the literary legacy of the mahasiddhas

The Siddhas in Four DimensionsFor the historian of religions, the mahasiddhas pose afamiliar puzzle. While the verifiable historical evidence ofthese figures is so obscure that truth and legend can seldombe separated, their cultural reality is nevertheless undeni-able.1 Like the mirages to which they compared the world,the siddhas seem to vanish into thin air whenever we seekto approach them. But if we keep our distance, attemptingonly to understand the manner in which they were repre-sented and the traditions attributed to them in the reli-gious life of South Asia and Tibet, they appear almost asliving presences even today.

The traditional accounts of the siddhas are not sources ofhistorical information as we tend to think of it, but relateabove all to the disclosure, in ritual, literature, and art, ofa dynamic realm of possible awakenings, accessible toreceptive persons without regard to temporal or spatial dis-tance. That these traditions have operated in the Tibetanreligious world in some such fashion is reflected on several

An Inexhaustible Treasuryof Verse: The LiteraryLegacy of the Mahasiddhas

MATTHEW T. KAPSTEIN

An IneTreasury of VThe LiteraryLegacy of the

1 Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism:

A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2002), offers

the most far-reaching effort to date to interpret

the Buddhist siddha movement in relation to cur-

rent knowledge of early medieval Indian history

in general.

Cat. no. 76, detail

HolyMadness.MKessayv2.1 9/27/05 9:45 AM Page 2

Sat the great brahman Saraha,

Whose complexion had a brilliance I’d never seen.

Supported by two ladies,

He wore the adornments of the cremation ground.

His joyful face beamed a bright smile, and

He inquired, “Have you fared well, my son?”

My delight at seeing that Venerable overwhelmed me;

My body-hairs trembled, my tears fell.

I circled him seven times, threw myself prostrate

before him,

And after touching the crown of my head to his feet,

I prayed, “Father! accept me with compassion!”8

In this way, in the imaginal realm of the dream, Saraha adopted

Marpa as his disciple, and his teaching to the latter on this unreal

occasion thereby became a real constituent of the later Kagyüpa tra-

dition, transmitted from master to disciple through the generations

down to our time.

The literature belonging to what I am describing as the esoteric

dimensions of the siddha traditions is enormous. In relation to the

tantric systems they promoted, the mahasiddhas are named as the

authors of many hundreds of commentaries, ritual manuals, and

books of guidance for practitioners. If the historical veracity of the

tales of the siddhas is in doubt, it is nevertheless certain that many

of their names were used by historical persons, who in fact created

much of the great corpus of Buddhist tantric texts. To name just one

example, Dombi Heruka (Fig. 2.3), the king who became an outcast,

is credited with the authorship of major rites connected with the

tantric divinities Cakrasamvara and Hevajra, and these continue to

form the basis for Tibetan esoteric rituals even today. At the same

time, the song-literature attributed to the siddhas had a remarkable

legacy in the development of the later medieval and early modern

literatures of India, as well as, in translation, that of the poetic lit-

erature of Tibet. Though the Indian authors of these verses remain

hopelessly obscure to us today, their literary contribution is never-

theless impressively clear. In this respect, the siddhas perhaps merit

comparison with the troubadours of medieval Spain and France.

The songs attributed to the siddhas were composed in a variety of

North Indian dialects generally classified as types of Eastern

Apabhramsa and so are claimed as early examples of the poetic liter-

ature of the modern languages of northeastern India, above all

Bengali, but also Assamese, Oriya, and Maithili.9 By virtue of their

form and imagery, however, the songs may be also regarded among

the forerunners of even more widespread developments in North

Indian devotional and mystical literature. The doha meter in which

the siddhas composed many of their verses may still be heard chant-

ed whenever the popular hymns of Tulsidas, the famous sixteenth-

The Literary Legacy of the Mahasiddhas 25

difficulties, as I am only concerned here with thesiddhas as literary personae (whether as charac-ters in legendary accounts or as the names used bycertain authors) and not at all with the underlyinghistorical verities, whatever these may have been.6 On Düjom Dorje (Rig-’dzin Bdud-’joms rdo-rje rol-pa-rtsal), see Matthew T. Kapstein, “The Sprul-sku’sMiserable Lot: Critical Voices from Eastern Tibet,”in Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of theInternational Association for Tibetan Studies: AmdoTibetans in Transition, ed. Toni Huber (Leiden: Brill2002), 99–111.7 The major tantric systems transmitted in Tibetwere generally traced back to figures claimed asmahasiddhas. The Path and Fruit (lam-’bras) systemof the Sakyapa (Sa-skya-pa) order, for instance, was

derived from the teachings of Virupa, while Tilopaand Naropa were regarded as the forefathers ofmuch of the Kagyü tradition. On a finer level, how-ever, many hundreds of particular esoteric instruc-tions derived from the siddhas were part of thearsenal of Tibetan Buddhist instruction, distributedthroughout the several orders and lineages. Thus,for instance, one speaks of “Guhyasamaja in thetradition of Arya Nagarjuna” (gsang-’dus ’phags-lugs), or “Cakrasamvara in the tradition of siddhaLuipa” (sdom-’byung lui-pa).8 The poem is studied in Matthew T. Kapstein, “TheIndian Literary Identity in Tibet.” in Literary Culturesin History: Perspectives from South Asia, ed.Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2003), 767–73. My complete translation of

it is given in David Damrosch et al., eds., TheLongman Anthology of World Literature, Volume1B: The Medieval Era (New York: LongmanPublishing, 2004).9 “Apabhramsa” originally referred to the “broken”vulgar speech, contrasted with Sanskrit and Prakrit,which by medieval times were purely literary lan-guages. When the siddhas’ songs were writtendown, about 1000 CE, the main forms ofApabhramsa were themselves also literary lan-guages. The so-called Eastern Apabhramsa lan-guages figure among the ancestors of the modernlanguages of northeastern India and relate to themroughly as Middle English to modern English.

Fig. 2.1

Siddha Naropa.

Tibet, Gyantse Palkor Chöde, 15th century

Photo by David Newman, copyright Tibetan and

Himalayan Digital Library (www.thdl.org)

Fig. 2.2

Siddha Saraha




24 M.T. Kapstein

2 For English translations, see James B. Robinson,trans., Buddha’s Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-fourSiddhas (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1979); andKeith Dowman, trans., Masters of Mahamudra:Songs and Histories of the Eighty-four BuddhistSiddhas (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1985). David Templeman, trans., The SevenInstruction Lineages (Dharamsala, HP: Library ofTibetan Works and Archives, 1983) translates a col-lection of accounts that both overlaps with and sup-plements the preceding, derived from the writingsof the noted Tibetan scholar Taranatha(1575–1634).3 Examples of such lineage histories includeKhenpo Könchog Gyaltsen, trans., The Great KagyüMasters: The Golden Lineage Treasury, ed. Victoria

Huckenpahler (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications,1990), and Dudjom Rinpoche, Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje,The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: ItsFundamentals and History, trans. Gyurme Dorje andMatthew Kapstein (London: Wisdom Publications,1991), 1:443–504. For Tibetan hagiographies ofindividual siddhas, see Herbert V. Guenther, TheLife and Teaching of Naropa (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1963); and Fabrizio Torricelli and AcharyaSangye T. Naga, trans., The Life of the MahasiddhaTilopa (Dharamsala, HP: Library of Tibetan Worksand Archives, 1995).4 The images of the siddhas illustrating the presentchapter are among the murals of the fifteenth-cen-tury Path and Fruit Chapel (lam-’bras lha-khang) ofthe Palkor Chöde (Dpal-’khor chos-sde) temple com-

plex in Gyantse, Tibet. I am grateful to DavidNewman, of the University of Virginia Tibet HimalayaDigital Library Project (www.thdl.org), for his carefulon-site photographic work during our collaborationon the project in 2002. Thanks are also due toTsering Gyalpo, of the Tibet Academy of SocialSciences, Lhasa, for his generous efforts, atGyantse and elsewhere, to secure access andrequired permissions. Some distortion of theimages, owing to the often awkward angles fromwhich they were of necessity photographed, wasunavoidable. As is evident from several of theplates given here, moreover, these magnificenttreasures of Tibetan painting are showing increas-ing signs of water damage. 5 Tibetan testimony dating to the eleventh and

twelfth centuries assures us that he was indeed anhistorical individual. See Davidson, Indian EsotericBuddhism, 317. For a study and translation of oneof the important surviving Sanskrit works attributedto this master, see Raniero Gnoli, and GiacomellaOrofino, Naropa: Iniziazione Kalacakra, BibliotecaOrientali 1 (Milan: Adelphi, 1994).Though this is per-haps the clearest such case, sufficiently compellingevidence points to the historical reality of several ofthe other celebrated mahasiddhas as well.Nevertheless, a problem that must always be bornin mind in this connection is the probability, in anygiven case, that the name of a particularly famoussiddha was used at one time or another by severaldifferent individuals. For the purposes of the pres-ent chapter, I will say nothing further about these

different levels, among which mundane, factual knowledge about the

siddhas was of marginal significance at best. Four dimensions of the

siddha traditions, I believe, were especially important. First, there

were the legendary accounts of the siddhas, especially those found in

the collected tales of the eighty-four.2 The stories of some siddhas

were found also in other works, including particular lineage histories,

and more extended accounts of their lives and exploits in detailed

hagiographies dedicated to the most popular among them.3 Moreover,

despite the ahistorical character of the traditions of the eighty-four

taken as a whole, some of these siddhas were certainly historical per-

sons, and a small number, for example Naropa (Fig. 2.1),4 were gen-

uinely important figures as well.5

The second dimension was their representation in painting and

sculpture. These first two dimensions — legend and art — may be

considered together to form the “exoteric” aspect of the siddha-tradi-

tions. They comprise what was known about them among uninitiated

persons and novices. The inspirational role that the tales and images

of the siddhas sometimes played may be seen in the life of a late-nine-

teenth-century tantric master from far eastern Tibet, Düjom Dorje,

who relates in his autobiography that, as a somewhat dissolute young

tülku (Tib. sprul-sku, a recognized incarnate lama), he found new

enthusiasm for his studies after reading the lives of the mahasiddhas.

Indeed, in the privacy of his quarters he even took to disguising him-

self as an Indian yogin, sitting naked with a wig of matted hair on his

head and holding a trident, which led some to suspect he was quite

mad. Later, in early adulthood, he renounced his monastic vocation to

become a lay tantric adept, in this way emulating his heroes.6

To emulate the siddhas, however, required that one be thoroughly

immersed in the two remaining dimensions of the traditions associat-

ed with them, comprising their esoteric teachings. These included, on

the one hand, the systems of tantric meditation and yoga that the sid-

dhas had propagated,7 which they themselves were thought to have

engaged in, and, on the other, the songs and poems attributed to

them. A four-dimensional perspective on a particular siddha or group

of siddhas — that is, familiarity with the appropriate stories, visual

depictions, and songs, combined with engagement in the actual ritu-

al and contemplative practices associated with them — entailed the

cultivation of a sense of a profound and intimate affinity with these

figures. The culmination of this spiritual relationship, in principle,

was special insight into the manner in which the Buddhist ideal of

enlightenment was embodied by the siddhas themselves, confirma-

tion of this sometimes occurring in visions or in dreams. Thus, the

translator Marpa (1012–96), founder of the Kagyüpa lineage in Tibet,

describes meeting Mahasiddha Saraha (Fig. 2.2) in a dream:

In a shaded grove of lak4a trees,

Atop a seat of antelope skin,

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2

HolyMadness.MKessayv2.1 9/27/05 9:45 AM 4

memorial should be a royal banquet for the eighty-four siddhas. This

put the good king in something of a quandry, as the siddhas were no

longer of this world. In order to fulfill his mother’s last wish, all he

could think to do was to pray and, as matters turned out, this was in

fact just what was needed. As he became absorbed in his devotions,

two Dakinis appeared to him, offering their aid. After they instructed

the king to make the arrangements for a great tantric feast, the

Dakinis miraculously traveled throughout the sacred realms of the

world to summon the mahasiddhas. Beginning with Luipa (Fig. 2.4),

each arrived in the appointed order and relished the delights of the

feast.17 Though the king wanted them to remain in his kingdom, they

refused, repaying his hospitality instead by singing in turn one of his

or her own songs, before vanishing into thin air. The king then con-

structed images to represent each of the siddhas, before which each

one’s song was written, and there he worshiped them. Sometime later,

a scholar named Viraprabha recorded what had taken place, as well

as the songs that the siddhas had sung. These were transmitted

through successive teachers, until, in the third generation following

Viraprabha, they reached Abhayadattasri, who taught his version of

the siddhas’ lives and the commentary on their songs to ensure their

future preservation.18

The legend tells us, in effect, that the constellation of the eighty-

four siddhas was an event in imaginal space, not historical time. It

also reveals that the cult of the siddhas is fundamentally tied to their

visual representation, both in contemplative visualization and in art,

and to the transmission of their songs. This is underscored by the ini-

tiatory rite mentioned above, in which, in the collective imagination

of master and disciples, the circle of the siddhas present at King

Kuñji’s banquet is reassembled and the songs they chanted on the

occasion once again are sung. What, however, is thought to be trans-

mitted through these songs? Why was considerable sacred authority

attributed to them?

In fact, the larger body of the poetic literature attributed to the sid-

dhas is extremely diverse. Their songs include elements of devotion,

social commentary, humor, transgression, symbolic or explicit

descriptions of the practices of tantric yoga, and philosophy. In these

respects, they are entirely consonant with the development of the

later medieval Indian poetic literature at whose beginnings they

stand. Nevertheless, Buddhist anthologists and commentators tended

to focus on particular themes that closely accorded with their favored

aspects of Buddhist esoteric instruction.19 In Abhayadattasri’s case,

the unifying theme is nothing less than the pinnacle of Buddhist

tantric contemplative teaching, the Mahamudra, or Great Seal, so-

called because its realization is said to delimit all possibilities of

experience, sacred and profane, just as the royal seal brings closure

to an act of government.20

As an example, we may consider the song he credits to Tantipa

(Fig. 2.5), a weaver who, having enjoyed a life of prosperity, fell on

hard times in his old age, living as the despised and impoverished


Fig. 2.3

Siddha Dombi Heruka




Fig. 2.4

Siddha Luipa




century Hindi devotional poet, are sung.10 In the siddhas’ insistence

on the need to encounter an innate font of spiritual meaning, as

revealed by one’s guru, in mystical contemplation, a part of their

message is perpetuated in verses canonized in the Adi Granth, the

sacred book of the Sikhs. Consider, for example, a quatrain attributed

to the most renowned poet among the Buddhist mahasiddhas, the

“great brahman” Saraha:

My friends! The wisdom that is innate

Is found nowhere but in the guru’s face.

When you behold the essential face of the absolute,

Your mind is deathless, your body ageless.11

A recognizable echo is found in verses from the Sikh founder, Guru

Nanak (1469–1539), such as:

The guru is the ladder, the dinghy, the raft by means of

which one reaches God . . .12

If the True Guru is gracious

how could there be fear of death?

If the True Guru is gracious

one mingles with the truth.13

ABHAYADATTASRI’S CIRCLE OF SONG

Certainly the most popular collection of the hagiographical accounts

of the siddhas is the one composed by the Indian teacher

Abhayadattasri and translated by him and his Tangut student

Möndrup Sherap, perhaps during the early part of the twelfth centu-

ry.14 Though this book is well known in the West, it has generally been

forgotten that it is actually one part of a larger body of work transmit-

ted by Abhayadattasri. This more extensive corpus additionally

includes an anthology, compiled by Abhayadattasri’s predecessor

Viraprabha, of short songs by each of eighty-four siddhas;

Abhayadattasri’s own detailed, oral commentary upon them (as

recorded by his Tangut disciple); and a variety of writings dealing

with the tantric teachings they championed.15 The whole collection

has come down through the centuries from master to disciple in the

course of an initiation into the practice of guruyoga, the Buddhist

tantric devotional exercise focusing upon the figure of the guru.

Here, the siddhas must be visualized according to precise iconograph-

ic specifications, and the recitation of the songs given in Viraprabha’s

anthology assumes an initiatory function.16 The four dimensions of

the siddha traditions are thus all very clearly involved in the ongoing

transmission in Tibet of Abhayadattasri’s collected works relating to

the mahasiddhas.

The origins of these texts and traditions are the subject of an

interesting legend. It is said that, in western India, in a district in

what is today Gujarat, there was a religious king named Kuñji. His

mother’s final request to him, before her death, was that her only

26 M.T. Kapstein

10 On Tulsidas’s use of the doha meter, see

Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing

the Ramacaritamanas of Tulsidas (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1991), 13–18.

11 Author’s translation, on the basis of the

Tibetan text as given in Abhayadattasri, Grub

chen brgyad cu rtsa bzhi’i rnam thar, ed. Bsod-

nams tshe-ring (Xining: Mtsho-sngon mi-rigs dpe-

skrun-khang, 1996), 164. A translation may also

be found in Dowman, Masters of Mahamudra,

66.

12 W. H. McLeod, trans., in Sources of Indian

Tradition, ed. Ainslie T. Embree, vol. 1, 2nd ed.

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),

505.

13 J. S. Hawley, and M. Juergensmeyer, trans.,

in Embree, Sources, 505.

14 For English translations, see n. 2 above.

15 Matthew T. Kapstein, “King Kuñji’s Banquet,”

in Tantric Religions in Practice, ed. David White,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),

52–71.

16 Per Kværne, An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric

Songs: A Study of the Caryagiti (Oslo:

Universitetsforlaget, 1977), 2nd ed. (Bangkok:

White Orchid, 1986), 63, insightfully suggests

that the songs he studied there “constitute an ini-

tiation once their essential structure becomes

apparent: they reveal the nature of the ultimate

state through the systematic ambiguity of their

imagery” (emphasis original). The use of the

songs in Viraprabha’s anthology in the context of

formal initiation tends to confirm this perspective.

17 As Luipa is said to have survived on a diet of

fish guts — the refuse left by the fisherman after

the catch — it was perhaps no accident that he

was the first to show up at a royal feast!

18 For a full translation of this legend, see

Kapstein, “King Kuñji’s Banquet,” 52–71.

19 On this question, see Kværne, Anthology,

17–20, and Davidson, Indian Esoteric

Buddhism, ch. 6.

20 Or, as Kongtrül (‘Jam-mgon Kong-sprul Blo-

gros-mtha’-yas, 1813–1899) puts it: “Because,

when experientially cultivating that to which one

has been introduced through the esoteric instruc-

tions of the guru, neither knowledge nor know-

ables surpass its radiance, it is a ‘seal’; and

because, besides that, there is no other gnosis

of the Buddha to be sought out, it is ‘great.’”

Quoted in Kapstein, “Tibetan Technologies of the

Self, Part II,” forthcoming. The metaphor of the

royal seal is made explicit in Lobsang Lhalungpa,

trans., Mahamudra: The Quintessence of Mind

and Meditation by Takpo Tashi Namgyal (Bos-

ton/London: Shambhala, 1985), 92–93.

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4


It should be clear from this example that Abhayadattasri was not

particularly interested in poetry; what concerned him was the mes-

sage that could be extracted from the siddhas’ songs in the context of

Buddhist contemplative teaching. As such, the poems were transmit-

ted and treated as meditation themes, part of the apparatus of spiri-

tual exercise for practitioners in the Tibetan lineages in which they

have been perpetuated. While this offers one way of attempting to

penetrate their meaning, it may be nevertheless worthwhile for the

modern reader in the West to reflect on what Abhayadattasri neg-

lects, that is, not the message, but the medium itself.

Besides the use in these songs of abstract or technical terminology

referring to tantric systems of contemplation and the spiritual experi-

ences that arise through them, their most notable feature is perhaps

their reliance upon metaphors and images drawn from common expe-

rience and everyday life. In this, they often reflect the occupations or

attributes of the siddhas themselves, as is the case in the song of the

weaver Tantipa. The interpretive device to which Abhayadattasri reg-

ularly turns in elucidating these metaphors is the classical Buddhist

distinction between relative and absolute reality. Thus, in the forego-

ing example, “thread” and “fabric” are relative, but “fivefold gnostic

emptiness” is absolute; it is what is really at issue in Tantipa’s song.

This is potentially misleading, for the song derives its power not from

the relativization of the ordinary in favor of the revelation of a tran-

scendent absolute, but rather in its disclosure that the two, relative

and absolute, are seamlessly woven together. If we are ever to find an

absolute source of meaning in our lives, it suggests, it will only be here

and now, in the tasks and encounters that constitute our everyday

world. This is conveyed not through the refined poetry of the literary

elite, but in apparently artless verse, whose very form declares its root-

edness in common life. Seen from this perspective, the world of the

Buddhist mahasiddhas seems to have much in common with that of

the great Taoist teacher Zhuangzi. We read, for instance, in a justly

famous passage from the latter, the account of Cook Ding, who once

explained butchering an ox to his lord in these words:

What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill.

When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was

the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole

ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with

my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a

stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the

natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife

through the big openings, and follow things as they are.23

As did Cook Ding in his discourse, what the siddhas make present

in their songs is a thoroughgoing transfiguration of the ordinary fea-

tures of our lives, not merely their appropriation as metaphor. This

provides a key to understanding many of these verses, a feature that

accounts in no small measure for their great legacy in subsequent


Fig. 2.7

Siddha Savari

(With two halves of a slain boar hanging from the

ends of his bow)




ward of his own children. After meeting Mahasiddha Jalandharipa

(Fig. 2.6), he gained great faith in the teachings of the Hevajra

Tantra and threw himself into the system of yoga that is taught there.

By his dedication to that path, he regained his youth, before flying off

into the heavens (and, we may assume, letting his ungrateful off-

spring know a thing or two in the process). The song attributed to

him by Abhayadattasri is as follows:

The weavers of this world

Produce varied textiles on their looms,

But thanks to the teachings of my master,

I’m now a weaver of all that there is.

With the thread of esoteric instructions

And the shuttle of discernment,

I weave the fabric of fivefold gnostic nothing

On the loom of the undivided expanse of awareness,

the buddhas’ body of reality.21

Abhayadattasri’s treatment of the difficult line, “I weave the fabric of

fivefold gnostic nothing” (literally, “emptiness”), provides us with some

idea of the manner in which these songs were interpreted in more or

less orthodox Buddhist contexts. He explains that when one comes to

realize the insubstantiality of outer objects and of one’s perception of

them, that is to say, their emptiness, and when one recognizes in turn

that this emptiness is itself devoid of all substantial attributes, then

the five “afflictions” — stupidity, lust, anger, envy, and greed — at last

come to an end, and it is their very cessation that is spontaneously real-

ized as “fivefold gnosis.” This, like the light rays of the sun, flows forth

incessantly in one who is graced with such enlightenment, and so

resembles a brilliant fabric that is woven without end.22

28 M.T. Kapstein

21 Abhayadattasri, Grub chen brgyad cu, 172.

22 Ibid., 173.

23 Burton Watson, ed. and trans., Chuang-tzu:

Complete Writings (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1963), 50–51, emphasis added.

Fig. 2.5

Siddha Tantipa




Fig. 2.6

Unidentified siddha, perhaps Jalandharipa




Fig. 2.5

Fig. 2.6Fig. 2.7


dation of the esoteric instruction of the Great Seal.” In some versions,

it is accompanied by detailed textual outlines, precisely correlating

the verses with the principle topics studied in formal instruction on

the viewpoint and practice of the Great Seal contemplative system.

For instance, the third Doha Treasure, attributed to Ka[ ha (Fig. 2.9),

may be translated, together with its topical divisions, as follows:

1. eliminating the extremes

1.1. eliminating extreme views

Worldings are arrogant:

Quoting all sorts of scriptures and Vedas,

They say, “I’ve gotten to emptiness!”

But they’ve not reached what’s inerrant.31

For emptiness, too, is empty of empty,

No birth can come from the unborn.

It’s all one big lie —

there’s no essence in what’s shifting and hollow.

Whoever understands this in thought

has thought but no understanding.

He just makes himself sick once again.

1.2. eliminating extremes in meditation

Conceptual thought is confusion.

Neither object, nor agent really real.

Impermanent! Lies! hence untruth.

Just this is confusion’s path.

When taking things up as the object of mind,

even the unagitated lord is brought down.32

The circle of the ma[ dala brings wholly to ruin

the buddhas, the world,

all the goddesses and wrathful protectors!33

1.3. eliminating extremes of conduct

Attainment through effort’s an error.

Obligation and prohibition — fatigue, self-restriction.

1.4. eliminating extremes with respect to the fruit

When moving through reality, like space,

the desire to go anywhere

Is a ghost’s quest to reach the horizon.34

Wishing to get to the juicy conclusion,

you’re a deer chasing the water-mirage.

You’ve been buddha from the very beginning!

Big mistake to become buddha again.

2. teaching suchness to be unaccountable and all-pervasive

A-ho!

Mr. Illusion has entered the central path.


ation “GM.”

31 This is closely similar to line 1 of verse 1 and

line 1 of verse 2 in the version given in Jackson,

Tantric Treasures, 117: “Worldlings display/

their arrogance:/ “I’ve entered the ultimate!/ …

Scholars put pride/ in their scriptures,/ Vedas,

and Pura[ as…”

32 The text here is obscure; the phrase I have

rendered “unagitated lord” is rba rlabs med pa’i

dbang phyug, literally, “waveless lord.” This

interestingly echoes verse 10 of Ka[ ha’s poem

in the version given by ibid., 120: “Waveless and

ever the same,/ the form of the innate/ is with-

out defilement…”

33 Compare Ka[ ha’s verse 18 in ibid., 123:

“How is the Thus-Gone gained?/ In the company/

of wrathful goddesses;// free from the ma[ dala

circle,/ I live in/ the innate moment.” Our pres-

ent text suggests that the first lines of Jackson’s

version might be interpreted to read: “How is the

Thus-Gone gained in the company of wrathful

goddesses?”

34 The odd word brï-ti,or bre-ti that occurs here

appears to be derived from Sanskrit preta, a

ghost.

Fig. 2.8

Siddha Virupa




Fig. 2.9

Siddha Ka[ha




Indian and Tibetan literature and recitation.

Some of the songs Abhayadattasri included in his anthology were,

from at least an orthodox Buddhist point of view, frankly transgres-

sive, if taken as I have proposed. An example is the verse of Savari,

the hunter-siddha (Fig. 2.7), whose murderous occupation supplies

the basis for his representation, both in iconography and in song:

The forest of ignorance is the grazing-place

Of herds of dualistic perceptions.

I take up the bow of wisdom and method;

My arrows fly to the heart of the matter.

Death is the death of false thought —

I feast on non-duality’s flesh,

Relish the taste of great bliss,

Savor the dessert of Mahamudra.24

The explicit allegorization of the hunt in this case offers an easy

escape to the Buddhist commentator, who is accordingly untroubled

by any suggestion that shikar might be concurrent with enlighten-

ment.25 Might we be better advised, however, in this and similar

instances to follow the intellectual’s pen, or Cook Ding’s knife? Just

whose arrows really do “fly to the heart of the matter?”

ENTERING THE EIGHT DOHA TREASURES

Abhayadattasri’s anthology of brief songs attributed to the siddhas is

not the only record of their poetic contributions, nor is it by any

means exceptionally important relative to either the history of Indian

literature (for it appears to have been unknown in India), or the sid-

dhas’ later literary legacy in Tibet.26 In recent years, there have been

several fine translations and studies of additional verse collections

that, taken together, now form a secure foundation for the study of

the major Indic poetry of the Buddhist siddhas.27

Besides these, however, there are a number of other Tibetan com-

pilations of poems attributed to the siddhas that have not so far been

studied. One is the short anthology called the Eight Doha Treasures (Do

ha mdzod brgyad), including eight works ascribed to six different sid-

dhas in all (one each by Saraha, Ka[ ha, Virupa [Fig. 2.8], and Naropa,

and two each by Tilopa and Maitripa, who is not however counted

among the familiar lists of eighty-four mahasiddhas).28 The songs

that it contains were derived from the translations of the Kagyüpa

founder Marpa, as well as those of Vairocanarak4ita, an Indian

teacher who traveled in Tibet during the early twelfth century and

whose disciples there included some of Marpa’s leading successors.29 I

have not yet been able to determine precisely when or by whom the

Eight Doha Treasures was compiled, but its wide distribution within the

Kagyü lineages, together with the great sixteenth-century Kagyü

master Takpo Tashi Namgyal’s treatment of it as authoritative, sug-

gests that it belongs to the relatively early history of the tradition.30

The Eight Doha Treasures is perhaps the most highly rarefied of the

collections of the siddhas’ verse, and it is in fact subtitled “an eluci-

30 M.T. Kapstein

24 Abhayadattasri, Grub chen brgyad cu, 163.

25 In fact, the hagiographical tradition in this

case, as given in ibid., 14–16 (=Dowman,

Masters of Mahamudra, 60–62), insists that

Savari, once converted to Buddhism, became a

strict vegetarian.

26 It it remarkable that, although songs of the

siddhas are very frequently quoted by Tibetan

authors, citations of the songs included in

Viraprabha’s anthology seem to be virtually

unknown.

27 Roger R. Jackson, Tantric Treasures: Three

Collections of Mystical Verse from Buddhist

India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)

provides a superb new translation of the three

major collections of dohas — by Saraha, Ka[ ha,

and Tilopa — that have survived in the original

Apabhramsa and have therefore become the

focal points of study by Indian linguistic and lit-

erary historians. Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Dreaming

the Great Brahman: Tibetan Traditions of the

Buddhist Poet-saint Saraha (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2005) is an excellent contribu-

tion on the Tibetan reception of the three doha-

cycles attributed to Saraha, which earlier had

been the subject of philosophical interpretation

by Herbert V. Guenther in The Royal Song of

Saraha: A Study in the History of Buddhist

Thought (Seattle: University of Washington

Press, 1968) and Ecstatic Spontaneity: Saraha’s

Three Cycles of Dohas (Fremont, California:

Asian Humanities Press, 1993). And we must

mention once more the magisterial dissertation

on the caryagiti, the “songs of tantric practice,”

by Per Kværne (see n. 16 above) that appeared

almost thirty years ago.

Each of these works may be consulted for full

bibliographical details regarding Indic and

Tibetan text editions, and earlier studies and

translations. An attractive, though rather free,

rendering of the Caryagiti, that has been over-

looked in the English-speaking world, may be

found in Prithwindra Mukherjee, Chants carya du

Bengale ancien (Paris: le calligraphe, 1981),

accompanied by an interesting recording in

which selections from the songs are interpreted

according to the raga notations given in the

manuscripts.

28 see addendum

29 On this figure, see Kurtis R. Schaeffer, “The

Religious Career of Vairocanavajra — A Twelfth

Century Indian Buddhist Master from Dak4i[ a

Kosala,” in Journal of Indian Philosophy 28

(2000): 361–84.

30 It is mentioned, among authoritative texts of

the tradition, as Do chung mdzod brgyad at

Lhalungpa, trans., Mahamudra, 105, and cited

frequently throughout the work as a whole, as

evidenced by the “Index” (476–88), in which it is

somewhat unhelpfully designated by the abbrevi-

Fig. 2.8

Fig. 2.9


ter Takpo Tashi Namgyal (1513–1587), in his masterwork,

Moonbeams of Mahamudra.44

The Eight Doha Treasures is explicitly mentioned in Moonbeams as one

of the principal authorities for the Mahamudra teaching, and the

numerous citations culled from it in Takpo Tashi Namgyal’s text con-

firm that this is no idle reference.45 Among the poems most copiously

quoted is the seventh in the collection, Naropa’s (Fig. 2.1) “Brief

Teaching of the View” (lta ba mdor bstan), a work distinguished by its

plentiful use of technical expressions borrowed from classical Indian

philosophies. (Perhaps this even argues in favor of the attribution of

the text to Naropa, who was reputed to have been a noted monastic

scholar prior to his apotheosis as a mahasiddha.) A single paragraph

in which Takpo Tashi Namgyal cites this text will serve as a typical

example of the manner in which the siddhas’ songs are put to use in

the context of formalized doctrinal instruction. At issue in the pas-

sage below is the precise significance of the concept of the mind’s

“luminosity” (Tib. ’od-gsal, equivalent to Sanskrit prabhasvara) in the

context of Mahamudra instruction:

To imagine that “luminosity” is something apparent in

the manner of sunlight is a great error. For it is the

nature of mind, untainted by conceptual proliferation

and purified of its taints, that is just designated “natu-

ral luminosity,” as proven by scriptures cited earlier;

and because, were the nature of mind such as to be the

cause of that luminosity which is exemplified by colors

and the appearance of light, then mind would be of the

nature of colors and apparent light; and because, it

would follow from that, that mind could not be proven

to be either without substantial essence, or naturally

pure. But then, you may wonder, in that case just what

is the reflexively aware and intrinsically limpid cogni-

tion that, as if by the mind’s own appearance, arises in

the mystical experience of adepts as its own light, tran-

scending colors and apparent light? Naropa has

addressed just this in his “Brief Teaching of the View”:

These apparent, mundane phenomena

Stand not apart from the reflexive mind,

Because they are apparent and limpid,

Like the experience of reflexive awareness.46

Takpo Tashi Namgyal is putting Naropa’s words to a rather differ-

ent use than what the latter seems to have intended. In the verses in

question, Naropa is concerned neither with the nature of mind, nor

with the visionary experiences of yogins. At issue for him, rather, is

the preliminary, philosophical step of arguing that perceptions of

things have much the same status as other mental events, and that

therefore things perceived exist for us only inasmuch as they exist in

mind. While Naropa’s verse may serve as a first step in the argument

that Takpo Tashi Namgyal seeks to develop concerning the mind’s

luminosity and visionary experience, there seems to be no getting

around the apparent contextual displacement that has occurred.

Takpo Tashi Namgyal’s extraordinary treatise was, of course, one

of the finest achievements of Tibetan religious thought. In subordi-

nating the interpretation of the texts he cited to the overriding archi-

tecture of his vision, however, he was doing just what religious sys-

tematizers everywhere and always have done. Maimonides and

Aquinas cite biblical authority with similar hermeneutic sleight of

hand. My point, rather, is to illustrate some aspects of the reception

of the siddhas’ songs in later Tibetan Buddhist intellectual traditions

and to suggest at the same time that we must not suppose reading the

poetry of the siddhas and reading them through these traditions to be

just the same.


Sky-mountain’s adorned with dream-wood.

Apparition’s elephant fell into the stream of mirage.

The infertile bride’s son conquered an elf ’s kingdom.

I, Ka[ ha, alone do not change at all;

Without the path’s efforts, I’m just what I am.

By realizing suchness, I’ve stopped doing accounts.

If you see what’s certain, unaccountable, inerrant,

Not grasped in twos, empty or not,

You’ll be by this borne to that horizon

where there are no more things, no more thought.

This poem has enough in common with the available Apabhramsa

version of Ka[ ha’s Dohako4a to suggest that they might have ultimate-

ly derived, at least in part, from a common source.35 Nevetheless, the

differences are very pronounced. The Apabhramsa text is “heavily

tantric . . . very little within it cannot be interpreted in terms of

Yogini tantra practices on the ‘completion stage,’ that is, within the

context of the subtle body.”36 This is also true of the songs attributed

to Ka[ ha in the Caryagitiko4a.37 The version we find in the Eight Doha

Treasures, however, seems to have been purified of much of this, though

some lines, such as, “Mr. Illusion has entered the central path,” allud-

ing to the confluence of the vital energies within the central channel

of the subtle body, do indeed reflect tantric practices. Nevertheless,

the poem overall has been edited so as to accord with the still eso-

teric, but quite abstract, precepts of the Great Seal. The question

may be posed, therefore, but not, in the present case, answered: was

this the result of a process of redaction in India or in Tibet, or per-

haps even one beginning in India and then continuing in Tibet? In

connection with certain other texts, for instance the Garland of Gems,38

traditions related to the mahasiddhas either derived from the collab-

oration between Indian masters and their Tibetan disciples, or else

stemmed from purely Tibetan elaborations of Indian tantric themes.

If the relationship between the Tibetan versions of the siddhas’

songs and their Indian sources thus remains sometimes puzzling,

questions of a somewhat different sort arise when we consider the

role of these texts in the Tibetan traditions that they inspired. The

Tibetan use of the topical outline served to rationalize these works, to

all appearances fiercely defiant of rationalization, in accord with the

demands of formal models of instruction in particular traditions of

spiritual discipline. The impetus to tame the impetuous words of the

siddhas was of course not felt among the Tibetans alone, for, as we

have seen in the case of Abhayadattasri, Indian Buddhist interpreters

were no less concerned to extract coherent meaning from them.

Nevertheless, the Tibetans went beyond even this in seeking to incor-

porate the songs within the architecture of fully elaborated Buddhist

doctrinal systems, and, in so doing, their approach, as interpreters of

Indian Buddhism, was often bold and innovative.

Though we know of important systematic treatises that cite the

siddhas’ songs among their authorities and that date to the four-

teenth century and before,39 the great age of system-building on the

basis of the Mahamudra teaching was certainly the sixteenth centu-

ry.40 This seemingly improbable development had its roots firmly

planted in the political trends of the time, for, during the fourteenth

century, factions favoring the Kagyü orders had become the rulers of

Tibet. Because administration in Tibet always required the services

of literate clerics,41 new educational institutions were formed, that

were committed both to the logical order of rigorous Buddhist

scholasticism and to Kagyü traditions of tantrism and yoga.42 One

result was the emergence of a peculiarly Kagyü brand of scholasti-

cism, concerned in part to demonstrate that the highest insights of

the Kagyü masters, and those of the Great Seal above all, were at the

apex of the entire Buddhist philosophical edifice. Perhaps the most

renowned exemplars of this trend were the brilliant Seventh and

Eighth Karmapa hierarchs, and the equally dazzling leader of the

Drukpa Kagyü order, Pema Karpo (1527–1592).43 The presentation of

the Mahamudra as a fully coherent doctrinal system, however, was

best articulated by their contemporary, the revered meditation mas-

32 M.T. Kapstein

35 Jackson, Tantric Treasures, 117–28.

36 Ibid., 41.

37 In fact, Ka[ ha is far and away the best repre-

sented of the poets in that collection. As the

table given by Kværne, Anthology, 4, shows, he

is credited with thirteen of the total of fifty

songs found therein.

38 Kapstein, “King Kuñji’s Banquet.”

39 Examples include the major writings of the rad-

ical Jo-nang-pa thinker Dol-po-pa Shes-rab-rgyal-

mtshan (1292–1361) and the great Rnying-ma-pa

master Klong-chen Rab-’byams-pa (1308–1363).

40 Nevertheless, precedents for these later

developments are already clearly present in the

writings of the major Bka’-brgyud-pa masters of

the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

41 This traditional relationship between govern-

ment and clergy in Tibet apparently resulted in

an actual decline in literacy in the major Gelukpa

(Dge-lugs-pa) monasteries of Central Tibet in

recent centuries, where the monks sometimes

avoided gaining too much proficiency in the

skills that would have qualified them to be draft-

ed into the state bureaucracy.

42 This is plainly stated by the Fifth Dalai Lama

(1617–1682) in his history of rulership in Tibet:

Rgyal-ba Lnga-pa-chen-mo (Dalai Lama V) Ngag-

dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho, Bod kyi deb ther

dpyid kyi rgyal mo’i glu dbyangs (Beijing: Mi rigs

dpe skrun khang, 1988), 141.

43 Karma-pa VII Chos-grags-rgya-mtsho

(1454–1506), Karma-pa VIII Mi-bskyod-rdo-rje

(1507-1557), and ’Brug-chen Padma-dkar-po

(1527–1592).

44 Translated in Lhalungpa, Mahamudra.

Unfortunately, Lhalungpa, like many recent

Tibetan writers, confuses the true author, the

sixteenth-century Bka’-brgyud master Dwags-po

Bkra-shis-rnam-rgyal, with a similarly named Sa-

skya-pa scholar who lived just over a century

earlier. On this question, see Matthew T.

Kapstein, review of Mahamudra: The

Quintessence of Mind and Meditation, trans. L.

Lhalungpa, Journal of the International

Association of Buddhist Studies, 13/1 (1990):

101–14.

45 Refer to n. 30 above.

46 Author’s translation, after the text of the

Phyag-chen zla-zer as given in Bka’ brgyud pa’i

gsung rab pod nyi shu pa: Thabs grol (Xining:

Mtsho-sngon mi-rigs dpe-skrun-khang, 2001),

571–72. The verse quoted here is drawn from

Do ha mdzod brgyad, folio 18a. For more on the

interpretation of “luminosity” in this and related

contexts, see Matthew T. Kapstein, ed., The

Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and

Religious Experience (University of Chicago

Press, 2004).


ADDENDUM

Do ha mdzod brgyad ces bya ba phyag rgya chen po’i man ngag gsal bar ston pa’i

gzhung. During the late-1960s xylographic editions were produced at

Rum-btegs, Sikkim, and Tashijong, Himachal Pradesh. The latter,

clearly based upon the mid-twentieth-century edition from Rtsib-ri,

near Ding-ri, Tibet, includes a topical outline (sa-bcad), absent in the

Rum-btegs edition. The Rtsib-ri and Tashijong versions also agree in

attributing the first of the eight doha collections included to Saraha (as

do the canonical versions: Sde-dge T. 2273 and Peking 3119), whereas

the same poem is elsewhere (e.g., in the Gdams-ngag-mdzod) erroneously

credited to Savari. This misattribution was no doubt due to the use of

the latter’s epithet, dpal ri khrod pa, found in all versions of the

colophon, but applied here to Saraha. The contents of Tashijong edi-

tion, including pagination, titles, and colophons, are as follows:

1. 1b1-6b6 rgya gar skad du/ do ha ko 4a na ma ma ha mu dra u pa

de sa/ bod skad du/ do ha mdzod ces bya ba phyag rgya chen po’o man ngag/

do ha mdzod ces bya ba phyag rgya chen po’i man ngag/ dpal ri khrod pa

sa ra ha’i zhal snga nas mdzad pa rdzogs so// rgya gar gyi mkhan po

bai ro tsa na rak4i tas rang ’gyur du mdzad pa’o//

2. 6b6-11a3 do ha ko 4a na ma/ bod skad du/ do ha mdzod ces bya ba/

do ha mdzod ces bya ba rnal ’byor gyi dbang phyug birwa pas mdzad

pa rdzogs so// rgya gar gyi mkhan po bai ro tsa nas rang ’gyur du

bsgyur ba’o//

3. 11a3-12a4 rgya gar skad du/ do ha ko 4a na ma/ bod skad du/ do ha

mdzod ces bya ba/

do ha mdzod ces bya ba rnal ’byor gyi dbang phyug te lo pas mdzad pa

rdzogs so// rgya gar gyi mkhan po bai ro tsa nas rang ’gyur du bsgyur

ba’o//

4. 12a5-13a5 rgya gar skad du/ do ha ko 4a na ma/ bod skad du/ do ha

mdzod ces bya ba/

do ha mdzod ces bya ba slob dpon nag po bas mdzad pa rdzogs so//

rgya gar gyi mkhan po shri bai ro tsa nas rang ’gyur du bsgyur ba’o//

5. 13a5-14b6 rgya gar skad du/ bha wa ni dhi tsa rya pha la do ha girti

na ma// bod skad du/ lta sgom spyod pa ’bras bu’i do ha’i glu zhes bya ba/

lta sgom spyod pa ’bras bu’i do ha’i glu zhes bya ba rdzogs so// rgya

gar gyi mnga’ bdag mai tri pa’i zhal snga nas/ bod kyi lo tsa ba mkhas

pa chen po mar ston chos kyi blo gros kyis bsgyur ba’o//

6. 14b6- 18a1 rgya gar skad du/ ma ha mu tra u pa de sa/ bod skad du/

phyag rgya chen po’i man ngag/

phyag rgya chen po lhun gyis grub pa dpal te lo pa chen po’i zhal snga

nas mdzad pa/ kha che’i pa{di ta mkhas pa grub pa thob pa na ro pa

chen po’i zhal snga nas/ bod kyi lo tstsha ba chen po sgra sgyur mar

pa chos kyi blo gros kyis byang pu la ha rir bsgyur cing zhus te gtan la

phab pa’o//

7. 18a2-20b4 rgya gar skad du/ i dhi si dhi sa ma na ma/ bod skad du/

lta ba mdor bsdus pa zhes bya ba/

rje na ro pa’i lta ba mdor bsdus pa zhes bya ba rdzogs so// pa{di ta

dznya na si ddhi’i zhal snga nas/ lo tstsha ba mar pa chos kyi blo gros

kyis bsgyur cing zhus pa’o//

8. 20b4-21b6 rgya gar skar du/ ma ha mu tra sanytsa mi tha/ bod skad

du/ phyag rgya chen po’i tshig bsdus pa/

mai tri pa’i phyag rgya chen po tshig bsdus pa rdzogs so// // pa{di ta de

nyid kyi zhal snga nas/ bod kyi lo tstsha ba mar pa chos kyi blo gros

kyis bsgyur ba’o//

21b6-22b2 Dedications and final colophon

A comparison of the songs as given herein with their canonical ver-

sions remains a desideratum


NO MORE THOUGHT, ALMOST . . .

It is perhaps one of the more remarkable features of the Tibetan

Buddhist traditions that, despite the great efforts made to domesti-

cate the siddhas in the context of well-ordered doctrinal systems,

they remained an unruly lot, capable of disrupting the placid lives of

relatively privileged clergy at almost any time, without warning. An

example was the eastern Tibetan adept Düjom Dorje, who as a rebel-

lious young hierarch had idolized the siddhas and made them the

icons of his rebellion. Buddhist communities in the West had a taste

of the whirlwind in the person of the late Chögyam Trungpa,

Rinpoche, who attributed to the siddhas a brand of “crazy wisdom,”

which he fully exemplified himself. If religious lineage is analogous to

bloodline, then perhaps the siddhas can be regarded as having con-

tributed to their Tibetan descendants that peculiar mutation of the

genome that makes for crazy and creative at the same time.

The siddhas are at their best, in my view, when their verse is con-

sumed raw, when we can get a small taste, no matter how fleeting, of

Savari’s feast of “non-duality’s flesh.” So, in concluding, one of their

number should have the last word. I offer here the closing verses of the

Mahasiddha Virupa’s (Fig. 2.8) contribution to the Eight Doha Treasures:

Ah-hah! “mahamudra” — that’s a big deep word.

But just what’s it get at?”

Emptiness?” One more label!

Things impermanent-in-essence are empty.

Who is it, then, that understands absence of self?

There’s no one who understands it.

“Buddha?” You’ve just pronounced one more word.

It’s not what’s authentic,

just saves appearances for those who need to be led.

And those who need to be led —

Not self! Mere illusions, apparitions!

“Mahamudra” — it’s a name made up by children.

Chasing this confusion, just who do you think you are?

Awareness-in-person?

The fruit, nirvana — it’s not so much as an atom,

and if that can’t be perceived,

Then “free” and “unfree”

can only be happenstance names.

In that space that is peaceful and pure, there’s none of it.

Neither freedom, nor bondage.”

Relative” and “absolute” — contrived labels, that’s all.

In the expanse of reality, there are no two truths,

there is no expanse of reality.

34 M.T. Kapstein


the literary legacy of the mahasiddhas

Documents