Category Archives: Doctrines

A Critical Remark about Misleading Polemical Amalgamations: “emptiness-of-other,” “subitism” and “practice linages”

Stéphane Arguillère (IFRAE / Inalco)

Much has been written about the debate on “emptiness-of-other,” “subitism” and “practice linages,”1 to the extent that some may have presented it as something that became central as early as the 14th century and remained so for the rest of Tibetan intellectual history. At some point, such an ideological device was constructed, but it actually became central as a commonly shared doxographical framework only in the nineteenth century with the “non-sectarian” (ris med) masters of eastern Tibet in their struggle for life against Gelug hegemony. In historical research, it is important to deconstruct false historiography—that is to say, to understand these late narratives as an ideological product of their own time, expressing the power games of that period, and basically irrelevant to the era we are studying.

Continue reading

  1. The full history of the fabrication of these amalgamations and stereotypes has not yet been written. The fact that they cannot be used as a frame of reference for serious history would not prevent them from being good objects of study for the historian. The purpose of inserting these explanations is merely to exorcise them so that we can appreciate the actual facts without the superimposition of irrelevant ideology. []

The Lineage of the Ka dag rang byung rang shar according to the Preliminaries known as The Five Nails (gZer lnga)

by Jean-Luc Achard
(CNRS, CRCAO)

The Natural Emergence of the Self-Arisen Primordial Purity (Ka dag rang byung rang shar) revealed by Rig ‘dzin rGod ldem (1337–1408) in 1366 in Zang zang Lha brag is sometimes regarded as a secondary or complementary rdzogs chen cycle associated with the famed Transparent Contemplation of Samantabhadra (Kun bzang dgongs pa zang thal).1 Here I shall briefly introduce the structure of its preliminary practices (sngon ‘gro) and present its two main lines of transmissions.2 The principal source for this short note is The Five Nails making up the Key Points of the Precious Preliminaries (sNgon ‘gro rin po che gnad kyi gzer lnga) which is the second text belonging to the collection.3

Continue reading

  1. See the complete analytical description of this cycle in Peter Schwieger, Die Werksammlungen Kun-tu bzaṅ-po’i dgoṅs-pa zang-thal, Ka-dag raṅ-byuṅ raṅ-śar und mKha’-‘gro gsaṅ-ba ye-śes-kyi rgyud, pp. 114-132. []
  2. These lines of transmission are described in Schwieger, op. cit., p. 115. We shall see another line of transmission according to the main Supplication (gSol ‘debs) text of this cycle (duly described in Schwieger, ib., p. 116) in a forthcoming short note to appear on this website. []
  3. On this system of five preliminary practices described according to the dGongs pa zang thal, see Tulku Thondup, Boundless Vision, pp. 65-79; id., The Five Nails, passim. See also S. Arguillère, Manuel de la transparution immédiate, p. 117 et seq. []