Tantra and Transparency, or Cultural

Contradiction and Today’s Tibetan

Buddhist Wizard
October 6, 2015Ben Joffe
This is the first of a series of articles that I will be posting this
month as a guest-contributor for Savage Minds. In each post I
will be sharing some preliminary and open-ended reflections
relating to my research on Tibetan diaspora, esotericism, and
the globalization of Tibetan culture. This week, I’d like to
introduce readers to the non-celibate Tibetan religious
specialists known as ngakpa (literally mantra or ‘spell’-users in
Tibetan, sngags pa) who are the focus of my current doctoral
dissertation fieldwork with Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal.

The red and

white blue-lined cloth often associated with ngakpa.

Mass monasticism has often been used as a shorthand for
Tibetan civilization in general. Over the last few decades in
particular, large-scale Buddhist monasteries, whether in
diaspora or in Chinese-occupied Tibet, have become key
symbols for the continued vitality of Tibetan culture in the face
of adversity. Yet even so, for centuries, ngakpa have existed in
Tibetan societies as an alternative, smaller community of
religious professionals, who though they are not monastics,
nonetheless embody many of the possibilities and
particularities of Tibetan culture life. Like monks and nuns,
ngakpa are professional Buddhist renouncers, individuals who
have taken formal vows to devote their lives to religious
attainment. Unlike monastics, however, ngakpa are non-
celibate and can engage in activities forbidden to the monastic
community. Ngakpa thus straddle lay and monastic worlds and
reside in a shifting third space of both accommodation and
resistance to more centralized political and religious
institutions. While monastics are the ‘yellow’ clothed
community (ser) and laypeople are ‘grey’ householders (mi
skya), i.e. clothed in no particular religious uniform, ngakpa,
with their long hair and white and-red cotton shawls and robes,
are known as the gos dkar lcang lo sde, the ‘white-robe,
dreadlock [wearing] community’ of non-celibate yogis. Able to
marry, have families, and pursue worldly work, ngakpa
nonetheless spend much of their time in study, meditative
retreat or working as ritual specialists for hire.

Meeting ngakpa in her travels in Tibet during the early 20th

century, French explorer and early convert to Tibetan Buddhism
Alexandra David-Neel profiled them as ‘shamanists’ disguised
as Buddhists (1992). To be sure, David-Neel was projecting her
own categories and judgements onto native practitioners, and
her turn of phrase has lurking behind it a long tradition of
foreigners claiming that (as far as they were concerned) much
of Tibetan Buddhism wasn’t really ‘real’ Buddhism at all. At the
same time, David-Neel’s description usefully captures issues of
esoteric power, authenticity, legibility, representation, and
transparency that have proven to be central so far in my
fieldwork with ngakpa living in exile. Ngakpas’ association with
tantra, the esoteric forms of Buddhism that came to Tibet from
India from the 7th century onwards, is key to understanding
their position and importance in Tibetan societies. It is also key
to understanding what makes them interesting
anthropologically. Anthropologists have long been interested in
how cultural histories, practices, and institutions are sustained
and transformed cross-generationally in situations of major
change and upheaval. They have described how shared
religious beliefs and practices have served as a basis for
political mobilization, for the legibility of diasporic groups, for
the forging of transnational moral communities and ethno-
nationalist imaginaries (phew!), and for the development of
marked forms of cultural identity. As specialists in esoteric
Buddhism living in exile, ngakpa present rich opportunities for
exploring how religion, identity, and politics may intersect in
situations where religious knowledge and power are distributed
highly unequally, and where religious authority and practices
that contribute to cohesive moral communities depend upon
secrecy, ambiguity, and restricted occult knowledge.

Esoteric or tantric Buddhism (the so-called Vajrayana or ‘Vehicle

of the Adamantine Thunderbolt’) with its alchemical
register, stresses that what is impure and poisonous can be
transmuted into the highest medicine. It promises that through
a shrewd re-orientation towards the sensory arisings and
afflictive emotions that are often treated in more exoteric
Buddhist contexts as sources of contamination and suffering,
these obstacles can be transformed into sources of realization.
Tantric practitioners’ ritual repertoires draw on elaborate
iconographies that embody Vajrayana’s unique orientation to
visceral forces of sex, violence, and death. Through intensive
imaginative engagement with both peaceful and forceful tantric
Buddhist deities and vital forces in the subtle channels of the
body, practitioners of various systems of tantric yoga seek to
rapidly transform their (apparently) impure bodies, speech and
minds into their innately pure and blissful state of Buddha-
nature. Pursued under the guidance of a legitimate guru,
and with proper preparation and intention such methods can
guarantee enlightenment in a single human lifetime. Practiced
incorrectly, however, they can bring corruption, madness and
death.

While pretty much all aspects of Tibetan Buddhism have a

tantric sensibility or aesthetic, concerns about the preservation
and regulation of high-level and especially non-celibate tantric
practices have been longstanding in Tibetan societies. Ngakpa
lineages, which are strongly associated with the Nyingma
(rnying ma) school, the most ancient sect of Buddhism in Tibet,
were consolidated and elaborated during Tibet’s ‘Dark Age’.
During this so-called ‘period of fragmentation’ (dus sil bu,
approx. 842 to 986 C.E.) large-scale monastic institutions and
state patronage/co-optation of religious power foundered in
Tibet. Ngakpa, transmitting esoteric teachings within families,
outside of monastic and state surveillance and regulation, were
instrumental in adapting and indigenizing tantric Buddhist
teachings from India and helped keep such traditions alive
during a time of civil war and intense political upheaval.
Anxieties about tantra going ‘rogue’ are particularly linked to
the age of fragmentation in Tibetan histories. Records from this
time describe non-celibate ‘village tantric masters’
misinterpreting tantra, and pursuing esoteric practices for
selfish, immoral or harmful ends, without a proper Mahayana
Buddhist motivation to liberate all beings from suffering. Since
monastics with the proper training can and do engage in higher
tantric practices, celibacy and monasticism have sometimes
been seen as providing a more controlled context for the
pursuit of potent but easily misused tantric methods.

Ngakpas’ non-celibacy and closeness to the ‘wildness’ of

everyday, worldly life is thus part of what makes them powerful
and what makes them ambiguous. Ngakpas’ ambiguous
charisma has shown up historically in various ways. As
wandering ‘crazy’ ascetics ngakpa have lampooned entrenched
institutions, yet as a hereditary clergy authorized to employ
ritual violence as part of potent tantric rituals to exorcise and
manipulate natural forces such as the weather, they have
figured prominently in everyday community activities. Ngakpas’
shifting status can be seen in traditional legal codes from Tibet:
ngakpa are forbidden from giving legal testimony for fear that
they might delude their audiences with magic, yet their same
powers may be called upon as an extra-judicial measure to
settle intractable disputes (French 2002). Visiting groups of
ngakpa attached to monastic institutions in early 20th century
Eastern Tibet, David-Neel observed how ngakpa had been able
to sell their unenviable but valuable talent for subduing demons
to monastic authorities, thereby earning a partial incorporation
into institutional, administrative structures, and a measure of
prestige, privilege and payment. In my current research, I am
interested in how such mediations of religious power between
ritual specialists and institutional authorities are continuing in
exile. How are ngakpas’ esoteric expertise and ambiguous
charisma faring in the face of calls for increased
democratization, clarity and standardization in Tibetan exile
society?

Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche (1926-1993), a

ngakpa who served as head weather controller for the Tibetan exile
government, whose legacy and ngakpa retreat center in McLeod Ganj,
India forms my primary field site.
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama with prominent ngakpa and
first appointed head of the Nyingma school in exile Dudjom Rinpoche
(1904-1987)
Since the People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet over six
decades ago, stateless Tibetan refugees who have fled their
homeland have struggled to rebuild and stabilize their political
and social institutions in exile. As the spiritual leader of
Tibetans, the fourteenth Dalai Lama has spearheaded efforts to
both preserve and to reform Tibetan life in diaspora. In
particular, he and the Tibetan administration have taken
measures to promote co-operation and inclusion among
Tibetans’ diverse religious communities. One major
development along these lines has been the establishing of the
Central Tibetan Administration’s Office of Religion and Culture
in McLeod Ganj, India, and the selection of formal ‘heads’ to
represent the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism and
Tibet’s pre-Buddhist religion Bon in exile. Ngakpa, like other
religious professionals, have thus found themselves newly
consolidated under the leadership of sectarian authorities in
exile. With the encouragement of religious authority figures
from both within and without their sectarian communities, they
have built new educational and ritual colleges (ngakpa
dratsang, sngags pa drwa tshang) and transmitted their
lineage-practices to new students for the sake of posterity.
Lopon P. Ogyan Tandzin Rinpoche (front), a ngakpa and student of
Dudjom Rinpoche with students from the ngakpa school or dratsang
which he founded in 2001 and which is located in a remote border
region of Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Yet drives for standardization and categorization can sit
uneasily with ngakpas’ distinct styles of religious practice.
Recently, I was told a story by a ngakpa friend about how some
decades ago ngakpa in McLeod Ganj had complained to the
Office of Religion and Culture about having been passed over
by community members when it came to receiving donations
for ritual services they had performed on behalf of the
administration and the public. While monks had received alms
for their religious labours, these ngakpa, feeling that they ought
to receive adequate recompensation and recognition for their
contributions, felt short-changed. The Office’s response,
apparently, was that ngakpa had not been dressing properly –
having failed to consistently wear markers of their affiliation as
members of the ‘white religious community’ people had not
known who, or what, they were. It was thus suggested that
ngakpa at least wear their white yogi shawl when performing
such services so as to avoid confusion.

A group of senior dreadlock-wearing ngakpa from Sakor village,

Repkong in Eastern Tibet .
The Dalai Lama has frequently stated that religious vow-holders
should dress more consistently and distinctly to reduce
ambiguity and misunderstandings (especially among
foreigners) about what is and isn’t permissible for different
classes of practitioners. Invoking the way in which the early
Tibetan kings set up distinctive boundaries between laypeople,
ngakpa and monastics in accordance with the Buddha’s own
teachings, the Dalai Lama has warned that inconsistency in
dress and conduct can become a cause for the criticism,
repudiation and deterioration of the teachings. Nonetheless,
research shows that ngakpa rarely stay in uniform. Not only do
ngakpa often dress in lay clothing when not conducting
ceremonies, but recommendations that ngakpa stick to their
white, long-hair ‘uniforms’ brush over the very real historical
and regional diversity of ngakpa lineage-practices. Ngakpa in
exile hail from different parts of Tibet and hold a range of major
and minor vows. They conduct their work and embody their
tantric commitments in distinct ways. While for some ngakpa
heaped masses of dreadlocks point to their maintaining of a
‘natural’, ‘unfabricated’ (rang bzhin, ma bcos pa’) state of mind
in the midst of worldly life, other practitioners prefer less
elaborate hairstyles, tying their washed and combed hair back
discreetly. From time to time, some practitioners have shaved
their hair entirely, citing reasons of both practicality or
necessity (itchiness, lice, heat etc) and modesty. Likewise,
despite their association with white and red yogis’ robes, tantric
ritual specialists from some regions have traditionally worn
other colours, such as black or brown – what one exile ngakpa
described to me as a ‘low’ colour, appropriate for the very high
practice of maintaining an ordinary, outer appearance
alongside a lofty state of inner cultivation.

Resistance to ‘standard uniform’ is thus also strongly linked to

the ways ngakpa understand the relationship between outer
and inner forms of religious practice, and to how they engage
with larger tantric themes of revelation, concealment and the
relativity of appearances. While ngakpas’ specific vows are
concretely and visually marked through the various tantric
ornaments, clothing, hair-stylings etc. associated with in
scripture with a tantric vow-holder, ngakpas’ frequent foregoing
of full regalia is tied up with culturally-specific understandings
of self-presentation, modesty and secrecy. In conversation,
ngakpa have often been quick to remind me that without inner
commitment and attainment, the material trappings of their
practice remain merely symbolic and trivial. Indeed, rather than
suggesting discipline or transparency, staying in costume may
sometimes indicate untrustworthiness. Tales about young
Tibetan and sometimes foreigner men who flaunt elaborate
dreadlocks and full tantric finery just to drink beer and pick up
women (individuals ngakpa and scholar Khetsun Sangpo
Rinpoche once labeled ‘appearance ngakpas’ )
surface often in conversation. Such anecdotes suggest by way
of contrast the figure of the ‘hidden yogi’ (sbal pa’ rnal ‘byor
pa), the accomplished practitioner who avoids advertising their
spiritual accomplishments through strategic performances of
ordinariness. They underscore how no one but a Buddha can
truly know the state of another being’s mind, how easy it is to
be mislead by appearances, to dress up and merely pose as a
tantric practitioner, and how much harder it is by contrast to
consistently maintain one’s vows and the mental orientations
associated with them in every situation. At the same time,
while ngakpa often warn one not to judge based on misleading
appearances and be wary of showiness, respected
practitioners’ great potency or ritual efficacy (nus pa chenpo),
is something concrete and demonstrable – emerging from the
accumulation of vital-force and special abilities (dngos drub) in
one’s person that can be pointed to and benefitted from by
others. Status and self-disclosure tie into the gendered politics
of religious practice as well. While ngakma or female non-
celibate tantric vow-holders play important social and religious
roles, they appear more often as the wives and sexual consorts
of male practitioners than as stand-alone practitioners or
experts in their own right. The cultural politics of being in and
out of the lime light thus take on even further layers for female
practitioners.
Ngakpa Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche (1920-2009)
Such ambivalence aside, representation and transparency still
matter for Tibetans today. While exile ngakpas’ self-
presentation varies contextually and individually, their vows
and moral commitments as a religious community remain
unambiguous and codified. In a social context where
advertising one’s own spiritual accomplishments can
sometimes be tantamount to providing proof you don’t have
any, religious authority must be both secured and contested
through daily and ongoing performances, and complex
interpersonal and community dynamics. Today, ideas and
practices connected to Tibetan religion are circulating more and
more widely, and ngakpas’ knowledge and power are involved
in ever broader economies of value and exchange. With the
rapid globalization of Tibetan Buddhism since 1950, Tibetan
refugee lamas are more and more catering to non-Tibetan
students for whom the possibility of engaging with advanced
Buddhist teachings without having to become celibate is
distinctly practical and appealing. While Tibetan ngakpa
continue to fulfill important functions within diasporic
communities, new emphases on secular education and
employment in exile have also meant that many exile-born
Tibetans are opting not to take up hereditary religious
vocations. As tantra is being reappropriated and reapplied in
new contexts and for new audiences, and as more and more
non-Tibetans are coming to adopt ngakpa styles of dress and
religious practice, fears about the corruption of the teachings
and about the spread and regulation of tantra outside of
monastic – and native Tibetan contexts in particular -are as
salient as ever. Various tantra-related ‘casualties’ – vow-
breaking controversies and abuses of power involving Tibetan
Buddhist convert communities that frequently operate beyond
the pale of Tibetan structures of authority – reveal the extent to
which truly centralized or standardized channels of authority or
regulation do not exist for the deeply heterogenous (and now
significantly transnational) landscape of contemporary Tibetan
Buddhism. The current moment in Tibetan history can thus be
compared to an earlier period of fragmentation, characterized
as it is as much by dispersal and decline as by innovation and
an unprecedented proliferation of Buddhist teachings.
Ngakpa/ma thus provide a particularly relevant, albeit under-
explored lens through which to understand processes of cultural
and religious change as they are affecting Tibetans today.
Ngakpa/mas’ shifting relationships with centralized authority
and with material expressions of power show how the forging of
cultural coherence and stable institutions in diaspora involves
both creativity and contradiction – how cultural life revolves
around tensions that are as unsettling as they are meaningful.
REFERENCES:

David-Neel, Alexandra. 1992. “Tibetan Journey,” New Delhi:

South Asia Books.

French, Rebecca. 2002. “The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology

of Buddhist Tibet,” Boston: Snow Lion Publications.