Robert Mayer's analysis of Guru Chowang's enduring connection between territorial deity cosmologies and the preservation of hidden teachings in Tibetan Buddhism Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.
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Robert Mayer's analysis of Guru Chowang's enduring connection between territorial deity cosmologies and the preservation of hidden teachings in Tibetan Buddhism Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.
Variants of the Rudra Subjugation Myth: Contrasting Themes in the Legends of Mahākāla and Vajrabhairava
Tibetan Graduate Studies Seminar
48 minutes
2 years ago
Variants of the Rudra Subjugation Myth: Contrasting Themes in the Legends of Mahākāla and Vajrabhairava
Cameron Bailey's talk on wrathful deities and their myths While the Rudra/Maheśvara subjugation myth is well known in Tantric Studies there exist a great number of variant retellings of it in the Tibetan literary record which have largely been overlooked by scholarship.
This presentation will discuss two cycles of less-well known versions of this centrally important tantric charter myth, one from the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, centring on a form of Mahākāla and the other from the Sarma tradition, focused on Vajrabhairava. I argue that these two versions of the myth in fact present very different, even radically opposing, theological worldviews. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Tibetan Graduate Studies Seminar
Robert Mayer's analysis of Guru Chowang's enduring connection between territorial deity cosmologies and the preservation of hidden teachings in Tibetan Buddhism Academic scholars are accustomed to understanding gter as sacred texts often associated with Padmasambhava, within a cult deriving historically from ancient imperial burials. Yet the great 13th-century Padmasambhava devotee Guru Chowang primarily understood gter, by definition, within a mundane framework, barely mentioning Padmasambhava at first, and with not a word about ancient tombs. Even more striking about Chowang’s understandings of gter are their widespread and continuing persistence, as suggested by recent ethnographies of Tibet’s territorial deity cosmologies. For rather than place ancient tombs at the centre of his analysis, Chowang looked to popular terrestrial deity cosmologies to provide a vehicle for Padmasambhava’s hidden teachings. This graft of Indian Buddhist notions of transcendent, spiritual, transmission onto mundane Tibetan territorial deity cosmologies still thrives to this day. Indeed, Tibetan scholars understood Indian Buddhism previously to have made a similar use of India’s nāga and yakṣa territorial deity cosmologies for the concealment and rediscovery of Buddhist teachings.
