We know from the old Tibetan documents found at Dunhuang, and from later epic traditions as well, that Tibet had early on elaborated a conception of sacral kingship, profoundly tied to the ideals of a heroic and aristocratic society. The earliest known version of the myth of the first Tibetan king shows not only men but the entire natural world, leaning in homage towards the king, in honor of his inherent charisma. In both the Old Tibetan Chronicle from Dunhuang and the later Epic of Gesar, the values of cunning, magical effulgence, and power, and the dangers of the hubris that arises from these, are frequently encountered themes. And once we move from legendary to historical time in the seventh to the ninth centuries, we find that the emperors styled themselves “divine rulers of magical sagacity.”
Following the breakup of the old Tibetan empire, those vying for authority sought to recapture elements of this confluence of divinity, wisdom, and power, and connections with Buddhist learning and with those who had reputations for spiritual attainment emerged as important signifiers of merit. This had indeed been presaged in the later empire’s adoption of the Buddhist religion. The association of Buddhism with the old monarchy and its successors, its mastery of literacy and learning in this world and of one’s destiny hereafter – these are among the factors that help to explain the cultural ascendancy that Buddhism had achieved in Tibet by the eleventh century when the historical record returns to the light. Personal mastery of Buddhist learning and ritual, above all in forms that were believed to represent authoritative Indian Buddhist sources, now became the preeminent marker of personal excellence, and hence the defining feature of an emerging cultural elite. This is reflected in a passage from the life of Khyungpo Neljor:
“From the start, since my paternal ancestors were all Bonpo masters, I had a hankering or disposition [for Bonpo teachings]. At age thirteen I studied all the outer and inner Bon teachings with the master Yungdrung-gyel and became learned in them. An assembly of about seven hundred who possessed ritual skull-cups gathered around me, and I composed many rites, treatises, and commentaries, and so caused the Bon teachings to be spread throughout the three provinces of Tibet. I became a Bon scholar and adept and produced many learned pupils. …
Though I actually saw many assemblies of deities and my occult powers became unlimited, so that I became an indisputable [master of Bon], nevertheless some doubts arose in my own mind. I thought, “Bon has not been translated by the panditas [of India] or by the undisputed translators [of Tibet.] People say that I am not a man of the Dharma, but that I am a Bonpo. So now, as prophesied by the adept Amogha, I must go to India.”
Ritual mastery and learning by themselves, it appears, are now insufficient. It is the undisputed possession of Buddhist teachings stemming directly from India that verifies one’s worth.
The dichotomy between autochthony and Indian origin, however, was neither equivalent to nor effaced the tension between magical or ritual sources of authority and clerical prestige. That this was a source of continuing rivalry is clearly indicated by the biographies of the eleventh-century masters of the Zur lineage of the Nyingmapa, where we find opposing factions formed even among the disciples of a single master:
At first, the teacher and his students … mainly devoted themselves to study; so there were few who were adept at the rites of enlightened activity. When discussions were held in the teaching court, those who did know the rites were seated among the ignorant, who did not participate in the discussions. [In retaliation] the ritualists would not allow the others to chant when they assembled for the daily torma offerings. At this Lama Zurpoche said, “One may be liberated by arriving at the culmination of any subject. It is not right to scorn one another …”
But scorn one another they certainly did. The opposition that we encounter here runs throughout the later history of Tibetan Buddhism and has been interpreted variously by students of the Tibetan religion.
Geoffrey Samuel, in his wide-ranging book Civilized Shamans, has emphasized the distinction between what he characterizes as “shamanic” and “clerical” Buddhism. Though I now think the former is an unfortunately confusing term that perhaps should be abandoned in this context, I believe that Samuel nevertheless rightly describes an important dichotomy within Tibetan Buddhism, as suggested by the anecdotes just given and also by our earlier examinations of death and of literacy. We may say that, on the one hand, Tibetan Buddhism came to define itself soteriologically, as concerned with the practical attainment of freedom, whether from the ills of this life, or from evil rebirth, or from samsara altogether, and that this was, for the most part, expressed in terms of ritual mastery. On the other hand, it defined itself in terms of the control of knowledge. In Tibetan terms, this distinction accords broadly with that between the accomplished adept’s attainment (grub-pa) and skillful mastery of the branches of learning (mkhas-pa): both are terms Khyungpo Neljor uses in the passage quoted above. To the extent that these may be represented as two disparate ideals that demand different types of virtuosity, we do find much evidence of competition between adepts and clerics. Nevertheless, Tibetan Buddhism came in time to promote a synthesis; the greatest masters were to be “gurus endowed with both learning and attainment” (mkhas-grub gnyis-ldan-gyi bla-ma). It was this synthesis that eventually came to define Tibet’s Buddhist elite.