Procedimientos para el ciclo de la hospitalidad

In this first part of the chapter I will briefly set the context regarding the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and the relevance of the Gelugpa School for the institution of the Dalai Lamas. Following this, I will explain key theological terms and concepts that will help us to understand the basis for the reverence and respect for the Dalai Lamas which are rooted in mainstream Buddhist doctrine. The importance of explaining these elements will be evident while analysing the role of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama as a human being, as a religious practitioner and as the religious-political leader of Tibet. As Hugh Richardson affirms, ‘the one aspect of the national character that has most influenced their past and their present is the devotion to religion which dominates the thoughts and actions of every Tibetan’.145

Buddhism in the ‘Land of Snows’ and the ‘Three Great Religious Kings’

According to the Indian archaeologist V.N. Mistra, the first inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau, which covers 2.5 million square kilometres, can be traced as far as twenty thousand years ago. However, the Tibetan people have their own myth of origin where the most important religious figure in Tibet appears for the first time, the manifestation of the eternal compassion of the Buddha: Bodhisattva Chenrezi (Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit). The Fifth Dalai Lama explained how the Buddha, while lying down in the ‘lion posture’ before His entrance to Parinirvana, the complete experience of the Emptiness (Shunyata), said to Avalokiteshvara:

‘The kingdom of snows in the north is, at present, a kingdom of animals,’ the Buddha replied. ‘There is not even the name of human beings there…in the future O Bodhisattva, it will be converted by you. At first, having been reincarnated as a bodhisattva, protect the human world of our disciples…then gather them together by religion’.146

This gives the doctrinal basis for the conception the Tibetan people have of themselves as protected by Chenrezi which has both religious and political implications. Buddhism entered Tibet around the 7th century CE and its impact and political influence was due in

145 Hugh E. Richardson, Tibet and Its History (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 11. 146 Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (London: Atlantic Books, 2007), 12.

87 part to ‘the reverence and devotion of Tibet’s greatest kings toward the teaching and principles of Buddhism’.147

The legacy of the kings of Tibet is mainly the story of Songtsen Gampo, Trison Detsen and Ralpachen, known by the Tibetans as ‘the Three Religious Kings, Men of Power’.148 These kings incorporated the Buddhist tradition from China and India, the latter being the type of Buddhism that spread in Tibet after the Second Great Dharma King supported the study of Buddhism in Tibet by inviting great Indian scholars such as Padmasambava who was also a tantric master to come to Tibet. In addition, the king built two temples, the Jo-khang, which still is the most revered temple in Lhasa, and the

Ramoche. The Last Great Dharma King is remembered for his systematization of the study of Buddhism, which he worked on until he was murdered by his ministers.

The Adamantine Path

Tibetan Buddhism was established mainly due to the efforts of the kings previously presented as well as the way Buddhism presented a path of individual and social development through practical guidance and tantric techniques. This particular approach is known as Vajrayana, the ‘Adamantine Path’ toward liberation. The Sanskrit word

Vajra (translated in Tibetan as Do-rje) means diamond or thunderbolt, and it represents the everlasting power of the truth of Dharma which destroys the veils of ignorance. In the end, what ignorance covers is the true reality beyond every phenomena, action and thought, something that cannot be reached or escaped, represented in the term Sunyata,

or ‘Emptiness.’

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama argues that the ‘absence of independent existence is ultimate nature—shunyata149. Shunyata is there. Phenomena that exist in dependence on other factors are devoid of an independent self’.150 Here we can see one way to explain what Sunyata means: interdependence or dependent origination. It is the conditioned arising of everything and everyone, where one cannot identify an independent quality that arises out of no previous causes and conditions. This is not to say that everything is

147 Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, Buddhist Civilization in Tibet (London: Routledge and Kagan Paul, 1987), 26.

148 Bell, Tibet: Past and Present, 29. 149 Alternate spelling of Sunyata.

150 Rajiv Mehrotra, All You Ever Wanted to Know from His Holiness The Dalai Lama on Happiness, Life, Living, and Much More (London: Hay House, 2009), 94- 95.

88 non-existent (an idea which can fall into nihilism) but to understand that while all phenomena do exist, their existence is the consequence of a complex relationship of causes and conditions. The Dalai Lama explains,

Emptiness is not like being a seed, not like space as a basis for all the planets and stars—not that kind. Emptiness in the sense of shunyata is explained on the basis of something that exists that has a connection with reality. Any phenomenon has emptiness as its own nature, and any phenomenon is pervaded by its own nature, emptiness, which is the absence of its true existence.151

Furthermore, in the sutra Kasyapaparivarta Sutra, Bodhisattva Manjushri explains this nature of emptiness which cannot be taken as an object by itself, as follows:

It is not Kasyapa, that emptiness leads to the annihilation of personhood; persons themselves are empty and emptiness itself is empty, absolutely empty, empty in the past, empty in the future, empty in the present. You must rely, Kasyapa, on emptiness, not on the person. However, those, Kasyapa, who rely on emptiness with an objectification of emptiness I speak of as lost and vanished from this teaching.152

In sum, the truth of emptiness dispels and destroys the illusory world and the continuous cycle of suffering (Samsara). Accordingly, Sangarakshita explains that ‘vajra, literally the thunderbolt or diamond, is the most widely current –Tantric synonym for sunyata’.153 During meditation, the Vajra is used as an instrument, along with the bell, and represents ‘the active principle, the means toward enlightenment and the means of conversion, thus the actual Buddha manifestation, while the bell represent the Perfection of Wisdom known as the Void (sunyata)’.154 Thus, Tibetan Buddhism developed many rituals that lead to the understanding of the intrinsic nature of reality so that emotions such as craving, hatred and anger could be controlled, conquered and finally transcended. The most notable feature is the use of tantric techniques which

151 Mehrotra, All You Ever Wanted to Know from His Holiness The Dalai Lama on Happiness, Life, Living, and Much More, 120.

152 ‘Kasyapaparivarta Sutra’ in Buddhist Scriptures, Donald López, ed. (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 353.

153 Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Methods Through the Ages, 7th. Ed. (Glasgow: Windhorse Publications, 1993), 418.

154 David L. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors

89 came from India and, more specifically, with the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava. Sangharakshita argues that ‘the Tantra represents, among the Mahayana schools, the Faculty of Vigour, traditionally defined as consisting in the maintenance and production of wholesome, states of mind’.155 Therefore, the practice of meditation is stressed in Tibetan Buddhism a bit more than the study of doctrine, although this is the basis of all meditation. Thus, the practice of visualizations and recitations of sacred syllables that invoke or express the divine manifestations of Buddha’s nature—called mantras—are very important for Tibetan Buddhists.

The Gelugpa School and the Rise of the Dalai Lamas

The most influential schools of Buddhism developed in Tibet were the Nyingma, Kadam, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelugpa. These schools were founded by Indian masters who were invited to Tibet during the first spreading of the Dharma with the Great Kings as well as by other Indian teachers who were followed by Tibetan in some regions. As a consequence, ‘these religious orders grew to dominate Tibetan society as the country assumed the essential form that it would retain for a millennium: an inward-looking religious state’.156 For the purposes of this thesis, I will concentrate in explaining the characteristics of the GelugpaSchool from which the Dalai Lamas lineage arose.

The Gelugpa School was founded by the celebrated scholar Tsongkhapa Lobzang Trapga under the premise that further development in the monastic rule and new stress on the vinaya had to be implemented. Tsonkhapa’s interests in the monastic discipline and the doctrine of Sunyata in Mahayana treatises led him to synthesize the mainstream Buddhist ideas with the tantric tradition. He received instruction on the

Madhyamika and Abhiddharma teachings with Redawa Zhonnu Lodro of the Sakya School and tantric instruction from Kyungpo Lhepa. Therefore, ‘Tsongkhapa followed the Prasangika Madhyamaka teachings and the New Translation Tantras. The type of practice he emphasized was also deeply influenced by the style of the old Kadam school founded by Atisa in Tibet’.157

Thus, Tsongkhapa revitalized monastic Buddhism in Tibet and founded the Ganden monastery in 1409 which, along with the Drepung and Sera monasteries,

155 Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism, 407. 156 Laird, The Story of Tibet, 73.

90 became one of the three most important monasteries in Tibet, known as the ‘Three Seats’, when the Gelugpas became the dominant school. In these centres of study, the monks continued the receive the basic teachings of Tsonkhapa that, ‘according to his vision, the doctrine of emptiness, if properly understood, did not invalidate ethical norms, logic, or the doctrine of dependent co-arising’.158 Tülku Thondup Rinpoche summarizes this view as follows:

The Gelugpas stress the teaching on interdependent arising to prove that all things are empty and free for conceptualization. According to the doctrine of interdependent arising, all phenomena are without self-nature and arise because of mutually interdependent causes and conditions. Thus phenomena are empty in that they lack self-nature and do not function independently of one another.159

This further development of Tibetan Buddhism was about to have another major revolution: the rise of the Dalai Lamas. The honorific name ‘Dalai Lama’ was given by the Mongolian Emperor Altan Khan in 1578 to Sonyam Gyatso. In fact, rather than a title, the ‘Dalai Lama’ is a translation of ‘Sonam’ (merit) and ‘Gyatso’ (ocean) from Tibetan to Mongolian. The most common meaning given to the name ‘Dalai Lama’ is ‘Ocean of Wisdom’, although the full Mongolian name is ‘the wonderful Vajradhara, good splendid meritious Ocean’.160

The term ‘Lama’ refers to a reincarnated teacher, so the Dalai Lama refers to a being who has achieved such a great amount of meritorious Karma, as wide as the ocean, that he is able to choose to be reborn again to teach the Dharma and help others to overcome suffering. Sonam Gyatso is considered the Third Dalai Lama because he and his followers ‘gave the name posthumously to Dge ‘dun (Gendun) rgya mtsho and Dge ‘dungrup, a student of the great scholar Tshong khapa, saying that each later Dalai Lama was the reincarnation of the earlier’.161

158 Cush, Buddhism, 284.

159 Thondup Rinpoche, Buddhist Civilization in Tibet, 62. 160 Laird, The Story of Tibet, 142.

161 Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Robert E. Buswell (New York, Thomson & Gale, vol.1, 2004), s.v. ‘Dalai Lama’

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