” of Buddhism, a magician, was deified in Tibet Padmasambhava (guru Rimpoche, 8th century).
At the same time, a rather sophisticated and complex symbolism and iconography Tibetan Buddhism is an integral part of all atheistic religious systems in which esoteric magic is widespread. Reverence spread bodhisattvas (magicians and sages of Buddhism), personal guards (Idamov - lower categories of deities, often representing the gods of local pantheons included in the system of the Buddhist magical “superstructure”), guru mentors (primarily the founders of schools and monasteries). At the lower (often local) level, spirits of the area, ancestors, totems, embodiments of life-giving power and other “remnants” of pre-Buddhist religious cults were revered.
Buddhism attacked Tibet with magical techniques: the first “great magician and preacher” of Buddhism Padmasambhava consciously supported the synthesis of local cults and the Buddhist religion, making this synthesis a method of gradually incorporating local cults into the “philosophical” system of Buddhism. By defeating the local “shaman priests” with more developed Buddhist magic (and psychotechnics) and “converting” the local deities of the pantheon to Buddhism, Padmasambhava and his disciples achieved the strengthening of the position of Buddhism in Tibet by the 11th century.
Arriving in Tibet, Padmasambhava began preaching Buddhism and demonstrating his magical abilities to the Tibetans. Apparently, the miracles granted tantric yoga , made a huge impression on the Tibetans. It is also possible that Padmasambhava's Tantric Buddhism is somewhat (at least in appearance) seemed to the Tibetans similar to the shamanism familiar to them.
As “Life” reports, “ Padmasambhava put the Bon priests and sorcerers to shame, surpassing their magical art, and subdued the demons and evil spirits of Tibet, converting them to Buddhism and making them dharmapalas - deities who protect the Dharma. Padmasambhava even left Tibet in an unusual way: having acquired a magical illusory body, he ascended to heaven along an arch of a rainbow, sitting astride a horse.”
At the initial stages of the formation of Buddhism in Tibet, the “priesthood”-magi of the sanctuaries-“monasteries” that arose as Buddhism spread celibacy , closely merging with the local aristocracy, than it turned into a hereditary landowning class. The latter opened up the possibility of strengthening Buddhism and its monastic infrastructure at the level of local authorities.
The first Tibetan school of Buddhism is usually called " red-capped " - the general name of the directions of Tibetan Buddhism, the most influential of which remained the school for a long time Nyingamapa , founded by Padmasambhava and spread even beyond Tibet - especially to Nepal and Sikkim. Other red-capped school, karjupa (karyupa) , penetrated into Bhutan and Sikkim. In Central Tibet it was strong red-capped school Sakyapa .
In the 14th century, one of the old Tibetan schools kadampa became the arena of reform activities, leading to new, more strict orders of Tibetan Buddhism. Reformism is associated with the name Tsonkhavy (1357 - 1419), as a result of whose activities arose “ yellow-capped » community Gelugpa , which soon became the leading one in the country. Its head was considered the “incarnation of Avalokiteshvara” (chief of the bodhisattvas) and was called Dalai Lama (Mongolian: " ocean [of wisdom] "), who received this title from the Mongol rulers of Tibet in 1578. Lama in Tibetan higher ", so otherwise the Dalai Lama can be translated as " high monk " - the personification of "highest, boundless wisdom." " Yellowcap “Lamaism, in which, in particular, the vow of celibacy of lamas is accepted, is a more strict and orthodox version of Tibetan Buddhism-Lamaism, which spread north of Tibet and still prevails there, as well as in Mongolia, Buryatia, and Kalmykia.
Basics theories Lamaism were laid down by Tsonghava, who in a number of his works substantiated his own reforms and synthesized the theoretical heritage of his predecessors. Subsequently, all Buddhist texts were collected by Lamaists into a 108-volume collection Ganjur , including Tibetan translations of the most important sutras and treatises of the Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana, numerous stories, dialogues, extracts related to the Buddha, as well as works on astrology, medicine, etc. Commentary on the “canonical” texts Ganjura is an even more extensive collection - Danjur , consisting of 225 volumes, which also included independent works, including stories, poems, spells, etc. In addition to Ganjur and Danjuravse, Lamaists highly honor and study the works of Tsonghava and the later fathers of the Lamaist church, including the Dalai Lamas.
Lamaism as we know it from a doctrinal point of view is heritage and synthesis of all the ideological and theoretical baggage of Buddhism for more than two thousand years of its history. But the doctrine of Buddhism was interpreted by Lamaism.
Lamaism, following what has already emerged in Mahayana tendencies, pushed nirvana into the background as the highest goal of salvation, replacing it with a richly developed cosmology, within which there was enough room for everyone: for believers and non-believers, laymen and monks, people and animals, for saints, gods, buddhas and bodhisattvas.
The gigantic cosmological system in Lamaism is strictly ordered. Its top is buddha buddha adibuddha , ruler of all worlds, creator of all things, a kind of Lamaistic equivalent of the Indian Brahmana or Taoist Tao . Its main attribute is Great Emptiness (sunyata) . It is this emptiness, which is the spiritual essence, the spiritual body of a Buddha, that permeates everything, so that everything living, Every person carries within himself a particle of Buddha and it is because of this that he has the potential to achieve salvation. Depending on the quantity and condition, this particle can be suppressed to a greater or lesser extent by matter.
In accordance with the degree of this depression and awareness of the need strengthen the buddha particle , as well as the practical actions taken for this, people are divided into several categories, the highest of which, the fifth, brings them closer to the state of a bodhisattva. This is considered to be available only to a few. For most, the main thing is to achieve a successful rebirth or be reborn in the Western paradise (sukhavadi) of Buddha Amitaba.
The cosmogony and theory of the “strict” Buddhism of Lamaism, which came after the “liberal” red-capped Buddhism (based on primitive tantric cults), primarily pursued the goal theoretical justification for the “objectivity” of the spiritual hierarchy among people: from laity to incarnations of Buddhas. And only then, according to this hierarchy, people were admitted to various kinds of psychotechnics (the higher, the more complex and “powerful”) according to the principle “to each his own” with the justification of the status “by the amount of suppression of a Buddha particle by matter,” or, in other words, depending on the spiritual status (and the latter is determined , as we already know, by the correspondence of the believer’s psyche with the egregorial algorithm of the egregor dominant in the religious system: in our case, “Adibuddha”).
All this indicates that Tibetan Buddhism-Lamaism turned out to be closer to the ideal than other varieties of Buddhism Masonic-Trotskyist world order, tested in the USSR in the first half of the 20th century - that’s why the hierarchs of the first Soviet state turned to it.
The doctrine of heaven and hell in Lamaism comes from Mahayana Buddhism, although it is possible that in Lamaism it is somewhat enriched by borrowings from Islam, as evidenced by some details. But it is essential that for Lamaism (as well as for other directions of Buddhism and Hinduism) heaven and hell - only temporary location, which does not exclude the individual from the wheel of rebirth, from the world of karmic samsara. Lamaism teaches: with the exhaustion of bad or good karma, sooner or later another birth follows, and this applies to almost everyone, even the deities living in heaven. Only a few are destined for Nirvana. What should people do in such a situation, according to Lamaism??
The main thing Lamaism teaches is “ to be reborn as a man ", and even more important - to be born in the country of Lamaism, where " your good friend and teacher lama will lead you along the path of salvation " In other words, the role of mentoring in Tibet has been brought to the extreme, and the quality of mentoring is also not formal: each guru must correspond to his status, having gone through his own path of psychotechnical practices.
Lamaism teaches that the lama’s instructions will help you get rid of suffering, from attachment to everything worldly and thereby improve your karma, prepare yourself for a favorable rebirth and get rid of the horrors of an unfavorable rebirth: from now on moving along the path of wisdom ( prajna) with its main methods-means ( paramitas) and overcoming avidya(ignorance) can help you.
The main thing, therefore, is to realize, overcome avidya (for which it is important to be reborn as a human and get a lama as a mentor), because it is precisely avidya underlies the circle of rebirths of twelve links-nidan , which are usually well known in their graphic-symbolic form to every Lamaist.
The center of political, religious and ritual life in the areas where Buddhism spread became monastery with hierarchically organized lameness : students, novices, monks, abbots, incarnations of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, prominent figures of Buddhism - “living gods”. Most of the lamas worked on the lands of the monastery, and only the top lived by performing rituals in the temple and in the houses of parishioners - calendar-production, age-related, healing-magical. Exactly religious ritual became the main purpose of Tibetan Buddhism, which, according to teaching, provided an opportunity to escape from a series of rebirths.
Tibetan Buddhism is still considered among its adherents (especially Western ones) to be the most mysterious and attractive. It became such as a result of the visual hierarchical monastic organization of the religious infrastructure, which is accompanied by a very unusual magical mysticism ( sacraments ), coming from Tibetan lamas, as well as support for Tibetan statehood. Besides Tibetan Buddhism was able to maintain its pristine attractiveness due to the predominantly high-altitude isolation of its numerous religious centers from the influence of the technocratic offensive on the regional civilizations of the Buddhist East. For adherents who fall from the outside under the magic of relatively “pure” (in the sense: not influenced by technocracy and localized in areas beyond the reach of strong fields of the technosphere) ancient Buddhism - the last (with the help lam , of course) has a very strong magical effect on the psyche, not prepared for non-technosphere magic and psychotechnics.
Tibetan Buddhism developed in such a way that the paramount thing for the consolidation of Lamaism in Central Asia was the belonging of the “Lamaized” local tribe (or part of it) to a specific economic and cultural type, which was due, first of all, to landscape of the habitat(as a rule - height above sea level) - which determined the proximity and intensity of contacts with bearers of other religious systems. So, the higher the tribe lived on the slopes, the more significant was the specific gravity transhumance, which means that even more so was its religious autonomy - which ensured the influence of Lamaism. As a result, Tibetan Lamaism was able to monopolize the spiritual life of the tribes of the highlands and the nomads of the arid steppes, deeply embedded in their social structure.
In the fight against tribal beliefs bond First of all, and initially, the “red hat” schools achieved success, “organically” incorporating local cults into Buddhism. It is the opportunistic feature of the school rituals Nyingmapa to local traditions ensured its leading role in the Himalayan region. “Red Cap” Buddhism did not completely disappear after the Reformation (XIV century) in the fight against Lamaism. It retreated territorially and functionally: the original Tibetan monasteries exist on the periphery of the Lamaist world, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. In the form of archaic layers of “folk Buddhism” (as the Buddhism of the “red cap” schools is called in this region), its elements were preserved in the regions of Buddhist-Hindu “sanctuaries” (for example, the temple complex Muktinath ), strongly influenced by Hindu Tantrism.
The successful development and consolidation of Buddhism (later Lamaism) in Tibet and its “yellow cap” reform in the 15th - 17th centuries. made this region for many centuries to come spiritual and organizational metropolis” in relation to neighboring countries and regions, the concentration of Buddhist monasteries - the founders and centers of various movements of Buddhism. Capital of Tibet - Lhasa - was until 1959 the residence of the Dalai Lama, the world spiritual and cult center of the strictest hierarchically organized Buddhism - Lamaism. In the middle of the 20th century, the centuries-old “well-being” of the Buddhist hierarchy, the coolest and most distant from the influences of the technosphere, was shaken: its adherents, supporting the spiritual and organizational regime in Tibet, had to move to another place. As a result of the “popular uprising” in the Tibet region of the PRC (on national-religious grounds, the Tibetans undertook a “liberation” movement against the “communist” government of China), the Dalai Lama was forced to flee. More than one hundred thousand Tibetans (out of about a million supporters) fled with him to Nepal, Bhutan and India, where the head of the Lamaists now lives.
Of course, the story of Tibetan Buddhism does not end there. Lamaism exists in Tibetan Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia and some high mountain regions of the Himalayas. However, Tibetan Buddhism, centered in Lhasa, was, until 1959, more than a religion: it was the “standard” of the Eastern hierarchical order, which, with the help of the central authority of the Dalai Lama, ruled religious and social “life” a wide range of countries and regions. But by a “strange” coincidence, it fell, having begun as a “national liberation” movement of the Tibetans (despite the enormous magical capabilities Lama's hierarchy) precisely at the moment when the teachings of L.R. arose in the West. Hubbard - Dianetics (1950), which, according to proponents of this doctrine, “ based on Buddhism ».
As one might assume, by the middle of the 20th century, the potential influence of Tibetan Buddhism (as a particularly “serious” type of Buddhism) on society had exhausted itself, since this type of Buddhist magic is effective only in conditions of low technosphere influence. However, the need for his experience not only remained (in addition to the still reverent reverence for everything associated with Tibetan Buddhism), but became the focus of attention of those who wanted to transfer the experience of working with the human psyche to society under changed conditions of environmental pressure.
Let us take a closer look at the religious organization of Tibetan Buddhism. The influence of the latter on society is based not only on the dominance of Buddhist magic and psychotechnics in the sphere of spiritual culture, but also on the social role Lama's hierarchy, which managed to preserve and carry through the centuries its exceptional attractiveness mainly “thanks” to its high-mountain localization - that from the outside seems to be the “standard” of the highest Buddhist (and even world) wisdom.
In high mountain villages, lamas are not just monks (if they even live in monasteries and observe asceticism) - they are “priests” of the temple of “communities”, organizing ceremonies of the calendar and production cycle. That is, lamas participate in organizing not only the religious, but also the everyday life of the people of their “parish.” In addition, lamas can be family “priests”-gurus, intermediaries between believers and the accepted deity of the pantheon, teachers, artisans, dancers, musicians, and soothsayers. Religious ritual remains the focus and is revered as the main goal of Tibetan Buddhism.
For believers there was to some extent the path to ascending the religious hierarchy is open: student, novice, monk, abbot, incarnations of Buddha, bodhisattva... - “living god” . However, since the times of “red-capped” Lamaism (when marriages of lamas were allowed), a class of hereditary “priesthood” emerged and became entrenched, which was closely connected with the feudal aristocracy. Therefore, it was impossible to rise above a certain level of the temple hierarchy even from “simple monks” (not to mention students) and the laity was passed on by inheritance, along with all the magical capabilities of each spiritual class.
Usually lamas live in the monastery only part of the year, most often they gather during holidays, or act as caretakers of the monastery. Lamas devote most of their time to teaching for the families of parishioners, working on their own or family plots, and sometimes on pilgrimages and meditation. The material basis for the existence of lamas, in addition to personal income from the household and from performing various rituals ordered by believers, is income from monastery property and, most importantly, regular and obligatory offerings from community members. Believers, as in other areas of Buddhism, are accustomed to accumulating religious “merits” in order to observe the dharma, which is “read into subsequent incarnations.”
In this regard, many cult objects of worship and veneration accumulated in monasteries (in addition to the highest people in the hierarchy): tank icons, reliquaries, musical instruments, woodcut “canonical” texts, images of revered deities, lamas, bodhisattvas. Religious buildings are also impressive: monastery complexes, village temples, chapels, prayer drums-cylinders with thousands of prayers imprinted inside, rotated by hands or water, walls or stones with carved prayers, flags, chortens (derived from Buddhist stupas) and other religious attributes. It is clear that all these Buddhist idols, as well as the deification of lamas and the heredity of the highest persons in the monastic hierarchy, are a serious departure from the principles of early Buddhism, which Gautama Buddha himself professed.
The Tibetan form of Buddhism is indicative of the that, having penetrated the sphere of influence of local “priests”-shamans and mastered the population controlled by them with the help of highly developed psychotechniques in Buddhism (compared to the magical capabilities of local “priests”-shamans) - lamas based on “religion for the people”(both Mahayana and Vajrayana were considered to be the two fundamental principles of Lamaism) built a strict hierarchy of mutual subordination of people (and even division into newly created classes and support for some existing ones) in the form of a socially relaxed system of relationships « in a single state "by religious "rank", and the "ranks" themselves were justified different possibilities of people in relation to achieving “enlightenment”(analogous to “Christian” “holiness”).
Until the final restoration of the power of the “Communist Party” in the PRC (after 1950), no one interfered with the autonomous functioning of this kind of stable spiritual and social hierarchy, as far removed as possible from the technosphere. At this point, the experiment with the use of the potential of Buddhism in a single country and in conditions remote from the technosphere has exhausted its social significance for the hierarchs monitoring the progress of this experiment. In addition, by 1959 it had already become clear that the “communist-Marxist” scenario in its original idea and on a global scale had failed, which means that the union of Buddhism and Marxism was at least postponed for an indefinite time, temporarily giving way to world capitalism, and This means further rapid development of the technosphere.
In such conditions, Tibetan Buddhism as a form of social organization became of little interest. At the same time, a long experiment showed that Buddhist psychotechnics make it possible to “sort” society, which includes Buddhism, according to religious rank, corresponding to the hierarchy of mutual subordination, and the latter strictly corresponds to the real, and not ostentatious, commitment of each individual to the observance of religious and social discipline, which makes it possible to especially accurately arrange personnel according to their submission to the crowd-“elite” hierarchy, while at the same time, of course, cultivating this kind of submission. As a result of the closure of the religious system into a religious vicious circle “ cultivating obedience - personnel selection - again cultivating obedience“- after some time (several generations), everyone who does not fit into the hierarchy turns out to be reliably rejected. We will consider the psychotechnical mechanism of this kind of “personnel selection” later.
For the hereditary transfer of spiritual and communal power, the lamas managed to invent more and more new ideas of succession (essentially class transfer of power), “taking advantage” of the support of the crowd and those lower in the religious hierarchy. So the teaching of Lamaism about “ living gods "has given rise to a whole practice search for new incarnations (rebirths) of famous figures of Lamaism. The simplest way of rebirth was that, contrary to monastic vows, the lama took a wife and gave birth to a son, who was destined to become " father's spiritual heir ».
Here is a direct, shameless class transfer of spiritual and temporal power. Such a role as a direct blood heir could be announced publicly, or one could secretly indicate in writing about one’s future reincarnation. Over time, for monks of the highest levels, searches for their reincarnations began to be carried out automatically . A number of signs seemed to indicate the future rebirth, which was usually a baby up to 9 months old: prophetic dreams of students or parents, time and place of birth, omens. The child was sent to a monastery, where he later faced a number of additional tests - for example, choosing objects that he owned in a past life from a bunch of similar ones. If successful, he was considered fit for long-term training, after which he was to take the place of his predecessor.
It is clear that the careful selection of personnel, primarily the highest spiritual level, was taken under full control by the top of the Lamaist hierarchy, and they raised their own selected personnel from an early age for the mission of supporting the hierarchy itself with the help of special stratified psychotechniques and disabilities influence on some biosphere processes and processes taking place at the level of biology of the human body. The possibility of a very bold (apparently after the lamas had steadily won the favor of their flock) use of the Buddhist doctrine of personal rebirth (in addition to the doctrine of incarnations) made it possible not only to maintain obedience in the crowd, extinguishing interest in social injustice with the help of the doctrine of posthumous retribution, but also to boldly manipulate the gullible personnel base, the working mass of which was quite enough to visit the monastery and see the incarnation or rebirth of “god”, after which even primitive cult psychotechnics were not required: why waste the time of experienced gurus on the “working” crowd.
And Irkutsk region.
The historical roots of Tibetan Buddhism exist in the Volga region, from the Caspian Sea to the Samara River, associated with the history of the Kalmyk Khanate. And also in Eastern Siberia. Today, there are Dharma centers of Tibetan Buddhism in all major cities of the country.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the Teachings of the Buddha of the Second and Third Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma were developed:
- Mahayana - The Great Path.
- Vajrayana - Diamond Way.
Until recently, Tibetan Buddhism was the predominant spiritual tradition of Tibetan civilization. Buddhism appeared in Tibet around the 7th century AD, and since then it has developed, gradually becoming the main spiritual school of the peoples of Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism has been and remains one of the most diverse, vibrant and diverse religious movements.
After almost fourteen centuries of free and deep development, difficult times came for Buddhism, as well as for the Tibetan civilization: in 1949, the Chinese invasion took place, and Tibet was annexed to the PRC. Due to the Chinese occupation, many thousands of Tibetans went into exile. Among them were many excellent and talented teachers who, around the 1960s, began teaching Buddhism around the world. Thus, hundreds of groups practicing Tibetan Buddhism emerged in virtually every country, in every city, and in many remote and unexpected places; this great tradition is studied everywhere in universities and colleges. So in a way, Tibet's beta was a gift to humanity.
Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism are extremely diverse, which is very difficult to bring to a single standard. The Tibetans themselves claim that Dharma everywhere in Tibet has “one and only taste,” but there is no one, “correct” standard of Tibetan Buddhism that everyone else should follow. The currently predominant Gelug school, inclined towards analytical methods of practice, is no more characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism than the predominantly meditation-oriented Kagyu and Nyingma traditions. The monks who lived in the rich monasteries of Central Tibet considered themselves no better than solitary meditators in small villages or solitary hermits who spent their entire lives in remote caves. The power and vitality of Tibetan Buddhism is perhaps rooted in its ability to absorb and combine with each other an incredible number of different teachings, practices and movements. Buddhists in Tibet do not always agree on which view is deeper or which approach is more effective, but they all unanimously claim that the diversity of Tibetan Buddhism comes directly from the Buddha. And this, undoubtedly, was one of his most precious gifts to his followers.
Story
First wave (VII-IX centuries) - early spread of Dharma (Nyingma)
Tibetan civilization flourished across vast areas of Asia, including the areas commonly considered to be true Tibet, "political Tibet", and other regions: Ladakh to the west, Bhutan, Sikkim and parts of Nepal to the south and southwest, and parts of Assam to the east .
The appearance of Buddhism in Tibet can be dated approximately to the 7th century. At this time, the Land of Snows was a strong military power ruled by kings, and the national religion was Bon (Bon Po), a form of shamanism in Central Asia. The young and strong state caused a lot of concern to its neighbors - the Chinese Tang Empire (618–907). Some border lands were constantly transferred from one to another in the 7th–9th centuries, for example, Dunhuang, a city in northwestern China (modern Gansu Province), which became a very important link in the chain of spread of Buddhism, both in China and in Tibet.
The Tibetans themselves believe that they first learned about Buddhism thanks to a miracle: during the time of King Lhatotori (IV century?), a chest containing the text of the Karandavyuha Sutra and various sacred objects fell from heaven. The king and his descendants worshiped the sutra and considered it a “mysterious helper,” which allowed Tibet to prosper.
In the first half of the 7th century, the first of the Tibetan “dharmic” kings, Songtsen Gampo, ascended the throne, who over time came to be considered the incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. (According to legend, his hair even hid a second head - a Bodhisattva). Songtsen Gampo married two princesses - the daughter of the king of Nepal and the daughter of the emperor of China. Both women were Buddhists and brought with them texts of teachings and sacred objects. Particularly significant was the gift of the Chinese princess Wen Cheng - a large statue of Buddha, which is considered one of the main relics of Tibet. Tibetans revere the wives of Sogtsen Gampo as embodiments of green and white Tara.
Since there was no written language in Tibet at that time, the king sent his minister Thonmi Sambhota to India to bring the alphabet, which was developed on the basis of the Indian Bengali script. Thonmi Sambhota created the first grammar of the Tibetan language, using Sanskrit as a model.
In the next century, Buddhism slowly and gradually took root in Tibetan society, remaining the “religion of the royal court,” foreign and alien to ordinary Tibetans. In the middle of the 8th century, the second of the Dharmic kings, Trisong Detsen, invited the famous Buddhist philosopher and scientist, Shantarakshita, to the Land of Snows, who made significant contributions to the development of both Madhyamaka and Yogacara. For his enormous merits and labors in spreading Buddhism in Tibet, Shantarakshita began to be called “Acharya Bodhisattva” (“Bodhisattva Teacher”). Shantarakshita built the first monasteries, most notably the Samyeling (Samye) Monastery near Lhasa, already the capital of Tibet, and bestowed monastic ordination on several noble Tibetans. However, the Mahayana teaching, which Shantarakshita represented, was not easy for the Tibetans, who were inexperienced in the intricacies of philosophy and ethics, a very warlike and indomitable people. In addition, priests and shamans of the original religion of Tibet - Bon, in every possible way prevented the spread of Buddhism, citing the wishes of the gods. Shantarakshita realized that he could not cope with the wild and unbridled energies of these lands, and advised to invite Padmasambhava (“Lotus-Born”), a tantric yogi and siddha from Uddiyana, to Tibet.
Padmasambhava did so much to spread Buddhism in Tibet that he is considered the second Buddha there (especially by followers of the “unreformed” or “red hat” schools). According to Tibetan scriptures, Padmasambhava was a manifestation (nirmanakaya) of the Buddha Amitabha; he was born from a lotus flower, in honor of which he received his name. Like Buddha, he was a prince who lived in luxury and bliss; like Buddha, he left the palace and became a hermit. Meditating in cemeteries and in hard-to-reach places, he received secret tantric initiations from dakinis and became an unsurpassed yogi and siddha. Padmasambhava demonstrated his incredible superpowers to the Tibetans and local gods and spirits, thereby convincing them of the effectiveness of the path of Tantric Buddhism. He defeated the Bon shamans, surpassing their magical art, and converted the demons to Buddhism and made them dharmapalas - defenders of the Dharma. Convinced that the seeds of Dharma were planted and beginning to sprout, Padmasambhava left Tibet, riding a horse into the sky along a rainbow arch.
Soon Shantarakshita, already in old age, died. He was replaced from India by Kamalashila, a disciple of Shantarakshita and a famous scientist. His name is associated with the famous debates at Samye Monastery, which played an important role in the development of Buddhism in the Land of Snows. In the first half of the 9th century, King Ralpachan, a devoted Dharma practitioner, became the king of Tibet. He initiated the regular work of translating Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan, which was carried out by both Indian scholars (pandits) and Tibetan lotzawa (translators). In the early 40s of the 9th century, Ralpachan was killed by Bon followers from noble families, and his brother Langdarma ascended the throne. He abandoned Buddhism and restored the rights of the Bon priesthood. Buddhist monasteries were closed, and monks were forced to return to the world. However, the attempt to restore the old religion failed: one of the Buddhist monks named Paldorje, “filled with sympathy for the king,” killed him. (This is not a joke: according to the doctrine, the king's deeds were supposed to lead him to be reborn in hell, so Paldorje did him a great service by preventing further deterioration of the king's karma. In addition, he committed " heroic deed Bodhisattva": for the sake of saving the Dharma and the sangha, he sacrificed his own good karma, committing one of the most "black" acts - murder). After this, Paldorje retired into hermitage, devoting himself to the study of Mahayana texts and meditation. The death of Langdarma is celebrated by followers of Tibetan Buddhism to this day.
The death of the Bon king became a difficult test for the Tibetan state: after his death, a struggle for power and unrest began, as a result of which the Tibetan kingdom broke up into separate fiefs. The “Dark Age” of internecine wars lasted almost 150 years, until the beginning of the 11th century. Tibet regained its unity only in the 17th century. As a result of the decline of the Land of Snows, Buddhism also weakened, and at the end of the 9th century it fell into complete decline. During the 10th century, Buddhism existed in Tibet only in name. In the surviving monasteries, the Vinaya tradition has practically disappeared, and the monasteries themselves have turned into “dormitories” for family lamas. The rules for reading and interpreting the tantras were forgotten, they began to be taken literally, which led to general debauchery and the flourishing of crude witchcraft. This unfortunate situation continued until the middle of the 11th century, when Buddhism came to Tibet for the second time. This “second wave” was different from the first in many ways.
Second wave (X-XIII centuries) - later spread of Dharma (sarma)
In the days before Langdarma's "repression", Buddhism in Tibet was practiced primarily by aristocrats; now it has begun to spread rapidly among ordinary people, and within 100-200 years Tibet became a real citadel of Dharma.
The early tradition contained elements of both Indian and Chinese Buddhism. Since the 11th century, Tibetans began to focus exclusively on Indian models.
In the 7th–9th centuries, Buddhism had difficulty taking root in Tibetan soil, but now the Tibetans were completely open to the tradition of the late Mahayana and began to quickly assimilate the entire volume of teachings.
The “Buddhist revival” followed two paths: at the same time, there was a restoration of the monastic school (Vinaya) and the spread of yogic forms of Vajrayana Buddhism. The mainstay of the restoration of the monastic system was the monk Atisha (Jovo Atisha; Dipankara Atisha Srijnana, 982–1054) from the famous Bengal monastery of Vikramashila University. He created the Kadam school, which sought not only to follow the strict principles of the Vinaya, but also to combine the latter with the practice of Tantric yoga. Atisha and his students and followers were engaged in translations of the Buddhist canon into the Tibetan language; thanks to Atisha, a system of monastic education was developed. After the 15th century, Kadam merged with the congenial Gelug school. The yogic lineage, rooted in the Indian Mahasiddha tradition, is associated with such renowned teachers as Tilopa and Naropa. It appeared in Tibet thanks to the yogi and lotsawa (translator) Marpa, who taught his followers the methods of the Six Yogas of Naropa and the practice of Mahamudra - the direct revelation of the nature of one's mind as the nature of Buddha.
In order to ensure the transmission of teachings, Marpa founded a new school - Kagyu-pa. Particular importance was attached here to the transmission of teachings, yogic initiations and practical methods directly from teacher to student (“Kagyu pa” translated means “school of Continuity”).
Marpa's closest student and successor was the famous Tibetan yogi and poet Milarepa (1040–1123). In his youth, he did a lot of trouble: with the help of black Bon magic, he took the lives of relatives who had treated his family badly. Milarepa deeply repented of what he had done and turned to Buddhism. His mentor was Marpa (who, before starting his training, forced Mila to go through severe trials so that he would be cleansed of the consequences of his deeds). Milarepa can be called the founder of the Tibetan tradition of mountain hermitage: he practiced in hard-to-reach caves, doing virtually without food or clothing. Milarepa wrote many songs and poems in which he expressed his understanding of the nature of the mind.
Milarepa's successor was one of his later students, Gampopa. Before becoming a follower of Milarepa, Gampopa studied at the Kadam school, where he studied the Vinaya and the sutra tradition in detail. He combined the teachings of sutra and tantra, gave them a clearer structure and made them accessible to many people. Gampopa became the founder of the first monastic communities of the Kagyu school (before him it was a yogic line in its purest form, its followers preferred wild caves to the monastic way of life, and everyone went to Enlightenment in their own, unique way). Since Gampopa had so many students, he was physically unable to teach everyone personally; Therefore, he wrote many books that expound the essence of the teaching and describe skillful methods that anyone can apply. One of his most famous works is “The Jewel of Liberation.” This text is required for study in the Kagyu and other schools, and provides a detailed explanation of Buddhist teachings, from the very basics to the heights of Mahamudra, and a guide for practice.
After Gampopa's departure, the Kagyu school was divided into four large and eight small schools. Karma Kagyu gained the greatest influence and distribution (“karma” refers to the name of the main monastery of this school - Karmadansa, founded in 1147). The spiritual head of the Kagyu bears the title Karmapa (the school is now headed by the 17th Karmapa), the first of the consciously reborn lamas of Tibet. The Karma Kagyu are also called the "black cap school" because the Karmapa's symbol is a pentagonal crown, donated by one of the Chinese emperors of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368).
It was the Karma Kagyu who became the founders of the tradition of searching for tulkus (“reincarnates,” that is, the hierarchs of the school who promised to return to samsara again and again for the benefit of others). Over time, the practice spread widely in Tibet and was canonized by the Gelug school.
In the modern world, Karma Kagyu is popular not only among ethnic followers of Tibetan Buddhism, but also among Europeans and Americans. Thanks to the mass emigration of Tibetan teachers to the West, Europeans were able to participate in traditional practices and initiations and study in educational centers created by emigrant monks.
Other Kagyu sub-schools were gradually supplanted by the Gelug school, which in the 17th century captured the main positions in Tibet. Now they flourish in such areas of the Himalayas as the kingdom of Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh, as well as in some regions of Nepal. In Ladakh, the Drigung Kagyu, small in number but famous for the scholarship of its monks, who created many treatises on various aspects of the theory and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, gained great influence. One of the most famous representatives of the Drigung Kagyu in the West was Lama Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche, for a long time who led the Taiwan Buddhist Association, and currently a cultural and educational center in the USA.
At the end of the 12th century, the Sakya school (translated as “Yellow Land”, after the name of the area where their first monastery was built), founded in 1073, gained the greatest influence. Sakya became famous for its outstanding scientists, as well as for its contribution to the political life of Tibet in the 13th century. –XIV centuries. It is to this school that we owe the appearance of the title Dalai Lama (“Lama (whose wisdom is like) the ocean”): this is what the Chinese Emperor Kublai Kublai (1279–1294) called the fifth Sakya hierarch, Pagba Lama.
The Sakya monastery was under the control of the aristocratic Khon clan, from which the hierarchs of this school emerged. Sakya did not require lamas to take a vow of celibacy, but it was necessary to end relationships with women immediately after the appearance of an heir. Sakya hierarchs generally took monastic vows, so the office of abbot and lineage holder was passed down within the Khon clan from uncle to nephew.
The Sakya school is based on the teachings of the Indian Mahasiddha Virupa, who established the principle of “fruit - result”, according to which the goal of the path is realized in the process of passing along it. In Sakya, great importance was attached to the practice of yoga of the intermediate state (bardo). The philosophical views of this school can be described as a synthesis of moderate Madhyamika and Yogacara. The central Sakya tantra is the Hevajra Tantra.
Representatives of the Sakya became famous for their learning and left many works on various aspects of Buddhism, but not only: this school is known primarily for its activity in the political field. The Sakya made many attempts (very successful) to unite Tibet and create a single theocratic state. In this respect, the Sakya hierarchs can be considered the immediate predecessors of the Gelugpas. The success of the Sakya was primarily due to their close relationship with the Mongol imperial Yuan dynasty in China.
In 1247, Kunga Gyaltsen, called Sakya Pandita for his knowledge, met with the Mongol prince Godan at his camp near Lake Kukunoor in northern Tibet, northwest China.
Godan asked the Lama to teach his people, and since Sakya Pandita was the most influential political leader of Tibet, he understood that bringing his country under Mongol rule meant saving it from a devastating invasion.
Despite his role in history, Tibetans primarily consider Sakya Pandita to be an accomplished spiritual master, scholar and writer. Among the books belonging to his pen is “Sakya Lekshe” (Russian “Treasury of Oral Instructions”, English “The Sakya Lekshe as Ordinary Wisdom: Sakya Pandita"s treasury of good advice”), instructions on the right way of life for the laity, which became a timeless classic and an example of the elegance of Tibetan prose, Sakya Pandita became the spiritual mentor of the Mongol leader.
A few years later, in 1251, Prince Godan appointed Sakya Pandita's 17-year-old nephew, Pagpa, as the Mongol governor of Tibet. As a famous figure in the country's history, Pagpu became famous for his religious tolerance. Later, when Kublai Khan became the Great Khan, he asked Phagpa to create an alphabet for his Eurasian empire, which stretched from Russia to southern China. He also proposed to Pagpa that all schools of Tibetan Buddhism be affiliated with Sakya. Tibetan historian Tsepen V.D. Shakabpa writes: "Pagpa insisted that other schools be allowed to practice Buddhism in their own way. This earned him the support of many Tibetan spiritual leaders; however, the presence of different religious schools within Tibet subsequently weakened the power of the ruling Sakya dynasty." For more than a hundred years, the Sakya lamas ruled Tibet as representatives of the Mongols, until they were replaced by followers of the Karma Kagyu.
Literature
- Torchinov E.A. Introduction to Buddhism. 2005.
