Constituting Canon and Community in Eleventh Century Tibet: The Extant Writings of Rongzom and His Charter of Mantrins (sngags pa’i bca’ yig)

Dominic Sur

doi:10.3390/rel8030040

Abstract

This paper explores some of the work of Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo (hereafter Rongzom) and attempts to situate his pedagogical influence within the “Old School” or Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.1 A survey of Rongzom’s extant writings indicates that he was a seminal exegete and a particularly important philosopher and interpreter of Buddhism in Tibet. He was an influential intellectual flourishing in a period of cultural rebirth, when there was immense skepticism about Tibetan compositions. His work is thereby a source of insight into the indigenous Tibetan response to the transformations of a renaissance-era in which Indian provenance became the sine qua none of religious authority. Rongzom’s “charter” (bca’ yig), the primary focus of the essay, is an important document for our understanding of Old School communities of learning. While we know very little of the social realities of Old School communities in Rongzom’s time, we do know that they were a source of concern for the emerging political and religious authorities in Western Tibet. As such, the review below argues that the production of the charter should be seen, inter alia, as an effort at maintaining autonomy in the face of a rising political power. The analysis also provides insights into the nature of the social obligations operant within Rongzom’s community—constituted as it was by a combination of ritually embodied and discursive philosophical modes of learning.

Highlights

The worldview of the “Great Vehicle” tradition of Buddhism is organized around the altruistic figure of the bodhisattva, a type of pedagogical being, whose very existence is characterized by the vow to help sentient beings along the spiritual path.2 to be a bodhisattva is to be a guide and a teacher
While we know very little of the social realities of Old School communities in Rongzom’s time, we do know that they were a source of concern for the emerging political and religious authorities in Western
A disciple obtains damtsik when she receives tantric initiation, a ritual ceremony that structures the teacher-student relationship as well as the inter-personal relations of those students who have the same teacher and attend the same teachings, In that case, their relationship is couched in language of family: they are referred to as “indestructible” or “Vajra siblings”, a phrasing which suggests that Tibetans conceptualize these relationships as constituting a family that is not biological

Summary

Introduction

The worldview of the “Great Vehicle” (mahāyāna, theg chen) tradition of Buddhism is organized around the altruistic figure of the bodhisattva, a type of pedagogical being, whose very existence is characterized by the vow to help sentient beings along the spiritual path. to be a bodhisattva is to be a guide and a teacher. A disciple obtains damtsik when she receives tantric initiation, a ritual ceremony that structures the teacher-student relationship as well as the inter-personal relations of those students who have the same teacher and attend the same teachings, In that case, their relationship is couched in language of family: they are referred to as “indestructible” or “Vajra siblings” (rdo rje mched), a phrasing which suggests that Tibetans conceptualize these relationships as constituting a family that is not biological It is a family whose relations are maintained through particular rituals and types of behaviors (i.e., “practices”). I begin by looking at the character and contents of Rongzom’s extant collected works

The Audacity of Autochthonous Authorship

The Formation of “New” and “Old”

Composition

Ethics

Conclusions