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EVANSTON, Ill.
Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at University of Chicago Divinity School Matthew T. Kapstein’s lecture “Pandits and Poets: Kashmir’s contribution to Buddhist literature and philosophy in Tibet,” here at the Block Museum Feb. 18, began with a glowing tribute to Shaiva tantric guru, philosopher and connoisseur of the arts, Abhinavagupta (c. 950-1020). Abhinava’s intuitive aesthetic vision of the fundamental unity of worldly experience and ultimate reality was mirrored in subsequent Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with resonances as far away as imperial China. Kapstein explored likely channels of transmission, before coming back a full circle to Kashmir.
So central was the “Light of Asia” to Tibet’s civilizational identity that its lamas eagerly sought to assimilate the wider classical Indian culture within which “Buddha-nature” had been elaborated and secured. Scholarly adepts, such as Ngok Loden Sherab, braved difficult terrain to study (1070s) at the feet of Kashmiri Buddhist luminaries such as Sajjana, bringing back and translating precious Sanskrit manuscripts. Sherab’s two companions, who stayed back long enough, were initiated into the esoteric core of Sajjana’s tantric teaching that strikingly reflect Abhinava’s own unitary Shaiva vision.
Just as Abhinava received his highest (Kaula) revelation from Shambhu Natha in the Punjab and his teachings were eagerly received and treasured in the southernmost reaches of the subcontinent, Shakyashri Bhadra (1127–1225), the “Great Kashmiri Pandit” of the Tibetans eventually moved to Varanasi to study the most esoteric Kalacakra and Cakrasamvara (Buddhist counterpart of the Hindu Bhairava) tantras before visiting eastern India and Sri Lanka, no doubt to teach. This prodigy of Buddhist wisdom, who had to find refuge in Orissa when his Odantapuri monastery was sacked by the invading Bakhtyar Khilji (1202 CE.), left for Tibet with nine disciples, constituting a “traveling university” that was a windfall for its eager lamas.
Shakyashri’s illustrious Tibetan disciple, Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen (1182-1251), insisted on his compatriots assimilating Sanskritic culture, just as the revival of Greek and Latin studies resulted in the European Renaissance. As Pandita’s fame spread across the expanding Mongolian empire, he was ‘invited’ to visit the Khan Godan in China, which he did with his nephew Phagpa, who became spiritual preceptor to emperor Kublai Khan before being appointed ruler of Tibet. While Pandita died after five years at the Mongol court, guru Shakyashri eventually returned to spend the last 12 of his 99 years in the “vale of paradise” that was his native Kashmir.
Opposed to the limited exoteric understanding of ‘self’ as empty that Sherab, Pandita, etc., disseminated as Buddhist orthodoxy, Sajjana’s esoteric teaching also received attentive hearing across Tibet. The “contemplative philosophy of extrinsic emptiness” (shentong) developed by Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen (1292-1361) only to be persecuted by the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) as covert “Hinduization” that brings back the Vedantic Atman through the backdoor, offers a striking resemblance to Abhinava’s all-inclusive ‘vision’ of the overflowing plenitude of the Self and foreshadows the eclectic universalist 19th C. movement on the Sino-Tibetan frontier.
Kashmir’s Hindu intelligentsia refined Buddhist doctrine and practice not only through polemical debates but also positive works affirming the rival faith. Celebrated in India for satires, humor and renderings of epic tales, the cosmopolitan Vaishnava poet Kshemendra was induced, probably by Sajjana, to compose the Avadana Kalpalata that versifies Buddha’s myriad rebirths. Though the Sanskrit original is lost in India, the entire cycle was translated into Tibetan. The Fifth Dalai Lama, who published a bilingual edition, encouraged artistic works based on its themes. In Kham, now part of China’s Szechuan, Tibetan painter-chaplain Situ Panchen (1700-1774), who preferred to have them illustrated Chinese-style, also popularized shentong in Eastern Tibet, thus bringing us back full circle to Sajjana.
Poet Kshemendra was himself a disciple of Abhinava, who taught that the “recognition of (the Self’s) fullness” (purnata-pratyabhijna) authorized the consummate Shaiva guru to teach Vaishnava and Buddhist doctrine sympathetically to adherents of these otherwise distinct religious currents. The present Dalai Lama is more sympathetic to this tradition of Lamaism.
Kapstein was introduced by Block’s associate director Kathleen Berzock and Sarah Jacoby, assistant professor of religion at Northwestern University.
Photo caption: Professor Matthew Kapstein began his exposition of “Kashmir’s contribution to Buddhist literature and philosophy in Tibet” at Block Museum, Evanston, Illinois, Feb. 18, with a glowing tribute to 10th C. Shaiva tantric guru, philosopher and connoisseur of the arts, Abhinavagupta.