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The Buddha from Dolpo
The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen Book Excerpt

496 pp., BUFRDO
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Perhaps the most controversial Buddhist master in the history of Tibetan philosophy was Dolpopa Sheraby Gyaltsen, the Jonang master whose theories of emptiness were nearly heretical at the time. This article gives us some insight into the nature of the controversy that resulted in his censorship—a controversy that lasted for hundreds of years. Adapted from Cyrus Stearns' book,The Buddha from Dolpo.

Without question, the writings of D�lpopa, who was also known as "The Buddha from D�lpo" and "The Omniscient One from Dolpo Who Embodies the Buddhas of the Three Times," contain the most controversial and stunning ideas ever presented by a great Tibetan Buddhist master. The controversies that stemmed from his teachings are still very much alive today, 650 years after D�lpopa's death.

When attempting to grasp the nature and significance of D�lpopa's ideas and their impact on Tibetan religious history, it is important to recognize that he was a towering figure. He was not a minor teacher whose strange notions influenced only his own Jonang tradition, and whose maverick line of hermeneutic thought died out when that tradition was suppressed by the central Tibetan government in the middle of the seventeenth century. This is perhaps the orthodox version of events, but there is abundant evidence that D�lpopa's legacy spread widely and had a profound impact on the development of Tibetan Buddhism from the fourteenth century to the present day.

Whenever D�lpopa's name comes up, whether in ancient polemic tracts or in conversation with modern Tibetan teachers, it is obvious that he is remembered first and foremost for the development of what is known as the shentong (gzhan stong) view. Until quite recently, this view was familiar to modern scholars largely via the intensely critical writings of later doctrinal opponents of D�lpopa and the Jonang tradition. In the absence of the original voice for this view, that is, D�lpopa's extensive writings that have only been widely available since 1992, even D�lpopa's name and the words "Jonang" and "shentong" often evoked merely the image of an aberrant and heretical doctrine that thankfully was purged from the Tibetan Buddhist scene centuries ago. In this way a very significant segment of Tibetan religious history has been swept under the rug. One of the main aims of The Buddha from Dolpo is to allow D�lpopa's life and ideas to speak for themselves.

D�lpopa uses the Tibetan term shentong (gzhan stong), "empty of other," to describe absolute reality as empty only of other relative phenomena. This view is his primary legacy and usually elicits a strong reaction, whether positive or negative. Others before D�lpopa held much the same opinions, in both India and Tibet, but he was the first to come out and directly say what he thought in writing, using terminology that was new and shocking for many of his contemporaries.

Statue of Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen

According to D�lpopa, the absolute and the relative are both empty, as Buddhism has always taught, but they must be empty in different ways. Phenomena at the relative level are empty of self-nature (rang stong) and are no more real than the fictitious horn of a rabbit or the child of a barren woman. In contrast, the reality of absolute truth is empty only of other (gzhan stong) relative phenomena. With the recent availability of a large number of writings by D�lpopa, it is now clear that he was not simply setting up the viewpoints of an emptiness of self-nature and an emptiness of other as opposed theories located on the same level. He obviously viewed the pair as complementary, while making the careful distinction that the view of an "emptiness of other" applied only to the absolute and an "emptiness of self-nature" only to the relative. Both approaches were essential for a correct understanding of the nature of samsara and nirvana. D�lpopa disagreed with people who viewed both the absolute and the relative as empty of self-nature, and who refused to recognize the existence of anything that was not empty of self-nature. From their point of view, the notion of an emptiness of other relative phenomena did not fit the definition of emptiness.

D�lpopa further identified the absolute with the buddha nature, or sugata essence, which was thus seen to be eternal and not empty of self-nature, but only empty of other. The buddha nature is perfect and complete from the beginning, with all the characteristics of a buddha eternally present in every living being. It is only the impermanent and temporary afflictions veiling the buddha nature that are empty of self-nature and must be removed through the practice of the path to allow the ever-present buddha nature to manifest in its full splendor.

Y�nten Gyatso,
one of D�lpopa's principal teachers

This view agreed with many Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures, but most of the scholars in Tibet during D�lpopa's life disagreed with him. They viewed such scriptural statements to be provisional in meaning and in need of interpretation for the true intent to be correctly comprehended. This was the opinion of the mainstream Sakya tradition to which D�lpopa belonged before he moved to Jonang.

For some time D�lpopa tried to keep his teachings secret, realizing they would be misunderstood and cause great turmoil and uncertainty for people who had closed minds and were accustomed to styles of interpretation that differed greatly from his own. He often remarked that the majority of buddhas and bodhisattvas agreed with him on these issues, but the majority of scholars in Tibet opposed him.

D�lpopa viewed the absolute as a true, eternal, and veridically established reality, empty merely of other relative phenomena.

Such descriptions of reality or the buddha nature are common in a number of scriptures that the Tibetan tradition places in the third turning of the Dharma wheel and in the Buddhist tantras. Nevertheless, no one in Tibet before D�lpopa had simply said that absolute reality was not empty of self-nature. This was what caused all the trouble. In answer to the objections of his opponents, D�lpopa noted that his teachings and the Dharma language he was using were indeed new, but only in the sense that they were not well-known in Tibet. This was because they had come from the realm of Shambhala to the north, where they had been widespread from an early date. He explicitly linked his ideas to the Kalacakra Tantra and its great commentary, the Stainless Light, which was composed by the Shambhala emperor Kalki Pundarika. These works were not translated into Tibetan until the early eleventh century. D�lpopa clearly felt that previous interpreters of the Kalacakra literature had not fully comprehended its profound meaning. He even ordered a new revised translation of the Kalacakra Tantra and the Stainless Light to make the definitive meaning more accessible to Tibetan scholars and practitioners. In this respect he was attempting to remove the results of accumulated mistaken presuppositions that had informed the earlier translations in Tibet and provided the basis for many erroneous opinions concerning the true meaning of the Kalachakra Tantra.

The Great Stupa of Jonang

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More about the book . . .

"This revised edition of Cyrus Stearns's The Buddha from Dölpo is a must read for all interested in the intellectual history of Tibet. New translations of some of the key works of Dolpopa open philosophical and cosmological ideas of one of the great thinkers of the Tibetan tradition. This is a marvelous piece of scholarship."—E. Gene Smith, founder and senior research scholar, Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center

"Cyrus Stearns's The Buddha from Dölpo is among the major contributions to the history of Tibetan Buddhism in recent years. This new, expanded edition amplifies and extends Stearns' innovative inquiry into the life and works of the remarkable fourteenth-century teacher Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, master of the Kalacakra, founder of the zhentong philosophical tradition, and architect without peer. The Buddha from Dölpo is essential reading for all serious students of the Dharma in the Land of Snows."—Matthew T. Kapstein, Director of Tibetan Studies, École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, The University of Chicago

"The first edition of The Buddha from Dölpo was like a brilliant beam of light for the first time illuminating the dark chamber of Dölpopa's long-buried legacy, opening the eyes of many to the inspiring life and teachings of one of the greatest masters of Tibetan Buddhism. This new carefully revised and enlarged edition is like the sun shining through all the windows of this chamber, revealing many essential jewels in the treasury of Dölpopa's thought. It is a true masterpiece that reestablishes Dölpopa's so important, but long-denied, place in Tibetan Buddhist history. Highly recommended reading for all who are interested in going beyond sectarian biases and wish to understand what this towering figure had to say on his own ground and in his own terms."—Karl Brunnhölzl, author of The Center of the Sunlit Sky and Luminous Heart

The Buddha from Dölpo is a revised and enlarged edition of the only book about the most controversial Buddhist master in the history of Tibet, Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361), who became perhaps the greatest Tibetan expert of the Kalacakra, or Wheel of Time, a vast system of tantric teachings. Based largely on esoteric Buddhist knowledge from the legendary land of Shambhala, Dölpopa's insights have profoundly influenced the development of Tibetan Buddhism for more than 650 years.

Dölpopa emphasized two contrasting definitions of the Buddhist theory of emptiness. He described relative phenomena as "empty of self-nature," but absolute reality as only "empty of other," i.e., relative phenomena. He further identified absolute reality as the buddha nature, or eternal essence, present in all living beings. This view of an "emptiness of other," known in Tibetan as shentong, is Dölpopa's enduring legacy.

The Buddha from Dölpo contains the only English translations of three of Dölpopa's crucial works. A General Commentary on the Doctrine is one of the earliest texts in which he systematically presented his view of the entire Buddhist path to enlightenment. The Fourth Council and its Autocommentary (which was not in the first edition of this book) were written at the end of his life and represent a final summation of his teachings. These translations are preceded by a detailed discussion of Dölpopa's life, his revolutionary ideas, earlier precedents for the shentong view, his unique use of language, and the influence of his theories. The fate of his Jonang tradition, which was censored by the central Tibetan government in the seventeenth century but still survives, is also examined.

"The Buddha from Dölpo is the most significant contribution to the study of the life and revelations of one of the most enigmatic personalities in Tibetan intellectual history, the Jonang master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361). Narrating Dolpopa's life story and evolution of thought, Cyrus Stearns lucidly describes how this foremost exponent of shentong philosophical thinking and Kalachakra tantric practice served as the catalyst figure for the Jonang Buddhist tradition during its formative period in fourteenth-century Tibet. A decade after its first publication, this revised and enlarged edition includes several significant refinements and additions, including a translation of Dolpopa's own commentary on his masterful work concerning the calculations of cosmic time according to shentong literature known as the Fourth Council. With this revision, Stearns secures The Buddha from Dölpo its place within the Western-language canon of scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism, making it an essential read for understanding Dolpopa's presentation of shentong, the Kalachakra Tantra in Tibet, and the early Jonang Buddhist tradition."—Michael R. Sheehy, Ph.D., Senior Editor of Tibetan Literary Research at the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center and Executive Director of Jonang Foundation

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More about the author . . .

Cyrus Stearns has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for over thirty-five years. His main Tibetan teachers were Dezhung Rinpoche, Chogye Trichen Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He received a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Washington and is the author of several books, including Taking the Result As the Path and King of the Empty Plain. He is currently a fellow at the Tsadra Foundation and lives in the woods on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, Washington.

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