Teachings of Tibetan Yoga: An Introduction to the Spiritual, Mental, and Physical Exercises of the Tibetan Religion [Illustrated Edition]
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About this ebook
This Book is an extremely concentrated introduction to the mental, physical, and spiritual exercises of Tibetan Buddhism, emphasizing the practice of Yoga exercises. The key to its understanding is the learning of Dumo—the generating of internal heat in one’s body.
Dumo’s special meaning for Tibetan Yoga flows from the profoundly anti-ascetic and anti-pessimistic doctrine of Tantric Buddhism. The author means precisely what he says when he explains that opposites are also inseparable unities and that the best example of this is that the human body-mind can be made into the body of Buddha. Sexual bliss can become divine bliss.
This work will both introduce the reader to the tranquility of yoga and, at the same time, lead him to explorations in the field of erotic mysticism.
Richly illustrated throughout.
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Reviews for Teachings of Tibetan Yoga
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Teachings of Tibetan Yoga - Garma C. C. Chang
This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com
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Text originally published in 1963 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
TEACHINGS OF TIBETAN YOGA:
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SPIRITUAL, MENTAL, AND PHYSICAL EXERCISES OF THE TIBETAN RELIGION
TRANSLATED & ANNOTATED BY
GARMA C. C. CHANG
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
INTRODUCTION by John C. Wilson 4
FOREWORD by Garma C. C. Chang 8
GLOSSARY 11
PART I—THE TEACHING OF MAHAMUDRA 15
THE SONG OF MAHAMUDRA by Tilopa 15
THE VOW OF MAHAMUDRA by Garmapa Rangjang Dorje 20
THE ESSENTIALS OF MAHAMUDRA PRACTICE AS GIVEN by the Venerable Lama Kong Ka 26
THE FIVE SIMILES OF MAHAMUDRA EXPERIENCE 26
THE FIVE WAYS OF STRAYING FROM MAHAMUDRA 27
THE THREE MAJOR EXPERIENCES OF MAHAMUDRA 28
HOW TO CULTIVATE MAHAMUDRA THROUGH ADVERSE CONDITIONS 29
THE ERRORS IN MAHAMUDRA PRACTICE 30
PART II—THE EPITOME OF AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SIX YOGAS OF NAROPA 32
THE EPITOME OF AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROFOUND PATH OF THE SIX YOGAS OF NAROPA by Drashi Namjhal 32
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF TANTRIC PRACTICE 34
THE PRACTICE OF THE SIX YOGAS 34
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 72
INTRODUCTION by John C. Wilson
The author-translator of this book was born in China into a highly-placed family some forty years ago. In early youth he broke out of this pattern to become the disciple of a Buddhist Guru, in a part of China near Tibet. His Guru sent him to Tibet to further his training. After eight years in Tibetan monasteries, six of them under one Guru, he came West to study animal husbandry and to bring this knowledge back to Tibet. The Communist victory in China and the Communist invasion of Tibet cut him off from return. His devotion to Tibetan Buddhism can now best be expressed by translating into English the unknown teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Last year he gave us the first complete translation of The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, the principal religious work of Tibet. Now he gives us, in a short and extremely concentrated book, an introduction to the spiritual, mental, and physical exercises of his religion. He is writing not only as a Chinese Buddhist scholar telling us about the Tibetan variety of Buddhism but, even more, as a Chinese who has become a Tibetan Buddhist. He has sought to make this fact precise by giving up his original Chinese name, Chen-chi Chang, and adopting a Tibetan name, Garma C. C. Chang. This book is most profitably read, then, not as a scholarly work but as an introduction to a religion by which its author-translator lives.
Furthermore, this book will most profitably be read by those Westerners who have really left behind denominational parochialism. To put it quite, plainly, we are publishing this book for an audience of educated laymen in the Western world who have ceased to be Christian, at least in any traditional sense. We are publishing this book for the reader who understands that all the great religions belong to him as part of his human past, that he belongs
to none of them. In the very helpful words of the Reverend Kenneth L. Patton, of Boston’s Charles Street Universalist Meeting House:
"The role of appreciation in the religious experience is strangely neglected amongst us. We seem to believe that our religion consists only of those precepts and attitudes that we practice. And yet, we can appreciate a great wealth of human experience and attitudes which we never would care to practice ourselves. I would try to appreciate everything in man’s religious history. In this sense, I would seek to be a complete universalist. And I believe that my critical and intuitive selection from the human and natural scene of those elements that will become my practicing religion will depend on whether my appreciation has attained universal scope. Otherwise, it would proceed from ignorance and prejudice and would be worth little."
If the reader will firmly keep in mind that he is first seeking to appreciate as fully and completely as possible the religion of Tibetan Buddhism, quite independently of whether he will ever care to practice any of it, he will get the most out of his first reading of this book. Open yourself to it and let it take possession of you!
Part I of this book is relatively easy to understand and relatively familiar. It is sufficiently similar to some kinds of Western religion.
Part II is much more important and much more difficult to understand. It is to center attention on it that we have titled this book Teachings of Tibetan Yoga, that is, to emphasize the practice of the Yoga exercises.
Most readers, even those who have read a good deal about Yoga, will find the practice of Dumo—the generating of internal heat in one’s body—strange and not at all easy to believe. I want to call to the reader’s attention the fact that this Dumo is the very foundation of the whole of Tibetan Yoga, without which no other part of it makes the slightest sense. That makes it all the harder to believe. Nevertheless, there it is. As it is presented here, its practice and its meaning are quite peculiar to Tantric Buddhism. But for varying meanings, the generating of internal heat as part of religious practice goes back for tens of thousands of years. The reader who wishes to pursue this extraordinary subject further will find it dealt with in Mircea Eliade’s monumental work, Shamanism.
Dumo’s special meaning for Tibetan Yoga flows from the profoundly anti-ascetic and anti-pessimistic doctrine of Tantric Buddhism. The author-translator has made a great effort, in his Foreword, to provide a bridge for Western readers to understand Tibetan Tantrism. Please read his Foreword most carefully. He means precisely what he says when he tells you that opposites are also inseparable unities and that the best example of this is that the human body-mind can be made into the body of Buddha. I suppose that for Westerners the most difficult example of all is that sexual bliss can become divine bliss. The author-translator is justly fearful of being misunderstood on this crucial question of erotic mysticism. As to the actual practices, he has provided the texts intact but it may well be that his notes leave certain questions unanswered which must be most puzzling to Westerners.
As in the case of Dumo, the retention in the body of male semen has a special meaning in Tantrism, although this idea (and practice) has an age-long history. In ancient Hindu and Chinese medicine, among other archaic medicines, it is believed that orgasm without ejaculation is not only healthful but preserves the semen and leads to long life. Modern physiology has not yet found any evidence of this kind, for orgasm without ejaculation in a normal person results simply in the semen being discharged into the bladder. Today we cannot know whether the original author of the Six Yogas understood the actual physiology, but we can be quite certain that Mr. Chang does. The point is that the Tig Le retention continues to be crucial to Tibetan Tantrism because here the practice is based not on a mistaken physiology but on a mystical technique: in effect, all the life processes are reversed, turned topsy-turvy, taken out of the realm of nature: breathing is stopped as far as possible, thinking stopped, hearing stopped, seeing stopped, and so on—in a word, everything is transformed. I do not pretend that this is a doctrine easy to understand, and it should be obvious that even more difficult is it a practice to achieve—and Mr. Chang warns you sternly not to try it without the help of a Guru. But, at least, please understand that it is not a matter of outmoded physiology.
All I am trying to do in this Introduction is to make it a little easier for Western readers to understand Mr. Chang’s book. When he speaks of Tantric physiology,
he does not mean a physiology subject to scientific verification. There have