The Dalai Lamas on Tantra by Glenn H. Mullin

Author:Glenn H. Mullin
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Snow Lion Publications
Published: 2007-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Ask any Tibetan lama about the history of this yellow hat and he probably will reply that Tsongkhapa introduced it as a declaration of his "reformation" of Tibetan Buddhism. I have heard several dozen lamas give Tsongkhapa as the source of it. The same claim is made in numerous Western scholarly books.

The reality, however, is that the yellow hat was introduced by the Zhalu master Buton Rinchen Drubpa almost a century before Tsongkhapa's use of it. Tsongkhapa therefore used it as a signal that he was primarily endorsing Buton's lineages.

Buton is also one of the greatest Tibetan writers on the Kalachakra system, and his Collected Works is a treasury of knowledge on the system. Tsongkhapa considered Buton's presentation to be so thorough that he wrote almost nothing on the system himself, and instead dedicated his Tantric pen to enormous treatises on systems such as the Guhyasamaja Tantra, the Heruka Chakrasamvara Tantra, and the Six Yogas of Naropa. Of course his Ngakrim Chenmo, or Stages on the Mantra Path, is his magnum opus on the Buddhist tantras as awhole.'

After discussing the Sutrayana doctrines that are used as preliminaries to the Vajrayana in both the Zhalu and Geluk Schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama goes on to introduce some of the kye cho, or "special characteristics," of the Kalachakra Tantra.

Anyone receiving initiation into any of the Highest Yoga Tantra systems takes a precept to honor the nineteen samayas, or sacred pledges, associated with the five buddha families: Akshobhya, Vairochana, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, and Amoghasiddhi. The five buddhas, as we see in other chapters of this book, are linked to the five sections of the mandala-the four directions and the centerand represent the transformation of the five elements and five skand- has into the five wisdoms and five enlightenment aspects.

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