THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

Q: Why would magical feats be an important accomplishment on the path to enlightenment?

JH: They're important because they can be used to the benefit of sentient beings. For instance, pacifying disease in an area, increasing your own intelligence so that you can understand difficult points of doctrine, making it easier to achieve realization, finding treasures in the ground, even deposits of gold or oil—as His Holiness says—for the sake of gaining wealth that can be of assistance to others. As for walking on water, well, I don't want to make up reasons. But it surely would be impressive if you could show it to someone. If I saw someone walk on water, I would be highly enthused.

Q: In various religious traditions, it seems that the use of so-called miracle is used to generate faith rather than necessarily as a promise of attainment. But this book is talking about attaining these accomplishments for oneself.

JH: It is about attaining them for oneself, but there would be opportunities to display them to others. For instance, to show that such feats are possible, to show that we're not bound in the way we think we are by the material world. When they are shown, it's to indicate that that person could also achieve them.

Q: What drew you to work on this project?

JH: A few decades ago His Holiness the Dalai Lama suggested that I translate The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra. I was shocked at his suggestion, because at that period we were mostly kept away from tantra. Frankly, I thought it was beyond me, and I didn't give him an answer. But over the next several days I thought about it and decided, well, if he wants me to do it, then I'll do it. He states in Tantra in Tibet so clearly that, although tantra is secret, so many books containing some misinformation have been published that he wanted to see a series published that would be accurate—the meaning being that he was moving back the line of secrecy. And that's how I began the project.

It's taken me 23 years. Of course in the meantime I published several other books. The problem was that there are many parts of the section on Yoga Tantra that Dzong-ka-ba does not explain in sufficient detail to be translated. His Holiness himself stopped before the Yoga Tantra section in his commentary that he gave to me in his office.

His Holiness said he would need to study it more. So within a year—maximum two years—he had studied Yoga Tantra in detail, including the major Indian texts that were translated into Tibetan. And he undoubtedly consulted with scholars from outside the order of Geluk to gain understanding. His office then let me know that he was giving a discourse on the whole of The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra and I took time off from teaching and went to Dharamsala. In that public teaching he included his new commentary on Yoga Tantra, which is the foundation of this book.

Q: You also have another book just newly published—Absorption in No External World: 170 Issues in Mind-Only Buddhism. What particularly interested you about that material?

JH: It is the third volume of a trilogy that I have written on Dzong-ka-ba's exposition of the mind-only school presentation of emptiness. This exposition is the subject of a great deal of controversy among Gelukba. Just fascinating material.

I became so fascinated that I read all of the major commentaries and some of the minor ones. I could see the dynamic interplay among these Tibetan scholars. I constructed the book around 170 topics of controversy. Why am I so fascinated by these controversies? My basic approach I would call "liberation through detail."

The more detail you pursue the more open your perspective becomes, because the more you see the controversies, the more you see that no one has an airtight system. And through the cracks, crannies, and even huge gaps you can see why someone could do things in quite a different way. It increases my interest and my ability to practice, and opens me to all sorts of perspectives outside the range of Gelukba scholarship, as is evidenced by the [forthcoming] publication of The Mountain Doctrine.

Q: My impression is that Absorption in No External World is wrapping up or cleaning up issues in the mind-only school.

JH: It's taking issues from Indian Buddhism and following them out in more detail than one might have thought was there. You see how the system holds together. I hope others will find it as fascinating as I do.

Interview by Christine Cox