map to the edge of the world

I've been studying meditation systems for more than two decades, yet I'm fairly new to Tibetan Buddhist studies. "Tsongkhapa's..." solves a dilemma that I've seen crop up in other systems, that I've seen no clearer resolution to than in this keystone Tibetan text. The "dilemma" that I referred to is the conflict and bridge between systems that emphasize
1) energy cultivation,
2) emptiness/absolute schools or
3) some mix of both but without a clear bridge.

Emptiness schools often critique energetic schools for merely getting caught in other layers of cyclic existence (and worse, creating intense karma in those layers). Yet emptiness schools often don't admit the valid energetic part of the path.

The first yoga of the six, the crux and foundation of this 6-yoga system, explains steps that produce bliss - and resolve it into emptiness. This resolution occurs within the mysterious deep-centers, who reside along - and whose vitality is integrated through - the central channel.

The Seventh Dalai Lama wrote verse about the 6 yoga system, whose 1st paragraph follows. Much of it is of specific cultural reference, but the 4th and 7th lines speak to general theory:
"Namo guru daka dakini yeh!
O all-pervading Heruka and your mandala of bliss,
O Tilopa, also known as the sublimely wise Jnanabhadra
Who took the insight of ecstasy and void to its limits,
And Naropa, an emodiment of Chakrasamvara:
I request you, bestow blessings, that we may achive
The wisdom of ecstasy and void conjoined."
- (from page 96 of the book)

This text has tremendous implications for the classic theological dilemmas re: sensation.

(The above is my pasted review of the previous edition of this book, which still holds for this.)

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Ian Myles Slater on: Explaining the Ineffable?

Those fairly familiar with the (steadily growing) list of Tibetan Buddhist works in English translation may need to know only that this is a new release, with an altered title and change of cover art, of Snow Lion's 1996 volume of "Tsongkhapa's Six Yogas of Naropa," translated with a helpful introduction and useful notes by Glenn H. Mullin. If you belong to that group, and have that edition, you won't need this printing, which is apparently unchanged in any other way. (Including the omission of a Western-language bibliography; most of what is needed can be dug out of the notes, but the effort shouldn't be necessary. And, as in too many Snow Lion volumes, there is still no index.) But if you are, and DON'T have a copy, having it readily available again may be welcome news -- it was to me. Even if the full new title, "The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary entitled A Book of Three Inspirations: A Treatise on the Stages of Training in the Profound Path of Naro's Six Dharmas Commonly Referred to as The Three Inspirations," is a bit of a mouthful.

However, it does give fair warning that this is anything but a how-to manual; it is a theoretical work on techniques for very advanced students of yoga, and for initiates in tantric yoga to boot. Topics covered include production of mystical heat, sleep and dream yogas, soul-projection, and after-death experiences. Mullin supplies explanations of the conceptual background, often providing fairly extended quotations from other Tibetan works, including commentaries to Tsongkhapa. Mullin's 1997 companion volume, "Readings on the Six Yogas of Naropa," is currently still in print under its original title. A shorter volume, it contains earlier and later treatments, from India and Tibet, including a supplementary text by Tsongkhapa himself.

(Please note that transliterations of Tibetan are hardly uniform -- you may prefer Tsong-kha-pa, Tsongk-'a-pa, or any of several other ways of rendering this and other names. I am here following Mullin, at least by intent, if not always successfully uniformly.)

Those with a somewhat lesser familiarity with the subject may still recognize the names. Naropa (or, in a less Tibetanized form, Naro) was an Indian Buddhist sage, renowned in Tibet as one of the teachers of Marpa the Translator (born 1012), whose several disciples stand at the heads of many teaching lineages, and the Monastic Orders with which they or their own disciples are associated. (Milarepa is the most famous.) Lobsang Drakpa (1357-1419), known as Tsongkhapa (or Tsong Khapa chenpo, "the Great") was one of the most important expositors and systematizers of the legacies of Marpa and other key transmitters; renowned as a philosopher, a practicing yogi, and a monastic reformer. One of *his* disciples, known as the Gyalwa Gen-dun Drub (1391-1474) was later recognized as the First Dalai Lama, and Tsongkhapa is especially, although not uniquely, revered by the Gelukpa Order he founded, of which the line of Dalai Lamas is the (reincarnating) leader.

The Dalai Lamas became a dominant power in Tibet with the armed backing of Mongol "disciples" (whose predecessors had given them the name) in the mid-17th century, were further supported by Ming Emperors, and later were recognized by the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty as rulers of Tibet under each Qing Emperor's personal patronage. This is the origin of modern Chinese claims that Tibet is "really" Chinese territory. (So if China reinstalled the former Dynasty, and the new *Manchu* Emperor recognized the Dalai Lama as his Spiritual Preceptor, there would be a basis for discussion!) Translations of Tsongkhapa therefore are not without their political and sectarian implications; some of which Mullin explains.

(If none of this means anything to you, the present book will be meaningless, too; but if you are looking for an entry to Tibetan Buddhism, I suggest some introductory works, below.)

But Tsongkhapa was himself associated with older schools, and his intellectual and cultural importance was not dependent on later politics; the Gelukpa success reflected as much as enhanced it. Mullin points out in the beginning of his introduction that a common honorific form of reference to Tsongkhapa is Gyalwa Nyipa, "The Second Buddha." (Note that a vast multitude of Buddhas, and incarnate Boddhisattvas, are recognized, so this is not quite like the saying "The Second Jesus," or even "A Second Mohammed." But is rather stronger than, say, the Jewish praise of Moses Maimonides, "From Moses to Moses, no one like Moses.")

The "Six Doctrines/Yogas/Teachings of Naropa" are a set of advanced Tantric techniques, which Marpa is said to have received from Naropa; although there is some dispute over whether this synthesis was Naropa's or he himself had derived it from his teacher, Tilopa. (It combined practical instruction and initiation with theoretical exposition, and therefore could not be reduced to a fixed text, so that issue was more historical than practical.) In either case, the "Six Yogas" became common ground for many branches of Buddhism in Tibet, and many Tibetan expositions, and commentaries on expositions, were composed. One of the first useful volumes of English translation of esoteric Tibetan texts, W.Y. Evans-Wentz's "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines or Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path" (Oxford, 1935; revised 1958) included a presentation of the "Six Yogas" by Padma Karpo (Pema Karpo, 1527-1592), as Book III, which Mullin notes as one of the better translations by Kazi Dawa Samdup; and not too confused by Evans-Wentz's attempts at explication. (A related text on soul-transference was included there as Book IV; and most of the set of texts reflect a common teaching-tradition.)

Another exposition of the system available in English, representing a (supposedly) different line of transmission, was included in Mullin's "Selected Works of the Dalai Lama II: The Tantric Yogas of Sister Niguma," (Snow Lion, 1985), now out of print; the relevant contents of which (chapter six; which also supplied the volume's subtitle) may or may not be duplicated in another volume translated by Mullin, "The Second Dalai Lama: His Life and Teachings" (Snow Lion, 2005); I haven't had a chance to check for myself, and Snow Lion's description is frustratingly opaque. (They are not part of Mullin's translation of the Second Dalai Lama's poetry as "Mystical Verses of a Mad Dalai Lama" (Theosophical Publishing House, 1994). However, the "Sister Niguma" version of the "Six Yogas" includes references to Tsongkhapa's explanation of difficult points; so they are nicely complementary, rather than independent.

This is all fairly heavy going, even granted some familiarity with Buddhist Yoga and its Tibetan developments. A classic exposition of the system for western readers is available in H.V. Guenther's excellent (if now a little antiquated) "The Life and Teachings of Naropa" (Oxford, 1963), although this is focused on Indian origins. Tsongkhapa's treatment was translated previously, after a fashion (and Mullin is quite clear about what fashion) in Garma C. C. Chang's "Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantras" (Falcon's Wing Press, 1961). Mullin points to numerous basic errors in its understanding of the Tibetan text, which I can't comment on; but I concur that Chang's constant sniping at both Tsongkhapa and the Gelukpas is annoying, and certainly suggests that, as a supporter of a rival group, the translator didn't "waste his time" by trying to actually understand the text. (The translation was in any case published from an unrevised draft, which certainly did it no good.)

Chang was more complimentary about the extra-Tsongkhapa/non-Gelukpa version of the "Six Yogas" system included by Evans-Wentz, and wrote an introductory "Yogic Commentary" to Kazi Dawa Samdup's translations in the "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" volume. He seems to have passed by Evans-Wentz's editorial reliance on Hindu and Theosophical sources, which in fact don't seem as much in evidence as in some of the three other volumes of the "Oxford Tibetan Series."

My own efforts to make sense of the "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" version of the Six Yogas, more years ago than I like to remember (I used the Galaxy Book paperback of 1967, as reprinted in 1970), was greatly facilitated by Mircea Eliade's "Yoga: Immortality and Freedom" (1954; English translation 1958, second Edition 1969), which explained in intelligible detail the presuppositions of the yogic physiology, and the functionings of the "subtle body." The Foreword by Donald S. Lopez to the third edition of "Tibetan Yoga" (Oxford, 2000) would have been a welcome help, had it been available then!

For Tibetan contexts of the "Six Yogas," beyond Lopez's well-informed but brief summary of the esoteric tradition, Snellgrove and Richardson's "Cultural History of Tibet" (1968, 1980) is still an invaluable introduction, even if the latest revision seems indefinitely delayed. It does not, I think, require much in the way of previous knowledge.

It might be followed by Geoffrey Samuel's comprehensive, if controversial, "Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies" (1993) which I found helpful in figuring out how the culture and politics interacted (and why Chang was so hostile). Giuseppe Tucci's very slightly antiquated "Religions of Tibet" (1979, English translation by Geoffrey Samuel, 1980) offers a very good, and more conventional, view, in terms intelligible to Western students; with a higher proportion of doctrine to history and sociology. (Tucci's Chapter Four, "Doctrines of the Most Important Schools," Part 10, "The gcod tradition," and Part 11, "Conclusion. The special nature of the Lamaist teaching of salvation" analyze the "Six Yogas" and other material in "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" -- although that volume doesn't seem to be mentioned directly in the notes and bibliography.)

And there are now plenty of good books from Snow Lion itself, and Wisdom Publications, among others, introductory and advanced, including a multitude of translations; although sorting out the devotional and the highly technical from the relatively objective and fairly elementary can be a problem for the novice. (Wisdom used to offer its books with Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced labels, but seems to have given up on this.)

I do NOT suggest starting with L. Austine Waddell's variously-titled volume on "Lamaism" or "Tibetan Buddhism," which dates back to 1895, and, despite some wonderful illustrations and even solid data, is a monument to Victorian disdain for heathens and foreigners (*especially* heathen foreigners), in which yogis are just magicians; and black magicians at that. Alexandra David-Neel's several volumes on her experiences in Tibet, like "Magic and Mystery in Tibet, (English version 1929), are more entertaining than Waddell, and far more respectful; and Tibetans have spoken well of them. Unfortunately, she seems to many readers (myself among them) to err on the side of enthusiastic credulity; and lack system and historical perspective. However, they are based on real travels; unlike the "memoirs" or "past life experiences" of "T. Lobsang Rampa," a.k.a. Cyril Hoskins, which, except as fiction, are best avoided.

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