Translation of The Pleasure Garden

Chapter 6 consists of a full translation of the condensed edition of Shardza’s life-story. The translation offers the reader an extended look into the rich body of material constituting one of the most popular and widely circulated Bönpo examples of this important Tibetan genre. It combines evocative poetry with prose accounts of key thematic features that constitute a saintly life in the Bön religion in the early twentieth century. In the process, the text covers a breadth of territory, exploring careful accountings of religious qualifications, voicing aspirational prayers, offering authorial asides on the attributes of a saint, and conveying intimate moments in the life of this Bönpo luminary. It is preceded by a brief history of its author.

Measures, Miracles, and Representations

Chapter 5 takes up critical issues that both reflected and shaped the larger Bön community of which Tenpé Gyaltsen is a part, and for whom he primarily writes. The author considers how the biographies treat key elements of Shardza’s enduring legacy. These are depicted via traditional measures, such as Shardza’s material contributions to religious institutions, including the texts he authored; his successful training of disciples; and the holy relics and palpable faith engendered by his miraculous passing. Shardza’s legacy also includes his biographical image, constructed through particular categories and with an awareness of potentially contesting voices. This chapter reviews some of the most significant conceptual distinctions to set the parameters for understanding a Bön religious life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Kham, and it concludes by reflecting on how these designations were used to situate Shardza within a particular religious landscape traced by his biographer.

Birth, Discipleship, and Precepts

Chapter 2 shifts its focus from key issues behind the biographical works to address the narrative presentation of Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen’s early life. It draws upon the saintly themes of The Pleasure Garden of Wish-Fulfilling Trees and the detailed chronicles of The Strand of Jewels to produce a new, composite image. Taking up his birth, childhood, and entry into religious life, and his relationship with his primary teacher and his assumption of monastic vows, this chapter begins to trace the arc of Shardza’s religious career as it emerges from these two sources. A close reading of these sources, which vary significantly by length, organization, and style, reveals how they render very different accounts of Shardza’s childhood, with implications for the life to follow. In the process, this chapter interrogates the relationship between tantric and monastic sources of religious power and authority in the biographical milieu of nineteenth-century Kham.

Teaching, Writing, Travel, and Dialogue

Chapter 4 examines the mid-career activities of this minority Bönpo living beyond the framework of an institutionally based monastic life. These developments include his emergence as a sought-after teacher; his contemplative approach to the writing process; his myriad experiences and responsibilities as an itinerant lama; his burgeoning relationships with influential patrons; and his connections with cosmopolitan figures beyond the Bön tradition. During his journeys Shardza typically presided over rituals, offered and occasionally received teachings and initiations, attracted students and patrons, and raised funds for religious purposes. He also engaged in in-depth conversations with other respected teachers he encountered, both Bönpo and Buddhist, often on the basis of his written works. Tenpé Gyaltsen reports that these ecumenical relations attest to his broadmindedness and freedom from narrow sectarian bias.

Teachers, Practice, and Travel

Chapter 3 turns its attention to the formative phase of Shardza’s youth. The chapter explores how the biographies present the emergent inclinations and religious orientations shaping his temperament. These were determined in large part by a breadth of religious teachers, by the style of training he adopted, and by an important early pilgrimage he undertook that brought him into contact with a broader cultural world. These lasting and varied influences provided an important basis for alternative representations to emerge. They allowed Shardza to be ultimately fashioned by his biographer as an open-minded but well-informed polymath who transcends and reconciles typically contrasting religious types, becoming a great adept and a prolific scholar, a nonsectarian visionary, and a committed Bönpo monastic.

Situating Bön and the Life of Shardza

The opening chapter locates Bön within a broader Tibetan cultural landscape, with a view to how historical developments have contributed to modern Bönpo identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with a general orientation to what it has meant to be an adherent of Bön, the chapter introduces key historical developments that have shaped Bön in ways significant to our understanding of Shardza’s life. These include complex and sometimes contentious relations with nascent Buddhist lineages in Tibet, internal divisions within Bön itself, and the climate of nonsectarianism that emerged in eastern Tibet in the nineteenth century. This presentation concludes with a look at some of the particular dynamics that fueled a dispute erupting late in Shardza’s career, in which his commitment to time-honored Bön tradition came to be questioned by critics from within the lineage.

Introduction

In this opening section the author introduces Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen, the Tibetan Bön religion’s most renowned and influential luminary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author describes his own relationship with and approach to the subject matter. The introduction provides a brief overview of Shardza’s life and articulates the main argument of the work. The author also discusses key literary conventions of the genre (known as namtar) that structure the Tibetan works at the center of this study. The plan of the book is set out in a series of chapter summaries.