BRIEF
INTRODUCTION TO BASIC CONCEPTS OF "TIBETAN" BUDDHISM
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MAGIC
AND THE SUPERNATURAL IN TIBETAN BUDDHISM
The religious practices found in the Tibetan cultural world, accepted
by and even conducted by the monastic orders, include the incantation
of mystic, magical formulas, the exorcism and destruction of demons,
divination, auguries, oracles, and symbolic sacrifice and ransom
-- aspects associated with Shamanism. It is this element within
Tibetan Buddhism of magic and the supernatural, so remote from the
original teachings and practices of Buddhism, that has led to its
designation as Lamaism, as if it were a separate religion or at
least a separate offshoot of the original faith. In attempting to
account for these apparent contradictions, scholars have sought
to identify the sources of these seeming divergences from what can
be claimed as the pure, original Buddhist teachings.
Buddhism
was a foreign import into Tibet, but Tibet made Buddhism its own,
and that encompassing system of beliefs and practices known as Tibetan
Buddhism can only be understood in the full context of the country,
its history, its society, and its indigenous religious and cultural
practices. It is also necessary to consider particular religious
currents (i.e., Tantrism) within Buddhism that ultimately affected
its form in Tibet.
At
the core of Buddhist teachings are the four noble truths, explaining
the nature and cause of suffering and the way to enlightenment:
a focused approach that makes no mention of a creator and that seems
in our contemporary world more a philosophy -- a perspective on
reality -- and a guide to living, than a religion. Yet, although
Tibetan Buddhism is based on those core teachings, it includes practices
that extend into the supernatural realm, such as defense against
omnipresent evil spirits. Thus the religion seems almost split into
two paradoxical factions: the spiritual path to enlightenment, and
rituals of protection against the hosts of evil. And although the
original teachings of the Buddha do not mention a creator or other
deities, Tibetan Buddhism embraces a vast pantheon of divinities.
These
supramundane beings derive from the intersection of many sources
and influences, both native and external. Only a general survey
of this complex subject can be given here.
Shakyamuni,
which was the Buddha's family name, was born in a small Indian state
in what is now southern Nepal, although the present nation of Nepal
did not come into existence until the late eighteenth century. He
lived in the context of Indian culture and religion, and it was
in India that Buddhism took root -- the original Buddhist stronghold.
In its earliest, and some argue its purist or most authentic form,
Buddhism was nontheistic, keeping its focus on a way of thought
and a conduct of life that would release human beings from inevitable
suffering. A basic premise of Buddhism is that neither the Buddha
nor any divine being interferes in human life, or acts as a savior
or intercedes as a saint might do. Rather, such beings teach, expound
the Dharma (law), and show the way.
The
concept of karma is fundamental to Buddhism. It is based on the
premise of the inexorable relation of cause and effect: in familiar
Western terms, you reap what you have sown. Your own actions, rather
than the decision of a divine being who sits in judgment, or the
intercession of any god, determine what will become of you.
Against
its Hindu background, Buddhism has sometimes been seen as a reform
movement analogous to the Protestant Reformation, an analogy that
perhaps should not be stretched too far, and it has even been considered
a revolutionary movement. Yet from its inception, and in the course
of its subsequent development for many centuries, Buddhism was affected
by the inevitable influence of its Hindu context, even as it was
a reaction against the mother culture and religion. The Mahayana
movement that flourished in the Buddhist universities of eastern
India absorbed Hindu elements. These sources, Hindu and Buddhist,
became interwoven and were the matrix for the later development,
Vajrayana. Tantric texts depict the defeat of Hindu deities, most
importantly the great god Shiva, by the Bodhisattva warrior, Vajrapani;
the vanquished Hindu gods were converted, pledged allegiance to
Buddhism, and were renamed and incorporated into the Buddhist structure.
And tantric texts introduced yet other gods, such as Mahakala, who
although one of the most important tantric deities in Tibetan Buddhism,
has an ancient origin in Indian cults.
With
the further development of Mahayana, and its cult of Bodhisattvas
(whose numbers multiplied, along with the Buddhas with whom they
were often paired), the pantheon expanded. Interweaving and building
on these influences, introducing and absorbing yet more deities,
Buddhism, like a living organism, continued to evolve, and the form
that we would come to know as "Tibetan" grew increasingly
labyrinthine.
Even
that is not the end of the story. After Buddhism was first introduced
into Tibet in the seventh century C.E., where it encountered a native
culture, a struggle ensued between the new religion and the ancient,
indigenous one. Ultimately and inevitably, Buddhism was influenced
by that which it came to replace. This complex interaction developed
into mutual adaptation, and the native traditions added their complement
of gods to a growing Buddhist pantheon of deities and supramundane
beings. A century after that first introduction, a Tibetan king
summoned Padmasambhava, a mystic eighth-century yogin from an area
northwest of India, now thought to be Pakistan's Swat valley, to
establish the primacy of the new religion: this is known as the
"first diffusion" of Buddhism in Tibet. Padmasambhava,
also known as Guru Rinpoche, is honored and revered throughout the
Tibetan cultural world, and even considered a second Buddha by followers
of the Nyingma-pa sect. According to legend, this legendary master
battled with and successfully overcame malevolent and hostile spirits,
including the indigenous Tibetan gods, and bound them over with
vows to serve the new faith. The old gods, former enemies, became
champions of Buddhism; they joined the pantheon, swelling its prodigious
array of deities and supernatural beings. Yet that, too, was not
yet the end of the story.
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