THE SNOW LION BUDDHIST NEWS & CATALOG


700 pp., cloth, TAGYKI
$49.95, Snow Lion special $39.96
by Cyrus Stearns;
a Tsadra Foundation Series Book
Available Sept. 2007
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 Practical Magic: An Interview with Cyrus Stearns

interviewed by Christine Cox

None of Tibet's great spiritual teachers have made a deeper impact on the religious, artistic, and technological history of the country than the great adept Tangtong Gyalpo, "King of the Empty Plain" (1361?-1485). Tangtong Gyalpo's achievements in three widely different spheres—his contributions to Tibet's meditative traditions, his development of long-life techniques still practiced in Tibet, and his legacy of iron suspension bridges and other architectural monuments built throughout the country—have given rise to hundreds of stories about his life and his death. The core of the book is a complete translation of the most famous biography of Tangtong Gyalpo, a fast-paced and enthusiastically narrated account which follows Tangtong Gyalpo as he travels throughout the length and breadth of Tibet and beyond, helping the poor, giving and receiving teachings, and performing countless miracles.

Christine Cox: Do you think that recently there's a greater collective interest in the variety of "magical" powers that can arise when one recognizes the true nature of our 3-D world? I'm thinking of the popularity of The Matrix, for example, in which seeing the emptiness of the world allows one to transmute its laws.

Cyrus Stearns: I'm not immersed in the popular culture so much—though of course I see movies like The Matrix. I personally was always interested in such things when I was quite young, whenever I saw them in movies and books and even cartoons. Of course, in the Buddhist context, the powers or special abilities that might unfold from realization have been considered quite secondary; there's seldom a deliberate cultivation of such things. They're thought of as common attainments, whereas the uncommon attainment is the enlightening insight itself.

CC: And yet Tibetan biographies—especially Tangtong Gyalpo's!—are full of miracles and straight-up sorcery mixed in with the deepest of teachings.

CS: Yes, it's interesting. Although the teachings are not focused on such things, Tibetan culture itself is. And, really, Tangtong Gyalpo presented himself as—and was—a very great magician and worker of miracles and marvels. In the textual sources he's almost always described in those terms. In later literature, very often the term that is used is "the Great Adept"—the Mahasiddha. People know that that term refers to him—even without the use of his name.

CC: I'm struck by how unfrivolous Tangtong Gyalpo's use of his powers was. He really utilized them in a most pragmatic way—to build iron bridges, for example, that are still standing now, five hundred years later. And to develop systems for longevity.

CS: Because many of his achievements were material accomplishments—building iron bridges, stupas, and monasteries—there are miraculous events that accompany the accumulation of the materials to do those projects. If you look through the book it's full of his spiritual songs and dharma teachings, and yet the external narrative is full of miracles that are usually connected with the spiritual topography of the land and bringing that under control, and the gathering of the various mineral sources necessary for construction.


Tangtong Gyalpo

CC: Sometimes these great beings manifest miraculous feats in order to inspire faith in something deeper in the people that they meet.

CS: There are several episodes where Tangtong Gyalpo does that. In some humorous ones he says, "Well, I guess you don't believe me—I guess I'll have to show you a miracle." And then he does.

CC: His approach to these magical powers is to use them to accomplish something very specific—it's not just showing off.

CS: That's absolutely true, though he's accused of showing off once or twice in the biographical material. But it's quite clear in all the ancient sources that his motivation was to do what he felt would be of the greatest benefit for the Tibetan people—and not only the people but also for all living beings. He would go to any lengths to do that; he would go to extremes. This is part of what ties into him being known as a crazy master, a madman. Because if he felt something to be necessary for the general good, then he would even do things that were socially prohibited.

The occult powers that may develop in the course of spiritual practice have an ambiguous place within Tibetan Buddhism. In this interview, Cyrus Stearns discusses Tangtong Gyalpo, one of the most famous of the ancient Tibetan magician/practitioners. Most Tibetan Buddhists have experienced pieces of his legacy—he's the source of many commonly used long-life initiation practices, for example—though they may never have heard the name of this wild, bridge-building visionary. He is considered to be the mind emanation of Padmasambhava.

CC: You have a very interesting discussion on "deliberative behavior"—apparently mad behavior used to help others—in your book.

CS: Tangtong Gyalpo is one of the greatest masters of crazy wisdom in Tibetan history. It's one of his great legacies. On the tantric Buddhist path one does not begin to deliberately act out or manifest these qualities unless one has reached a certain point of high spiritual development—and then it's done for a very specific purpose. As he emphasizes himself, he's always doing these things with the goal of helping people as much as he can, and sometimes it just requires extreme means. He lived in an environment where it was recognized—sometimes, not all the time—that if someone could manifest these miracles and was a great eccentric, he wasn't just a nut.

CC: I know that you've studied with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Chogye Rinpoche, Dezhung Rinpoche, and others. Have you had teachers who followed this eccentric model?

CS: [laughing] Not like Tangtong Gyalpo, no.

CC: I've heard that Kalu Rinpoche and many of the great lamas chose Tangtong Gyalpo's Chenrezig practices for their students, starting way back in the 1970s. The practices that Tangtong devised—and received both from living and visionary teachers—are some of the most widely used today by all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism. But I understand that among Tibetans in particular, his practices for extending life are most widely used.

CS: Anyone who spends time in a Tibetan community or with Tibetan teachers will receive long life blessings, very frequently those of Tangtong Gyalpo. Certainly it is his practice that is the most common—and the most highly regarded—among the many techniques for accomplishing longevity. This is probably because he is thought to have lived to be 125 years old; he's shown the proof in his life of relying upon these techniques.

It doesn't matter whether the teacher is Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug or Jonangpa; Tangtong Gyalpo's long life practices are the most famous. I think this is due not only to his own longevity, but also to the fact that he practiced and taught every tradition in Tibet. He's close to unique in that he's venerated by all the Tibetan lineages.

CC: Why is longevity so desirable?

CS: Certainly from a traditional perspective that's one of the things one hopes for. But these techniques are not only for longevity but for health as well. Ideally, one receives the blessing from a teacher and then also practices the meditation techniques oneself.

After Tangtong's death, many masters received teachings on achieving longevity from him in visions and then composed works for that purpose.

CC: Tangtong Gyalpo received teachings from emanations from the subtle realms. Didn't he get direct visionary transmissions from the Dakini Niguma, Vajrayogini, and others?

CS: That's another reason that his practices are thought to be so special—because of the way he received them; he was one of the great visionaries of Tibet. He received many, many teachings from over five hundred masters, including those from India and Nepal. And then, afterwards, he very often received visionary transmissions of either the same or similar teachings. It certainly gave an added energy to his traditions. He received them not only as pure vision, but also as hidden treasure texts (terma). Then he would combine the results of all of these transmissions.

CC: When he encountered Niguma, she gave him the ability to emanate forms—a useful skill. And isn't he particularly associated with Chod practice?

CS: Chod is one his important legacies. He received the person-to-person transmission from several human teachers, and then from Vajrayogini herself in a vision in a charnel ground in Kashmir. The practice he created has been passed down to the present day.

CC: I read that Tangtong used Chod to negotiate with the local spirits before he started his construction projects.

CS: One of his teachers, a great Sakya master, recommended that he first practice Chod to bring the spirits under control before setting off to do the various projects that he had in mind. Because the spirits and guardian protectors of the areas are often not friendly, he has to subdue them or help them understand who he is and what he's doing. Sometimes, though, the spirits are supportive right off, if, for example, they've encountered Padmasambhava centuries before in the same place.

CC: I imagine that in the West we suffer the repercussions of not entering into relationship with the entities associated with specific land before we pave a parking lot or dig a basement.

CS: I wouldn't be surprised. In order for Tangtong Gyalpo to build what were generally unprecedented bridges out of iron, he of course had to extract the metal from the earth. Traditionally substances like iron and precious metals were considered the essence or treasure of the earth—and these are protected by various spiritual forces.

CC: Theoretically, such beings would be associated with natural environments everywhere.

CS: Certainly. Native American people are very similar in their veneration of the landscape and its animation as a living world.

CC: As for the bridges themselves, they were not only physical, right? Didn't they serve a metaphoric function as well?

CS: Yes. Tangtong often says in the biographies that there is a very special meaning to them. On the mundane level he is building these iron bridges that span very turbulent rivers in Tibet and that enable people to travel much more easily and thus enhance commerce and communication and so forth. But he also speaks of them as precious iron pathways to enlightenment and describes them as providing opportunities to pass over the four rivers of birth, sickness, old age, and death. And they were looked upon in that way.

CC: The book has photos of some of the bridges that have survived. I find it surprisingly moving that each of the original iron links is said to have been stamped with a vajra.

CS: My teacher Dezhung Rinpoche said that that was the case and that he had visited one in the far reaches of Eastern Tibet that had those marks. However, it seems that none of the surviving bridges that have yet been photographed bear those vajras. Perhaps they were not stamped on the links of every bridge that Tangtong built. And it is also the case that some of his bridges have been repaired and chains have been replaced over the centuries.

CC: What led you to take on this fabulous project of gathering the biographical and textual information on Tangtong Gyalpo?

CS: In the 1970s I was fortunate to be in Dezhung Rinpoche's first group of American students. When he first began to teach he chose Tangtong Gyalpo's meditation practice that focused on Chenrezig—Avalokiteshvara—which is probably the most widespread technique for developing compassion that is used in Tibet. Rinpoche told many stories about Tangtong—and I quickly became very interested. At that time the Tibetan biography of Tangtong Gyalpo was not available. Dezhung Rinpoche had much of it memorized, because he quoted portions of it to me although I knew he had not seen the book for probably thirty years.

Yet, amazingly enough, in the uncatalogued microfilm collection of the University of Washington, where I was studying, I found a microfilm of the biography.

Later Chogye Rinpoche very kindly gave me a gift of his own copy of the biography in Lumbini when I first met him. That's the one that I have sitting here that I've used on and off ever since. Over the years, each time I've come across references to Tangtong Gyalpo I've made notes and tossed them into a folder. The biography I chose to translate is the most famous of his biographies, the one written in the seventeenth century, drawing on earlier sources written by Tangtong Gyalpo's own disciples.

CC: Your book is hard to put down, actually. It's full of one great story after another, woven in with the deepest of teachings on some of the core practices.

CS: That's good to hear. It's certainly what an author aims for!

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About the author . . .

Cyrus Stearns is a scholar of Tibetan religion, literature, and history. He has studied with and translated for many Tibetan teachers, and has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Washington. He lives near Seattle, Washington.

Books by Cyrus Stearns: