Goddess Tārā: Silence and secrecy on the path to enlightenment

Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 44-59

  Landesman, Susan S ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950113102     PISSN: 87554178     EISSN: 15533913     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2979/FSR.2008.24.1.44     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. The Sanskrit reads: "visayāvabodhād vijn̄ānam buddha ity upadiśyate," from the Lankāvatāra- sūtra, v. 140.6, quoted in Alex Wayman, "Buddhist Dependent Origination and the Sāmcombining dot belowkhya Guncombining dot belowas," Ethnos (1962): 14-22. The Laṅkāvatāra- sūtra is believed to have been composed as early as the latter half of the fourth century.
2. See Hajime Nakamura, Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes, vol. 1, Buddhist Traditions Series (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 231.
3. The tantras comprise a body of esoteric teachings and practices, "emphasizing cognitive transformation through visualization, symbols, and ritual," as noted in John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1995), 219. The earliest tantras were composed between the third and sixth centuries.
4. See Alex Wayman, "An Historical Review of Buddhist Tantras," Journal of Rare Buddhist Texts Research Project 20 (1995): 137-53.
5. The first English translation and analysis of this text is by Susan S. Landesman, The Great Secret of Tārā: Tārā and the Rise of Female Buddhas in India according to the Tārā-mūla-kalpa (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2008).
6. The Tibetan text that served as the basis for this study is entitled Ral pa gyen brdzes kyi rtog pa chen po byang chub sems dpa' chen po'i rnam par 'phrul pa le'u rab 'byams las bcom ldan 'das ma 'phags pa sGrol-ma'i-rtsa-ba'i- rtog-pa zhes bya ba (published in The sTog Palace Manuscript of the Tibetan Kanjur, volume 107 [MA] [Leh: Smanrtsis Shesrig Dpemzod, 1975-1980]).
7. Bu-ston was the celebrated editor of the Tibetan canon's first comprehensive and definitive block-printed edition of commentaries. The Tanjur (bsTan 'gyur) and translator of twenty-three commentarial works included therein. He may have also made important contributions to the editing of the Tibetan scriptural collection The Kanjur (bKa' 'gyur). See D. S. Ruegg, "The Life of Bu Ston Rinpoche," Serie Orientale Roma 34 (1966): 18-35, 181-85;
8. Helmut Eimer, "Ein Jahrzehnt Studien zur Überlieferung des Tibetischen Kanjur," Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 28 (1992): 1-202, esp. 176-78.
9. Landesman, Great Secret of Tārā, chap. 3.
10. Tenzin Gyatso, The Kalachakra Tantra: The Rite of Initiation, trans. Jeffrey Hopkins (London: Wisdom Publications, 1985), 34-36.
11. Among the first to propound this theory were Godefroy de Blonay, Matériaux pour servir a l'Histoire de la Déesse Buddhique Tārā (Paris: Library Émile Bouillon, 1895), 1-65, esp. 62;
12. Hirananda Shastri, "The Origin and Cult of Tārā," Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 20 (1925), 1-27, esp. 5-7, 20.
13. Blo-bzang Sbyin pa, Dkyil khang Mkhan Zur Blo-bzang sbyin pa. The Collected Works, 4 vols. (Delhi: Chos 'phel legs ldan, 1979), 1: fol. 522 (3a): "lus 'di nyid la skyes par gyur te."
14. Jaya Pancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowita, The Collected Works of Jaya Pancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowita (Blo-bzang hcombining dot belowphrin-las), 4 vols., ed. Lokesh Chandra (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1981), 1: fol. 221b-3-5
15. (Śata-Pitcombining dot belowaka Series of Indo-Asian Literatures, vol. 278). In contrast to the spirit of this vow, its language employs three different words for gendered embodiment. The words for the male body (skyes ba'i rten) indicate an honorific status, since this term is also used for representations of the Buddha's body in paintings and sculpture. In comparison, the words for the female body (bud med kyi lus) and female form (bud med kyi gzugs) are commonly used generic expressions.
16. The state of spiritual accomplishment that the Buddha claims women are capable of reaching is that of the arhat, indicating one who has conquered the enemy passions and thus eliminated defilements causing suffering. See Susan Murcott, First Buddhist Women (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), 16-17,
17. Yuichi Kajiyama discusses this point in "Women in Buddhism," Eastern Buddhist, 2nd ser., 15, no. 2 (1982): 53-70, esp. 65-66, wherein the author proposes that Buddhadatta Thera is referring to the major characteristics of a Great Person. The "Great Person" is a reference to a Mahāpuruśa, which refers to a Buddha, Śiva, Brahmā, Māra, etc.,] who displayed special marks or characteristics at birth. Among these characteristics, women lack "the male sexual organ hidden in recess" (kośopagatavastiguhya). In this case, a "complete set" would imply that the male sex is a prerequisite for enlightenment; however, Kajiyama reveals that monks never openly stated this point.
18. Although this legend is preserved in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century writings of Tāranātha and Jaya Pancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowita, there are many earlier sources in which women undertake vows to uphold and promulgate the Dharma teachings, aspire toward enlightenment, and guide others toward the same goal. Earlier references appear in the third-century Buddhist source "Queen Śrī Mālā's Ten Great Vows and Three All-inclusive Aspirations," Lion's Roar of Queen Srīmālā (Śrīmālādevā- simcombining dot belowhanāda-sūtra), trans. Alex Wayman and Hideko Wayman (New York: Columbia University Press, 64-68).
19. See also Entry into the Realm of Reality: The Text [Gancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowavyūha-sūtra] (trans. Thomas Cleary [Boston: Shambhala, 1987], 165), wherein the goddess Vasantã proclaims, "I resolve that just as I liberate these sentient beings from the miseries of such bad behavior, so shall I establish all sentient beings in the transmundane path of transcendence, make them irreversible in progress toward omniscience, and lead them to omniscience by the great vow of universal good."
20. See Heart of Wisdom, trans. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (London: Tharpa Publications, 1985), 4-6.
21. The Rig Veda, trans. Wendy O'Flaherty (New York: Penguin Classics, 1981), 62-63, v. 10.125. Tārā's identity as Mahāvidyā- rājñī, sometimes translated as "Queen of Charms" or "Best of Charms," further reinforces the continued importance of an ancient Indian reverence for speech, especially within ritual context.
22. Marcel Lalou, "The Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa et Tārāmūlakalpa," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (1936): 3-4, 327-47.
23. P. L. Vaidya, Man̄juśrī-mūda-kalpa (hereafter MMK), 29, lines 3-6.
24. The Enlightenment of Vairocana, trans. Alex Wayman and R. Tajima (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 11-12. The VAT contains what is perhaps the earliest known depiction of the green Tārā in the Buddhist tantras. Wayman has proposed a mid-sixth-century date for the VAT, composed in the area of Mahārāshtra.
25. Akanistha is the highest heaven in the form realm where the Sambhoga-kāya Buddha resides while teaching tenth-stage bodhisattvas. Wayman and Tajima, Enlightenment of Vairocana, 101, 146n41.
26. quoted in Mkhas grub rje, Introduction to the Buddhist Tantric Systems, trans. Ferdinand Lessing and Alex Wayman (1968; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), 24-25n13, 116n18: "Rig sngags zhes pa ni mo'i gzugs dang tshul 'dzin pas gsungs pa'i tshig ste/sngags zhes pa ni pho'i tshul dang gzugs kyis smras pa'i tshig go." See also 176n24, which states that the Vidyārājñī (Queen of Vidyās) represents both the deity and the magical formula associated with that deity.
27. An example of this process is found when comparing TMK, sTog Palace Manuscript (fol. 160b-1-4) to the Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa, ed. P. L. Vaidya, Buddhist Sanskrit Texts 18 (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1964), 17, lines 26-31. Here, the MMK text refers to Ārya Mañjuśrī's basic mantra (mūla-mantra), whereas the TMK's parallel reading refers to Tārā's basic charm (mūlavidyā), also referred to as a root charm.
28. Dudjom Rinpoche and Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History, vol. 1, trans. and ed. Gyurme Dorje with collaboration by Matthew Kapstein (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), 31.
29. David Kinsley, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Māhāvidyās (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 58.
30. Within Hindu context, Kinsley notes that the term māhā vidyā is used to refer to transcendent knowledge and power, supreme knowledge or wisdom, as well as the mantra associated with the deity's presence. This knowledge is accessed through the worship often goddesses (Māhāvidyās), whose liturgy is found in the Mahābhāgavata Purāncombining dot belowa, composed in eastern India after the fourteenth century. Herein, Tārā appears as one of the ten Hindu Māhāvidyās. See Kinsley, Tantric Visions, 22, 57-60.
31. Kinsley, Tantric Visions, 60.
32. Emphasis added. The Holy Teachings of Vimalakīrti, trans. Robert F. Thurman (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 62.
33. Thurman, Holy Teachings of Vimalakīrti, 12.
34. H. B. Sarkar, "The Origin of the Sailendra Dynasty of Java: A Reappraisal," in Amalā Prajñā: Aspects of Buddhist Studies, P. V. Bapat volume, ed. N. H. Samtani and H. S. Prasad (Delhi: Indian Books Centre, 1989), 381-97.
35. See also Marcel Lalou, "Les Textes Bouddhiques au temps du Roi Khri sroṅ lde bean," Journal Asiatique 241 (1953): 311-53, esp. 313-17, 329.
36. Mkhas grub rje, Buddhist Tantric Systems, 126-27.
37. A late seventh- to eighth-century time frame for Candragomin is proposed, since the TMK does not contain rites to evoke the popular twenty-one forms of Tārā, which it would have included had they been popular in the time and place where the TMK was composed. See Alex Wayman, Chanting the Names of Mañjuśrī: The Mañjuśrī-nāmā- samcombining dot belowgīti (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1985), 5,
38. Wayman notes that the Candragomin who wrote the Ekavimcombining dot belowśati-sādhana probably lived in the eighth century and is not the same as the sixth-century Candragomin who wrote a famous grammatical treatise that rivaled Candrakirti's. Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India (ed. D. Chattopadhyaya [Calcutta: Humanities Press, 1981], 200-209), places the latter Candragomin during the late eighth-century reign of the Pala King Dharmapāla (770-781 CE).
39. Mark Tatz places Candragomin in the seventh century in "The Life of Candragomin in Tibetan Historical Tradition," Tibet Journal 6, no. 3 (1972): 1-22,
40. Mark Tatz, "The Date of Candragomin," Buddhism and Jainism, (Cuttack: Institute of Oriental and Orissan Studies, 1976), 281-97.