JAMYANG KHYENTSE WANGPO AND THE RI-ME MOVEMENT

                                   

"If possible you should all give serious thought to Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, Jamgön Kongtrül and Chogyur Lingpa. They are really, really special people. Their approach to Buddhism, their interpretation of Buddhism, their intention, their action, is something that ordinary people cannot [imagine]. Incredible masters!" 

Great praise indeed from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. This article explains some of their extraordinary activity.

Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820-1892) is one of the great figures of 19th century Eastern Tibet. He worked with Jamgön Kongtrül (1813-1899) and Chogyur Lingpa (1829-1870) to find treasure texts and artefacts and together they established the non-sectarian or ri-me movement.

In a short article it is only possible to touch on a few aspects of their extraordinary activity and it may be helpful to put it in some historical context. One of their most important predecessors was Jigme Lingpa (1730-98), the promulgator of the Longchen Nyingthik, the Innermost Spirituality of Longchenpa. It became both the foundation of the main Dzogchen teachings in the contemporary period and the ri-me movement. The Longchen Nyingthik gave the ri-me movement an emphasis on yogic self-discipline rather than imposed monastic discipline and a conception of the enlightened state as pure and open and beyond all logic and conventional description. Jigme Lingpa was a major treasure discoverer who had spent many years in meditation retreats. In activities that prefigured Kongtrül's creation of the Five Collections, he published and promoted Nyingma texts that had become rare, beginning by having copies made of the Nyingma tantras held in the manuscript collection of the major Nyingma monastery of Mindroling. He went on to write a history of the Nyingma and other works which, when collected, numbered nine volumes. These include several important mind treasures.

As a significant example of non-sectarianism, Jigme Lingpa could count disciples from amongst the Sakya, the Drigung Kagyu and the Gelugpa, among others, not to mention the Nyingma. Jigme Lingpa's teaching lineage flourished in Eastern Tibet around Dege, and after his death three incarnations were recognised as being his emanations. These were Do Khyentse] [1800? -1859?], Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, [1820-1892] and Patrul Rinpoche, [1808-1887]. All of these lamas were important in the ris-med movement.

Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo's and Jamgön Kongtrül's work in promoting ri-me or non-sectarianism, their compilation of texts and treasure finding, came about when both Eastern Tibet and the non-Gelugpa schools were on the defensive. In the political field, the armies of the Gelugpa-allied Lhasa government had been victorious in deciding the outcome of a local conflict involving the Dege royal house. In religion, the earlier schools of Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya had to compete with an increasingly well-organised and standardised Gelugpa with compelling scholastic manuals and debating powers. Their response, in promoting non-sectarianism, diverse lineages that needed to be gathered and maintained, Dzogchen and treasure discovery, all found their precedent in the person of Jigme Lingpa.

Jamgön Kongtrül is principally famous for compiling the Five Collections. These are: 
1. The Store which Embraces All Knowledge, (also known as Kongtrül's Encyclopaedia) probably compiled between 1862 and 1864.
2. The Mantra Store of the Lineages of Transmitted Precepts, a compilation of tantric practices from the Kagyu school. Probably the first compiled of the Five Treasures as the complete initiation into this collection was bestowed by Kongtrül in 1856.
3. The Store of Precious Treasure, a collection of introductory instructions for the major treasure cycles, the cycles being preserved separately, as well as newly written liturgical texts, important supplementary works and smaller basic texts. Probably compiled between 1864 and 1886. 
4. The Store of Precious Instructions is a collection of oral instructions of teacher to disciple in the practice of the different lineages, such as Mahayoga, Anuyoga and Atiyoga. Kongtrül perceived that arguments over metaphors were often at the base of sectarian disputes, and so by compiling all the various instructions, he sought to point out their inherent non-contradictoriness. 
The Uncommon Store includes Kongtrül's own discovered texts, compositions on Guruyoga and liturgies as well as philosophical exegesis. He expounds his interpretation of gzhan-stong (a technical term to describe the mind of the Buddha) as a unifying concept amongst the diverse traditions.

Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo was recognised to be one of the Five Kingly Treasure Finders, who are considered to be emanations of the ancient Tibetan king, Trisong Detsen (reigned 704-755). He is most well-known for treasure finding (or terma) and he found all types of treasure. These include earth treasures, which are physical objects such as texts or statues or clothes of a departed master. They are often found in locations such as caves. He also found mind treasures, which are memories of receiving teachings in a past life that are activated at an auspicious time, treasures which had been found in the past and then reconcealed, and pure visions. Through pure vision he was able to receive eight lineages through visionary means. These were of Nyingmapa; Kadampa; Lamdre; Marpa Kagyu; Shangpa Kagyu; Kalachakra; Zhi-byed and Chod, Pacification and Object of Cutting; and Mahasiddha Orgyanpa.

Receiving a lineage through visionary means is called a "short lineage", and its importance is in its directness. What is communicated is not only the words but the experience. It is also a means of dealing with the problem of change over time. It is almost impossible to find an original unchanged manuscript of a text that was first written a thousand years ago. 

In general, lineages have three elements, the initiation, transmission and instruction. The initiation and instruction are always likely to be added to, changed a little bit, adapted over time, and the lung, the transmission, will be dependent upon the manuscript version that is available. The short lineage takes the visionary directly to the founder of the lineage and is particularly potent as a source of grace and blessing. It may be a way of renewing a lineage that was lost, of deepening the understanding of a lineage received in a conventional manner, or even a method of creating a connection before receiving a lineage in a conventional fashion.

Khyentse's receiving of the eight lineages straddled both dual and non-dual experience. On the one hand, much of what he described are meetings; he had visions of Atisha, Marpa, Thangtong Gyalpo and so on. On the other hand, these gave rise to non-dual experiences such as achieving the various lineages of Dzogchen. In terms of the ri-me movement, the idea of the accessibility of all of these historical figures and lineages of teaching gave Khyentse and Kongtrül a potency as a focus wherein all divergent traditions came together. Impartiality was demonstrated through the physical compilation of different texts, and the gathering through short lineage of different traditions.

In the twentieth century the work of Khyentse Wangpo and Jamgön Kongtrül has been continued by luminaries such as His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and other ri-me lamas.

Di Cousens

(Di Cousens received an M.A. in History in 1996 after completing a thesis on the life of Jamgön Kongtrül and is also the editor of Pure Vision, the newsletter of Sakya Choekhor Lhunpo in Melbourne, Australia. In July 2000 she gave a paper on the Visionary Lineages of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo at Leiden University, Amsterdam.)