Great Perfection.pdf

2 introduction
The cause of the Tibetan decline
Although the adoption of Buddhism as the state religion at the summit of
the empire gave birth to an influx of foreign religious culture, it also ironically
marked the beginning of the Tibetan political decline.
The doctrine of “cause and effect” in Buddhism is the ideology crucial
to promoting its spread. Kings merely become subordinate and at best auxiliary
agents for maintaining the propagation of the faith. They themselves
like other beings cannot escape from going through the samsàric transmigration.
How this ideology came to be reconciled with the world vision of
the ancient Tibetans is still little known. According to the indigenous belief,
the Tibetan kings were direct descendants of the gods of Phyva. They
came down from heaven to reign over the black headed people. Moreover,
they were gods like the Phyva themselves and so were imbued with supernatural
qualities such as byin, “splendour” of body for the overpowering
of political and military opponents and ’phrul, “magic sagacity” of mind
enabling them to sustain the order of the world. 4
Nevertheless, Buddhism seems to have adjusted itself, as it usually did
in the countries where it spread, to the native beliefs by assimilating the
indigenous conception of kingship and the notion of royal powers to its own
notions: the term byin came to be used in conjunction with rlabs to form the
word byin rlabs (adhißthàna) and ’phrul with rdzu, rdzu ’phrul (‰idd-hi) or with
other similar Buddhist terms. Both the terms, subsequently almost entirely
lost their original and early connotation. The kings themselves became simply
chos rgyal (dharmaràja) and were finally subjected to the Buddhist moral
code. They later had fears about taking any more military actions, because
of contamination by sdig pa ( pàpa), “sin”. The confession for a king probably
Khri gTsug-lde-btsan (805–838), in which a Sino-Tibetan border
conflict involving killing men and animals is recorded, can still be read. 5
Another major factor which is political and economic and which seems
to have enhanced the decline is the establishment of the Buddhist
monastic institution and more precisely the system of maintenance which
began to evolve from the time of the ordination of the first seven Tibetan
monks. The model of the monastic discipline of bSam-yas was the
Vinaya of the Mùlasarvàstivàda tradition, one of the earliest •ràvaka
sects which was once flourished in north-western India. As a Buddhist
monk, •àntarakßita who ordained the seven Tibetans, belonged to this
4 PT 16, f. 34a4: sku la byin chags/ thugs la ’phrul mnga’ .../ Cf. Macdonald 1971, pp.
337–39.
5 F.W. Thomas, Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan, London 1951,
Vol. II, p. 79.