Buddhist History after the Buddha

An Excerpt from Guru Rinpoché
His Life and Times
By Ngawang Zangpo

About This Title

This book recounts Guru Rinpoche’s historic visit to Tibet and explains his continuing significance to Buddhists. Through a series of historical texts written by prominent Tibetan Buddhist masters, this book recounts the life and legacy of Padmasambhava, The Lotus-Born, better known as Guru Rinpoche. Credited with transmitting Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century CE during the last century of the Tibetan Empire, Guru Rinpoche fostered radical changes to Tibet, marking historic transformations in the country’s religious and political position. Having converted Tibet into a largely Buddhist society, Guru Rinpoche’s influence remains a central force in Tibetan identity and practice today.

Guru Rinpoché offers an account of his life through four distinct accounts, including:

• A biography by Jamgon Kongtrul
• A biography by Dorje Tso from a revelation by Sera Khandro
• An Indian version of his life by Tarnata
• The Bön version of his life by Jamyong Kyentse Wongpo

In addition, the book includes a selection of supplications and Buddhist poetry praising the Lotus-Born master, Guru Rinpoche.

Buddhist History after the Buddha

Buddhas rarely appear in this world; it is said that, as has been the case with our Buddha Shakyamuni, a buddha’s life and teaching influence human history for centuries. Buddhas make history, they do not teach it. The Buddha’s teaching, both in content and in style, must be taken into account if we are to understand “Buddhist history” after the Buddha.

To begin, we must face a curious fact: Not only did the Buddha not teach history, the collection of written works of hundreds of Indian Buddhist saints and scholars contains not one work we could call history. The list of writers is impressive, including Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Shantidéva, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti, and so many undisputed masters of Buddhism’s words and meanings. Did any write a history of Buddhism or of the spread of Buddhism throughout India and Asia? While we cannot affirm that they did not, we can point out that a history text does not number among the thousand of their works which Tibetans translated and preserved. Further, among the many categories of writing included in the Tibetans’ Collection of Writings of Indian Buddhist Masters, we find such relatively mundane subjects as astrology, art, architecture, poetry, and medicine, but not history.

What we call “Buddhist history” was definitely not the concern of the greats of Indian Buddhism. It could be argued that they preserved the history of the Buddhist monastic order’s origins, but this was more of a legal than a historical project, as the vows’ inception and evolution set vital precedents for those who accepted the Buddha’s ordinations. Indian Buddhist writers wrote of the Buddha’s life and past lives, but not of the spread and development of their religion. The stories of important masters were retold, but as tales of mystery and wonder, outside the bounds of verifiable history. The Lives of the 84 Great Accomplished Masters, for example, is an important work for students of tantra to read and contemplate, but should not be construed as objective history.

Where do we learn of Indian Buddhist history? In part, from the Tibetans: for example, Butön’s The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet, Gö Lotsawa’s Blue Annals, or Taranata’s History of Indian Buddhism. Yet these venerable sources date from 1322, 1476, and and 1608, respectively, at least eighteen centuries after the Buddha’s life. Further, these writers could not draw from writings by Marpa or others who traveled to India on numerous occasions and who lived for many years there. Like their Indian mentors, the great, early Tibetan masters did not write history, neither of the Buddhist India they visited nor of their native land.

The answer to the question of who wrote accounts of India is revealing: it was the Chinese, in the persons of visiting monks whose records of what they witnessed are still used as the basis for modern historians’ portrayal of some aspects of ancient Buddhist India (Fa-hsien traveled 399–414; Sung-yun and Hwei-sang, 518–521; and Hsuan-Tsang, 629–645).

It seems likely to me that the Tibetans caught the history bug not from their Indian spiritual masters, who appear immune to it, but much later, from long co-habitation with the Chinese. A century before Guru Rinpoché’s visit, the Tibetans received from India a new calendar (with a sevenday week, and a twelve-month lunar year) and an alphabet. What should have resulted was a clear record of those epic times, but this is far from the case. Most later Tibetan historians, who were limited by language to sifting through paltry Tibetan sources alone, came up with wildly differing dates for key events in ancient Tibetan history. For example, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Regent (Dési San-gyé Gyatso, 1653-1705) records Guru Rinpoché’s departure from Tibet in 804, six years before Dudjom Rinpoché has him arrive and sixty years before the same author dates his leaving!

To know what happened in eighth or ninth century international relations, we should probably ask the Chinese. I do not say this from favoritism, but in the thought that the Chinese at the time kept clear records of their very troublesome neighbors to whom they sent gifts and princesses, by whom they were invaded, and with whom they signed peace accords. The Chinese people have been assiduous historians longer than any people who still keep a collective memory alive. It might be said that there is never a good time to engage the Chinese in a historical debate, as some Tibetans still try to do. It’s like accepting a challenge to play basketball against the Dream Team. (While the Chinese strength, meticulous historical records, is the Tibetans’ weakness, the roles are reversed when discussing the present—the Tibetan people have little difficulty in speaking unequivocally about their present wishes, whereas the Chinese government is understandably unwilling to engage in an exploration of the will of its people.)

The point here is that, for history as we know it, we must leave the pure realms of Great Way and tantric Buddhism. Tibetans were keen students of Indian Buddhism but poor students of history. Thus, when we read most Tibetans’ accounts of the history of Indian Buddhism, or of their own Buddhist history, we should first recall that even the most impartial Tibetan Buddhist writer was handicapped by a lack of an Indian Buddhist model for his/her work. Such histories as Tibetan writers proposed to write did not belong, strictly speaking, to traditional Buddhist composition. Their models came from the secular, material world of empires and bureaucrats. Second, and conversely, the empires they wrote to validate, that of Tibetan church institutions, required a “Buddhist,” thus mythic, flavor outside the confines of secular history. What resulted was a blend of poor history and poor Buddhism that did little service to either. Tibetan history, particularly that of the early, imperial, era, was purified and Buddha-fied.

To gauge how prevalent mythic histories are among Tibetan works, we can read a modern non-Buddhist scholar, Samten Karmay, who felt he had to define the term “history” to his Tibetan readership at the outset of one of his books:

In general, what we call “history” is an individual’s unbiased and impartial, precise written account of what could be objectively seen or heard of the life of the common people or the state during his/her own lifetime. Even without detailed research, we can believe or trust such written histories. On the other hand, we might gather many books claiming to be “history” or “the genealogy of kings,” which record what occurred many hundreds of years before [their composition], yet it is difficult for us to treat them other than subjects of longterm study, analyzing what is true or false in their accounts.

Thus, among our Tibetan historical records, there are two kinds of material. The first are records that date before the 10th century: inscriptions on stone pillars erected during the lifetimes of [Tibetan] rulers, the same rulers’ major and minor edicts, and the ancient written accounts of that time. Examples of these ancient accounts are the Chinese imperial annals,4 old records in early Tibetan script recently unearthed from what is now called Dunhuang, and wooden inscriptions called tram-shing, found near that location.

The second [kind of historical material] are the royal genealogies and Buddhist histories written in the 11th century or, more often, thereafter. Among these can be found some reliable royal genealogies, such as The Buddhist History of Lho-trak, commonly known as Feast for the Wise, written in 1564 by the master scholar Pawo Tsouk-lak Treng-wa (1504–1566). Modern Tibetan historians the world over recognize this work as authoritative. The reasons for this are as follows: The author did not overly repeat the blend of oral and written histories found in previous Buddhist histories. For his account of ancient Tibetan history, he made precise copies of the stone inscriptions that he himself read. Further, he went to Samyé Monastery, where he read and copied royal edicts that he found in old library collections, thus providing proof [for his historical account]. (A Brief Royal Genealogy of the Ruler, Son of Heaven, Darma, and His Heirs, pp. 1–3)

Karmay’s definition of history seems obvious to us, but evidently not to his readership, which has rarely been treated to “pure” historical writing. We could apply Taranata’s words above, written on the subject of the Buddha’s life, to any objective history: “For an account of the [Buddha’s] enlightened deeds that appeared in common to all who lived close-by at the time the Buddha lived in the world, including such beings as those who harbored wrong views, those who practiced non-Buddhist religions, or even animals, we must consult the tradition of the Common Way, the tradition of the Listeners.” What the followers of the Lesser Way (and “pure” historians of any time) have that followers of the Great Way and tantra lack is a belief in the substantial reality of the world and of consciousness. Persons with modern education usually graduate with a similar worldview—firm belief in what the Lesser Way calls “indivisible atomic particles,” the building blocks of the material world, and in “instants of consciousness,” the building blocks of the individual self. Such beliefs lead to reliable histories, but not to enlightenment as understood by higher forms of Buddhism. Thus the stunning absence of historical writing among the scholars and meditations masters of Indian Buddhism and the clumsiness of most Tibetan Buddhist masters who set about writing a non-Buddhist genre—history—when their spiritual training naturally led them into the realms of myth and legend.

One of the main arenas where the conflicting priorities of Buddhism and history collide in Tibetan writing is the “treasure texts,” source of many accounts of Guru Rinpoché’s life and of the early Tibetan kings. Treasure texts are said to have been concealed by Guru Rinpoché and his main disciples, and are revealed at opportune moments by destined individuals, for the benefit of Guru Rinpoché’s followers. The texts, and their intended readership, belong entirely to Great Way or tantric Buddhism, spiritual paths that have little love of history-for-history’s sake. If the Buddha did not come into the world to teach geography or history, the same could be said for the second Buddha, Guru Rinpoché. If we read the treasure texts as Great Way or tantric Buddhist literature, there seems to be little reason to expect them to conform to the Lesser Way’s version of history. In fact, by all logic, we should expect them to stand alongside the tantras or the Flower Ornament Discourse in style and content. To tantric Buddhists, it makes little sense to imagine that Guru Rinpoché concealed treasure texts with the intent that his followers study early Tibetan history. It would be more consistent with Buddhist texts throughout the ages to consider his treasure texts as instruction along the path to enlightenment pertinent to the time of his readers, but not necessarily faithful to the facts of history. Why should Guru Rinpoché have written any differently than all great Indian Buddhist masters? Like them, his only priority was to help others to enlightenment.

Attempts to read treasure texts not as Buddhist texts but as historical documents surely lead the reader astray. Such is the case of Professor F. A. Bischoff in his essay, “Padmasambhava est-il un personnage historique? [Is Guru Rinpoché a historical figure?].” He takes as his point of departure The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, translated into French (as Le Dict de Padma) in 1912 by Gustave-Charles Toussaint. The original Tibetan book is a treasure text revealed by a Tibetan master named Orgyen Lingpa in the mid-fourteenth century, six centuries after Guru Rinpoché left Tibet. On examining the content of this work, Bischoff finds little justification for belief that Padmasambhava ever existed. One can hardly blame him, since the text in question clearly belongs to tantric Buddhism and is not intended as history. The text recounts both Indian Buddhist history and early Tibetan history with precisely the same point: to show how Guru Rinpoché was present at each major event, or was a student of each major master, including Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and close disciple. This is plainly not history, but it is tantric Buddhism. Tibetans have enjoyed this text since its recovery until today and retain from their reading the idea that Guru Rinpoché, their refuge, first steeped himself in the best of Buddhism in the land of its birth, then infused Tibet from its Buddhist infancy with his enlightened influence. That message frees the reader from historical partiality; it refurbishes a land anchored in earthbound human history as a pure land of the second Buddha. Guru Rinpoché said that he would leave a treasure text of his life story for each generation (in this book, I have included a translation of one recovered in the twentieth century). These “life stories” are legends-to-live-by, renewals of the relationship between the Tibetan people and their primary spiritual master.

But are these autobiographies history? No, not by any reasonable definition of that term. Do we believe these stories? Yes, just as faithfully as Buddhists of the Great Way believe the Buddha Shakyamuni descended from the heavens to demonstrate enlightenment in the world and just as they believe that the principal texts of the Great Way and of tantra were retrieved from the lands of gods, nagas, non-human spirits, or invisible human kingdoms, such as Shambhala. Again, as Taranata stated, “The Great Way is supreme for many reasons: in general, the Great Way is wide-ranging, it is the domain of inconceivable wisdom, it appears within the experience of sublime disciples, it constitutes the [Buddha’s] life story of great mystery, and there are many levels within the Great Way itself.” Yet, as much as it is our chosen spiritual path, we enter its domain of inconceivable wisdom in the knowledge that it does not represent a basis for the writing of human history. Tantra and treasure texts share the same territory as the Great Way; for Buddhists, to read them as historical documents is pointless.

In conclusion, the Buddha’s teaching did not emphasize history and its spirit has always been considered much more important than its words. The Buddha’s words themselves are meant to be weighed and measured according to specific criteria, not always taken literally. Much of the Buddhist path beyond its first steps is not grounded in human history, but in a universal space and in timelessness. For reasons we can only speculate upon, the great Indian Buddhist masters do not appear to have lifted their prolific pens to write secular or religious histories. In Tibet, Buddhist “histories” were written, but few are acceptable as history; treasure texts were revealed and sometimes are mistaken for history. At their best, treasure texts are authentic tantric Buddhist teachings; they rewrote the story of Tibet’s kings and their adoption of Buddhism for reasons other than setting any objective, historical record straight. In the next sections, we will see that a clear picture of Guru Rinpoché’s era and some of his vital contributions to Tibet can be better appreciated outside an exclusively Buddhist mythic view.

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