Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361), known simply as Dolpopa, the Tibetan Buddhist master known as "The Buddha from Dolpo," is often seen as the founder of the Jonangpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...

. While the doctrinal origins of the Jonangpa tradition in Tibet can be traced to early 12th century master Yumo Mikyo Dorje

Yumo Mikyo Dorje

Yumo Mikyo Dorje was a student of the Kashmiri scholar Somanatha, and an 11th century Kalachakra master. Yumo Mikyo Dorje is regarded as one of the earliest Tibetan articulators of a shentong view of shunyata — an understanding of the absolute radiant nature of reality...

, they became much wider known through the efforts of Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen.

Biography

He was born in the Dolpo

Dolpo

Dolpo is a high-altitude culturally Tibetan region in the upper part of the Dolpa District of western Nepal, bordered in the north by the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Part of the region lies in Shey Phoksundo National Park...

region of modern Nepal. However, in 1309, when he was seventeen, he ran away from home to seek Buddhist teachings, first in Mustang

Mustang (kingdom)

Mustang is the former Kingdom of Lo and now part of Nepal, in the north-central part of that country, bordering the People's Republic of China on the Tibetan plateau between the Nepalese provinces of Dolpo and Manang...

, and then in Tibet.

Dolpopa became one of the most influential, original yet controversial of Tibetan teachers. Originally a monk of the Sakya

Sakya

The Sakya school is one of four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the others being the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Gelug...

order, he developed a teaching known as Shentong

Shentong

Shentong is a philosophical sub-school found in Tibetan Buddhism. Its adherents generally hold that the nature of mind, the substratum of the mindstream, is "empty" of 'other' , i.e., empty of all qualities other than an inherent, ineffable nature...

or Zhentong (gzhan song), which is closely tied to the Indian Yogācāra

Yogacara

Yogācāra is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and ontology through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It developed within Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE...

school and the tathāgatagarbha tradition. He is considered to be one of the greatest exponents and practitioners of the Kālacakra or "Wheel of Time":

"It is important to keep in mind that Dolpopa was a consummate practitioner of the Six-branch Yoga, the perfection-stage practices of the Kālacakra tantra, and although he based his doctrinal discussions upon scripture, in particular the Kālacakra-related cycles, his own experience in meditation was crucial to the formulation of his theories."

In 1314, when he was twenty-two years old, Dolpopa received full monastic ordination

Ordination

In general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...

from the famous abbot of Chölung Monastery, Sönam Trakpa (1273–1352), and made a vow at the time to never eat slaughtered meat again.

In 1321, Dolpopa visited the monastery of Jonang

Jonang

The Jonang is one of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Its origins in Tibet can be traced to early 12th century master Yumo Mikyo Dorje, but became much wider known with the help of Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen, a monk originally trained in the Sakya school...

for the first time. He then visited Tsurphu Monastery for the first time and had extensive discussions with Rangjung Dorje

Rangjung Dorje

Rangjung Dorje was the third Karmapa, an important figure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. He reportedly produced a spontaneous black crown at the age of three and declared himself to be the mindstream reimbodiment of Karma Pakshi...

, the third Karmapa

Karmapa

The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu, the largest sub-school of the Kagyupa , itself one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism....

, about doctrinal issues. It appears that Rangjung Dorje almost certainly influenced the development of some of Dolpopa's theories, possibly including his Shentong method. Other than this, he had studied almost completely under the Sakya tradition until he was thirty years old in 1322, and he had taught for most of the previous decade at the great Sakya Monastery

Sakya Monastery

Sakya Monastery, also known as dPal Sa skya or Pel Sakya is a Buddhist monastery situated 25 km southeast of a bridge which is about 127 km west of Shigatse on the road to Tingri in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.The seat of the Sakya or Sakyapa school of Tibetan Buddhism, it was founded in...

.

In 1327, after the death of his guru

Guru

A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...

Yönden Gyantso, Dolpopa decided to fulfill a prayer he had made at the great stūpa

Stupa

A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the remains of Buddha, used by Buddhists as a place of worship....

at Trophu (Khro phu) to repay his master's kindness. "He also felt that the stūpa would become an object of worship for people who were not fortunate enough to engage in study, contemplation, and meditation, and therefore provide them with the opportunity to accumulate virtue."

In 1329 a large stūpa was quickly built at upper Zangden (Bzang ldan), but it collapsed. In 1330 the foundations for a much larger stūpa were laid at a new site in lower Zangden. It was a massive undertaking and involved many workers and artisans. Support flowed in from around Tibet. It was finally consecrated in 1333 and was the largest stūpa temple (sku 'bum) or Kumbum

Kumbum

A Kumbum is a multi-storied aggregate of Buddhist chapels in Tibet. It forms part of Palcho Monastery.The first Kumbum was founded in the fire-sheep year 1427 by a Gyantse prince. It has nine lhakangs or levels, is 35 metres high surmounted by a golden dome, and contains 77 chapels which line...

in Tibet.

After the construction of the stūpa, he spent many years studying and in meditation retreat. He became widely recognised as one of the great Buddhist masters of Tibet. Many offerings were sent to him including gold from Sakya

Sakya

The Sakya school is one of four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the others being the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Gelug...

Tishri Kunga Gyaltsen, and a golden mandala

Mandala

Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point...

from Rangjung Dorje.

Dolpopa retired from the leadership of Jonang

Jonang

Monastery in 1338, and appointed the translator (Lotsawa) Lödro Bal to succeed him. Lödro Bal remained in this role for seventeen years.

Politics

Newland (1992: pp. 30–31) conveys the political intrigue of the Great Fifth against the Jonangpa, the king of Tsang

Ü-Tsang

Ü-Tsang , or Tsang-Ü, is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Amdo and Kham. Geographically Ü-Tsang covered the central and western portions of the Tibetan cultural area, including the Tsang-po watershed, the western districts surrounding and extending past Mount...

(gtsang) and the writings and philosophy of Dolpopa:

Tsong-ka-pa and his successors have been especially vehement in their objections to the views of Shay-rap-gyel-tsen, (shes rab rgyal mthsan, 1292-1361) and his followers. Shay-rap-gyel-tsen, an abbot of Jo-mo-nang, formulated his view in Ocean of Definitive Meaning (nges don rgya mtsho) and other writings; his followers are called Jo-nang-bas. As Ge-luk political power reached its agogee under the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century, the Jo-nang-bas were proscribed and their monasteries and other property were completely confiscated and converted to Ge-luk use. Tibet's intersectarian conflicts were almost always driven by motives more political than "purely philosophical", indeed, the Jo-nang-bas were allies of the king of Tsang (gtsang), the main political and military adversary of Ge-luk in the first half of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, for more than two hundred years before they destroyed the Jo-nang-ba order the Ge-luk-bas had been denouncing Shay-rap-gyel-tsen's philosophy as something utterly beyond the pale of Mahāyāna Buddhism...While the immediate occasion for the persecution of Jo-nang was its defeat in a power struggle, proscription suggested itself as a penalty in the context of a long history of substantial and deeply felt philosophical differences. This hostility is reflected in the banning of Shay-rap-gyel-tsen's major books from the premises of Ge-luk monasteries more than 150 years prior to his order's extinction.

Experiential philosophy

The entire corpus of Dolpopa's writings was completely suppressed by the dominant Gelukpa order for several hundred years, although it is sometimes claimed that this suppression was equally for political reasons as doctrinal. The reasons for this include his controversial definition of the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā (usually translated as "emptiness" or "voidness") as being twofold, including both "emptiness of self-nature" and "emptiness of other (shentong)". He taught that emptiness of self-nature applied only to relative truth, while emptiness of other is characteristic of ultimate truth, i.e. ultimate Reality is not empty of its own uncreated and deathless Truth - the Eternal Buddha -, but only of what is impermanent and illusory - see Hopkins, Mountain Doctrine, 2006, passim).

Equally controversially, Dolpopa was not afraid to employ the term 'Self' or 'Soul' (atman

Atman (Buddhism)

The word Ātman or Atta refers to a self. Occasionally the terms "soul" or "ego" are also used. The words ātman and atta derive from the Indo-European root *ēt-men and are cognate with the Old English æthm and German Atem....

) to refer to the ultimate Buddhic Truth that according to him lay at the heart of all being. In his Mountain Doctrine work, he refers to this Buddhic Essence as the 'Great Self', 'True Self', 'Diamond Self', 'Supreme Self', 'Solid Self', and 'Supreme Self of all Creatures', basing himself on specific utterances and doctrines of the Buddha in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Angulimaliya Sutra, and Srimala Sutra, amongst others (see Hopkins, Jeffrey, Mountain Doctrine, 2006 passim). While most Buddhists baulk at such a term, there are still exponents of the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions of Buddhism (as well as Dolpopa's own Jonangpa School) who are happy to see the heart of all beings as one unified, egoless Buddha-Self. Contemporary Oxford University Doctor of Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Kagyu lama, Shenpen Hookham, for example, writes affirmatively of the True Self in the teachings of Dolpopa and other great Buddhist masters, saying:

Absolute, Eternal True Self: Many venerable saints and scholars have argued for the Self in the past and do so in the present. Great teachers of the Tibetan Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya schools have and do argue that such a view [i.e. the reality of an essential, deathless Self] is fundamental to the practice of the Buddhist path and the attainment of Enlightenment.

Hookham further points out in her study of Dolpopa's form of Shentong

Shentong

teachings that Dolpopa (along with other representatives of this Shentong

Shentong

tradition, including such Tibetan Shentong masters as Rangjung Dorje, Mikyo Dorje and Jamgon Kongtrul) really envisioned the Buddha within each being as an actual, living truth and presence, not conditioned or generated by any temporal process of causation:

The essential feature of a Shentong interpretation of tathāgatagarbha doctrine is that the Buddha is literally within all beings as their unchanging, permanent, non-conditioned nature .... Buddha is by all [tathāgatagarbha-sutra] accounts considered to be non-conditioned, eternal, unchanging, bliss, compassion, wisdom, power, and so on. For Shentongpas [i.e. the adherents of a Shentong understanding of scripture] the fact that Buddha is non-conditioned means the essence of Buddha is complete with all the Buddha Qualities in a timeless sense'.

Dolpopa uses many scriptural citations to support his view, drawing upon sutras and tantras to substantiate his understanding of Mahayana and tantric teachings on definitive truth. As Cyrus Stearns writes in his monograph on Dolpopa, this scholar-monk made:

... the assertion that ultimate truth, referred to by terms such as tathāgatagarbha (Buddha-nature), dharmadhātu (expanse of reality), and dharmakāya (buddha-body of reality), is a permanent or eternal state. Of course, statements to this effect are not unusual in certain Mahayana sutras and treatises ....For Dolpopa, all such statements in the scriptures and commentaries were of definitive meaning (nītārtha, nges don), and were to be understood literally.

Dolpopa also frequently makes use of such positive terms which he finds in the selfsame scriptures and tantras as 'permanent', 'everlasting, 'eternal' and 'Self' (Stearns, ibid.). This, Dolpopa claims, all pertains to the realm of Nirvana, and is one with the Buddha-nature. It is not merely an intellectual view, but a direct experience of great bliss, and this doctrine is (according to Dolpopa) communicated to Buddhists via the mediacy of the Mahayana Buddha-nature sutras:

The ultimate Mahayana is the vehicle of the Buddha-nature, and the ultimate Buddha-nature is great bliss.

This felicitous state is said to lie within the being, eternally. But within the samsaric mode of perceiving, it is not recognised, and darkness remains. Stearns brings out the distinction which Dolpopa draws here between samsara and Nirvana, quoting Kalkin Pundarika to make the point:

[Samsaric] existence and nirvana are not identical, but like a shadow and the sun.

For Dolpopa, the indwelling Buddha (or Nirvana) is genuinely real, yet 'empty' in one sense - in that the internal Buddha or Buddha nature is empty of illusion, but replete with wondrous Buddha qualities. For Dolpopa and those who espouse analogous Shentong doctrines:

... the whole point of establishing the empty nature of illusion (rangtong) is to discover the Reality of the Absolute Buddha Wisdom Mind (Paramarthabuddhajnana) beyond the reaches of the conceptual mind that can only function in terms of grasping its own creations.

Dolpopa further comments that worldlings believe that they have Self, happiness, permanence and purity, but that they look in the wrong direction for these transcendental qualities, whereas those who have transcended the world use these terms meaningfully, since they know where these qualities are to be found. Even having faith in the reality of these higher qualities helps remove spiritual veils. Hookham writes:

'Dolpopa explains that the worldling believes he has self, permanence, bliss, and purity; he sees these qualities in what does not have them. Those who are beyond the world also talk of Self, Permanence, Bliss, and Purity, but in their case it is meaningful, because they know what really has these qualities. Dolpopa remarks that just to believe this removes many veils, thus emphasising the power of faith' Cyrus Stearns points out that for Dolpopa, spiritual awareness or gnosis (jnana) is a key constituent of the Buddhist path and allows the practitioner to burn away veils of ignorance and thus to see the eternal qualities of the Buddha's body of reality (the Dharmakaya

Dharmakaya

The Dharmakāya is a central idea in Mahayana Buddhism forming part of the Trikaya doctrine that was possibly first expounded in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā prajñā-pāramitā , composed in the 1st century BCE...

):

' ... the accumulation of gnosis (jnana) ... burns away all the veils that have been obscuring the spiritual qualities of the buddha-body of reality (dharmakaya), which is eternal and spontaneously present within each living being.'.

Dolpopa even wrote a prayer wishing that the Buddhas might take pity on those Buddhists who deem that the Emptiness taught by the Buddha is nothing more than a non-affirming negation and concerns only self-emptiness (the absence of essence in all things). Dolpopa writes on this point:

May they [the Buddhas] have pity on those who hold that the whole of the Buddha's teaching on emptiness concerned self-emptiness alone and hold them in their compassion.

May they [the Buddhas] have pity on those who hold that the whole of the Buddha's teaching on emptiness concerned a non-affirming negation alone, and hold them in their compassion.

Dolpopa also wrote a commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāga; and Dolpopa found a strong supporter and advocate in the later Jonangpa lama, Taranatha

Taranatha

Tāranātha was a Lama of the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is widely considered its most remarkable scholar and exponent....

, who was keen to spread Dolpopa's ideas. Cyrus Stearns comments on this:

'Taranatha took upon himself the responsibility of causing Dolpopa's insights to once again reach a wide audience, and was determined to revive what he saw as a priceless transmission lineage in danger of being lost.'

External links

Dolpopa on www.JonangFoundation.org
Tibetan Buddhist Rime Institute - Holder of Kalachakra Jonang
History of the Jonang Tradition - International Kalachakra Network
http://www.people.freenet.de/gruschke.andreas/Jonang_paper_E.htm Abstract for Gruschke, A. (2000). The Jonangpa Order - Causes for the downfall, conditions of the survival and current situation of a presumably extinct Tibetan-Buddhist School. Ninth Seminar of The International Association for Tibetan Studies
Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center Biographical Data

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