|
Lama
Tsong Khapa Life Story
TSONG-KHA-PA
Dhyana is the
kingly faculty of the mind. One-pointed, it remains immovable
like a mighty Mount Meru. Projected, it permeates any virtuous
object at will. It leads to the exhilarating bliss of applying
body and mind to any task. Knowing this, the yogins of mental
control have devoted themselves continuously to one-pointed
concentration which overcomes the enemies of mental wandering.
I, the yogin, have
practiced just that. If you would also seek emancipation,
cultivate the same.
Prajna is the eye
with which to behold profound shunyata and the path by which to
uproot ignorance, the source of cyclic existence. It is the
treasure of genius exalted in all the scriptures and is renowned
as the supreme lamp that eliminates the darkness of the closed
mind. Knowing this, the wise who have wished for emancipation
have advanced along this path with every effort.
I, the yogin, have
practiced just that. If you would also seek emancipation,
cultivate the same.
Lam-rim Bsdus-don,
19-20
TSONG-KHA-PA
Just as the
creative ferment in ancient Greek thought had prepared the way
for Plato, and the Buddhist reformation in India had provided
the context for Shankaracharya, so too the Buddhist renaissance
and proliferation of schools in Tibet laid the groundwork for
the remarkable Tibetan teacher, the great synthesizer
Tsong-Kha-Pa. Despite the influx of diverse streams of Buddhist
teaching at various times and from different parts of India,
Khotan and China, there persisted a singular unanimity regarding
Buddhavachana, the Word of Buddha. But whilst the Sangha
stagnated in India through loss of contact with lay people and
owing to its emphasis upon intellectual rigor to the neglect of
ethics, it was retarded in Tibet by its laxity in discipline.
This was in part due to divergences of practice in the various
lineages and in part due to a growing gap between theory and
practice under the harsh conditions of Tibetan life. The
political entanglements of the monasteries, undertaken in the
prolonged search for patrons and aggravated by the increasing
concern for wealth, power and prestige, contributed to a
pervasive corruption in self-discipline. Continuity of the
Buddhist tradition in Tibet had been ensured despite formidable
cultural and religious obstacles, radical differences in
language, significant alterations in Tibetan political modes and
ambivalent magical practices. The price paid had been
considerable laxity, distortion and inversion in the monastic
orders, whilst the threat of irreparable damage from within rose
in direct proportion to the diminution of external influence.
Tsong-Kha-Pa's
parents were blest by a variety of unusual dreams before his
birth. His mother dreamt that a statue of Avalokiteshvara as
huge as a mountain appeared before her and gradually diminished
in size until it entered her through the brahmanda or crown
opening. Tsong-Kha-Pa's father dreamt of Vajrapani, who sent a
vajra or lightning-bolt sceptre from his celestial realm into
his wife. These and other symbolic dreams indicated that
Tsong-Kha-Pa was the emanation of both Avalokiteshvara and
Manjushri. In time, he would be recognized as the boy who Buddha
had told Ananda would be reborn in Tibet as Sumati Kirti –
'glory of wisdom' – Losang Drakpa in Tibetan. When he was born
in the onion country of Amdo in eastern Tibet, an auspicious
star appeared in the heavenly vault. Choje Dondrup Rinchen,
Tsong-Kha-Pa's first teacher, was returning to Amdo from Lhasa
when Tsong-Kha-Pa was born. Divining the descent of an emanation
of Manjushri, he hurried back and presented sacred gifts to
Tsong-Kha-Pa's father. At the age of three Tsong-Kha-Pa took
layman's vows from Rolpay Dorje, the Fourth Karmapa, and then
entered into such profound communion with Vajrayana deities –
Heruka, Hevajra and Yamantaka – that he was ready to receive
the vows of a novice at the age of seven. Choje Dondrup Rinchen
then took charge of Tsong-Kha-Pa and watched over him until his
sixteenth year, when he traveled to the great cathedral in Lassa
to take the Bodhisattva vow before the image of Buddha.
Knowing that he
would never again return to Ado, Tsong-Kha-Pa accepted his first
teacher's parting advice to meditate on Yamantaka for continuity
of practice, Vajrapani for freedom from distraction, Manjushri
for wisdom and discrimination, and Amitayus for long life,
amongst others. Then he set out to master the teachings of all
the lineages. His travels would require a book merely to
catalogue, though the pattern they followed was simple: in every
case, he went to the best teachers of a particular school or
doctrine, or to those who alone knew a particular text or
treatise. As a little boy he went to Drikung Monastery, whose
head lama of the Kargyu Order imparted to him the teachings of
bodhichitta – the altruistic seed of Enlightenment –
mahamudra – the great seal of perfection – and medicine. By
the age of seventeen Tsong-Kha-Pa had become a proficient doctor
of medicine. Moving on to Chodra Chenpo Dewachen Monastery, he
rapidly learnt the Prajnaparamita Sutras and the works of
Maitreya, and by his nineteenth year he was renowned as a
scholar. He debated at Samye Monastery, received the Heruka
initiation at Zhalu and took his examinations in the
Prajnaparamita at Sakya. Then he met Rendawa Zhonnu Lodro, who
was to become a lifelong spiritual companion, and received from
him the essence of the Madhyamika or Middle Way philosophy. Here
he inaugurated a method which was to provide the foundation of
his reform. He became a disciple to Rendawa in some respects and
his teacher in others. His application of dialectics to the
guru-chela relationship eventually led to his recognition as the
undisputed master of all the lineages and teachings.
Taking up the works
of Chandrakirti – the Mahayana version of the philosophical
Abhidharma – of Vasubandhu and Dharmakirti, he began to teach
Buddhist philosophy. His reputation spread rapidly, and soon he
was invited to various monasteries to instruct senior monks in
the highest subtleties of the Buddhavachana. Whilst at Choday in
northern Tibet he was initiated into a number of tantric
practices. Upon his return to Lhasa he found an entire
delegation from Amdo waiting to plead with him to come home. He
felt that such a journey would interrupt his studies dedicated
to the welfare of all beings, and so he renounced the offer, but
he sent his mother a portrait of himself which spoke to her when
she opened it. Later, he refused an invitation to become
imperial tutor for the emperor of China. Journeying to Narthang,
he consulted the complete texts of the Kangyur and the Tengyur
and studied the treatises of Nagarjuna. Then he returned with
Rendawa to Sakya, where he finished his examinations.
Tsong-Kha-Pa had become a powerful dialectician, in large
measure because of his utter calm and fair-mindedness in the
midst of heated and intense debates. People were both fascinated
and awed by him, but in his presence they were soon put at ease.
His respectful and patient treatment of every sincere question
infused teaching and learning with a sanctified joy that
regenerated listeners and motivated them to uphold their vows
and persevere on the Path.
Although his
matchless intelligence and depth of mystical insight amazed
those who came into contact with him, his utter selflessness and
transparent morality demonstrated a seemingly effortless
translation of sublime ethics into the visible arena of daily
activities. This led many monks and laymen to recognize in
Tsong-Kha-Pa one of those great beings who choose their
incarnations for the sake of universal Enlightenment. When he
began to write at the age of thirty-two, many who had known him
only by reputation could benefit from his teachings. Tagtsang, a
monk and translator who had previously been critical of
Tsong-Kha-Pa's eclectic doctrines, was stunned by his Golden
Garland of Eloquent Teaching. Writing to Tsong-Kha-Pa, he
confessed, "As your sun of wisdom rises, my flower of
arrogance disappears." During this period Tsong-Kha-Pa was
ordained, received the teachings which had been preserved by the
lineage founded by Marpa, and undertook an extensive study of
the kalachakra tantra cycle, the heart of which is Shamballa
conceived as a spiritual, mental and physical centre of reality.
Though his outward movements can be traced for the remainder of
his life, his arcane practices and secret activities cannot. He
cultivated the super normal siddhis, including the meditation
wherein the body can be made to generate and radiate remarkable
amounts of heat. He travelled north and south from Lhasa to give
initiations, and also, with Rendawa, performed initiations on
Potala hill, where the palace of the Dalai Lamas would later be
built.
Tsong-Kha-Pa now
made a systematic study of the four levels of the Vajrayana,
involving deep understanding of the mysteries of Sarasvati, the
Black Manjushri, Manjushri Dharmachakra and the Guhyasamaja,
'king of tantras' He then entered upon an intensive retreat
during which he determined the course of the remainder of his
life. It is said that when he emerged from this retreat, he was
thereafter able to question Manjushri at will, consulting him
and receiving guidance from him in all important matters. From
this time onward Tsong-Kha-Pa alternated extended retreats with
his disciples, during which many mystic visions occurred, with
very specific meetings and religious activities. He assimilated,
for example, the Kadampa tradition founded by Atisha and made it
the basis of his own reform. When he met the Nyngma lama
Khenchen Namkha Gyaltsen, there was an instantaneous mutual
recognition. Khenchen saw Tsong-Kha-Pa as Manjushri, and
Tsong-Kha-Pa recognized him as Vajrapani. When Tsong-Kha-Pa
thought of going to India, Vajrapani advised against it, not
only because of the difficulties involved in such a journey, but
also because Tsong-Kha-Pa, with his mystic powers, would be of
greater service by remaining in Tibet. He did so and used the
time he would otherwise have spent in travels to write his great
lam-rim treatise, the Great Exposition on the Stages of the
Path.
Tsong-Kha-Pa took
the spirit of Nagarjuna's dialectic and applied it to Atisha's
teaching (which he felt expressed the methodology of Buddha) to
create the lam-rim teachings. A vision in which Maitreya
appeared confirmed his intuition. Beginning with Guru Yoga as
the basis for all spiritual growth and advancement, he explained
the path to Enlightenment in terms of gradual stages and
progressive awakenings. Such a conception, which subordinates
the radical methods of insight of the Vajrayana, requires a
balanced development of the whole individual and places
meditation on the foundation of morality. Integral to this
approach – a fusion of doctrine and method, theory and
practice – is a strict understanding of the disciplinary rules
for monks. Where self-mastery through self-restraint is ignored,
attempts to deepen insight are rapidly inverted or distorted
into psychic excesses. The growth of the whole being towards the
Bodhisattva goal requires a dedication to self-control in
thought, feeling, word and deed. When he completed this
Exposition, Sarasvati approved it and Manjushri told him that he
need not seek advice on the nature of reality, since his own
powers of insight – prajna – were sufficient for any task.
Shortly thereafter, Tsong-Kha-Pa entered into a full
understanding of shunyata.
By the time he was
forty Tsong-Kha-Pa was ready to devote all his time to teaching.
He visited the monastic centers of various orders and taught
every form of Buddhist practice. Having mastered all doctrines
and practices, he was able to insert his reform into each of the
orders without giving offence or generating resistance. Everyone
wanted to claim him as their own because he was the unexcelled
master of every discipline and he backed his words by his own
conduct – the quintessence of the method of upaya, skilful
means. In 1409 he realized one expression of his religious
reform by inaugurating the Great Prayer Festival at Lhasa in
which eight thousand monks participated. The twenty-one-day
event, which draws all the orders together, continues even at
present in Dharamsala under the auspices of the Dalai Lama. When
the festival ended, Tsong-Kha-Pa decided to remain in one place
and chose Dongri (Nomad Mountain) as the site for the monastery.
Called Ganden, the Tibetan word for Tushita, the celestial abode
of Maitreya, its construction was placed in the hands of Gendun
Drub, who would posthumously become the First Dalai Lama.
During his last
years Tsong-Kha-Pa composed many valuable commentaries on
various texts while continuing his teaching. In 1419 he was
invited to Drepung Monastery, where he taught the most advanced
disciples. One day he halted his discourse halfway through a
text, saying that he would continue another time. Everyone
present knew the significance of this act: to stop midway
through a cycle of teachings indicated the intention of resuming
the discourse with those who were worthy in a future
incarnation. He returned to Ganden and left it again only to
consecrate the ground for Sera Monastery. At the age of
sixty-two he gathered his chief disciples together, gave his
last instructions, assumed the lotus posture, passed into high
meditative states and ceased to breathe. After his funeral he
appeared to various disciples a number of times. Even his
closest disciples found it hard to believe that such a Great
Teacher had lived in their midst. He seemed to have spent his
whole life writing, so numerous were his treatises. But it also
seemed that he devoted himself exclusively to meditation, so
constant was his practice. Yet he spent his life in almost
ceaseless discourse to monks and disciples. He had done the work
of three exceptional men at one time, even if his most arcane
activities are left out of account.
Unlike many other
teachers, Tsong-Kha-Pa did not offer his own life as an example
to be emulated, for no one could hope to do so. Nonetheless, he
spoke of his life in terms of the various stages of study,
practice and attainment he had experienced, thus showing others
what can be done and enjoining them to take what they can use.
Advising his disciples to "seek transcendence first of
all", he wrote in The Three Principles of the Path:
By constant
meditation, your mind will let go
Of desires
even for life's successes,
And your aim,
day and night, will be emancipation.
Transcendence
without bodhichitta
Cannot yield
the supreme bliss
Of unexcelled
Enlightenment.
Therefore the
Bodhisattva conceives supreme bodhichitta.
Warning that efforts
at transcendence can easily get off track because residues of
ignorance, selfishness and preconception plague the aspirant at
every stage, Tsong-Kha-Pa set forth the inner spirit of the
Middle Way:
Appearance as
inevitably relative
And shunyata
as free of assertions –
When these
are understood as separate,
Buddha's
intent remains unknown.
When they are
simultaneous and not altered,
The mere
sight of relativity
Becomes sure
knowledge free of objective habits. . . .
While
appearance eradicates absolutism,
Shunyata
eliminates nihilism,
And you know
shunyata manifest as causality,
And are freed
from extremes in views.
Tsong-Kha-Pa held
that an individual was supremely privileged to have gained a
human form, from which alone the path to Enlightenment can be
entered. But that form has to be made ideally receptive to
spiritual growth, and this requires the cultivation of a
fundamental ethical sensitivity which is accurately translated
into moral practice. In addition, one has to take a positive
line of action regarding one's karmic inheritance through
self-purification and the restoration of vows broken in this and
in previous lives. One needs to meditate upon suffering as the
universal human condition – but not in terms of one's own
dissatisfactions and delusions – so that one can come to
understand whatever happens to oneself in light of the whole of
humanity.
All these
disciplines, which are taken up together and deepened by stages,
have as their pivot bodhichitta, the seed of Enlightenment
manifest as altruism.
Ever enhancing your
enlightened motive of bodhichitta is the mainstay of the path of
the supreme yana. It is the basis and foundation for the great
tide of altruistic conduct. Like an elixir which produces gold,
it turns everything into the two treasures of merit and insight,
forming a storehouse of merit gleaned from infinitely collected
virtues. Knowing this, the Bodhisattvas have held this supremely
precious bodhichitta as their innermost mental bond.
Cultivation of the
paramitas and meditation conjoined with one-pointedness, when
connected by a rigorous dialectical logic, can cut the grip of
Samsara. The unpracticed, however, will marvel at the
possibility of a total fusion of complete mental tranquility and
unlimited spiritual insight, but nothing less will be
successful.
Having reached this
union, meditate on the shunyata of empty space while absorbed in
one-pointed meditation, and meditate on the shunyata of illusion
when in the world. By doing this, your union of method and
insight will be perfecting the conduct of the Bodhisattvas. They
have made it their custom never to be content with partial
paths.
Tsong-Kha-Pa was
aware of the myriad ways in which one may drift away from
balanced practice. In his Letter of Practical Advice on Sutra
and Tantra, he warned a disciple and friend:
Suppose we were to
take as our foundation the self-deception of having only a
partial and intellectual understanding of the stages of the path
and then heard, thought and meditated on this basis. . . .
Despite our noble claims, I think the way our mind will probably
have been working will have been nothing other than aiming for
benefits in this life, or for certain pleasurable results of
cyclic existence to which we have given the name 'Emancipation',
or for some partial end for ourselves which is not Enlightenment
at all.
Tsong-Kha-Pa dared
to see why the path to Enlightenment is trodden by so few, and
he knew that even after the kaleidoscopic distractions and
self-rationalizing temptations of the world have been firmly set
aside, the difficulties of the path only begin to manifest
themselves. He knew in exact detail every possible pitfall along
the way, and yet he was not for an instant discouraged, either
for himself or in respect to humanity. He was firm in his faith
that any and every human being could attain Enlightenment if
only motive, persistence and renunciation of expectation were
combined. This indescribably noble and profound conviction was
as natural to him as breathing, and it is why he is considered
to be Tibet's greatest Bodhisattva.
When Tsong-Kha-Pa
and Rendawa first met, they became at once intimate spiritual
friends. Rendawa's pure response to Tsong-Kha-Pa has become the
mantram by which his blessing is sought by the sincere aspirant
and devotee:
Avalokiteshvara,
mighty treasure of immaculate love,
Manjushri,
lord of stainless knowledge,
Vajrapani,
destroyer of the demonic host,
O Je
Tsong-Kha-Pa, Losang Drakpa,
Crown jewel
of the sages of the Land of Snow,
Humbly I
request your blessing.
|