The Creative Vision: The Symbolic Recreation of the World According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Tantric Visualization Otherwise Known As the Developing Phase PDF
Preview The Creative Vision: The Symbolic Recreation of the World According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Tantric Visualization Otherwise Known As the Developing Phase
T I TT 7 x JL H i CREATIVE VISION The Symbolic Recreation of the World According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Tantric Visualization Otherwise Known as The Developing Phase HERBERT GUENTHER LOTSAWA All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, photographed, stored in any format, or transmitted in any fashion without prior written permission from the publisher. For information address: 175 San Marin Drive, Suite 108, Novato, CA 94947. Production Coordination; Matrix Productions Cover Art: Cynthia Moku and Video Arts Copy Editing: Russell Fuller Book Design: Merrill Peterson Production Artist: Kim Freeman Typesetting: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ’Gyur-med-tshe-dban-mchog-grub, Dge-rtse Pandita, b. 1764? The creative vision. Translation of: Bskyed-pa’ i nm-pa cho-ga dan sbyar- ba’i gsal-byed zun-jug snye-ma. Bibliography: p. 160 Includes index. 1. Yoga (Tantric Buddhism) 2. Tantnc Buddhism— China—Tibet—Doctnnes. I. Guenther, Herbert V. II. Title. BQ7805.G982513 1987 294.3'44 87-2799 ISBN: 0-932156-03-7 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Nena ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While preparing the translation and writing this book I have been extremely fortunate to benefit from correspondence and fruitful discus sions with friends and colleagues, artists as well as writers, philosophers, and scientists. I am particularly indebted to professor K.J.G. Haderlain, David Higgins, Mariana Neves-Anders, and, last but not least, my wife Dr. Ilse Guenther. 1 have also received important information from professors Eva and Lobsang Dargyay. Lastly, I wish to thank my publisher Merrill Peterson for his valuable editorial suggestions. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION vl PART ONE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE 1 Prelude 3 Being’s Holomovement and the Two Realities 4 The Symbolic Re-creation Process 10 In-depth Appraisals and Phase Transitions 21 Imagination and the Symbolic Re-creation of the World 30 The Imaginative Recapitulation of Morpho- and Ontogenetic Processes 47 Conclusion 57 PART TWO EASTERN PRESENTATION 59 Prologue 63 Introduction 63 Preparation 65 The Main Part 74 CONCLUDING REMARKS 105 NOTES 111 REFERENCES 160 Works in Western Languages 160 Tibetan Works 162 INDEXES 168 INTRODUCTION The Creative Vision-addresses itself to an individual’s creative vision of himself and his environing world. Its subtitle, “The Symbolic Re-Cre- ation of the World,” paraphrases the Tibetan term bskyed-nm (bskyed-pa’i nm-pa), rendering the Sanskrit terms utpattikrama and utpanrmkrama, both of which may be translated, more or less literally and hence rather inadequately, as developing phase or phases. The first Sanskrit term emphasizes the process and the second emphasizes its result or product. Re-creating one’s world and by implication oneself through vividly experienced symbols is discussed in a relatively small work, the bsKyed- pa’i nrri'pa cho-ga dang sbyar-ba’i gsal'byed zung^’jug snye'ma (“The ear of com symbolizing the unity of the human and the divine—the shining sun of the developing phase with its attendant ritual”),1 by ’Gyur-med tshe-dbang mchog-grub, also known as the Kah-th©g dge-rtse pandita. He was probably bom in 1764, but the year of his death is unknown. This small but important text is, to a certain extent, an excerpt from the author’s larger gSang'Sngags nang'gi lam-rim rgya^cher 'grel-pa Sangs- rgyas gnyis-pa’i dgongS'Tgyan (“The ornament that is the Second Buddha’s [Padmasambhava’s] sense-bestowing world design—an exhaustive com mentary on the psychic progress in the individual’s existential approach to life’s meaning”), which was written in 1805. Unfortunately, the ex cerpt from this work has been transmitted to posterity in rather poor shape. Rampant with omissions and abounding in misspellings, at places it is even illegible and, worst of all, quite garbled. We can only surmise the reasons for this deplorable condition. The work may have been hurriedly written, and the person who took down the notes to be elabo rated in the body of the text was not always attentive. The printing blocks were probably carved by an illiterate craftsman and never passed through a corrector’s hands. However, these defects could be mended by consulting the author’s larger work and by referring to other works similar in content. A translation of a text like this one presents enormous difficulties. First no two languages are sufficiently alike to permit a mechanical trans fer of the style and meaning of an original text from one language to another. Further, translating is above all an ongoing hermeneutical pro cess that demands the utmost of the translator. A translation deserving of the name must be faithful to the substance—the meaning of the text. If the text contains a word that has no English equivalent, it must be paraphrased rather than be replaced by a word from another language— in the case of Tibetan from Sanskrit—whose semantic value may be quite different from the connotations the original word aroused in the mind of the person who used it. Apart from being thoroughly trained in the language of the text to be translated and highly sensitive to the subtleties of one’s own language, the translator must know both the subject matter of the text and the context in which it was conceived and composed.2 ’Gyur-med tshe-dbang mchog-grub’s work belongs to a group of texts that favor an existential-experiential rather than epistemological ap proach to one’s enworldedness (rgyud, Skt. tantra), involving self-explo ration coupled with self-interpretation, and world interpretation. As a “way,” such an approach involves a progressively deepening understand ing of how the nexus of meanings, which is what we call world, evolves. However, as the Buddhists noted long ago it is more correct to speak of various approaches that reflect differences in and levels of an individual’s intellectual acumen, which is always interpretive in nature. “There is no such thing as a way or ways in consciousness; individual ways turn up merely by virtue of consciousness making itself understood,” says Klong- chen rab-’byams-pa.3 Following the Indian predilection for systematization and classifica tion, the Tibetans accepted nine ways or spiritual pursuits (theg-pa, Skt. yarn).4 Three of these are more or less well known in the West because they fitted easily into the framework of traditional Western philosophical systems that acted as powerful fore-structures or fore-conceptions in pre senting and interpreting Indian philosophy in general and Buddhist phi losophy in particular.5 These three pursuits are (1) the Sravakayana— the way of those who listen and who, as social beings, make others listen too; (2) the Pratyekabuddhayana—the way of those who autistically withdraw as each-a-Buddha-for-himself; and (3) the Bodhisattvayana— the way of those who have a strong social awareness and who have become reflectively aware of the meaning of the mundaneness of ordi nary mentation. In general, the first two pursuits constitute the Hina- yana, a rather conservative movement that, philosophically, represents a naive realism. The third pursuit constitutes the Mahayana, a more com prehensive movement embracing all the varieties summed up by the term idealism. However, from the holistic viewpoint that gained precedence in the development of Buddhist thought, these three pursuits rank rather low because they tend, precisely because of their excessively rational and reductionistic character (realism being as reductionistic as idealism), to diminish and ultimately even eliminate one’s humanity. Certainly a world minus ourselves is a contradiction in itself, and a human being as a barren abstraction sheds little illumination on his or her concrete en- worldedness and, to say the least, remains emotionally and spiritually unsatisfactory. Once we understand the inadequacy of logical induction or deduc tion as a way to impart meaning to our lives, we can “move on” to probe the forces working in and through us and to create a world in which we can live because it encompasses much more than mere thinking. This moving on is the concern of the next six approaches, referred to by the term Vajrayana—the pursuit of the indestructible, ever dynamic core of Being. Each of these approaches constitutes a specific way of weaving the tapestry of one’s existence. The point to note here (a point that we cannot overemphasize) is that without prior realization of the shortcom ings of the preceding pursuits, the arduous task of weaving one’s exis tence mto a richer and more satisfactory tapestry remains ineffectual and may even become counterproductive. This realization was admirably expressed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust (1984, p. 13). I’ve studied now, to my regret, Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and—what is worst—Theology from end to end with diligence. Yet here I am, a wretched fool and still no wiser than before. I’ve become Master, and Doctor as well, and for nearly ten years I have led my young students a merry chase, up, down, and every which way— (Habe nun, ach! Philosophy, Juristerei und Medizin, Und—leider auch—Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heissem Bemiihn. Da steh’ ich nun, ich armer Tor! Und bin so klug als wie zuvor; Heisse Magister, heisse Doktor gar, Und ziehe schon an die zehn Jahr
The list of books you might like
