The Creative Vision: The Symbolic Recreation of the World According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition of Tantric Visualization Otherwise Known As the Developing Phase

196 Pages·1987·32.74 MB·English

by  ʼGyur-med-tshe-dbaṅ-mchog-grub (Dge-rtse Paṇḍita)

T I TT
7
x JL H i
CREATIVE
VISION
The Symbolic Recreation of the World
According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
of Tantric Visualization
Otherwise Known as
The Developing Phase
HERBERT GUENTHER
LOTSAWA
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Production Coordination; Matrix Productions
Cover Art: Cynthia Moku and Video Arts
Copy Editing: Russell Fuller
Book Design: Merrill Peterson
Production Artist: Kim Freeman
Typesetting: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
’Gyur-med-tshe-dban-mchog-grub, Dge-rtse Pandita,
b. 1764?
The creative vision.
Translation of: Bskyed-pa’ i nm-pa cho-ga dan sbyar-
ba’i gsal-byed zun-jug snye-ma.
Bibliography: p. 160
Includes index.
1. Yoga (Tantric Buddhism) 2. Tantnc Buddhism—
China—Tibet—Doctnnes. I. Guenther, Herbert V.
II. Title.
BQ7805.G982513 1987 294.3'44 87-2799
ISBN: 0-932156-03-7
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Nena
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While preparing the translation and writing this book I have been
extremely fortunate to benefit from correspondence and fruitful discus­
sions with friends and colleagues, artists as well as writers, philosophers,
and scientists. I am particularly indebted to professor K.J.G. Haderlain,
David Higgins, Mariana Neves-Anders, and, last but not least, my wife
Dr. Ilse Guenther. 1 have also received important information from
professors Eva and Lobsang Dargyay. Lastly, I wish to thank my publisher
Merrill Peterson for his valuable editorial suggestions.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION vl
PART ONE WESTERN PERSPECTIVE 1
Prelude 3
Being’s Holomovement and the Two Realities 4
The Symbolic Re-creation Process 10
In-depth Appraisals and Phase Transitions 21
Imagination and the Symbolic Re-creation of the
World 30
The Imaginative Recapitulation of Morpho- and
Ontogenetic Processes 47
Conclusion 57
PART TWO EASTERN PRESENTATION 59
Prologue 63
Introduction 63
Preparation 65
The Main Part 74
CONCLUDING REMARKS 105
NOTES 111
REFERENCES 160
Works in Western Languages 160
Tibetan Works 162
INDEXES 168
INTRODUCTION
The Creative Vision-addresses itself to an individual’s creative vision of
himself and his environing world. Its subtitle, “The Symbolic Re-Cre-
ation of the World,” paraphrases the Tibetan term bskyed-nm (bskyed-pa’i
nm-pa), rendering the Sanskrit terms utpattikrama and utpanrmkrama,
both of which may be translated, more or less literally and hence rather
inadequately, as developing phase or phases. The first Sanskrit term
emphasizes the process and the second emphasizes its result or product.
Re-creating one’s world and by implication oneself through vividly
experienced symbols is discussed in a relatively small work, the bsKyed-
pa’i nrri'pa cho-ga dang sbyar-ba’i gsal'byed zung^’jug snye'ma (“The ear of
com symbolizing the unity of the human and the divine—the shining
sun of the developing phase with its attendant ritual”),1 by ’Gyur-med
tshe-dbang mchog-grub, also known as the Kah-th©g dge-rtse pandita.
He was probably bom in 1764, but the year of his death is unknown.
This small but important text is, to a certain extent, an excerpt from
the author’s larger gSang'Sngags nang'gi lam-rim rgya^cher 'grel-pa Sangs-
rgyas gnyis-pa’i dgongS'Tgyan (“The ornament that is the Second Buddha’s
[Padmasambhava’s] sense-bestowing world design—an exhaustive com­
mentary on the psychic progress in the individual’s existential approach
to life’s meaning”), which was written in 1805. Unfortunately, the ex­
cerpt from this work has been transmitted to posterity in rather poor
shape. Rampant with omissions and abounding in misspellings, at places
it is even illegible and, worst of all, quite garbled. We can only surmise
the reasons for this deplorable condition. The work may have been
hurriedly written, and the person who took down the notes to be elabo­
rated in the body of the text was not always attentive. The printing
blocks were probably carved by an illiterate craftsman and never passed
through a corrector’s hands. However, these defects could be mended by
consulting the author’s larger work and by referring to other works similar
in content.
A translation of a text like this one presents enormous difficulties.
First no two languages are sufficiently alike to permit a mechanical trans­
fer of the style and meaning of an original text from one language to
another. Further, translating is above all an ongoing hermeneutical pro­
cess that demands the utmost of the translator. A translation deserving of
the name must be faithful to the substance—the meaning of the text. If
the text contains a word that has no English equivalent, it must be
paraphrased rather than be replaced by a word from another language—
in the case of Tibetan from Sanskrit—whose semantic value may be quite
different from the connotations the original word aroused in the mind of
the person who used it. Apart from being thoroughly trained in the
language of the text to be translated and highly sensitive to the subtleties
of one’s own language, the translator must know both the subject matter
of the text and the context in which it was conceived and composed.2
’Gyur-med tshe-dbang mchog-grub’s work belongs to a group of texts
that favor an existential-experiential rather than epistemological ap­
proach to one’s enworldedness (rgyud, Skt. tantra), involving self-explo­
ration coupled with self-interpretation, and world interpretation. As a
“way,” such an approach involves a progressively deepening understand­
ing of how the nexus of meanings, which is what we call world, evolves.
However, as the Buddhists noted long ago it is more correct to speak of
various approaches that reflect differences in and levels of an individual’s
intellectual acumen, which is always interpretive in nature. “There is no
such thing as a way or ways in consciousness; individual ways turn up
merely by virtue of consciousness making itself understood,” says Klong-
chen rab-’byams-pa.3
Following the Indian predilection for systematization and classifica­
tion, the Tibetans accepted nine ways or spiritual pursuits (theg-pa, Skt.
yarn).4 Three of these are more or less well known in the West because
they fitted easily into the framework of traditional Western philosophical
systems that acted as powerful fore-structures or fore-conceptions in pre­
senting and interpreting Indian philosophy in general and Buddhist phi­
losophy in particular.5 These three pursuits are (1) the Sravakayana—
the way of those who listen and who, as social beings, make others listen
too; (2) the Pratyekabuddhayana—the way of those who autistically
withdraw as each-a-Buddha-for-himself; and (3) the Bodhisattvayana—
the way of those who have a strong social awareness and who have
become reflectively aware of the meaning of the mundaneness of ordi­
nary mentation. In general, the first two pursuits constitute the Hina-
yana, a rather conservative movement that, philosophically, represents a
naive realism. The third pursuit constitutes the Mahayana, a more com­
prehensive movement embracing all the varieties summed up by the term
idealism. However, from the holistic viewpoint that gained precedence in
the development of Buddhist thought, these three pursuits rank rather
low because they tend, precisely because of their excessively rational and
reductionistic character (realism being as reductionistic as idealism), to
diminish and ultimately even eliminate one’s humanity. Certainly a
world minus ourselves is a contradiction in itself, and a human being as a
barren abstraction sheds little illumination on his or her concrete en-
worldedness and, to say the least, remains emotionally and spiritually
unsatisfactory.
Once we understand the inadequacy of logical induction or deduc­
tion as a way to impart meaning to our lives, we can “move on” to probe
the forces working in and through us and to create a world in which we
can live because it encompasses much more than mere thinking. This
moving on is the concern of the next six approaches, referred to by the
term Vajrayana—the pursuit of the indestructible, ever dynamic core of
Being. Each of these approaches constitutes a specific way of weaving the
tapestry of one’s existence. The point to note here (a point that we
cannot overemphasize) is that without prior realization of the shortcom­
ings of the preceding pursuits, the arduous task of weaving one’s exis­
tence mto a richer and more satisfactory tapestry remains ineffectual and
may even become counterproductive. This realization was admirably
expressed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust (1984, p. 13).
I’ve studied now, to my regret,
Philosophy, Law, Medicine,
and—what is worst—Theology
from end to end with diligence.
Yet here I am, a wretched fool
and still no wiser than before.
I’ve become Master, and Doctor as well,
and for nearly ten years I have led
my young students a merry chase,
up, down, and every which way—
(Habe nun, ach! Philosophy,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und—leider auch—Theologie
Durchaus studiert, mit heissem Bemiihn.
Da steh’ ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;
Heisse Magister, heisse Doktor gar,
Und ziehe schon an die zehn Jahr