The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets

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The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets | 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha

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C,K, Y, S /’khor lo bzhi yi dbye ba yis/ /nyin thun bzhi ru gsungs pa yin/ (“Due to the divisions of the four chakras / Daily sessions are taught as four”). D, J, U /’khor lo bzhi yi dbye ba yis/ /nyin thun bzhi yi dbye ba yi/ /nyin mtshan bzhi ru gsungs pa yin/ (“Due to the divisions of the four chakras / Daily sessions are taught as four / In the divisions of the four periods of the day”). We have made this selection out of consideration for the four-line stanza structure that predominates in this text.

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affliction

nyon mongs pa
ཉོན་མོངས་པ།
kleśa

The essentially pure nature of mind is obscured and afflicted by various psychological defilements, which destroy the mind’s peace and composure and lead to unwholesome deeds of body, speech, and mind, acting as causes for continued existence in saṃsāra. Included among them are the primary afflictions of desire (rāga), anger (dveṣa), and ignorance (avidyā). It is said that there are eighty-four thousand of these negative mental qualities, for which the eighty-four thousand categories of the Buddha’s teachings serve as the antidote.

Kleśa is also commonly translated as “negative emotions,” “disturbing emotions,” and so on. The Pāli kilesa, Middle Indic kileśa, and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit kleśa all primarily mean “stain” or “defilement.” The translation “affliction” is a secondary development that derives from the more general (non-Buddhist) classical understanding of √kliś (“to harm,“ “to afflict”). Both meanings are noted by Buddhist commentators.

Amitābha

’od dpag med
འོད་དཔག་མེད།
amitābha

The buddha of the western buddhafield of Sukhāvatī, where fortunate beings are reborn to make further progress toward spiritual maturity. Amitābha made his great vows to create such a realm when he was a bodhisattva called Dharmākara. In the Pure Land Buddhist tradition, popular in East Asia, aspiring to be reborn in his buddha realm is the main emphasis; in other Mahāyāna traditions, too, it is a widespread practice. For a detailed description of the realm, see \1\2The Display of the Pure Land of Sukhāvatī, Toh 115. In some tantras that make reference to the five families he is the tathāgata associated with the lotus family.

Amitābha, “Infinite Light,” is also known in many Indian Buddhist works as Amitāyus, “Infinite Life.” In both East Asian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions he is often conflated with another buddha named “Infinite Life,” Aparimitāyus, or “Infinite Life and Wisdom,”Aparimitāyurjñāna, the shorter version of whose name has also been back-translated from Tibetan into Sanskrit as Amitāyus but who presides over a realm in the zenith. For details on the relation between these buddhas and their names, see \1\2The Aparimitāyurjñāna Sūtra (1) Toh 674, i.9.

blessed one

bcom ldan ’das
བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས།
bhagavān

In Buddhist literature, this is an epithet applied to buddhas, most often to Śākyamuni. The Sanskrit term generally means “possessing fortune,” but in specifically Buddhist contexts it implies that a buddha is in possession of six auspicious qualities (bhaga) associated with complete awakening. The Tibetan term‍—where bcom is said to refer to “subduing” the four māras, ldan to “possessing” the great qualities of buddhahood, and ’das to “going beyond” saṃsāra and nirvāṇa‍—possibly reflects the commentarial tradition where the Sanskrit bhagavat is interpreted, in addition, as “one who destroys the four māras.” This is achieved either by reading bhagavat as bhagnavat (“one who broke”), or by tracing the word bhaga to the root √bhañj (“to break”).

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ḍākinī

mkha’ ’gro ma
མཁའ་འགྲོ་མ།
ḍākinī

A class of powerful nonhuman female beings who play a variety of roles in Indic literature in general and Buddhist literature specifically. Essentially synonymous with yoginīs, ḍākinīs are liminal and often dangerous beings who can be propitiated to acquire both mundane and transcendent spiritual accomplishments. In the higher Buddhist tantras, ḍākinīs are often considered embodiments of awakening and feature prominently in tantric maṇḍalas.

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demon

bdud
བདུད།
māra

Māra, literally “death” or “maker of death,” is the name of the deva who tried to prevent the Buddha from achieving awakening, the name given to the class of beings he leads, and also an impersonal term for the destructive forces that keep beings imprisoned in saṃsāra:

(1) As a deva, Māra is said to be the principal deity in the Heaven of Making Use of Others’ Emanations (paranirmitavaśavartin), the highest paradise in the desire realm. He famously attempted to prevent the Buddha’s awakening under the Bodhi tree‍—see The Play in Full (Toh 95), \1\221.1‍—and later sought many times to thwart the Buddha’s activity. In the sūtras, he often also creates obstacles to the progress of śrāvakas and bodhisattvas. (2) The devas ruled over by Māra are collectively called mārakāyika or mārakāyikadevatā, the “deities of Māra’s family or class.” In general, these māras too do not wish any being to escape from saṃsāra, but can also change their ways and even end up developing faith in the Buddha, as exemplified by Sārthavāha; see The Play in Full (Toh 95), \1\221.14 and \1\221.43. (3) The term māra can also be understood as personifying four defects that prevent awakening, called (i) the divine māra (devaputramāra), which is the distraction of pleasures; (ii) the māra of Death (mṛtyumāra), which is having one’s life interrupted; (iii) the māra of the aggregates (skandhamāra), which is identifying with the five aggregates; and (iv) the māra of the afflictions (kleśamāra), which is being under the sway of the negative emotions of desire, hatred, and ignorance.

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listener

nyan thos
ཉན་ཐོས།
śrāvaka

The Sanskrit term śrāvaka, and the Tibetan nyan thos, both derived from the verb “to hear,” are usually defined as “those who hear the teaching from the Buddha and make it heard to others.” Primarily this refers to those disciples of the Buddha who aspire to attain the state of an arhat seeking their own liberation and nirvāṇa. They are the practitioners of the first turning of the wheel of the Dharma on the four noble truths, who realize the suffering inherent in saṃsāra and focus on understanding that there is no independent self. By conquering afflicted mental states (kleśa), they liberate themselves, attaining first the stage of stream enterers at the path of seeing, followed by the stage of once-returners who will be reborn only one more time, and then the stage of non-returners who will no longer be reborn into the desire realm. The final goal is to become an arhat. These four stages are also known as the “four results of spiritual practice.”

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As its title suggests, this tantra is specifically concerned with the proper interpretation, or “resolution,” of the highly esoteric or “secret” imagery and practices associated with deity yoga in both its development and completion stages as described in the Yoginītantra class of tantras. The work is organized according to a dialogue between the Buddha and Vajragarbha‍—the lead interlocutor throughout many of the Yoginītantras‍—and the Buddha’s responses give particular attention to the specifications of the subtle body completion-stage yoga involving manipulations of the body’s subtle energy channels, winds, and fluids in conjunction with either a real or imagined consort. The tantra sets its interpretation of these common Yoginītantra themes and imagery within the wider context of the four initiations prevalent in this class of tantras. In resolving the secrets connected with each initiation, the text elaborates the different levels of meaning connected with each initiation’s contemplative practices.

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Translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. The principal translator for this text was James Gentry, who also wrote the introduction. Andreas Doctor edited the translation and compared it with the original Tibetan.

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee would like to thank Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche for suggesting this tantra for translation, and Khenpo Sangyay Gyatso for his generous assistance with the resolution of several difficult passages.

This translation has been completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

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This translation is based on seven Tibetan-language textual witnesses of a translation from Sanskrit into Tibetan ostensibly executed by the eleventh century translation team of the Indian paṇḍita Gayādhara and the Tibetan translator Drokmi Śākya Yeshé. The Sanskrit manuscript(s) upon which tradition claims Gayādhara and Drokmi based their translation has since vanished from the purview of Buddhists and Buddhist scholars. In reliance, then, on the two conjectured dates of Drokmi’s death, this tantra’s terminus ante quem can only be roughly estimated to be either 1043 or 1072. Tibetan historical records claim that Gayādhara continued to be active after Drokmi’s death.

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Judging from its bibliographic location within the relevant Kangyur collections, as well as from the distinctive themes it advances, this tantra belongs to the Yoginī class of tantras. Post-tenth-century Tibetan classification schemes that were formalized by the fourteenth century in the structure of the Tibetan Kangyurs typically catalog the translated texts of the Yoginītantra class, which Tibetans called “Mother tantras,” alongside what they called “Father tantras” and “Nondual tantras,” to make up the more inclusive category of “Unexcelled Yoga Tantra” (yoganiruttara / anuttarayoga tantra). The Unexcelled Yoga tantras, believed by most Tibetan exegetes to be the ultimate revelation of the Buddha of our eon, therefore occupy the first major bibliographic category in the Tantra collection of most Kangyur collections. Unexcelled Yoga tantras are in turn followed by the tantra classes of “Yoga,” “Conduct,” and finally “Action,” an order thought to represent along a descending gradient the relative soteriological power of the yogic techniques emphasized in each textual class.

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The same hierarchical logic is also reflected in the Kangyur’s internal subdivisions of Unexcelled Yoga tantra itself, where the highest of the high, Nondual tantras, are followed by Mother tantras and then by Father tantras, once again reflecting in descending order Tibetan conceptions of the relative profundity and power of each subclass’s methodological emphasis. In relating the rationale for this tripartite hierarchy in his commentary on the Guhyagarbhatantra, Longchenpa (klong chen rab ’byams pa dri med ’od zer, 1308–64) echoes the following popular tantric dictum:

Father tantra primarily teaches generation stage, mother tantra primarily teaches completion stage, and nondual tantra primarily teaches their integration.

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In terms of content, then, Yoginītantras emphasize the apex of those Buddhist tantric methodologies developed on the Indian subcontinent from the ninth through the twelfth centuries ᴄᴇ, which later Tibetan exegetes collectively refer to as completion stage practices. Such practices are distinguished by Tibetans from those of the Father tantras, where the emphasis is on male deities, images, and symbols, and the associated practices of development stage, or deity yoga, in which one imaginatively recreates self and environment in the form of a central male deity and his celestial domain.

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In contrast, the Yoginī or “female practitioner” tantras are said to emphasize more the special efficacy of female deities, principles, and symbols. These tantras likewise promote yogic techniques‍—the completion phase practices of Tibetan parlance‍—involving highly choreographed manipulations of the energy channels, winds, and seminal fluids that constitute the human body’s subtle physiology. Such practices center on the controlled arousal and movement of winds and fluids throughout the subtle body by means of sexual union with a real or imagined female practitioner or deity. Other salient features of the Yoginītantras include imagery related to Indian charnel grounds and the profusion of fierce male (heruka) and female (yoginīs and ḍākinīs) divinities believed to cavort there; the ritual preparation, exchange, and consumption of “polluting” substances such as bodily fluids and fleshes; an emphasis on the intimate connection and correlation between language, cosmos, and subtle physiology; and a considerable degree of language and imagery shared with Hindu Śaiva tantric traditions, particularly the Kāpālikas. For Indian and Tibetan commentators of Yoginītantras the term yoginī not only denotes the overtly sexual nature of the practices these texts prescribe, it also connotes the power and efficacy of contact with the feminine in all its human and divine forms.

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Yet, alongside the profusion of elements that might reflect a nonmonastic origin or audience, the Yoginītantras also often assume knowledge of traditional Buddhist topics of learning like the dharmas of the Abhidharma, the ordination status of the various lay and monastic vow holders as stipulated in the Vinaya, and understandings of self, mind, and world drawn from Middle Way and Mind Only formulations. The Hevajratantra and the Cakrasaṃvaratantra, the two most well-known and widely practiced Yoginītantras, exhibit well this hybrid combination of characteristics.

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Due to the social, political, and economic fragmentation that followed the collapse of the Tibetan empire in 840–42 ᴄᴇ, Tibetans were unable to begin translating the Yoginītantras until over a century later, toward the end of the tenth century, when Tibetans once again resumed their large-scale importation of Indian Buddhist texts and traditions. This renewed interest in Indian Buddhism among Tibetans, a movement that has recently come to be called the “Tibetan Buddhist renaissance,” was characterized foremost by the rise of an elite class of Tibetan scholars specially trained in the daunting task of translating and interpreting the developments in Indian Buddhist theory and practice that had transpired in the intervening century. From the inception of this period the new class of translator-scholars was thrust into the limelight and enjoyed the status of aristocracy.

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Drokmi the translator appears to have been an especially important figure within this new ecclesiastical network. Ronald Davidson’s 2005 study entitled Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture, which explores the major socioreligious figures and themes of this important period in Tibetan history, devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 5: “Drokmi: The Doyen of Central Tibetan Translators:” 161–209) to the life and career of Drokmi, including his relationship with the Indian scholar Gayādhara. We refer the reader to this chapter for a detailed discussion and analysis of Drokmi’s and Gayādhara’s lives and influence.

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Here it suffices to note that Tibetan historical records depict Drokmi as having been especially steeped in Yoginītantra traditions. Drokmi receives credit, along with Gayādhara, for having produced authoritative translations of some of the most influential Yoginītantras to circulate in Tibet, most notably the seminal texts of the Hevajratantra system of practice and exegesis. Drokmi is also described as having produced, again together with Gayādhara, a translation of the famous Root Text of Mārgaphala (Path and Fruit), which would later become a core feature of the institutional identity of the Tibetan Sakya tradition. The process by which the first few generations of Sakya hierarchs integrated the laconic Root Text of Mārgaphala with the Hevajratantra ritual system to craft a powerfully influential sectarian identity forms the subject matter of much of Davidson’s 2005 study. Further readings on the rubric and contents of Buddhist Yoginītantras include Gray (2007), Isaacson (1998), Sanderson (1995a, 1995b and 2001), and Snellgrove (1959 and 1987).

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In most Kangyurs, The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets is found within a corpus of thirty-two works known as the Rali (ra li) tantras (Toh 383–414). The corpus is divided into four groups‍—mind, speech, body, and miscellaneous‍—each comprising eight tantras. All are works translated by Drokmi, and all but eight with Gayādhara. The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets is the second of the first group, the eight mind tantras. It is not clear whether the texts belonging to the Rali corpus were so identified by Drokmi himself or later, but Butön, in his 1323 History of the Dharma, includes them in his classified list of canonical texts with the mention that they are “well known as the thirty-two Rali [tantras].” He places them as belonging to the Cakrasaṃvara cycle, and editors of the Kangyur have generally followed this classification.

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A brief review of the structure and content of The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets reveals the presence of several Yoginītantra traits. The tantra is organized according to a dialogue between the Buddha and Vajragarbha, who is the lead interlocutor of the Buddha’s entourage throughout many of the Yoginītantras, such as the Hevajratantra, and others. After a brief opening narrative frame common to the Yoginītantras, Vajragarbha poses a series of four questions about each of the four major terms of the tantra’s title: secret, resolution, tantra, and king. The Buddha offers responses, which in turn elicit further questions. Vajragarbha’s opening four questions structure the body of the text as a whole, while his follow-up questions tend to open subtopics for further discussion. The following outline, which we have extracted in accordance with Vajragarbha’s questions, reveals the tantra’s thematic flow. Folio numbers correspond to the Degé witness.

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Opening narrative frame (187a.2–4)
I. What is “secret”? (187a.4–195a.5)
- 1. The first secret, the practice of the development stage related to the vase initiation (187a.5–190b.5)
  - A. The support (187a.6–188a.5)
  - B. The supported (188a.5–190b.5)
    - i. What is the completion of the thirty-seven features? (188b.6–189a.2)
    - ii. How are they “developed”? (189a.2)
    - iii. What are their stages like? (189a.2)
    - iv. What are the maṇḍala that is the support, its sessions, and its breaks like? (189a.2–189a.5)
    - v. How are view and conduct brought into coalescence? (189a.5–189b.1)
      - a. What is “ambrosia” like? (189b.2–190a.1)
        a1. Outer ambrosia (189b.2–7)
        a2. Inner ambrosia (189b.7–190a.1)
        a3. Secret ambrosia (190a.1)
      - b. What is the conduct associated with it like? (190a.1–2)
        b1. Beginners (190a.2)
        b2. Superior persons (190a.2–4)
      - c. How do its qualities emerge?
      - d. What are all the meanings of the adornments?
        d1. What is the “sixth” like? (190a.6–190b.3)
        d2. What is a superior person like? (190b.3–4)
        d3. How is desire fully purified? (190b.4–190b.5)
- 2. The second secret, the subtle physiology related the secret initiation (190b.5–193a.5)
  - A. Chakras, their locations and natures (190b.5–191b.7)
  - B. Subtle energy channels (191b.7–192a.3)
  - C. “Camphor” (subtle seminal fluid) abiding in those channels (192a.3–4)
  - D. Practices based on this subtle physiology (192a.4–193a.5)
- 3. The third secret, sexual yoga related to the wisdom-gnosis initiation (193a.5–195a.2)
  - A. What is a cluster of stars like?
  - B. What is coalescence like?
  - C. What is nonduality like?
  - D. The actual practice of sexual yoga and the status of its practitioners (194a.1–195a.2)
    - i. What is a three-initiation fully ordained monk like? (194b.2–4)
    - ii. What are his activities like? (194b.4–195a.2)
- 4. The fourth secret, related to the fourth initiation (195a.2–195a.5)
II. What is its “resolution” like? (195a.5–195b.3)
III. What is the meaning of tantra? (195b.3–5)
IV. And what is its king like? (193b.5–6)
Closing narrative frame (193b.6–7)

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This text is present in at least seven of the currently extant Kangyurs‍—the Choné, Degé, Lithang, Kangxi Peking, Stok Palace, Urga, and Yongle Peking versions (referenced in the notes, following Harrison and Eimer’s suggested sigla, as C, D, J, K, S, U, and Y)‍—where it occupies 18, 18, 14, 18, 21, 18, and 18 folios, respectively. While the tantra is located in each of these Kangyurs within the second bibliographic subdivision of the Collected Tantras section, among the penultimate Yoginītantras, the location of the Collected Tantras section varies somewhat between collections. The present translation is based primarily on the Degé edition, in consultation also with the six other available witnesses.

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“The appearance of the lion should be white and excellent,
Its body and speech gentle and without any fault‍—
This is the basis for the formation of flesh.
As for ox, or elephant,
This should be the flesh of one from which musk and the like emerges
Based on the single material cause of it eating a ketaka flower.
Beef should be flesh that contains bile.
Horse meat should come from the king among horses,
Whose complexion is neither white nor red,
With flesh that neither changes shape nor color.
Human meat must be the flesh of a seventh-birth.
An adept should investigate his body, speech, and mind.
The food container should be a skull-cup in a single piece.
The ambrosia should be accomplished with the ingredients inside it.

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