David B. Gray Santa Clara University
A key figUre in the history of Tibetan Buddhism is Tsongkhapa (1357–
1419 Ce), the great scholar-practitioner who founded the geluk (dge lugs) order of Tibetan Buddhism. He is a somewhat anomalous figure in Western scholarship who remains widely known yet poorly under-stood. His is a name known by those who have even a casual familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism. While many, although by no means all, of his numerous works have been translated and studied in the West, his bi-ographies remain untranslated, leaving few resources for the study of his life and works for those who do not read Tibetan.1
This situation is partly due to a stereotype of Tsongkhapa as a conservative scholar primarily interested in the reformation of the conduct of the monastic community. This view, which originated in Tibet and has been transmitted to the Western scholarly world, per-haps has led to what might be termed an imbalanced state of the field of Tsongkhapa’s life and works. While his more scholastic works on Buddhist philosophy and doctrine have received considerable study, his works on tantra, and his biographies, have received much less attention.
in this paper, i will address this stereotype by exploring the common conception of Tsongkhapa as an accomplished scholar who was less than accomplished in the vital arena of religious practice. This, in turn, will lead into the topic of the paper, which is Tsongkhapa’s own writing on the proper qualifications of a commentator on the tantras, which points to the key issue of the claims to authority that were made by key figures such as Tsongkhapa. These claims played a major role in the legitimation of the traditions that were developing in Tibet during this time period.
The view of Tsongkhapa as a conservative reformer is not incorrect, although it is, arguably, a partial view of his life and work. Tsongkhapa was best known in Tibet for his works in Tibetan philosophy. He was deeply concerned with the dissolute lifestyles of many of the monks of his time, and was dedicated to reforming monasticism. He was famous in his time for his “celebrated rehearsal of the practice of the monastic code, or Vinaya, in 1402.”2 it is for this reason that geoffrey Samuel chose to highlight Tsongkhapa as an exemplar of the “clerical” mode of Tibetan Buddhism.3
in addition to his notable activities as a scholar and reformer, Tsongkhapa was also deeply engaged in tantric practices and experi-enced a number of visions. However, he was not widely known as a yogī. in fact, he seems to have developed a somewhat contrary reputa-tion as a solid scholar who was not immune to missteps in the complex world of advanced tantric yogic praxis.
Tsongkhapa, like many Tibetan Buddhists of his time, was conser-vative in the sense that he saw spiritual authority as located, gener-ally speaking, in the past and in india, emanating thence in lineages that connected contemporary Tibetans with great indian masters such as Śākyamuni Buddha and the mahāsiddha Nāropa. This is not to say that Tibetans slavishly imitated indian paradigms; during what ronald Davidson has termed the “Tibetan renaissance,” spanning from the late tenth through fourteenth centuries, Tibetans translated and as-similated a vast amount of religious literature and practices from india and began the process of indigenizing it, opening it to “a specifically Tibetan articulation.”4
Tsongkhapa was one of several Tibetans of his time who managed to achieve a convincing synthesis of the received teachings, such that he came to be seen (retrospectively) as the founder of a new tradition, the geluk. yet he himself was deeply dedicated to the great masters of india. Tsongkhapa, like other contemporary Tibetan practitioners, was the recipient of numerous transmissions of lineages deriving from the mahāsiddhas. Tsongkhapa saw india as the locus of spiritual author-ity, and like Tibetans of previous generations, he sought to travel to india to personally approach this source. However, Tsongkhapa was living in what was then still a new era in the history of Buddhism, an era in which pilgrimage to india was no longer safe or worthwhile for Buddhists, due to the destruction of the major centers of Buddhist learning there.5
His biographies relate that, during his thirty-ninth year, Tsong-khapa had been staying at Lhodrak Drawo Monastery at the invitation of the Nying-ma Lama Lhodrak Namka gyaltsen (lho brag nam mkha’
rgyal mtshan), where he was receiving teachings from this lama. While there, he gave rise to a strong desire to travel to india to meet with the mahāsiddhas Nāgabodhi and Maitrīpa. The Nying-ma Khenchen had the ability to communicate with the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi and con-sulted him on this issue. Vajrapāṇi wisely dissuaded Tsongkhapa from making this trip, which, by the late fourteenth century, would have been extremely dangerous, given the fact that by this time all of the major Buddhist sites in North india had been destroyed.
instead, Tsongkhapa and his entourage went on pilgrimage to Tsari Mountain, a sacred site in southeastern Tibet. While on pilgrimage at Tsari Mountain, Tsongkhapa refrained from drinking consecrated beer, apparently out of concern that this would be a violation of his monastic vows. As a result, the ḍākinīs who dwell there afflicted him with sharp pains in his feet, which were not relieved until he propitiated them.
A succinct account of this event is related by Tsongkhapa’s disciple khedrup Jay, in the short biography Haven of Faith that is positioned, in most editions, at beginning of the first volume of Tsongkhapa’s Collected Works.6 This work relates Tsongkhapa’s visit to Mt. Tsari as follows:
Then he arrived with more than thirty masters at the great Tsari.7 He stayed for a few days, and presented tea to the retreatants. Seeing the mountain, he performed the Saṃvara self-initiation and so forth, and many wonderful signs appeared. When he arrived at the pass that approached Tsari, he thought that even at this seat (gnas, pīṭha) he would not engage in the gaṇacakra [rite]8 with the inner offering.9 As a result, he immediately had a sudden sharp pain in one of his feet.
Arising as Mahākāla, he performed a Saṃvara gaṇacakra together with the inner offering. As soon as the gaṇacakra was dismissed, he immediately recovered without any pain.10
This story depicts a misstep in tantric praxis, in which Tsongkhapa, apparently out of concern for the maintenance of his monastic vows, refrained from performing an essential ritual step in highly charged environment of Tsari Mountain, widely believed by Tibetans to be the Cāritra pīṭha of the Yoginī tantric systems.11 it is a misstep that had a painful consequence, but one that was fortunately easily relieved by the correction of the ritual omission.
This story was very well known; it was related in Tsongkhapa’s biographies,12 and was retold by later scholars such as the Druk-pa kagyü master Padma dkar-po (1527–1592 Ce).13 And as Toni Huber has brought to our attention, the story is retold by the contemporary Druk-pa kagyü yogīs who practice advanced tantric meditative prac-tices in the vicinity of Tsari Mountain in order to illustrate the power of site and the devotional attitude needed to safely approach it.14
i bring up this story not to disparage Tsongkhapa or cast doubt on his qualifications for composing a commentary on the Cakrasaṃvara-tantra. Such a judgment is not mine to make, nor is it one that i person-ally hold. But i bring it up to illustrate the caricature of Tsongkhapa that seems to have originated in Tibet, reinforced by the telling and retelling of this story, which portrays him as a somewhat stodgy and spiritually uninspired scholar who is more concerned with ethical co-nundrums (should a monk consume an alcoholic sacrament?) than the conduct appropriate to the consecrated environment of the ḍākinīs. in other words, he is portrayed as learned but not fully realized.
i begin with this story because it calls to mind an important dis-tinction made in Tibetan religious discourse, that between the scholar (mkhas pa) and practitioner (grub pa). Here, Tsongkhapa fills the role of the scholar, whose persistent adherence to discursive thought patterns lands him in trouble when he enters the world of advanced tantric practice, where discursive thought is problematic and must ul-timately be abandoned. This is an important distinction, which also calls to mind more general distinctions, such as between practice and knowledge. This latter category is highlighted in the Tibetan tradition in a fashion that is particularly meaningful here, via the distinction between the ordinary knowledge of a scholar, shes-pa, and the gnosis that ideally results from practice, ye-shes.
But while Tsongkhapa’s achievements as a scholar were consider-able, he cannot simply be pigeonholed as a scholar. This is in fact a mis-characterization, as it fails to take into account his rich visionary life,15 as well as his four-year and one-year retreats at Ölka Chölung (‘ol kha chos lung).16 yet his characterization as a scholar who faced challenges in the arena of tantric practice brings up the important question of the requisite qualifications as a commentator on the tantras.
The question of the requisite qualifications of a tantric commenta-tor is among the many fascinating issues that Tsongkhapa addresses in his extensive commentary on the Cakrasaṃvara. This work, titled the
Complete Illumination of the Hidden Meaning (sbas don kun gsal), is one of his mature works.17 At some point during his sixty-third year, circa 1418 or 1419 Ce when he was at the peak of his teaching career as well as the end of his life, Tsongkhapa taught his lecture series that would be re-corded as his Complete Illumination of the Hidden Meaning commentary.18 in his introduction to this work, Tsongkhapa asks, and answers, a very important question, namely the basis of tantric commentary.
On what authoritative sources should the commentator depend? He broaches, and answers, this question as follows:
in general, in explaining root tantras that are abridged from extensive tantras, on what should one rely? it is said that there are three meth-ods [for doing this]. in the Commentary Praising Saṃvara, [Vajrapāṇi]
stated that [the abridged tantra’s import] should be realized, for the sake of those who have not had the good fortune of hearing the very extensive root tantra, through reliance upon other tantras which collect the profound adamantine expressions19 of the tantras, whose teachings have been collected from the extensive tantra, or the com-mentaries of bodhisattvas, or the instructions of the guru. The first type includes explanations that rely on other explanatory tantras that were abridged from the extensive original tantra (āditantra).
The second type included explanations that rely on the commentar-ies of bodhisattvas, like the Commentary Praising Saṃvara. The third type includes explanations depending on the personal instructions of those like Lūipa, Kānhapa and Ghaṇṭāpa, who are like the noble master and his students. Therefore, it is not the intention of the bodhisattvas that you should rely only on their commentaries.20
in addressing this question, Tsongkhapa turned to, and paraphrased, a famous commentary on the Cakrasaṃvara-tantra by Vajrapāṇi, which is one of the three “bodhisattva commentaries” on major tantras au-thored by indian advocates of the Kālacakra-tantra during the late tenth through early eleventh centuries.21 These became extremely popular and influential works in Tibet. Tsongkhapa here paraphrased a pas-sage in this work, which occurs as follows within it: “furthermore, due to its abundance of adamantine expressions, learned ones desir-ing liberation should know it by means of the instruction of the holy guru, what is said in other tantras, and the commentaries written by the bodhisattvas.”22
The first reliance recommended by Vajrapāṇi, relying on “the in-struction of the holy guru” (sadgurūpadeśa), is completely uncontrover-sial. The third, on the other hand, is an obvious plug for this work, and
points to the great ambition of the advocates of the Kālacakra tradi-tion. The second reliance is rather subtle. Later in this work Vajrapāṇi explains, “One should understand [this] Tantra by means of other tantras, since the Tathāgata stated them.”23 Should one accept that the tantras are all genuine buddhavacana, authentic Buddhist scrip-tures, then it should logically follow that interpreting one in light of the others is not only permissible, but in fact a sensible strategy. This, however, was not the typical strategy taken by indian Buddhist authors of tantric commentaries. Vajrapāṇi was advocating a somewhat radi-cal exegetiradi-cal strategy, and one which suited well his own approach.
His method was to comment on the Cakrasaṃvara-tantra, which was very popular by the late tenth century, in light of the newly composed Kālacakra-tantra in order to, arguably, implicitly bolster the prestige of the latter.
Tsongkhapa was clearly sympathetic to Vajrapāṇi’s approach. Like a number of his contemporaries, Tsongkhapa was deeply concerned with the comparative and synthetic study of Buddhist literature, aiming to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of the trans-lations of the authoritative speech of the Buddha (bka’ ‘gyur) and the indian scholarship on it (bstan ‘gyur). The many centuries of transla-tion that ultimately resulted in the formatransla-tion of the canons of Tibetan Buddhism had more or less concluded during the fourteenth century, during Tsongkhapa’s lifetime.24
As a result, this strategy also suited the needs of Tsongkhapa, who was deeply concerned with the systematization of Buddhist literature.
He thus did adopt the strategy of commenting on tantras such as the Cakrasaṃvara in light of what is taught in other tantras, although he did so sparingly, recognizing, perhaps, that this is a powerful exegetical tool that is nonetheless open to abuse, and is thus controversial. The strategy that he followed most closely was the traditional and conser-vative strategy, which is to follow the scripture’s own tradition of oral instructions passed down from the great gurus of the indian tradition.
Despite Tsongkhapa’s quotation of Vajrapāṇi’s Laghutantraṭīkā commentary, he warns against over-reliance on the bodhisattva com-mentaries, noting that even Vajrapāṇi himself calls for reliance on the gurus’ oral instructions. The caveat in the last line is a testament to the work’s popularity, which apparently was great enough that Tsongkhapa felt it necessary to state that the bodhisattva commentar-ies alone are not suitable bases for tantric exegesis.
The composition of the “bodhisattva commentaries” undoubtedly contributed to the successful dissemination of the Kālacakra tradi-tion, and their popularity likely “raised the bar” for the composition of tantric commentaries by creating the impression that one needed to be highly realized—like Vajrapāṇi, the tantric elucidator extraordinaire—
to comment on the tantras. Tsongkhapa continues his discussion with comments on this issue as follows:
This literature does imply that commentary [on the tantras] should only be done by those who have attained the supramundane cogni-tions. While this is not a statement concerning the many other ways of attaining such powers, there is the attainment of the five supra-mundane cognitions that are realized by the power of manifesting the meaning of reality by means of great bliss. This is in accordance with the explanations of Ghaṇṭāpa and Ḍombiheruka.25
Tsongkhapa here refers to discussions in the indian commentarial lit-erature on the idealized qualifications of a guru. Ghaṇṭāpa, for exam-ple, in his presentation of advanced perfection-stage yogic practices of the Cakrasaṃvara tradition, lists attainment of the five supramundane cognitions among the qualifications for a guru in this tradition.26
Here Tsongkhapa concedes a very important point. He acknow-ledges, and supports, the claim that tantric exegesis requires consider-able spiritual attainment. However, he makes an important distinction.
for him, the establishment of an exegetical tradition requires the ad-vanced spiritual attainment of a siddha. indeed, all of the major exegeti-cal traditions of major tantras such as the Cakrasaṃvara are traced back to the mahāsiddhas of india. However, advanced spiritual attainment is not required provided that one is not innovating, but simply following pre-established tradition. He continues his explanation as follows:
furthermore, it is the case that before developing an exegetical system on the intention of a tantra, one first distinguishes the prac-tice systems of that particular tantra. However, it is not taught that it is necessary to obtain the supramundane cognitions in order to elucidate the meaning of the tantra, provided that one has followed a tradition created by former [masters]. Some people say that to just comment on a tantra one must have attained the supramundane cognitions, and that if one writes without them, one will go to hell.
However, if one engages in tantric commentary without even having attained a trace of supramundane cognition, one is just making a fool of oneself.27
Tsongkhapa mentions the more stringent view apparently held by some of his unnamed contemporaries, namely, that advanced spiri-tual attainments are required to comment on the tantras, and those who lack this risk a very serious consequence, namely a downfall to hell. However, he dismissed this view, and argued for the far more lib-eral view that the worst consequence of unqualified tantric exegesis is making a fool of oneself.
Tsongkhapa here followed expected practice and did not make a claim to authority on the basis of his own spiritual realization; he did not claim to be a siddha. instead, he took the approach that is far more common in Tibetan scholastic literature, which is the claim that he follows and relies upon a prestigious exegetical tradition that traces its roots to the great saints of india. Throughout the text he claims to follow the exegetical traditions of the mahāsiddhas, most notably Nāropa, who was one of the most prestigious figures in the dissemina-tion of tantric tradidissemina-tions to Nepal and Tibet. He makes this point in his description of his own exegetical method, which immediately follows the discussion of authority quoted above.
in that way, from among the three [approaches] here, i will explain based on two of them, the first and the third. I will conjoin the root [text] and its explanations relying upon the expositions of the cre-ation and perfecting [stages] of Lūipa, Kāṇhapa, and Ghaṇṭāpa. Since I will explain relying on the personal instructions of Śrī Nārotapa, this explanation is distinctively excellent. Although the two stages are not shown clearly with respect to the text of the root tantra in the expositions of Lūipa and Ghaṇṭāpa, if you know well the instructions of these two, you will be able to understand by relying on the instruc-tions which join the root [text] and its explanainstruc-tions. i will explain this in the context of [my presentation of] the meaning of the text.28 Tsongkhapa thus presents his role as a modest but important one.
He does not present himself an innovator, engaging in the ambitious task of devising a new and original interpretation of the root scripture.
Undoubtedly, he would agree that a high degree of spiritual develop-ment would be a prerequisite for such a task. instead, he presents him-self as a systematizer who elucidates the scripture by applying to it the relevant explanations of the past lineage masters. in another pas-sage later in the commentary he strongly extols this approach, stating that “Since the oral instructions of the saints explain the thoroughly mixed-up and unclear root tantra, they seem to enchant the scholars, since they give unexcelled certainty on the path. Later scholars who
rely on Nāropa’s commentarial tradition should explain in accordance with that only.”29 Although he seems here to contradict his previous statement that he relies on two sources in commenting on the tantra, the instructions of the lineage masters as well as the explanatory tantras, this should probably be read as an indication of his strong reli-ance upon, and enthusiasm for, the lineage instructions.
given the fact that he so strongly evokes the lineage instructions as the basis of his exegetical authority, it is naturally essential that Tsongkhapa establish his lineage credentials. This is a common step in tantric exegesis. for example, one of the “oral instruction” textual sources that Tsongkhapa relies on to establish his connection to the mahāsiddha Nāropa is a précis of the Cakrasaṃvara-tantra composed by the Kashmiri scholar Sumatikīrti, a student of Nāropa who eventually settled in the kathmandu Valley and instructed a number of Tibetans who travelled there during the eleventh century.30 This text, the Laghu saṃvaratantrapaṭalābhisandhi, ends with a colophon that clearly establishes the authority of the author, and hence the text. it reads as follows: “This completes the Intended Import of the Concise Saṃvara Tantra, composed in the presence of Śrī Nāropa’s successor, the scholar Sumatikīrti. It was translated by the Indian preceptor himself, and the translator-monk grags-mchog Shes-rab.”31 In referring to Sumatikīrti as “Nāropa’s successor” (dpal nā ro ta pa’i rjes su ‘brangs pa), it makes a powerful assertion of lineage authority. As this colophon was likely composed with Sumatikīrti’s approval if not by him, it served to bol-ster his prestige with the networks of communication and exchange that linked the kathmandu Valley with Tibet.
As time progressed, the length of the lineages naturally extended.
While Sumatikīrti could reasonably claim to be Nāropa’s direct dis-ciple, later Tibetan commentators had to go to greater lengths to demonstrate their connections to the master. The twelfth century Sa-skya master Sa-chen kun-dga’-snying-po (1092–1158 Ce) composed32 what is likely the earliest surviving commentary on the Cakrasaṃvara-tantra.33 in his Pearl Garland (mu tig ‘phreng ba) commentary, he presents his position in the full lineage, going back to Mahāvajradhara Buddha, as follows:
regarding the lineage succession of the root and explanatory Tantras, the sixth truly and completely awakened buddha, Mahāvajradhara Buddha, explained them to the Lord of Secrets, Vajrapāṇi, who, having consecrated the master Saraha the elder, explained them and