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Vision and Violence
 Brill’s
Tibetan Studies
Library

Edited by
Henk Blezer
Alex McKay
Charles Ramble

VOLUME 29

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/btsl

Vision and Violence
Lama Zhang and the Politics of Charisma
in Twelfth-Century Tibet

By

Carl S. Yamamoto

Leiden • boston
2012
Cover Illustration: Lama Zhang, wearing “Sgam po pa’s Hat” (see Introduction, I). From Bla ma zhang
gi rnam thar zin bris, manuscript from 'Bras spungs monastery

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yamamoto, Carl S.
Vision and violence : Lama Zhang and the politics of charisma in twelfth-century Tibet / by Carl S.
Yamamoto.
pages cm. — (Brill’s Tibetan studies library, ISSN 1568-6183 ; volume 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21240-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Zan G’yu-brag-pa Brtson-’grus-g’yun-drun,
1123–1193. 2. Bka’-rgyud-pa lamas—Biography. 3. Buddhism and politics—China—Tibet
Autonomous Region—History. I. Title.

BQ999.A37Y36 2012
294.3’923092—dc23
[B]
2012007862

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.

ISSN 1568–6183
ISBN 978 90 04 21240 4 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 23010 1 (e-book)

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
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provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
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Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To the memory of Lillian Mezzelo, 1928–2011
 CONTENTS

Preface . ............................................................................................................... xi
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................... xiii

Introduction: Picking up the Pieces: Lama Zhang and The “Tibetan

Renaissance” . .................................................................................................... 1
I. Sgam po pa’s Hat .............................................................................. 1
II. “Tibet in Pieces” ............................................................................... 4
III. The Buddhist Revival and the Rise of the Dwags po Bka’
brgyud pa Order ............................................................................... 6
IV. Lhasa in the Twelfth Century ...................................................... 12
V. A Sketch of the Life . ....................................................................... 13
VI. Lama Zhang’s Afterlife ................................................................... 15
A. In Tibet ......................................................................................... 16
B. In Scholarship ............................................................................. 18
VII. Methodological Considerations . ................................................. 24
A. Hegemony . .................................................................................. 24
B. Charisma ...................................................................................... 28
C. Style ............................................................................................... 29
VIII. Sources ................................................................................................ 32

1. L ama Zhang’s Life ....................................................................................... 35

I. Sources for Lama Zhang’s Life ...................................................... 35
A. Works Written by Lama Zhang . ............................................ 37
B. Works Written by Zhang’s Immediate Disciples and
Contemporaries . ....................................................................... 41
C. Works Written by Later Authors ......................................... 43
II. The Life ............................................................................................... 46
A. Birth and Childhood . .............................................................. 46
B. Early Education ......................................................................... 50
C. Destructive Magic and the Life Turnarounds . ................ 52
D. Meetings with Key Teachers ................................................. 56
E. Meeting with Sgom tshul and Realization of
Mahāmudrā ................................................................................ 63
F. Cultivation of Realization; Meditative Attainments . .... 66
G. Public Life ................................................................................... 71
H. Last Years and Death . ............................................................. 76
viii contents

2. Lineage and Style: Placing Lama Zhang in the Tradition ............. 79

I. Was Lama Zhang a Bka’ brgyud pa? ............................................ 79
A. Sect and Lineage ........................................................................ 79
B. Lama Zhang’s Lineages ............................................................ 82
C. The Formation of Traditions .................................................. 88
II. Lama Zhang’s Religious Style ......................................................... 96
A. Chos lugs: Style vs. System ...................................................... 96
B. The Elements of Lama Zhang’s Religious Style ................ 99

3. “To Tell Your Own Story Yourself ”: Autobiography, Genre

Families, and Textual Economies .......................................................... 139
I. Gyatso on the Historical Conditions for Autobiography
in Tibet ............................................................................................. 139
A. The Collapse of the Tibetan Empire and the
Reconstitution of Tibet as a Buddhist Culture ................. 139
B. New Strategies of Legitimation; New Modes of
Recognition and Self-Presentation; New Forms
of Literature ................................................................................ 142
II. Textual Economies and the Birth of Genres ............................ 144
A. Textual Economies . .................................................................. 144
B. Genre Families ........................................................................... 148

4. “Lord of the Teachings” . ........................................................................... 175

I. The Two Career Paths ..................................................................... 175
II. “Lord of the Teachings,” “Protector of Beings” . ....................... 177
A. Who Was Fighting? . ................................................................. 177
B. “The Yoke, the Law, and the Seals” . .................................... 194
III. Public Works ...................................................................................... 203
A. The Works . .................................................................................. 203
B. Marking Territory, Sacred and Political ............................. 210

5. “Great Meditator Who Tears Down Forts” ......................................... 213

I. Conflicts and Fighting ..................................................................... 213
A. Reasons for Fighting ................................................................. 213
B. Some Sites of Fighting ............................................................. 216
II. “Fierce Activities”: the Question of Tantric Justifications .... 223
A. Vision and Violence .................................................................. 223
B. Lama Zhang as a Virtual Object ........................................... 230
 contents ix

III. Voices Against Lama Zhang . ......................................................... 233

A. “Eulogizing” Lama Zhang ........................................................ 233
B. Humor and Rhetoric . ............................................................... 245
C. Reining in the Wildman .......................................................... 246

Conclusion: Mastering Space, Time, Symbol: Lama Zhang

and the Buddhist Hegemonization of Central Tibet ............................ 255
I. Sectarian Groups and the Institution of the Lama . ............... 255
A. Hegemony and Charisma . ...................................................... 255
B. The Spatial Dimension: Spread and Densification .......... 260
C. The Temporal Dimension: Lineage and the Formation
of Traditions . .............................................................................. 264
D. The Symbolic Dimension: Territory, Tradition, Text,
and Identity . ............................................................................... 266
II. “Lord of the Teachings” Revisited ................................................ 273

Appendices
Appendix 1: Contents and Back Matter/Colophons to
Volumes 1–7 of the Shedup-Namgyal 2004 Edition of
Lama Zhang’s Collected Works . ........................................................ 279
Appendix 2: Lama Zhang’s Root Lamas and Their Principal
Teachers . ................................................................................................. 348
Appendix 3: Listing of Lama Zhang’s 44 Teachers, Along with
141 Teachings Received, from Various Root Lamas (Rtsa ba’i
bla ma sna tshogs kyis ‘thob byang), Shedup I.307–16 ............... 349
Appendix 4: List of 15 Lineages of Teachings Received by
Zhang, from Various Lineages (Brgyud pa sna tshogs),
Shedup I.293–307 .................................................................................. 356
Appendix 5: Occurrences of the Term bka’ brgyud in the
Shedup-Namgyal 2004 Collected Works ......................................... 361
Appendix 6: Occurrences of the Term lha sa sde bzhi in
Lama Zhang’s Writings ....................................................................... 367

Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 369

Index .................................................................................................................... 383
 Preface

Sometimes it helps to ask very simple questions. Even stupid questions.

Mine went something like this: How did Tibet become Buddhist? 1
It was this question that snapped into focus the blur of issues my
research had become when it was still a dissertation-in-process. Above
all, it convinced me that Lama Zhang Brtson ‘grus grags pa (1122–1193)
was more than just a marginal “crazy” in the history of Tibetan Bud-
dhism, and that looking at the details of his life would afford important
clues about that larger, more drawn-out event now often called the
“Tibetan renaissance.”
When I had first begun to consider Lama Zhang as a possible
research subject, the impression I had of him was that of a volatile—
possibly psychotic—minor character who had used his religious
authority to gain political leverage, engaged in ethically suspect activi-
ties, and employed the less reputable forms of Buddhist tantra as a
smokescreen for his misconduct. Furthermore, though he had been
revered as a master of the philosophical/contemplative system known
as the “Great Seal” (mahāmudrā), his irresponsible promotion of this
technique as a self-sufficient soteriological “panacea” had led him to
devalue the ethical side of classical Buddhism, which hastened his
lapse into immoral behavior. For all of this, he had been rebuked and
shunned by his more respectable Bka’ brygud pa contemporaries.
I don’t know exactly where I got this impression: like all impressions,
it was the informal summing-up of countless barely understood opin-
ions and assumptions. But I do believe it has some currency among
contemporary Tibetologists. For example, since completing the disser-
tation form of the book, I have a read a master’s thesis on a peripher-
ally related subject that offers a very similar impressionistic picture
of Lama Zhang. Since the sections of the thesis treating of Zhang are
based entirely on secondary sources, the author cannot be faulted for
this, but it does suggest that the impression is out there.

1 Matthew Kapstein frames the same issue in considerably less crude terms: “[A]
central problem for the historical study and interpretation of Tibetan civilization” is
“[t]he penetration by Buddhism of Tibetan culture, so that the two would become to
all intents and purposes indivisibly associated.” Kapstein 2000, 3.
xii preface

My first intimation that there was another way to look at Lama Zhang
was the clash between the supposed rebukes of his respectable contem-
poraries and the absolute and unwavering respect I saw when I looked
at the sources themselves. Most emblematic of this for me was the rough
and affectionate relationship I saw between Lama Zhang and the First
Karmapa—a respectable figure if there ever was one.
The key to understanding the centrality of Lama Zhang in medieval
Central Tibet is the figure of the “Lord of the Teachings” (bstan pa’i bdag
po), a persona that pulls together disparate threads—religion and poli-
tics, contemplation and action, literature and governance, vision and
violence—and creates an enduring pattern, a template for later politico-
religious leaders of Lhasa: most prominently the future Dalai Lamas. The
“Lord of the Teachings” is a principle of order introduced into a social
world gone to pieces (sil bu). Like Wallace Stevens’s “jar in Tennessee,”2
it causes the surrounding landscape to arrange itself around it, creating
order wherever it is placed. And new principles of order—varied and mul-
tiple—were precisely the agents of the Central Tibetan “renaissance.”

2 Stevens, Wallace, “Anecdote of the Jar.”

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are so many people without whose support and assistance this
book would never have come into being, and I am happy to be able
at this point to acknowledge, if not repay, a few of my debts. I order
them by place:
Charlottesville: First of all, my teachers and mentors at the Uni-
versity of Virginia, which offered resources of a depth and breadth it
would have been difficult to find elsewhere: above all, Jeffrey Hopkins,
my first adviser, who inspired me with his intellectual rigor and warm
support, and David Germano, my subsequent adviser, who won me
over to the historical standpoint through his brilliant example, then
offered endless ideas, inspiration, advice, and guidance. Karen Lang
has been a quiet but steady source of intellectual and moral support
from the very beginning, as has Paul Groner. Kurtis Schaeffer arrived
too late for me to benefit from his classes, but kindly agreed to serve on
my dissertation committee and has since offered comments and advice
that are unfailingly helpful. Ann Monius, now at Harvard, was a valu-
able early mentor and her priceless advice stays with me even now. My
long struggle with the Tibetan language has produced results that are, at
best, mixed, but the situation would surely have been utterly hopeless
without the efforts of my early Tibetan language teachers Sonam Dekyi,
Bill Magee, and Tsering Wangchuk. A warm thanks to all of you.
New York and New Jersey: I was fortunate to have lived in New York
at a time when there was an unusual concentration of Tibetan studies
scholars and practitioners. Special thanks to the late Gene Smith and
the staff at Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center—particularly Chözin—
for help acquiring texts. Also to Josh and Diana Cutler and Geshe Lob-
zang Tsetan at the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center, Lauran Hartley,
Tenzin Norbu, Robbie Barnett, and Lozang Jamspal at Columbia Uni-
versity, Pema Bhum and Kristina Dy-Liacco at the Latse Library, Eve-
line Yang at the Trace Foundation, and Gelek Senge, Nima Dorjee, and
Elisabeth Benard. Finally, deepest gratitude to my non-Tibetanist New
York guru, Pauline Pinto.
Baltimore: In the summer of 2011, I received a Towson University
Faculty Development and Research Committee summer research fel-
lowship, which allowed me to complete the writing of this book. Many
xiv acknowledgments

thanks to the University and the Committee for their generosity. Since
arriving at Towson in the fall of 2009, I have found a sane and collegial
department, a friendly work environment, and a supportive academic
community, which have proved key to the completion of the book. Thanks
especially to Rose Ann Christian, Walt Fuchs, Anne Ashbaugh, Stephannie
Faison, Jeff Larson, and Kate Wilkinson. Finally, to my students and to my
peers on the number 8 Greenmount Ave. bus: there’s more of you in this
work than you can imagine.
Academia: Among the academic Tibetologists to whom I owe a debt, I
should mention first of all Dan Martin. When, as a graduate student fishing
tentatively for a topic, I inquired timidly whether I might be intruding on
his “territory,” he offered a resounding negative, and then backed up his
words by offering me invaluable texts, references, and advice. I hope he
will not be displeased with my clumsy trampings through the field he first
opened up to scholarship. I have also benefited immeasurably from the
advice, generosity, and encyclopedic knowledge of Per Sørensen. Without
these two scholars, I would have been at a complete loss as to how to pro-
ceed with this project. Other Tibetan studies scholars from whom I have
received important help include Janet Gyatso and Alex McKay.
Leiden: Thanks to Patricia Radder and Peter Buschman at Brill for shep-
herding me through an unfamiliar process with patience and skill.
Through the generosity of the U.S. Department of Education, I was able
to spend a year and half in Tibet, Nepal, and India on a Fulbright-Hays dis-
sertation research fellowship. Special thanks to E. Howard Booker, Budget
Officer, UVa GSAS, for surmounting multiple obstacles—visa delays and
sundry mishaps, including a revolution—any one of which could have
derailed the whole year without his timely interventions. During this time
abroad, I received help and comradeship of a nature I can only dream of
being able to reciprocate some day:
Lhasa: Thanks, above all, to Balok Tenzin Dorje, Guge Tsering Gyalpo
from the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences (TASS), and Pema Tashi
from the Tibet Library, who not only helped me navigate some very dif-
ficult texts, but also offered incredible friendship and hospitality. Others
include the great scholar Drigung Konchog Gyatso, as well as my teachers
at Tibet University: Gen Lhakpa Tsetan, Gen Dekyi, Gen Dawa Tsering,
Gen Khenrab Wangchup, Gen Tsering Wangdu, Gen Champa Yangchen,
Wei Hong, Shapshar Choedron, and the late Gen Dawa. Also, Ying Liu of
the Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library was enormously helpful in every
way. Finally, thanks to my language partner Lobsang Jamkar for lessons
and hospitality.
 acknowledgments xv

Kathmandu: First of all, heartfelt thanks to Khenpo Shedup Tenzin of

Shri Gautam Buddha Vihara, who gave me special access to many of the
texts I needed, including the nine-volume Collected Works on which this
project is based. Also to his brother Dawa and his nephews Karma Palsang
and Karma Namgyal, who acted as liaisons for the Khenpo. Also, special
thanks to Khenpo Sherab Dorje of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery,
who met with me every day during a fierce monsoon and patiently led me
through a particularly difficult text, as well as to Urgyen, my conversation
teacher. Also owed thanks are Ram and Santoshi for their friendship, their
flat, and good movies; Pam Novak and Manu Lopez of SIT for friendship
and advice; Peter Moran, Fulbright point man in Kathmandu, who shep-
herded our Fulbright group through a socially turbulent year and played
a key part in the successful delivery of a copy of Lama Zhang’s Collected
Works to Tsel Gungtang monastery; Hubert Decleer for miscellaneous
advice; and Bidur Dangol and Zahed Shah for good books.
Gangtok, Sikkim: First of all, much gratitude to Dr. Lopen Dugyal Bhu-
tia, with whom I spent the summer of 2007 reading Lama Zhang texts
daily. A former village lama who, late in his life, went back to school and
earned, first an acharya degree, and then a Ph.D., he remains a source
of inspiration to those of us whose career rhythms are somewhat out of
sync with the norm. Secondly, a big thanks to Anna Balikci-Denjongpa
of the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, who first put me in touch with
Dugyal and other teachers and offered intellectual stimulation and friend-
ship throughout my stay at Namgyal. Thanks as well to Tsultsem Gyatso
Acharya, who kindly assisted me with the reading of texts and allowed
me to collaborate with him on some articles for the Bulletin of Tibetology.
Other Namgyal residents to whom I owe thanks: the Director, Mr. Tashi
Densapa, Kelsang Choden, Jhampa, Ngodup Bhutia, Sonam Thinley, Ten-
zin Samphel, and Phurpo Tshering.
Darjeeling: Thank you to Mr. Gyurmed Tsundue of the Manjushree
Center of Tibetan Culture for assisting me in my search for teachers and
for taking me to meet Khenpo Jigme. Thanks to Khenpo Jigme of Druk
Thupten Sangag Choeling (Dali Gompa) for allowing me to take pictures
of his small Lama Zhang statue.
Sarnath: Thank you to Geshe Ngawang Samten Khenpo for graciously
allowing me to stay at the guesthouse at the Central Institute for Higher
Tibetan Studies (CIHTS). Additional thanks to Khenpo Sonam Gyatso of
CIHTS and the Vajra Vidya Institute for reading my text to me. Also to
Raajaan, Sukhdev, Daisy, and Rosy at the Sarnath Cafe for good food and
good company.
xvi acknowledgments

The demands of study in the Tibetan cultural areas breed an unusually

strong sense of camaraderie, and it would be unforgivable not to thank
my fellow Tibetology graduate students (many of them now professors
themselves), who were not only sources of inspiration and ideas but also
absolutely crucial to my survival. First of all, extra special thanks to my
international surrogate family: Kimberly Dukes, Chris Hatchell, Suzanne
Bessenger, and Tina Harris. Also many thanks to Frances Garrett, Tra-
vis McCauley, Kammie and Ryuichi Takahashi, Kevin Vose, Jann Ronis,
Annabella Pitkin, Sarah Jacoby, Antonio Terrone, Leigh and Jason Sang-
ster, Nancy Lin, Holly Gayley, Kabir Heimsath, Mara Matta, Natalie Köhle,
Cameron Warner, Sarah Schorr, Brandon Dotson, Nathan Hill, Andy
Quintman, Ben Bogin, and Dave DiValerio.
Finally, a loving thank you to my family—my mother Grace Yamamoto
and my sister Esther Cohen—for their unstinting support through what
can only have seemed a bewilderingly long college career.
 INTRODUCTION

PICKING UP THE PIECES: LAMA ZHANG AND THE

“TIBETAN RENAISSANCE”

I. Sgam po pa’s Hat

Lama Zhang (1122–1193)1 was a figure about whom it was not easy to be
neutral. He was a man of extremes and contradictions: poet and military
commander, iconoclast and traditionalist, solitary recluse and public
leader, master of words and denigrator of verbal knowledge, charismatic
visionary and bureaucratic administrator, meditation master and institu-
tion-builder, preserver of peace and perpetrator of “fierce activities.”
Like his life, his reputation has fluctuated wildly. Even today, he is the
occasion for strong opinions: a leading contemporary Tibetologist, for
example, comments that he was, “[t]o state the obvious, . . . a pathological
tyrant.”2 Obvious or not, this has surely not been the consensus opinion
on Zhang. His followers, the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa, saw him as a real-
ized buddha, as did the influential Bka’ brgyud pa historians Rta tshag
Tshe dbang rgyal, Dpa’ bo Gtsug lag phreng ba, and ‘Gos lo tsā ba Gzhon
nu dpal.3
Nor was this positive assessment limited to partisans of the Bka’ brgyud
pa order: the Third Dalai Lama is reported to have “pressed the ends of
his eyes with the fingers of his hands” and said “I was like this when I was
Lama Zhang.”4 The Fifth Dalai Lama also thought himself to be Zhang’s
incarnation, and the Great Fifth’s regent, Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, regarded
Lama Zhang as a reincarnation of both Padmasambhava and Srong btsan
sgam po, key figures in the Tibetan imperial national myth that was being
actively fashioned during Zhang’s lifetime.5

1 Bla ma Zhang; also called, variously, Zhang Dar ma grags, Zhang Brtson ‘grus grags pa,
Sna nam Brtson ‘grus grags pa, Zhang ‘Gro ba’i mgon po, Skye med Zhang, Zhang G.yu brag
pa, Gung thang Bla ma Zhang, Zhang Tshal pa, and Zhang Rin po che, singly or in different
combinations. On the issue of Zhang’s dates, see Chapter 1, n.75.
2 Davidson 2004, 331.
3 Lho rong chos ‘byung, 195; Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston, 808; Deb ther sngon po, 832.
4 Ahmad 1999, 186.
5 Ahmad 1999, 186.
2 introduction

Still, he was not universally revered, even in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. The great scholar Sa skya Paṇḍita Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan (1182–
1251) strongly criticized Zhang’s views on Buddhist soteriology.6 And
among his contemporaries, there were those who questioned both his
activities and his moral character: “The stories of your crimes,” wrote one
such critic, “are beyond belief.”7
Between buddha-cum-national-saint and criminal psychopath there is
not much ground for reconciliation, even if we grant the normal fluctua-
tions to which public reputations are subject.
In some ways, the controversies that have attended Lama Zhang are
unfortunate, because they distract from more interesting historical issues,
leaving behind a misleading impression, the cartoon image of a quirky
minor character: in the more favorable versions a principled eccentric,
in the less favorable a dangerous and heterodox madman—but in either
case, a decidedly peripheral figure. But I want to argue, on the contrary,
that Zhang was in fact right at the center of things at a particularly key
moment in Central Tibetan history: the medieval Buddhist revival known
to traditional Tibetan commentators as the “later spread of the teachings”
(bstan pa phyi dar). The same period has more recently been called the
“Tibetan renaissance”8—but in either case what is meant is that crucial
formative time when Tibetans put together a unified religious culture, out
of scattered fragments, inspired by a new vision of Tibetan society as Bud-
dhist, not by accident, but by its very nature and from its very inception.
The “earlier spread of the teachings” (bstan pa snga dar) of the seventh
through ninth centuries had brought Buddhism to the Tibetan imperial
court, but the extent of its penetration into society at large appears to
have been limited.9 It was only during the “later spread” revival period—
roughly from the mid-tenth to the mid-thirteenth century—that the
manifold and varied discourses and practices of the Buddhist tradition,
particularly its late Indian tantric forms, came to permeate medieval

6 See Sa skya Paṇḍita Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan, Sdom gsum rab dbye (Rhoton 2002), and
the excellent discussion in Jackson 1994.
7 khyod kyi sdig spyod rnam thar bsam mi khyab. Phyag khri mchog ma, Shedup V.602.
There is in my mind, as I discuss below in Chapter Five, a question whether this work
might not have been written by Lama Zhang himself, as a parody. Even so, it would seem
to reflect, in a funhouse mirror as it were, real criticisms that others were making. Other-
wise it could not be a parody.
8 Davidson 2005.
9 On this issue, see the fascinating blog post van Schaik 2009, with contributions by
Dan Martin and Brandon Dotson.
 picking up the pieces 3

Tibetan society at every level. The moral, political, literary, and material
cultures of Tibet were reconfigured according to Buddhist soteriological
narratives. Tibetan customs of diet, dress, and bodily comportment were
reshaped by Buddhist ethical, medical, ritual, and aesthetic norms. Tibet-
ans’ sense of time was rearranged according to a Buddhist calendar of
festivals and holidays and embedded within a sweeping Buddhist vision
of history and cosmic time. The very physical landscape of Tibet was over-
lain with a sacred topography of Buddhist temples, shrines, monasteries,
stūpas, and religious landmarks, all tied together by an extensive webwork
of pilgrimage routes centered around the holy city of Lhasa. On top of
this, a growing body of new—and distinctively Tibetan—writing began
to take shape inside and outside of the monasteries, and the outlines of a
remarkable Tibetan Buddhist culture of learning and literary production
were becoming discernible. So complete was the culture’s “Buddhiciza-
tion” during this time, that today one must repeatedly remind oneself that
Tibet was not always Buddhist. And, I will argue, it is precisely in his role
as an agent of this historical “Buddhicization” of Tibet—as an agent of
this “renaissance”—that Lama Zhang’s significance for Tibetan history as
a whole lies.
There could be no more fitting emblem of Lama Zhang’s centrality than
the meditation hat (sgom zhwa) he wore. It is said to have been handed
down from the great Sgam po pa—pivotal “renaissance” figure who wed-
ded Mi la ras pa’s hermit-meditator tradition to the monastic tradition
of the Bka’ gdams pa-s, thus giving rise to the Dwags po Bka’ brgyud pa,
one of the most successful of the “new orders” (gsar ma). Sgam po pa
is said to have passed the hat on to his nephew Sgom pa tshul khrims
snying po (1116–1169, ‘Sgom tshul’ for short), one of Zhang’s root lamas.
Sgom tshul in turn bequeathed it to Zhang.10 The hat could have gone to
any number of disciples better known to us today—the first Karma pa,
for instance, or ‘Bri-gung ‘Jig rten mgon po, both of whose orders have
survived to the present. It is of no small significance that it ended up on
Lama Zhang’s head. The circumstance that the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa-s
did not survive, while other Bka’ brgyud pa suborders did, has allowed for
a progressive forgetting of Lama Zhang’s centrality—to the point where
a figure formerly regarded as one of the “Three Jewels of Tibet,”11 ranking
with Tsong kha pa and the first Phag mo gru pa, could be demoted to the

10 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.32.

11 bod nor bu rnam gsum. Roerich 1976, 711; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.51, II.379.
4 introduction

status of a marginal eccentric. But when viewed from the standpoint of

the great medieval Buddhist transformation of Tibetan society, the inheri-
tor of Sgam po pa’s hat was anything but marginal.

II. “Tibet in Pieces”12

To get some perspective on the Buddhist revival, we need to back up a

bit, and look first at the immediately preceding period—the century fol-
lowing upon the mid-ninth-century dissolution of the Tibetan empire—
for to understand a “revival” we have to be clear on what exactly needed
reviving and why.
Later Tibetan commentators employ a number of tropes when refer-
ring to this period—all giving voice to a general sense of turmoil, decline,
and disorder. One common metaphor focuses on the state of Tibetan Bud-
dhism, representing it as a once-blazing fire that has been reduced to mere
“embers” (me ro). Thus, Nyang ral Nyi ma ‘od zer (1136–1204)—a contem-
porary of Lama Zhang—wrote, regarding the subsequent Buddhist revival:
“The embers of the teachings were rekindled from the East.”13 Mkhas pa
Lde’u, writing a century later, employs the same figure of embers, and
adds others as well:
The manner in which the embers of the Dharma were rekindled: . . . The
teachings wax and wane, like the rising and setting of the sun and moon. . . .
Like plants in summer and winter, [the teachings] are subject to change.14
But it was not just that the Buddhist teachings had declined: the great
Tibetan empire had foundered at about the same time. So the crisis was
much more far-reaching. When Buddhism lost its hold and the empire
collapsed, the ensuing trauma shook all levels of Tibetan society: the
political, the religious, the economic, the domestic, the spiritual, the psy-
chological. Thus, perhaps the most compelling metaphor for the period
was the one that pictured Tibetan society as something that had fallen to
pieces (sil bu)—a formerly vital and integrated whole that had become

12 Martin, Dan, “The Periodization of Tibetan History: General Chronology,” http://

www.thdl.org/collections/history/timeline_general.html.
13 bstan pa’i me ro smad nas bslangs pa. Chos ‘byung me tog snying po’i sbrang rtsi’i
bcud, 449.
14 de nas chos kyi me ro bslangs lugs/ . . . bstan pa de yang . . . nyi zla’i shar nub dang
‘dra ste ‘phel ‘grib/ . . . dbyar dgun gyi rtsi thog dang ‘dra ste ‘gyur ba. . . . Rgya bod kyi chos
‘byung rgyas pa, 390.
 picking up the pieces 5

fragmented and dispersed. Zhang’s biographer Tshal pa Kun dga’ rdo rje,
for example, writes:
In Tibet at that time, as the law of the kings of Tibet had declined, but the
law of the Mongols had not yet spread, Tibet had gone to pieces (bod sil
bur song).15
A common later variant refers to this period as a “time of fragmentation”
(sil bu’i dus).16
This metaphor of “fragmentation” carries more emotional force than
the others because it makes manifest the traumatized state of the whole
society, not just the Buddhist teachings. Furthermore, since fragmentation
presupposes a prior state of wholeness, the metaphor also carries within it
a picture of an ideal past and an implicit narrative of future restoration. In
this case, that ideal past is the period of the “Dharma Kings” (chos rgyal)
of the Tibetan Empire, and the ideal future one in which, through the
healing powers of the Buddhist teachings, and the integrative powers of
heroic kingship, the fragments are put back together and Tibet is restored
to its former glory as a worldly and spiritual superpower.
As it turns out, there would be no future empire—at least not with-
out substantial foreign leveraging—and the new heroes would not be
kings. Still, there would be a large-scale social-cultural reintegration, and
it would not depend on emperors or empires as binding agents. This
sets for the historian of the period the task of identifying those binding
agents—the social and cultural forces that, in the absence of a strong cen-
tral government, worked to maintain cohesion and counteract dispersion.
It is here that Lama Zhang’s contributions are most significant for, as I
will argue, he not only founded and maintained an impressive religious
community, but also provided tools for putting the “pieces” of Tibet back
together again: compelling minimodels of religious, political, ideologi-
cal and symbolic organization that would prove enormously influential
for those who would, during the course of the following centuries,
re-envision and rebuild Tibet as a unified Buddhist society. And at the cen-
ter, commanding this array of unifying practices, stood—not the “Dharma
King”—but the tantric lama: a charismatic, larger-than-life visionary for

15 de dus bod ‘dir/ bod rje’i rgyal khrims nub/ hor gyi rgyal khrims ma dar bas/ bod sil
bur song/. Tshal pa Kun dga’ rdo rje, Rnam thar bsdus pa, Shedup VI.148. The same figure
is used by the Fifth Dalai Lama, Dpyid kyi rgyal mo’i glu dbyangs, 3.2.9. THDL electronic
version. http://www.thdl.org/xml/showEssay.php?xml=/collections/history/texts/5th dl
history.
16 E.g., Shakabpa 1976, 235.
6 introduction

whom worldly and spiritual power were but two inseparable aspects of a
single mastery.

III. The Buddhist Revival and the Rise of the

Dwags po Bka’ brgyud pa Order

When Tibet is described as “fragmented,” this indicates first of all the loss
of centralized political authority following upon the collapse of the empire.
But fragmentation was not just an affair of politics and governance; nor
was it by any means confined to the Tibetan areas. “[I]t cannot have been
an accident,” writes Davidson, “that the Chinese, the Tibetan empire, and
other Central Asian principals endured a series of calamities of almost
exactly the same nature at almost precisely the same time. . . .”17 Christo-
pher Beckwith expands on this notion, referring to a broader mid-ninth-
century “collapse of the early medieval world order,” affecting the greater
part of Central Eurasia.18 Both Davidson and Beckwith suggest there
were as yet poorly understood larger-scale economic—even climatic—­
disruptions underlying the widespread political and social turbulence.
We do know, for example, that about the same time the Tibetan empire,
the Uighur states, and the Chinese Tang dynasty fell, there was decreased
economic activity along the circuits of trade and commerce that had con-
nected India, Central Asia, Tibet, and China for centuries—the very cir-
cuits that had played such a key role in the dissemination of Buddhism
from India to Central, East, and Southeast Asia. As Tansen Sen writes:
From the mid-ninth to the mid-tenth centuries, the woeful state of trade
across Central Asia remained unchanged. The political fragmentation of the
region not only hindered long-distance trade but also made it perilous for
Buddhist monks to travel between India and China. . . . The overland route
between India and China through Tibet was only marginally operational
during this period.19
Of course, part of the reason that trade activity in the region ground to
a near-halt was that, without centralized political authorities to main-
tain, regulate, and protect the routes, travel became dangerous and dif-
ficult. It would appear then that the interaction between stable states
and economic activity was reciprocal—economic stasis destabilized

17 Davidson 2005, 72.

18 Beckwith 2009, 158.
19 Sen 2003, 212, 213.
 picking up the pieces 7

g­ overnments; unstable governments dampened the dynamism of trade

and commerce—and that the breakdown of the economy and the break-
down of stable governing entities set up a mutually reinforcing downward
spiral that caused turmoil throughout the region, a turmoil that was not
only political and economic, but also social and cultural. It was to last at
least a hundred years.
One of the effects produced in Tibet, in addition to commercial stand-
still, wars, and political chaos, was the disappearance of organized forms
of Buddhism. New monasteries were no longer being built, old venerable
institutions were falling into decay,20 novice monks were no longer being
ordained, and written records were becoming scarce.
Just as the dark time of fragmentation and cultural stasis between
the mid-ninth and the mid-tenth century was bound up with a sort of
diminished network dynamism within the interlocking economic system
of Tibet, India, Central Asia, and China, so the period of revival, which
began in the mid-tenth century, seems to have coincided with an eco-
nomic revival, along with renewed political stability and cultural vitality,
throughout the region. As Davidson writes:
[W]e have tantalizing suggestions that the last half of the tenth century was
a time of economic coalescence and the reemergence of some political sta-
bility. . . . It is no coincidence that the period of the [Tibetan] renaissance
almost exactly mirrors a rebirth experienced in Central Asia and China
generally and in the northeastern Tibetan Hexi and Liangzhou areas in
­particular.21
Similarly, Sen writes that, after a century of economic paralysis, there was
a mid-tenth-century “resumption of overland trade” between India and
China through Central Asia, aided by two developments:
First, the expanding role of Buddhist institutions in economic activities
in both India and China helped itinerant merchants procure funds, mar-
ket religious and non-religious items, and, at times, escape the payment of
taxes at custom houses. Second, the establishment of Buddhist kingdoms
in Tibet and Central Asia renewed the demand for Buddhist commodities

20 Davidson quotes at length a pathos-filled description by Klu mes, a member of the

group who reoccupied Bsam yas monastery—the oldest and most venerable monastery in
Tibet—after it had been empty for decades. We are presented here with a sad picture of
a monastery badly damaged by water, with trees pushing through the windows, many of
the pillars cut down, fallen plaster everywhere, a fox den in the circumambulatory path,
and birds nesting in the statues. Davidson 2005, 94–95.
21 Davidson 2005, 86.
8 introduction

and, at the same time, facilitated the movement of merchants through their
territories.22
It is against the background of this economic revitalization and renewed
circulation of goods and people that we see, in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, a revival of Tibetan cultural and religious life. This early period
of the Buddhist resurgence was characterized, first of all, by a revival of
monasticism and a reintroduction of Buddhist teaching lineages from
India. If there was anything that symbolized the missionary vigor of the
new religious movements that arose as Tibet was coming out of the “period
of fragmentation,” it was the renewed interest in building temples and
establishing a monastic system of celibate monks with legitimate Vinaya
lineages. Traditional accounts tell of the heroic “ten men of Dbus gtsang
(i.e. Central Tibet)”23 who traveled to the Tsong kha region of northeast-
ern Tibet in search of unbroken ordination lineages, and then returned to
Central Tibet to build Buddhist temples.24 This temple-building was con-
tinued and expanded by the religious successors to the “ten scholars”—
the groups known as the “lower” or “Eastern Vinaya”25 monks. The result,
according to Davidson, was a
dizzying process of temple construction and congregation formation in
Ü and Tsang from the late tenth through the twelfth centuries, with several
hundred sites of congregations developed under the aegis of representatives
of their tradition.26
Because temples and monasteries were intimately bound up with the
activities of trade and pilgrimage,27 they “provided a network of physi-
cal foci for the social and mercantile interaction of small traveling mer-
chants and Tibetan religious.”28 As these activities intensified, the Tibetan
landscape became crisscrossed with multiple interlacing networks, along
which flowed materials, goods, people, ideas, texts, and religious practices
at an accelerating pace, catalyzing a dramatic reanimation of Tibetan
society.

22 Sen 2003, 215.

23 dbus gtsang gi mi bcu. Deb ther sngon po, 105 (Roerich 1976, 77).
24 Deb ther sngon po, 105; Roerich 1976, 77.
25 smad ‘dul. Tibetan phyi dar Vinaya lineages are classified as “upper” (stod), “lower”
(smad), and “middle” (bar), which as geographical designations signify western, eastern,
and central, respectively. Davidson 2005, 349.
26 Davidson 2005, 122.
27 van Spengen 2000, 23–24.
28 Davidson 2005, 87.
 picking up the pieces 9

As monasteries gained economic and political strength, they attracted

the attention of the aristocratic clans, “the most powerful single institution
in Tibet.”29 Though the clans initially saw in the monastic network a rival
power, in time many became patrons of the new religious institutions,
“exploit[ing] the newly acquired wealth of the monasteries by securing
clan members a place in the spiritual hierarchy.”30 It was members of two
of these clans, the ‘Khon and the Rngog, who in 1073 established the his-
toric monasteries of Sa skya and Gsang phu ne’u thog, respectively.31
The new monasteries, fortified by merchant wealth and aristocratic
prestige, provided a concrete physical and social foundation for the newly
emerging monastic movement and for the new sects that would coalesce
around them.
In that period, a new crop of religious leaders and missionaries—the
Eastern Vinaya monks, the charismatic new translators, and the Bka’ gdam
pa followers of the Indian guru Atiśa—came on the scene to promote a
revived Buddhist culture.32 A stream of new texts poured in from India
and—in what seems to have been in part a response to these new texts—
a body of discovered “treasures” (gter ma) began to appear from within
the ranks of the practitioners of the old religion.33 It was a rich period, but
also quite volatile—truly a time of information overload.
But toward the beginning of Lama Zhang’s century—the twelfth cen-
tury—things began to shift, as the mass of disparate new materials was
slowly processed, assimilated, and shaped into characteristically Tibetan
forms. “The twelfth century,” writes Davidson, “stands as the watershed in
Tibetan religion, for it became the time in which Tibetans confidently estab-
lished their independent perspective on the architecture of the Buddhist
path.”34 As such, it might be seen as the beginning of a period of consoli-
dation, owning-up, and taking-stock after the frenetic activity of the elev-
enth century. A sort of cultural self-confidence set in, as “Tibetans began to
feel themselves authentically Buddhist enough to inaugurate the process of
innovation.”35 This innovation took at least two different forms:

29 Davidson 2005, 274.

30 van Spengen 2000, 23.
31 Deb ther dmar po, 43, 62.
32 Davidson 2005, 315.
33 Davidson 2005, 364.
34 Davidson 2005, 427.
35 Davidson 2005, 377.
10 introduction

(1) First of all, there was innovation in the sorts of social institutions
that evolved to support the new religious practices. At the beginning of
the twelfth century, the new religious groups—though they had garnered
popular support and established institutions—were, compared to the
dynastic clans, organizationally immature, and unable to provide a stable
model of institutional succession. But by the end of the century, the old
model of clan authority had in some places—most notably in Sa skya—
merged with the monastic model, effecting a new institutional stability
with reliable methods for transmitting authority from one generation to
the next.36 This was a new social formation, one not seen in India, the first
of several uniquely Tibetan solutions to the problem of succession.
(2) Along with the new institutional configurations, there came inno-
vative approaches to doctrine and practice. For instance, from the elev-
enth-century Bka’ gdams pa missionaries and the Rngog family came the
monastery of Gsang phu ne’u thog, which in the twelfth century rose to
prominence as a center of scholarship, specializing in logic and debate.37
Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109–1169) was perhaps the best known of the
Gsang phu abbots, and trained, not only his Bka’ gdams pa successors, but
also Bsod nams rtse mo from Sa skya monastery,38 as well as Karma pa
Dus gsum mkhyen pa and Phag mo gru pa Rdo rje rgyal po from the Dwags
po Bka’ brgyud pa tradition.39 One source even claims that Lama Zhang
himself—often taken as the quintessential anti-scholastic—studied with
Phya pa.40
As significant as the novel forms of organization and practice evolv-
ing at Sa skya and Gsang phu may have been, for our purposes the most
important new development of the twelfth century was what Davidson
dubs “the Kagyüpa [Bka’ brgyud pa] efflorescence”41—the profusion of
lineages descended from “the mysterious master Marpa.”42
The key catalyst here was Sgam po pa Bsod nams rin chen—the master
whose meditation hat Lama Zhang inherited—a synthesizing figure who
had trained under both the Bka’ gdams pa monastics and the tantric yogin
Mi la ras pa. As Trungram Sherpa writes:

36 Davidson 2005, 427.

37 van der Kuijp 1987.
38 D. Jackson 1996, 235–36.
39 Davidson 2004, 382.
40 Deb ther sngon po, 406; Roerich 1976, 333.
41 Davidson 2004, 385.
42 Davidson 2004, 175.
 picking up the pieces 11

His efforts to synthesize the two lines, with their Kadam and Kagyu prac-
tices, are encapsulated in the name for his system, “The Unity of Bka’ gdams
and phyag chen (Mahāmudrā)” (bka’ phyag zung ‘brel).43
When he established Dwags lha Sgam po monastery in 1139, he not only
brought monastic discipline to the siddha-based mahāmudrā tradition,
but also created the social platform that enabled “the Kagyüpa transition
from a fragile series of lineages into an organized monastic denomination
with multiple institutions possessing a common identity.”44
The Dwags po Bka’ brgyud pa line provided a sort of countertradition
to that offered by the Gsang phu Bka’ gdams pa-s, one more meditatively
based and less scholastic in outlook. In fact, in several places Sgam po pa
criticizes the exclusively scholastic approach. For example, he writes, in
a letter to Phag gru:
This is not known even by a learned paṇḍita. It is not understood by dis-
criminative understanding (prajña). It is not within the scope of the dialecti-
cian’s activities. . . . [I]t arises without words.45
Still, lest one be tempted to call Sgam po pa’s view “anti-intellectual,”
it is important to keep in mind that he and three of his most promi-
nent pupils—Phag mo gru pa, Dus gsum mkhyen pa, and Lama Zhang
­himself—were trained by the Bka’ gdams pa-s. As Geoffrey Samuel
expresses it, “Gampopa’s position is a compromise between the shamanic
perception of Enlightenment as beyond words but positive, and the aca-
demic analysis of it in purely negative terms.”46
And indeed, what seemed to later hard-liners—like Sa skya Paṇḍita—to
be an irresponsible mixing and matching of doctrines and practices must
be viewed from the standpoint of the twelfth century: the sectarian and
doctrinal divisions that would later be taken for granted were still fluid—
as evidenced by the wide array of teachings Zhang received that would
later be associated exclusively with non–Bka’ brgyud pa orders from an
array of teachers who would also later be claimed by different orders.
Even given the wider array of practices available at the time, Sgam po
pa still seems to have leaned toward syncretic positions instinctively, as if
by temperament. As Davidson writes:

43 Sherpa 2004, 158.

44 Davidson 2004, 385.
45 ’di mkhas pa paNDi tas kyang mi shes/ shes rab kyis mi rtogs/ rtog ge ba‘i spyod yul
ma yin/ . . . tshig dang bral ba . . . rab ’char. D. Jackson 1994, 40, 151.
46 Samuel 1993, 479.
12 introduction

Gampopa works toward breaking down the barriers to vocabulary synthesis,

so that terminology from one area can be employed freely to explain others,
and he develops the idea of the “conformity” of the different vehicles with
one another. This is probably one basis for his amalgamation of the Kagyüpa
traditions and the language of the Kadampa Mahayanist ideas. . . .47
Although Zhang’s contact with Sgam po pa appears to have been minimal,
his primary teacher was Sgom tshul, Sgam po pa’s nephew and successor
to the abbacy of Dwags lha Sgam po monastery, and he clearly inher-
ited these strong tendencies that are characteristic of the Dwags po Bka’
brgyud pa-s, favoring inclusiveness over orthodoxy, and nonconceptual
meditation over discursiveness.
But Sgom tshul’s significance also has a geographical dimension, for
the accidents of Central Tibetan history set him down in Lhasa—and this
would prove key to the later career of Lama Zhang.

IV. Lhasa in the Twelfth Century

It is easy to forget just how much twelfth-century Lhasa differed even

from the capital city it was to become in its “classical” period—never
mind the idyllic holy city of our imaginations. In twelfth-century Lhasa,
there was no Potala, no Norbulinka, no Tibetan “government,” no ambans
or other foreign emissaries, no Dalai Lama. Twelfth-century Lhasa was
considerably smaller—in both population and extent—than the more
familiar seventeenth-century Lhasa of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Most of all,
twelfth-century Lhasa had no unified political authority—which meant
the people of the city were subject to the frequent shifts of power between
small-time clan- and sect-based local rulers, as well as the depredations
of bandits and thieves. A sense of spiritual and civic malaise appears to
have been widespread. There would still have been reminders—palaces,
temples, fortresses, art works—of the magnificence of the age of impe-
rial Buddhist hegemony, but twelfth-century Lhasans looked back at the
empire period with the melancholy of those for whom Central Tibet had,

47 Davidson 2004, 390. Sgam po pa’s concern with just how much “terminology from
one area can be employed . . . to explain others” is evidenced in works of his that Jan-Ulrich
Sobisch identifies as among the earliest examples of the “Three Vows (sdom gsum)” genre
of Tibetan scholastic literature. Sobisch 2002, 177–215. Note that it is precisely from within
this tradition that Sapaṇ attacks both Sgam po pa and Zhang. Sdom gsum rab dbye (Rhoton
2002).
 picking up the pieces 13

in Lama Zhang’s words, “fallen into a time of degeneration.”48 Most promi-

nent among these reminders of past glory would have been the Ra mo che
and the Lhasa ‘Phrul snang—or “Jo khang”49—temples, said to have been
built to welcome Emperor Srong btsan sgam po’s two Buddhist wives. But
during Zhang’s lifetime, both of these temples—the most sacred Buddhist
sites in Lhasa—were burned to the ground in sectarian fighting, as had
been parts of the holy Bsam yas monastery a half century earlier. There
could be no more apt and depressing symbol for Lhasans of the depths to
which Central Tibet had fallen. In Zhang’s recounting of the disturbances,
he likens the Jo khang temple to a lion eaten from within by worms, add-
ing that “nothing remained but ruins and smoke.”50
It was here that Lama Zhang, rather late in his life, was drawn into the
vortex of Central Tibetan politics, and it was here that he left his endur-
ing mark. By the time of his death, the two temples had been rebuilt, the
local routes had been made safe for merchants and pilgrims, and at least a
semblance of normalcy had been restored to everyday life. Buddhism had
become an instrument not only of religious life but also of law, order, and
governance, and the groundwork had been laid for a century and a half of
Tshal pa rule in Central Tibet. More than this, the city of Lhasa had begun
its dramatic transformation from the ruin of an old imperial encampment
to a cultural dynamo powering a new Tibetan Buddhist culture that would
continue to evolve up through the 1950s.

V. A Sketch of the Life

Even apart from these larger historical issues of the “later spread” Buddhist
revival, Lama Zhang’s life would be well worth studying in itself, as the
story of a high-spirited, strong-willed, and charismatic individual of unim-
peachable spiritual authority, feared and revered by his ­contemporaries,

48 dus kyi snyigs ma la babs pas. Bla ma dwags po sgom pa’i rnam thar, Shedup I.173. In
Buddhist texts, dus kyi snyigs ma is the standard Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word
kaliyuga, “degenerate age.” This is a good example of the use of terms from the transhis-
torical Buddhist cosmology of successive world “ages” to describe small-scale historical
events within Tibet.
49 On the many names for this temple, see Warner 2008, 214–18. Gtsug lag khang is
perhaps the most common local designation. Ra sa ‘phrul snang is an older version than
Lha sa ‘phrul snang and is often used by scholars, but since the latter is the form the name
takes in all of the writings of Zhang and his disciples, I will use it here for the most part.
50 seng ge’i khog pa ‘bus gzhig pa bzhin du nang nas zhig ste/ mer bsregs nas re’u hrul
dang du ba las med pa. Bla ma dwags po sgom pa’i rnam thar, Shedup I.173.
14 introduction

cantankerous, never shying away from controversy, but at the same time
highly articulate and self-reflective, with a wicked sense of humor and an
unusual command of literary and other expressive means.
His life story begins as the conventional Buddhist narrative of the gifted
child who is universally acknowledged from an early age to be possessed
of exceptional spiritual powers, but then takes an unconventional detour
through a phase of habitual cruelty to animals—the adult karmic pay-
back for which is, as he relates in his autobiography, chronic intestinal
distress—this cruel streak perhaps foreshadowing some of the morally
controversial aspects of his later character and actions.
His young adulthood is marked by repeated attempts—often unsuc-
cessful—to master a life made turbulent by the contrary pulls of high spir-
itual aspiration, formidable magical powers, and an unruly temperament.
He gains notoriety in eastern Tibet as “the Great Magician from Central
Tibet” and engages in destructive sorcery—usually involving the sacrifice
of animals and/or the defeat of family enemies. A pattern emerges wherein
periods of backsliding alternate with periods of contrition. In this aspect,
Zhang’s story resembles that of the great yogin Mi la ras pa—of whom
Zhang is a third-generation spiritual lineal descendant—whose path to
sainthood likewise entailed the overcoming of an early life of harmful
worldly sorcery.51
This period ends in Zhang’s twenty-fourth year with a metaphoric pur-
gative dream in which he expels from his nose a snake-like creature—
seeming to represent his karmic predisposition towards evil—whom he
acknowledges has accompanied him for many lifetimes, and to whom
he bids goodbye as it disappears over the horizon. Shortly afterward, he
resolves to take ordainment as a monk.
This inaugurates the next phase of his life, during which Zhang pur-
sues the career of monk and wandering hermit-yogin. During this time,
he seeks out realized teachers, refuses disciples and patrons, and devotes
himself to solitary tantric practice in the mountain retreats that dot that
region of Central Tibet bounded by Lhasa on the west and Bsam yas on
the east. It was during this period that his prodigious literary gifts began to
show. He wrote The Path of Ultimate Profundity,52 a treatise on “Great Seal”
(mahāmudrā) meditation that is his best-known work—though perhaps

51 Lama Zhang in fact wrote one of the earliest extant versions of Mi la’s life story. Mi
la’i rnam thar, Shedup I.146–58. See also Quintman 2006, 96–101.
52 Lam zab mthar thug, Shedup IV.78–149.
 picking up the pieces 15

not his most representative work. Less familiar, but ultimately more sig-
nificant, are his songs of spiritual realization (mgur), his biographies of past
Bka’ brgyud pa masters, and Shes rab grub pa ma Autobiography53—thought
to be among the first autobiographies written in Tibetan. His model during
this phase of his life is clearly the cotton-clad recluse-saint Mi la ras pa, who
embodied the ideal of the solitary meditator, shunning human contacts and
devoting himself full time to the pursuit of realization.
A key turning point occurs in his late thirties, when sectarian fighting
breaks out in Lhasa—leading, among other things, to the burning of the
Lhasa ‘Phrul snang (Jo khang temple), Tibet’s holiest Buddhist site—and
Zhang is charged by his teacher Sgom tshul with the restoration of the
temple as well as the enforcement of law and order within the Lhasa area.
It is at this point that Zhang—with much initial reluctance—abandons the
eremitic life to which he has hitherto devoted himself and throws himself
with zeal into public life. Over the course of the next three decades, he
and his religious order—the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa—will take political
control over the Lhasa area, and he will craft the persona that proves to
be his most lasting legacy to Tibetan Buddhism: “Lord of the Teachings”
(bstan pa’i bdag po)—the publicly committed tantric lama, charismatic
master of space, time, and symbol, whose administration of the worldly
sphere rests firmly on a base of spiritual attainment.
By the time of his death at the age of 71, the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa-s
are a force to be reckoned with: a sizable and well organized monastic
order with a supporting community of lay followers and patrons, a mili-
tia, a sainted founding figure, a spiritual lineage, a literary corpus, and a
strategic foothold—both political and religious—in Lhasa, the symbolic
center of the Tibetan Buddhist universe.

VI. Lama Zhang’s Afterlife

“Every charismatic figure lives twice—” writes Adam Hochschild, “once in

real life and once after death, as a screen on which people project their
hopes and illusions.”54 This certainly holds true for the charismatic Lama
Zhang. Though the principal focus of this work will be the events of his
actual lifetime, an assessment of his importance would not be complete
without a look at the ways in which his own works and deeds outlived

53 Shes rab grub pa ma, Shedup I.316–66.

54 Adam Hochschild, back cover, Barmé 1996.
16 introduction

him. I will begin by examining his impact on the later culture of Tibetan
Buddhism and then discuss the ways in which he has appeared in con-
temporary scholarship.

A. In Tibet
Even after the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa-s lost their control of Lhasa, and
through the numerous power shifts that followed over the next several
centuries, the figure of Lama Zhang retained its religious and political
authority. Part of what survived was what I, in Chapter Two, call Zhang’s
religious “style”—an integrated complex of literary, doctrinal, and con-
templative emphases that served as an influential model of Buddhist
practice for later generations of Tibetans. But a more important aspect
of his religious afterlife can be seen in his adoption as a legitimizing icon
by later sectarian traditions. For these successor groups, Lama Zhang
was to become, to borrow Bernard Faure’s illuminating phrase, a “virtual
object”55—that is, a symbolic placeholder within their own lineage-sup-
porting narratives. In fact, it is precisely this attractiveness of Zhang to
posterity that makes it necessary for us to exercise caution when read-
ing later accounts of his life—all of which have been colored by the con-
cerns and interests of these would-be spiritual offspring—and take care
to identify and separate out these later agendas so as not to mistake them
for the agendas of Zhang and his direct disciples. Much of the work of
this book will be to disentangle the elements of Zhang’s life gleaned from
sources from his own lifetime from these later appropriations. At the
same time, it is important to see how these later appropriations point to
real accomplishments in his own life that served as the basis for the later
­virtualizing.
There have been mainly two sectarian traditions who have claimed
Lama Zhang, the Bka’ brygud pa and the Dge lugs pa. In the Bka’ brgyud
narrative, Zhang is incorporated as the founder of the Tshal pa, one of
the “Four Great” subschools of the Bka brygud pa order. He is particularly
renowned within this tradition as an early master of the philosophical/
contemplative system known as the “Great Seal” (mahāmudrā; Tib. phyag
rgya chen po)—which becomes, along with the “Six Dharmas of Nāropa”

55 Faure 1986, 197. This point is elaborated upon in Chapter Five below.
 picking up the pieces 17

(nA ro chos drug), one of the cornerstones of the classical Bka’ brygud pa
“tenet system” (grub mtha’).56
The Dge lugs appropriation is, for our purposes, more interesting,
because it speaks more directly to the above-mentioned issues of secu-
lar-religious sovereignty within Central Tibet. Gradually, during the 16th
and 17th centuries, the principal Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa monasteries in
Central Tibet came under Dge lugs control, and remained so until the
mid-twentieth century. In the process, relevant narratives of the Tshal
pa-s were integrated into the Dge lugs lineage histories. Thus we see, for
example, the eighteenth-century Dge lugs text the Gung thang Register
asserting that “the coming of the supreme conquerors who appear among
us today as the omniscient incarnate succession [i.e. the Dalai Lamas] is
a manifestation of the acts of this very one [Lama Zhang].”57 In particular,
Zhang became an important emblem of political-spiritual control over
“the Lhasa mandala,”58 and was incorporated as such into the develop-
ing lineages of the Third, the Fifth, and the Seventh Dalai Lamas, as well
as the head of the order, the Dga’ ldan khri chen.59 It is in fact tempting
to dub him, in retrospect, a sort of “proto–Dalai Lama.”60 The point of
such an appellation would be to highlight, first of all, his importance as a
precedent-setter for later Lhasa-based religious rulers, but also the quite
conscious efforts of the early Dalai Lamas to appropriate the symbolism
of religious-secular rule he employed and style themselves his direct spiri-
tual heirs. This can be seen especially in the powerful complex of narra-
tives centering on the Lhasa ‘Phrul snang temple, with its Jo bo Śākyamuni
statue and its associated protectors Dpal ldan lha mo and Mahākāla—all
of which would become central elements of the governing ideology of the
Dalai Lamas. But it was Lama Zhang who first put together this specific
combination of tantric Buddhism, charisma, Jo bo worship, and political
rule that would become most closely identified—not only for the ­outside

56 See, e.g., Chos ‘byung mkhas pa’i dgong rgyan, Shar yul phun tshogs tshe ring, 357–
413.
57 da lta rang cag rnams la dngos su snang ba’i rgyal mchog thams cad mkhyen pa sku
‘phreng rim par byon pa ‘di nyid kyi mdzad pa’i rnam ‘gyur zhig yin. Gung thang dkar chag,
13a; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.91.
58 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.20.
59 Gung thang dkar chag, 13a; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.91.
60 This may seem less far-fetched if one considers that the best-known retroactive
recipients of the title were the First and Second Dalai Lamas, neither of whom possessed
the title during his own lifetime. So it is really not such a stretch to think of Zhang, in
his role as “virtual object” in the Dge lugs pa lineage narrative, as similarly, though less
officially, a “proto–Dalai Lama.”
18 introduction

world, but for Tibetans themselves—with the institution of the Dalai

Lamas. This would reach its most developed form in the rule of the Great
Fifth Dalai Lama, Blo bzang rgya mtsho (1617–1682).

B. In Scholarship
As suggested at the beginning of the chapter, Lama Zhang—even removed
from the contentious atmosphere of Tibetan religious politics—has been
anything but an object of disinterested study. The issues that surround him
seem capable of touching fresh nerves even 800 years after his death—
and this holds not only for contemporaries with sectarian agendas, but
also those with more general scholarly concerns pertaining to knowledge,
authority, leadership, violence, etc.
For convenience I divide scholarly treatments of Zhang into two sorts:
(1) topical treatments, the focus of which is generally not Lama Zhang
himself but some more circumscribed issue to which he is seen as having
made a contribution, and (2) more comprehensive treatments of Zhang’s
life and teachings. I begin with the topical treatments:

(1) Topical Treatments

(A) Zhang as founder of one of the “Four Great” Bka’ brgyud pa suborders
(bka’ brgyud che bzhi). In the traditional expositions of the Bka’ brgyud pa
order of Tibetan Buddhism, the various suborders are presented accord-
ing to a simplified schema of “Four Great” and “Eight Lesser” orders (che
bzhi chung brgyad).61 Lama Zhang finds a place within this schema as
founder of the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa, one of the Four Great suborders.
This four-eight framework, employed in most Tibetan-language scholarly
works, is also used by many non–Tibetan-language scholars.62 System-
atizations of this sort rarely offer much specific information on Zhang
himself; he stands as a sort of placeholding “founder” figure within the
“Four Great” category. Still, these standardized accounts are obviously not
intended as “history” in the modern sense and should be taken for what
they are: useful digests of a large quantity of information, with value both
as simple mnemonics for scholars and others, and as lineage markers for
the ­faithful.

61 See, e.g., Dung dkar 2002, 158–59.

62 See Guenther 1955, 90, n1; Snellgrove 1987, 488–89; Kapstein 1996, 278; Smith 2001,
41–46.
 picking up the pieces 19

(B) Zhang as an early Tibetan advocate of the “Great Seal” or mahāmudrā

(Tib. phyag rgya chen po). The highest teaching of the Dwags po Bka’
brgyud pa has traditionally been the meditative/philosophical system
known as mahāmudrā, or the “Great Seal,”63 and Lama Zhang’s close asso-
ciation with this practice has given him his highest visibility within mod-
ern scholarship. The most thorough treatment of Zhang’s mahāmudrā
contributions is to be found in Dan Martin’s work, particularly his trans-
lation and annotation of the treatise for which Zhang is best known, The
Path of Ultimate Profundity (Lam zab mthar thug).64 David Jackson offers
further insight into Zhang’s mahāmudrā approach by linking it to the con-
troversial innovations of Sgam po pa in this area.65 It is interesting that
Zhang is well known in this role even to scholars of different religious
orders—for example, Dudjom Rinpoche, who, in his massive work on the
Rnying ma school of Tibetan Buddhism, quotes a mahāmudrā instruction
from Lama Zhang’s Path of Ultimate Profundity.66
Zhang has also been associated historically with a much-disputed
mahāmudrā-related doctrine (apparently originating with Sgam po pa)
called the “white panacea” (dkar po chig thub), which holds that if one
has “realized one’s own mind” (rang sems rtogs pa), nothing more need
be done in the way of religious practice in order to attain the highest
religious goal: everything else is extraneous. This doctrine—if it indeed
ever was presented as a formal doctrine—was criticized fiercely by the
great thirteenth-century scholar-monk Sa skya Paṇḍita. Later Bka’ brgyud
pa scholars have defended Sgam po pa and Lama Zhang, and the contro-
versy has to some degree continued to this day, even spilling over into
mildly heated exchanges among contemporary academic scholars.67 In
general, the white panacea controversy has been framed as a philosophi-
cal debate, which unfortunately tends to reduce Lama Zhang’s compli-
cated religious legacy to a simple doctrinal position—somewhat ironic
since Zhang often claimed not to understand doctrine particularly well.68

63 See, e.g., Kongtrul 2007.

64 Lam zab mthar thug, Shedup IV.78–149; Martin 1992, 1996a, and 2001. A new transla-
tion of this text can be found in Roberts 2011, part of the Library of Tibetan Classics series
edited by Thupten Jinpa.
65 Jackson 1994.
66 Dudjom 1991, 201.
67 See R. Jackson 1982; van der Kuijp 1983; Broido 1987; Seyfort Ruegg 1989; D. Jackson
1990 and 1994; and Davidson 2005.
68 Cf. his remark in the Shes rab grub pa ma biography, Shedup I.320, that though he
was taught all of the standard Buddhist texts, “There was no comprehension” (shes pa ni
ma byung).
20 introduction

As a doctrinal debate, the white panacea issue has generally been inter-
preted as a local variation of the broader disagreement between advocates
of the “simultaneous” approach (cig car gyi ‘jug pa) and advocates of the
“gradual” approach (rim gyis ‘jug pa) to enlightenment—a controversy
embodied most concretely in the semi-legendary eighth-century debate
at Bsam yas monastery between the villainous Chinese Chan monk Hwa
shang Mahāyāna and the Indian paṇḍita Kamalaśīla.69 By far the most
thorough treatment of the white panacea controversy can be found in
the writings of David Jackson, who concentrates heavily and sympatheti-
cally on Sa skya Paṇḍita’s principles of scholarship and the manner in
which these principles stood behind his abhorrence of the Bka’ brgyud
pa doctrines.70
(C) Zhang as a literary figure. Martin was the first to bring to the
attention of scholars the striking variety of writing styles of which Lama
Zhang was capable—at least some of which were undoubtedly his own
­inventions.71 Zhang has since received a degree of scholarly attention
around issues relating to Tibetan literary genres. Of greatest interest in
this regard are his works of biography and autobiography. Regarding the
latter, Zhang is commonly seen as an innovator in the area of Tibetan
religious autobiography (rang gi rnam thar),72 a genre that would, in the
coming centuries, generate a quantity of life-writing unmatched by any
other pre-modern Buddhist culture. This is not to ignore the more conven-
tional genre of religious biography, or hagiography. Here, too, Zhang’s role
is paramount. Schaeffer cites him as one of the key early hagiographers of
the “later spread” period—writing what Schaeffer regards as precursors to
the well-known Bka’ brgyud “Golden Rosary” (gser phreng) collections of
lineage biographies.73
Another literary genre that has brought scholarly attention to Zhang is
that of “songs of realization,” or mgur. These songs, closely associated with
Mi la ras pa, are derived from an Indian genre called dohā, as well as from
indigenous Tibetan sources. Schaeffer, in his book on the semi-legendary
Indian saint Saraha, and again in an article on Zhang’s Indian root lama
Vairocanavajra, acknowledges Lama Zhang as an early Tibetan transmit-

69 On this debate, see Faber 1986; Seyfort Ruegg 1989; Seyfort Ruegg 1992; Gomez 1983;
Stein 1987.
70 D. Jackson 1990 and 1994.
71 Martin 1996a, 62–63; 65.
72 Gyatso 1998, 101.
73 Schaeffer 2000, 362.
 picking up the pieces 21

ter of the dohā song tradition.74 Martin also mentions Zhang in this role in
his article on Tibetan female religious leaders of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries.75 As a composer of mgur, Zhang was occasionally anthologized
in Tibetan song collections, and thus turned up in a popular English trans-
lation of the sixteenth-century Bka’ brgyud mgur mtsho sponsored in 1980
by the controversial lama Trungpa Rinpoche.76
(D) Zhang as a political leader. Finally, Lama Zhang has received atten-
tion from modern scholars as an early example of a Tibetan religious
leader who assumed a strong political role. In his classic work on Tibetan
culture and history from 1962, R.A. Stein brings up Zhang in his discussion
of “the evolution of monastic power,” first as founder of Tshal Gung thang
monastery, and then as an example of a “high ecclesiastic” who served as
“go-between” linking religious with secular power. In particular, he men-
tions Zhang’s role as a negotiator and enforcer of secular law in a time of
serious social disorder.77 Similarly, Thaye, Dolma, and Lister, in the notes
to their translation of one of the Bka’ brgyud “Golden Rosary” biographi-
cal anthologies, write that “Lama Zhang dedicated himself to establishing
law and order through military means.”78 Martin offers a fuller treatment
of this issue, suggesting that Zhang “played an important role in Tibet’s
development into . . . a ‘theocracy,’ ” and “may help us to explain why it
is that from his time on central Tibet’s polity remained sectarian-based,
rather than monarchical as was most of the world in those times.”79 An
important source for discussions of Zhang’s political legacy was contrib-
uted by Everding, who translated a late-eighteenth-century text called the
Gung thang Register (gung thang dkar chag), which chronicles the history
and inventories the contents of Tshal Gung thang, the monastery founded
by Lama Zhang in 1187.80 Covering a period far exceeding the span of
Lama Zhang’s rule, the work affords an extremely important chronicle of
the post-Zhang development of the Tshal pa into a major power within
the Lhasa area.
One of the stories related to Zhang’s political leadership that has
interested scholars involves a supposed feud between him and the

74 Schaeffer 2005, 8.
75 Martin 2004, 70.
76 Bka’ brgyud mgur mtsho; Nālandā Translation Committee 1980, 272–73.
77 Stein 1972, 78, 146–47.
78 Thaye, Dolma, Lister 1990, 67.
79 Martin 2001, 49–50.
80 Everding 2000.
22 introduction

­ rotector deity Pehar. Pehar is best known as the protector of the Gnas
p
chung temple—home to the famous oracle of the Dalai Lamas—and it
is undoubtedly this connection that has helped keep the legend alive.
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, in his landmark treatment of Tibetan demons and
protector deities, recounts how Pehar—feeling he was not receiving the
respect due him at Zhang’s monastery, Tshal Gung thang—caused the
monastery to catch fire and burn, as a result of which Zhang ejected him
from the monastery, imprisoning him within a box that was sent floating
down the Skyi river.81 This episode has become a part of the local lore of
the Tshal Gung thang village area—although, as Guntram Hazod argues,
the figure of Lama Zhang, as he appears in these stories, is more a general
stand-in for the Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa-s as a whole than an individual
historical figure.82
Also closely related to his role as a political leader is the repairs Zhang
and his teacher Sgom tshul made to the Lhasa ‘Phrul snang, or Jo khang,
temple (see Chapter Four below). Because of the historical and architec-
tural importance of the temple, mentions of Lama Zhang can thus also
be found in works by specialists in Tibetan architecture. Thus we see in
Vitali’s study of the early temples of Central Tibet a short account of the
conflicts in Lhasa in the 1160s that damaged the temple, the mediation of
the conflicts by Sgom tshul, and the subsequent appointment of Zhang
to oversee its repair and maintenance.83 Similarly, Anne-Marie Blondeau
and Yonten Gyatso, and Amy Heller mention Zhang’s name when discuss-
ing details of the renovations made to the Jo khang during the twelfth
century.84

(2) More Comprehensive Treatments

More recently, there have been at least three scholars whose treatments
of Lama Zhang’s life and works have gone beyond mere topical mentions:
David Jackson, Dan Martin, and Per Sørensen and Guntram Hazod.85
Jackson’s principal concern in his contribution is not with Lama Zhang
as such, but with the aforementioned “white panacea” controversy occa-
sioned by Sa skya Paṇḍita’s criticisms of the early Dwags po Bka’ brygud

81 Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1956, 104–05.

82 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, II.571.
83 Vitali 1990, 82.
84 Blondeau and Gyatso 2003, 28, 31–32; Heller 2004.
85 D. Jackson 1994; Martin 1990, 1992, 1996, 1997, 2001a, and 2001b; Sørensen and Hazod
2007.
 picking up the pieces 23

pa mahāmudrā teachings. But, as Zhang was seen as a principal target of

these polemics, Jackson devotes several chapters to his doctrines and life,
offering a thorough and well-documented accounting of (1) the doctrines
set forth in The Path of Ultimate Profundity, (2) their background in Sgam
po pa’s controversial “sūtra mahāmudrā” teaching, and (3) Zhang’s contro-
versial political and military activities.86
Along with his important translation from The Path of Ultimate Pro-
fundity, Martin published a series of articles between 1992 and 2001 that
together offer one of the fullest treatments available of Lama Zhang. In
addition to recounting his political involvements, Martin relates Zhang’s
more “worldly” concerns to the mahāmudrā outlook, suggesting that per-
haps Zhang’s political activities were not really incompatible with his
Buddhist principles:
[F]rom Zhang’s own perspective, he was only putting into practice his
understanding of what might today be called “engaged Buddhism,” or, in
terms that would have made more sense to Zhang, bringing compassion and
non-dual awareness to their peak by plunging once more into the life of the
world in the post-meditation phase.87
Furthermore, Martin, in his discussion of mahāmudrā, brings a wel-
come measure of levelheadedness to the “white panacea” controversies,
reminding us—correctly, in my view—that the idea of a less-than-gradual
path to realization “is not a Tibetan invention, but has its direct roots in
tantric lineages in India, and less directly in Mahayana discussions about
the Path.”88
Finally, the most recent work to deal comprehensively with Lama
Zhang is Per Sørensen and Guntram Hazod’s massive book on the Tshal
pa Bka’ brgyud pa order, Rulers on the Celestial Plain.89 This work takes the
form of a translation of and commentary on the late-eighteenth-century
Gung thang Register (gung thang dkar chag), also translated by Everding
(see above).90 The scope of the book—the trajectory of this particular
order and its residual influences from the twelfth through the twentieth
century—obviously extends far beyond Lama Zhang’s life. Still, there is
a large amount of material on Zhang—much of it never seen before in
a non-Tibetan-language publication—and it stands as by far the most

86 D. Jackson 1994.
87 Martin 2001, 50.
88 Martin 2001, 50.
89 Sørensen and Hazod 2007.
90 Everding 2000.
24 introduction

c­ omprehensive treatment of his life and writings to date. What is espe-

cially noteworthy about Sørensen and Hazod’s approach is the scope and
ambition of their methodological program, which is
to combine texts and ethnography, in an attempt to establish what we may
term historical geography—still far too rarely engaged in a Tibetological
context—which here means: documenting political developments in place
and time and making these historical developments visible in the landscape
and topography.91
To this end, they utilize a bewildering variety of means: translation, tex-
tual explication, ritual theory, political history, ethnographic fieldwork,
geography, and toponymic research, resulting in a densely annotated
translation supplemented by photographs (including aerial satellite pho-
tos), maps, charts, and a collection of self-standing essays on a variety
of loosely connected topics having to do with Tshal Gung thang and its
environs. It will undoubtedly be years before scholars exhaust the riches
of this complex and challenging work.

VII. Methodological Considerations

While I think it unwise to approach a subject as rich and varied as the

present one with the blunt instrument of rigid methodology—the more
perspectives the better, it seems to me—there is a cluster of concepts
I employ at a high level of generality that I think deserve some explicit
mention at the outset. I will discuss them briefly under three broad head-
ings: hegemony, charisma, and style.

A. Hegemony
From the standpoint of social theory, the most helpful explanatory frame-
work I have found for conceptualizing the “Buddhicization” of Tibet—
the end result of the momentous Buddhist revival of the “later spread”
period—is that of “hegemony” found in the writings of Gramsci and later
neo-Gramscian scholars. I am certainly not the first Tibetanist to think
this: Janet Gyatso, in her account of this same period, writes of “the hege-
mony of Buddhism in Tibet”; similarly, Geoffrey Samuel refers to the

91 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, I.9.

 picking up the pieces 25

“partial hegemonisation in Tibet” by “the dissenting tradition of Indian

[Buddhist] Tantra.”92
In the Gramscian tradition, hegemony refers to the process by which a
dominant social group achieves and maintains its power through its mas-
tery of the cultural sphere. The caretakers of this sphere are what Gramsci
calls ‘the intellectuals’, a term with a broader meaning than is usual in
English:
at the highest level would be the creators of the various sciences, philoso-
phy, art, etc., at the lowest the most humble “administrators” and divulga-
tors of pre-existing, traditional, accumulated intellectual wealth.93
Hegemony is opposed to coercion, which is the form of control exercised
in the political sphere by an organized state. As Malpas and Wake write:
Unlike many theories of power, hegemony does not advocate a “top-down”
dictatorial model of rule. Within hegemonic relations, the dominant class or
classes favour encouragement over coercion.94
Gramsci took care to emphasize that the idea of hegemony does not apply
to the dominant party alone: it also refers to a subordinate group’s struggle
to marshal the symbolic and cultural resources necessary to gain ascen-
dency. In Gramsci’s terminology, rather than force, hegemony operates
through “consent” and “moral and intellectual leadership.” It begins with
dispersed individual wills and seeks to achieve a “collective will,” which
includes shared goals and values as well as a shared world-view.95
The version of this theory I find most compelling is that offered by
Laclau and Mouffe. Here, the concept of hegemony is understood from
within a theory of discourse, which makes Gramsci’s somewhat vague
ideas about a “general will” more precise. Consent and leadership are
effected through struggles over the symbolic realm, the realm of dis-
courses, within which are embedded identities—or in Laclau and Mouffe’s
language, “subject-positions.” Hence the primary operation that achieves
hegemony is what they call “articulation”—the discursive linking together
of contingent cultural fragments to attain a new group identity tied to a
common purpose.96

92 Gyatso 1998, 116; Samuel 2005, 52–71.

93 Gramsci 1971, 13.
94 Malpas and Wake 2006, 199–200.
95 Gramsci 1971, 57–58.
96 The more thorough discussion of this is in Laclau and Mouffe 2001, pp. 105–14.
26 introduction

The idea of hegemony forms a backdrop to the discussion herein inso-

far as a large part of Lama Zhang’s mastery—his literary innovations, his
activities as “Lord of the Teachings,” his cultivation of the deities and
protectors associated with the Lhasa Gtsug lag khang temple, his fixing
of Bka’ brgyud lineages, his appropriation and administration of physi-
cal and sacred space—is really a mastery of discursive means and thus
serves as an excellent example of hegemony as the symbolic fixing of uni-
ties within a fragmented cultural space. This makes Lama Zhang, despite
his characteristic modesty about his formal learning, a quintessential
Gramscian “intellectual.” Looking at the details of Lama Zhang’s intellec-
tual operation at this local level will also yield important clues about the
larger event of the Buddhist revival and the many ways in which hege-
mony operates there as well.
A drawback to the use of this concept is that over time the meaning
of the word ‘hegemony’ has been diluted to the point where, for many—
scholars and others—it now signifies little more than domination. In this
sense, it is seen as a purely negative state, something to be overcome, not
achieved. Thus, for example, Tibet scholar Martin Mills criticizes the use
of the term to characterize the spread of Buddhism in Tibet, explicitly
associating it with the Chinese Communist position that “a hegemonic
Buddhist ideology acted to legitimate feudal inequalities in pre-modern
Tibet by effectively silencing subaltern modes of identity and discourse,
in particular those produced by the peasantry.”97 Clearly, the word ‘hege-
monic’, as employed here by Mills, connotes something like ideological
coercion, if not outright suppression. For Gramsci, as Chantal Mouffe
explains, “intellectual and moral leadership exercised by the hegemonic
class does not consist in the imposition of the class ideology upon the
allied groups,”98 whereas Mills’s account seems to imply exactly that. He
suggests, for example, that if Tibetan institutional Buddhism had been truly
hegemonic, it would have “actively sought to silence . . . local ideologies.”99
The fuller Gramscian concept, which seems to me more useful—­especially
as applied to Tibetan Buddhism—sees hegemony not as the silencing of
opposing positions, but as something that is fragile, contingent, and in
Raymond Williams’s words, “has continually to be renewed, recreated,
defended, and modified,” because “[i]t is also continually resisted, lim-

97 Mills 2003, 334–35.

98 Mouffe 1979, 193.
99 Mills 2003, 345.
 picking up the pieces 27

ited, altered, challenged by pressures not at all its own.”100 In fairness to

Mills, the word “hegemonism” was in fact used by the Chinese govern-
ment during the Mao era in the strictly negative sense, as “a code word
for imperialism.”101 So there may be some historical basis for Mills’s objec-
tion. But what is unfortunate is that there is no other term that carries
the subtlety of Gramsci’s notion, so if we let it be flattened into a mere
synonym for ‘domination’, we lose a rich explanatory concept.
Matthew Kapstein also employs the term ‘hegemony’ to refer to the
Buddhist penetration of medieval Tibetan culture, writing:
Buddhism in Tibet developed through a sustained and subtle process,
whereby the foreign religion achieved a decisive cultural hegemony but was
at the same time, as conquerors almost always are, transformed by its own
success.102
This usage—particularly its suggestion that the hegemon is itself trans-
formed by its own success—would seem more consonant with the Gram-
scian sense of the term ‘hegemony’.
A fascinating recent employment of the term can be found in McCleary
and van der Kuijp’s two working papers in “the economics of religion,”
which posit a “religion market” wherein religious groups compete for mar-
ket share. They write:
Our argument begins by observing that homogeneity of the Buddhism mar-
ket in Tibet became established from the tenth to the thirteenth centu-
ries. . . . The Buddhist hegemony over the Tibetan religion market meant that
outside religions, such as Islam and Christianity, had high entry costs . . . .
Without competition from other religions, Buddhism flourished in Tibet,
with several schools and sects developing over time.103
‘Hegemony’ here, it would seem, is roughly synonymous with ‘monopoly’.
This is a somewhat less subtle sense of hegemony—closer, perhaps, to
that of Mills (and Mao)—though the flexibility of the market model does
leave open the possibility that the concept thus framed could be recon-
ciled with the fuller sense advanced by Mouffe and Williams, wherein
rival positions are not eliminated, but “held in suspension,” as it were,
and can always reappear given a change in circumstances.

100 Williams 1977, 112.

101 Cohen 2000, 200.
102 Kapstein 2000, 4 (emphasis added).
103 McCleary and van der Kuijp 2007a, 1 (emphasis added).
28 introduction

It is only the fuller, more flexible conception of hegemony that I have

in mind as a background concept here, though the word itself will be used
sparingly. What occurred during the Buddhist revival was not strong-armed
ideological conquest—it was a slow building of consensus through the
negotiation of multiple fragile alliances, a gradual accumulation of influ-
ences across a subtle network of language, symbol, ritual, and social life.

B. Charisma
The Tshal pa Bka’ brgyud pa-s, during the first years of their rule over the
Lhasa area, offer a good example of what Max Weber called “charismatic
leadership,” wherein an individual assumes leadership of a group by vir-
tue of the followers’ belief that he or she is “endowed with supernatu-
ral, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.”104
This concept has received extensive treatment elsewhere, but the use I
make of it, and its connection with other key concepts, needs to be dis-
cussed briefly. My specific interest is in charisma’s power to create order.
Charisma is like current passing through an electromagnet lying among
scattered iron filings: patterns form when it is switched on. In particu-
lar, I will discuss—in Chapters Two and Four—the way Lama Zhang’s
charisma organizes space and time in the form of territory and tradition,
respectively. Space is bound and sacralized through the tantric “sealing” of
territories, and time is structured as tradition through the symbolic links
that connect charismatic lama lineages and assemble them into large and
continuous temporal units. This ordered and sacralized space-time—a
social body bound by the ligaments of territory and tradition—in turn
enables the Tshal pa polity to hold together in the face of disorganizing
social forces, making it one of the earliest successful large-scale political-
monastic communities in Central Tibet.
Insofar as charisma performs this organizing function, it is closely
related to hegemony as described above. The symbolic organization
of space and time through the power of charisma, and the appearance
therein of embedded social identities, is a good example of the process of
“articulation” central to Laclau-Mouffe’s theorization of hegemony. This
connection between hegemony and charisma ensures that the authorita-
tive basis of leadership and consent is the spiritual accomplishment of
the lama.

104 Weber 1978, 241.

 picking up the pieces 29

I also note—and will develop further in Chapter Two—the fascinating

parallels between the social-scientific concept of charisma and the notion
of “blessings” (byin rlabs), so crucial to most forms of Tibetan Buddhism.
Early on, one of Zhang’s principal teachers scolds him for overconceptual-
izing his meditative experiences, and enjoins him to think less and pray
more, since “This is the lineage of blessings!”105—and indeed blessings
and charisma were to take on all the more importance for the various
Bka’ brgyud pa subsects because of their self-identification as meditative,
not scholastic, orders. Of course, all of the rising twelfth-century orders
stressed charisma to some degree, but the Tshal pa model was striking
(and later criticized) for its strong emphasis on the charismatic tantric
adept as an organizing principle.

C. Style
Some of the earliest scholarship on Lama Zhang, as noted above, focused
on the criticisms Sa skya Paṇḍita leveled against certain Bka’ brgyud expo-
nents of the Great Seal or mahāmudrā—of which Zhang was often taken
as a prototypical representative. In reading these accounts, I often felt an
uneasy sense that the real issues were not on the table, that the parties
to the dispute were talking past one another—particularly when modern
scholars appeared to be subtly taking sides. It seemed to me that what was
really at issue in the exchanges between the Sa skya and the Bka’ brgyud
partisans was not so much points of doctrine as matters of style. It was
like trying to referee a debate between an Abstract Expressionist and a
Photorealist. Dan Martin seemed to be saying much of the same thing
when he wrote about “differing approaches to Buddhism that had a great
deal of trouble approaching each other.”106
At the same time, it seemed to me that what was most interesting about
Lama Zhang was not captured by a dispute framed as a doctrinal contro-
versy, and furthermore that what had survived of his life and works was
more than a set of doctrines or an official lineage. He had a way of pull-
ing together an ensemble of effects that had impact and influence even
though his “school” of Tibetan Buddhism had not survived. This, too, was
best expressed by the word ‘style’, which shifted the emphasis to what
seemed to me most compelling about a strong personality like Zhang.

105 de byin brlabs kyi brgyud pa yin. Zin bris, 39a–39b.

106 Martin 1996a, 60.
30 introduction

Historians and philosophers of science—most notably Alistair

­ rombie—have used the idea of style as a means for understanding those
C
aspects of science that are not captured by the explicit “content” of a sci-
entific discipline.107 This has proved particularly fruitful for the under-
standing of scientific disputes—which often revolve around something
less “objective” than the theory or evidence at hand and less “subjective”
than mere personality differences. Following upon Crombie’s work, Sergio
Cremaschi and Marcelo Dascal of the International Association for the
Study of Controversies have employed the concept of style as an analytical
tool for understanding such diverse controversies as those between the
nineteenth-century economists Malthus and Ricardo and the twentieth-
century philosophers Derrida and Searle. Referring to the former contro-
versy, they write that
methodological considerations are but one of a whole set of stratagems
employed by each opponent. We argue that each opponent’s preference for
a particular kind of stratagem expresses his own specific scientific style. . . .108
If one were to substitute ‘religious’ for ‘scientific’ in the above passage,
the last sentence might be a good description of the Bka’ brgyud–Sa skya
“doctrinal” dispute. “[T]his notion [of style],” Cremaschi and Dascal write,
“may be useful for historians of science no less than for historians of art.”109
And to this, of course, we can add “and historians of religion.”
My own use of the concept of style will center on Lama Zhang’s char-
acteristic choices around issues of knowledge (experiential valued over
verbal), religious practice (distinct preferences with regard to meditation
and ritual), doctrinal deviation (an unusual, at times extreme, tolerance),
and literary language (a flair for innovation verging on the outrageous and
a mastery of diverse genres). Style is what lends coherence to this col-
lection of choices, and is hence tied closely to both hegemony and cha-
risma. What draws Zhang’s religious outlook together into a unity, holding
the diverse elements of style together, is the sheer force of personality:
charismatic power and visionary will backed by the spiritual credibility
that religious attainments confer. And this charismatically unified style
serves in turn as the instrument of hegemony—the means by which intel-
lectual and moral leadership is assumed, consent negotiated, and collec-
tive will forged through the activation of cultural signifiers. This is where

107 Crombie 1994.

108 Cremaschi and Dascal 1998, 229. See also Dascal 2001.
109 Ibid., 242.
 picking up the pieces 31

Lama Zhang’s command of literary and other symbolic means as well as

his inclusive, synthesizing sensibility stand out. Hegemony as effected by
Zhang is the work of the visionary—the one who, through his mastery
of language and discourse, opens unimagined vistas, enunciating a broad
and expansive vision of sacred space, time, and community that com-
mands assent and brings together competing groups and practices.
* * *
Though I think it best, after these initial methodological reflections, to
allow these three terms to retire discreetly into the background, they
should not be forgotten, for the concepts associated with them will con-
tinue to animate much of the discussion directed toward broader issues.
In particular, all three bear directly on the question of how Central Tibet
reassembled itself after the “time of fragmentation” and how Lama Zhang
contributed to that reassembly; for hegemony, charisma, and style are all
social-cultural coagulants—they keep things together, keep them from
going to pieces. It is therefore no accident that these concepts play an
important framing role in my narrative of the life and writings of Lama
Zhang. They stand behind my central argument that Lama Zhang’s specific
contribution to the Buddhist “renaissance” was a new model of rulership
and religious community offered for posterity. This was important because
a principal agent of the Buddhist revival was the new, increasingly insti-
tutionalized sectarian orders, which, as they grew in extent and organiza-
tion, became social forces to be reckoned with. Zhang’s tantric model of
rulership offered the means to hold together one of the larger and more
“worldly” of these religious orders—the Dwags po Bka’ brgyud pa—as it
underwent the transition from scattered groups of hermitic meditators to
an integrated large-scale community. The basis of his model of rulership
and community was a distinctive style of Buddhist tantra—a personal
reconfiguration of the rich toolkit of ritual, textual, and contemplative
practices handed down by the Buddhist tantric tradition—which acted as
the symbolic connective tissue of a complex community centered on the
figure of the charismatic lama. Zhang’s was only one of several such mod-
els: as monastic polities began appearing throughout Central Tibet during
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, other models of sectarian community
were offered—most notably at Rwa sgreng, Gsang phu ne’u thog, and Sa
skya monasteries. But Zhang’s was an especially provocative model, and
became enormously influential. It was based, not on scholarship, not on
a strict monastic code, not on doctrinal purity, but on the charisma of the
tantric hermit who, shunning his beloved seclusion, comes down from
32 introduction

the mountains, assumes the mantle of “Lord of the Teachings” (bstan pa’i
bdag po), and builds a worldly community. The Lord of the Teachings,
as envisioned by Zhang, is not only a monk and tantric adept, but also
an aggressive political and military figure, an enforcer of law and order.
He sustains a community through his multidimensional mastery (bdag
po can also be translated as ‘master’)—his ability to marshal a variety of
resources, both material and spiritual, and forge them into a unity. He
masters space: annexing, marking off, and sealing territory through magic
and force, subduing both human and nonhuman enemies, and offering
protection from physical danger, social disorder, and spiritual malaise. He
masters time: linking his community, through narrative and trope, to a
rich and authoritative past of powerful adepts and buddhas, to a legiti-
mizing and identity-supporting lineage. And finally, he masters language
and discourse: knitting together the spatial-temporal community of terri-
tory and lineage through his command of a large array of oral and writ-
ten literary genres, which he employs in a remarkably self-conscious and
purposeful fashion.

VIII. Sources

The primary source I have used for Lama Zhang’s writings is the 2004
nine-volume Collected Works published in Kathmandu by Shree Gautam
Buddha Vihar, edited by Khenpo Shedup Tenzin and Lama Thinley Nam-
gyal as part of the Sgam po pa Library series. All of the citations herein
to Lama Zhang’s works are to this version: it is by far the most complete,
legible, and easily obtainable collection of Zhang’s writings, which makes
it a good point of reference for present and future scholarship. Until fairly
recently, the only available sources for Lama Zhang’s writings were the
Highly Esoteric Experiential Writings, a collection of Zhang’s “sealed,” or
secret, works (Bka’ rgya ma) from O rgyan chos gling monastery in Bhu-
tan, and the Bka’ ‘thor bu, an incomplete piece of what must at one time
have been a collected works, from the library of Burmiok Athing in Gang-
tok, Sikkim. Fortunately, there are now at least three editions of Zhang’s
collected works available to the public: a five-volume nineteenth-century
manuscript Gsung ‘bum, reprinted in Kangding, Sichuan, sometime in the
1990s; a nine-volume Bka’ ‘bum scanned to microfilm by the Nepal-­German
Manuscript Preservation Project from a manuscript housed at Samdo
monastery in Nepal; and finally the nine-volume Sgam po pa Library edi-
tion mentioned above. Though I have found it most convenient to cite to
 picking up the pieces 33

the latter, it is not—nor was it intended to be—a critical edition in the

text-critical sense, and thus does not render transparent the provenance
of the texts used in its compilation. Its use herein is therefore not meant
to sidestep the problems attendant on the existence of a variety of collec-
tions of uncertain provenance, or the desirability of eventually creating
a textual apparatus that would track the origins and variations in Lama
Zhang’s writings. This, however, should not be considered a part of the
current project, and its outcome would not, I believe, affect the substance
of what is written here.
 Another Random Document on
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"Should what?" she asked, as he hesitated.
"I should kill her!" he said, fiercely.
"How dreadful! You are quite a tragedy hero, Lord Vivianne." She
laughed as she spoke, and shrugged her shoulders. "Suppose this
lady of whom you speak should be like you, and say the same thing
—that she would rather kill you than marry you. What then?"
"Why, then we should fight it out to the bitter end."
"Here is the duchess," said Lady Studleigh, calmly. "Mind, Lord
Vivianne, I do not think you have done the wisest thing in trusting a
stranger, like myself, with your secrets; however, your confidence in
me shall not be misplaced, I will keep them."
Then the duchess and Lady Linleigh joined them. He remained with
them, affecting to talk to them, but secretly engaged in watching
Lady Doris. But it was all in vain. There was no trace of thought or
care on her face. She talked and laughed gayly, as though he had
not spoken a word; the only thing was, that in her manner to him he
detected a gentle pity that she had not shown before.
"I must be mistaken," he said to himself. "Eyesight, hearing,
memory, all must be wrong—all must have failed me; but—she could
not possibly be playing a part—she cannot be my lost Dora. No
woman could be so utterly indifferent. I must be mistaken, but I will
find it out!"
 CHAPTER LXVI.
A LITTLE ARTIFICE.

It did not occur to Lady Doris that in all probability Lord Vivianne
would recognize Earle. He had seen him once, and once only—that
was walking with her, near Brackenside. But his lordship had no eyes
then to spare for the rustic lover. He had also known his name—
Earle Moray—but he was proverbially careless, forgetful and
indifferent. It was a question whether he had paid the least heed to
it, not thinking it could even interest him.
On the day of the dinner party at Hyde House it had occurred to her
that they would meet. They had both been at the Duchess of
Eastham's ball, but in a crowded ball-room even friends often failed
to recognize each other. How would it be when they met in the same
room, dined at the same table? People would be sure to make some
allusion to Earle's poems, some one would be sure to mention
Downsbury Castle, then Earle would join in and she would be lost.
She might, by her indifference, make him believe that he was
mistaken: but if he once found out who Earle was, and that Earle
was still her lover, she could blind him no longer. Had she met him
only at rare intervals, she might have continued to mislead him. Had
she met him casually in society, she could have carried on her
deception until it was too late for him to injure her. But now that he
was coming, as it were, into the very heart of her home, she had
less chance.
If he found out about Earle, he would find out about her, too. Then
—well, suppose it came, this discovery that she dreaded so terribly,
what would he do if she refused to marry him? "Kill her," he had
said; but that was not so easily done. She might compromise and
secure her own safety by refusing to marry Earle, and marrying Lord
Vivianne. He would keep her secret then. People would only say that
she had changed her mind, and say that she was like all the
Studleighs—faithless. But she loved Earle with all her power of
loving, and she hated Lord Vivianne with an untold hatred.
She said to herself that if she had to save herself from the most
terrible death by marrying him, she would not do it. She loathed
him; she would have been pleased to hear that he was dead, or
anything else dreadful had happened to him, for he had spoiled her
life. Of what use was all her wealth, her luxury, her magnificence?
Her life through him was spoiled—completely spoiled.
"I wish he were dead," she said to herself, over and over again. "The
toils are spreading around me; I shall be caught at last."
She flung her arms above her head with a terrible cry. What was she
to do? She must, first of all, prevent them from meeting that night.
They must not dine together at her father's house; that was the evil
to be immediately dreaded. She flung the masses of golden hair
back from her white face.
"If I dare but tell Earle, and let him avenge me," she thought.
Then she wrote to him a coaxing little note, telling him that she had
a particular reason for desiring him not to dine at Hyde House that
evening—a reason that she would explain afterward, but that she
herself desired to see him alone. Would he come later on in the
evening and ask for her? She would arrange to receive him in Lady
Linleigh's boudoir. Then she rung for a footman in hot haste.
"Take this note to Mr. Moray," she said. "Never mind how long you
have to wait. Give it into his own hands, then bring me the answer."
"Oh, these lovers," sighed the servant. "What there is to do to
please them!"
Still, he did his best. He waited until he saw Earle, put the note in
his hand, and waited for the answer.
Earle only smiled as he read it. He was so completely accustomed to
these pretty little caprices, he had ceased to attach any importance
to them. He merely wrote in reply that he was entirely at her
command.
"You remember the old song, my darling:
 "'Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me;
Thou hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.'

"I will come later on in the evening and see no one but you."
He laughed as he closed the note.
"I wonder what pretty caprice possesses my darling now," he said to
himself.
The man who took the note back wondered at his young mistress,
her face was quite white, her golden hair clung in rich disorder, the
white hands, so eagerly extended to seize the letter, trembled and
burned like fire.
"They must have had a quarrel," he said to himself, with a knowing
nod, as he closed the door. "They have had a quarrel, and my lady
wishes to make it all right again."
It was a reprieve. She kissed the little note with a passion of love
that was real.
"My darling," she said, "if we could but go away together."
And as she sat there a sudden memory of the time when she had
run away from him came to her. She saw the old-fashioned garden
at Brackenside; she saw the great crimson roses, and the sheaves of
white lilies; she saw the kindly face of Mattie, and heard Earle
singing:

"Thou art my soul, my life—the very eyes of me."

Ah, peaceful, innocent days! Blind, mad fool that she had been ever
to listen to Vivianne—to let him tempt her—to let him take her from
the innocent, happy home! What had she gained? And—ah, Heaven!
—what had she lost? If she could but have foreseen, have known,
how differently she would have behaved.
"I am strong," she said, pushing away the golden hair with her white
hands. "I am strong, but I could not live this life—it would kill me."
She sat for half an hour, thinking steadily, then her resolve was
taken. She would tide over the dinner as well as she could, throwing
him more and more off his guard. She would see Earle that evening,
and tell him that she wanted their marriage hastened; that she was
tired of so many lovers, and wanted to go away with him; that she
was wearied of London life.
She knew that Earle would be on the alert to serve her, he would
manage it all. She had faith in his great love. Then she would tell the
earl that her health and strength were failing her; ask him to take
her to Linleigh Court. Lord Vivianne would not dare to follow her
there. It was like a haven of rest to her. When the summer came,
she would marry Earle quietly and go abroad. Then she would be
out of her enemy's power; he could no longer hurl her from her high
estate, or compel her to marry him. She would be another man's
wife then, and it would be his place to protect and avenge her.
The plan, rapidly conceived, rapidly sketched, was her only resource,
her only safety. True, it would spoil her life, the triumphs that she
now enjoyed would be hers no longer. She would cease to be the
belle of the season, the queen of beauty and fashion. She must lose
that part of her life which she valued most—the homage, the
adulation, the brightness, and all through him. How her whole soul
raged in burning fury against him!
If he had been lying there on the ground, her foot on his neck, she
would not have spared him. She would have seen him die with
pleasure. It did not lessen her anger and her rage that she had to
talk to him, to smile, and charm him.
"If a look could kill him," she said to herself, "he should die."
She longed to be in Italy, where a bravo, for a comparatively small
sum, would soon have ended his life. She was obliged to soothe her
anger, to still the fierce tempest of rage, to calm her fears, to take
an interest in her dress, to smile, to look sweet and winning, with
the most vindictive hate in her heart.
Then she went into the little drawing-room. Lord Linleigh went up to
her.
"What a pretty toilet, Doris," he said. "White lace and roses. Your
taste is simply superb. But, ah, me! ah, me!"
"What is it, papa?" she asked, as he laughed, gently.
"Earle is not coming, my dear. I am afraid you will be disappointed.
He has sent a hurried little note to say that it is impossible. He is
busy about his election, you know."
A few minutes afterward and Lord Vivianne, with a smile on his face,
entered the room. Her fingers clutched the flowers she carried so
tightly; the thought passed through her mind that if he could but
have fallen dead over the threshold it would have been well for her.
"I shall see him if he comes in later on," she said.
A few minutes afterward he was seated by her side, and they were
talking in the most friendly manner. The dinner passed over better
than she had hoped. Earle was not mentioned nor did any one
allude to Downsbury Castle. Lord Vivianne had contrived to secure a
place by Lady Studleigh's side, and he did his best to please her. She
could not help remarking how courteous and gallant was his manner
in society. She contrasted it with what she had seen of him in
Florence. When dinner was over, and they had gone into the
drawing-room, he bent over the back of her chair.
"Lady Studleigh, have you forgotten my terrible outburst of the other
day?"
"Yes," she replied; "I have seen much that is amusing since then."
"It was not very amusing to me," he said. "When a man lays bare
the core of his heart, he does not do it for amusement."
"Not for his own, perhaps," she said; "but if he does it in your tragic
style, he cannot help other people being amused."
"I could call you Doris," he said, "when you look at me with that
piquant smile."
"I hope you will not, Lord Vivianne. I should always fancy papa was
talking to me."
"Did you think I was mad that day in the chestnut grove?"
Lady Doris laughed.
"My experience of the world is not very large at present," she said.
"Whenever I see or hear anything unusual, I think it is the fashion of
the times."
"Ah, Lady Studleigh, I wish I could persuade you to be serious—you
are always laughing at me."
"Tendency to laughter is hereditary with me," she said. "I cannot
help it. I am afraid that I have no talent for sentiment. The only
matter I find for surprise is why you should have selected such a
very unsuitable character as myself for your confidante. I cannot say
what may be in store for me, but I do not remember that any love
affair ever possessed the least interest for me yet."
"You should have a love affair, as you call it, Lady Studleigh, in Italy,
where the air is poetry, and the wind music."
"Papa," said Lady Studleigh to the earl, who was just passing her
chair, "do you hear Lord Vivianne's advice?"
"No, my dear; but I do not doubt that it is good."
"He tells me to go to Italy to learn a lesson in love. That is a sorry
compliment to England and the English, is it not?"
 CHAPTER LXVII.
A QUIET WEDDING ADVOCATED.

"What did that little note mean, Doris?" asked Earle, with a smile.
"You see that I obeyed you implicitly."
Even as he spoke he stood still, lost in admiration of the beautiful
picture before him.
Although it was summer there was a bright little fire in the silver
grate, the lamps were lighted, but lowered, so that the room was
filled with a soft light; the hangings of rich rose silk were drawn, the
long mirrors reflected the light, the flowers filled the air with
perfume, and in the very heart of the rich crimson light sat the Lady
Doris. She was half-buried in a nest of crimson velvet, the firelight
had caught the gleam of her jewels, the sheen of the golden hair,
the light in her eyes, the white dress: it seemed to shine above all
on the white jeweled hands, that lay carelessly clasped on her knee.
She had told the countess Earle would call, and that she wished to
speak to him, so that she knew her tete-a-tete would be quite
undisturbed.
Earle looked at her, thinking that there had never been so fair a
picture in all the world; then he repeated his question. She looked
up at him, and he was struck by the unusual expression in her eyes;
he knelt down before her, and took one white hand in his.
"That cruel note," he said, "depriving me of a pleasure I cannot
enjoy too often. What did it mean?"
She did what was very unusual with her; she clasped her arms
round his neck.
"Oh, Earle! Earle! it is strange what rest I feel when you are near
me. I will tell you what the note meant, but you will laugh at me."
"I do not think so, darling; I have laughed with you, but not at you."
"I knew that tiresome Lord Vivianne was coming, and he tries my
temper so; he will admire me, and I do not want his admiration."
"Then why keep me away, darling; I might have saved you from it."
"No; I knew you could not. I was obliged to go down to dinner with
him, and it would have tried my temper too severely if I had been
compelled to sit by him and could not have been with you. You may
think it a stupid, childish reason, Earle, but it is a true one. I was
determined if I could not talk to you, I would not be annoyed by
seeing any one else do so."
He looked slightly puzzled, but, as he said to himself, it was one of
her caprices—why not be content?
"If my staying away pleased you," he said, "I am doubly pleased."
Yet it struck him as he spoke, that she had lost some of her
animation and brightness.
"How beautiful you look in this light, Dora," he said. "Why, my
darling, a king might envy me."
One of the white, jeweled hands rested caressingly on the noble
head of the young poet. He had never seen Dora so gentle before.
"My darling!" he cried, his face glowing with its rapture of happiness.
"My darling, you are beginning to love me so well at last."
"I do love you, Earle," she said, and for some minutes there was
silence between them.
She had a certain object to win, and she was debating within herself
how it was to be won.
"It is like a fairy tale," he said. "Why, my darling, looking at you I
cannot believe my own good fortune; you are the fairest woman in
England; you are noble, you are high in station; you have the wit,
the grace, the noble bearing of a queen. I have nothing but the two
titles you have given me, of gentleman and poet—yet I shall win you
for my wife. It is so wonderful—this love that breaks all barriers;
money could not have brought you to my side—a millionaire might
love you, but you would not care for him; title could not win you—it
is love that has made you all mine! All mine, until death!"
She listened to his impassioned words; she looked at the handsome,
noble face, and a sensation of something like shame came to her
that she should have to maneuver with a love so grand in its
simplicity; still she must save herself. Her arms fell with a dreamy
sigh; the firelight shining on her face showed it to be flushed and
tremulous.
"Earle," she said, "do you remember how I used to long for a life like
this? long for gayety, excitement, wealth, pleasure, and perpetual
admiration?"
"I remember it well. I used to feel so puzzled to know how to get it
for you."
"Now I have it—more than even my heart desired. You will not think
me very fickle if I tell you something?"
"I shall never think you anything but most charming and lovable,
Doris."
"Well, the truth is, I am rather tired of the life; but I do not like to
say so. I cannot think why it is; sometimes I think it may only be
fancy, that I am not strong as I used to be; perhaps the great
change has been too much for me. Let it be what it may, I am tired
of it, though I cannot say so to any one but you."
"The queen of the season tired of her honors?" said Earle, kissing
the sweet lips and the white brow.
"I am really tired, Earle. Then, though admiration is always sweet to
a woman, I have rather too much of it. That Prince Poermal is
making love to me, the Marquis of Heather made me an offer
yesterday, and Lord Vivianne teases me. Now, Earle, it is tiresome, it
is indeed, dear. My mind, my heart—nay, I need not be ashamed to
say it—are filled with you. I do not want the offers of other men—
their love and admiration."
"Declaring our engagement would soon put an end to all that," he
said, thoughtfully.
But that was not what the Lady Doris wanted; she wanted him to
urge their marriage.
"Yes," she said, "we might make it known, but people would not
believe it; it would not save me from the importunities of other
men."
He looked wonderingly at her. After all, it was a new feature in her
character—this dread of lovers.
"That is not all, Earle," she said, clasping her soft, warm fingers
round his hands. "I tell you—no one but you—this life is a little too
much for me. Before I had recovered from the great shock of the
change, I was plunged into the very whirlpool of London life. Do not
imagine I have joined the list of invalids, or that I have grown
nervous, or any nonsense of that kind: it is not so; but at times I
feel a great failure of strength, a deadly faintness or weakness that
is hard to fight against—a horrible foreboding for which I cannot
account."
Her face grew pale, and her eyes seemed to lose their light as she
spoke.
"I am sure," she continued, "that it is from over-fatigue. Do you not
think so, Earle?"
"Yes," he replied; "now, what is the remedy?"
"I know the remedy. It would be to give all up for a time, and take a
long rest—a long rest," her voice seemed to die away like the softest
murmur of a sighing wind.
Earle felt almost alarmed; this was so completely novel, this view of
Doris, who had always been bright, piquant, and gay.
"You shall go away, darling," he said, tenderly.
"But, Earle," she said, "my father and Lady Linleigh are enjoying the
season so much, they have so many engagements, I cannot bear to
say anything about going."
"Then I will say it for you. I shall tell Lord Linleigh, to-morrow, that
you have exhausted yourself, and that you must have a few weeks
of quiet at Linleigh Court."
"What will he say, Earle?"
"If I judge him rightly, darling, he will say little, but he will act at
once; before this time next week you will be at Linleigh."
"Do you really think so? I am so glad," yet she shivered again as she
spoke. "I long to go to Linleigh, Earle, yet I have such a strange
feeling about it, a strange presentiment, a foreboding; surely no evil,
no danger awaits me at Linleigh. Do you know, I could fancy death
standing at the threshold waiting with outstretched arms to catch
me." Again her voice died away with a half-hysterical sob.
Earle bent over her and kissed her.
"My darling, you are fanciful, you are tired. I am so glad you have
trusted me; it is high time you were attended to. These nervous
fancies are enough to drive you mad; the evil has gone further than
I thought. Doris, my love, my sweet, it is only the reaction from
over-fatigue that gives you these ideas, nothing else; what awaits
you but a future bright as your own beauty? What shall I live for
except to love and to serve and to shield you?"
"Earle," she cried suddenly, "do you know what I wish?"
A long shining tress of golden hair had fallen over her shoulders, and
she sat twining it round her white fingers.
"Do you know what I wish?" she repeated.
"No; if I did I should do it, you may be quite sure, Doris."
"I wish that we—you and I—were married; that I was your wife, and
that we had gone far away from here, away where no one knows us,
where we could be quite happy, alone and together."
"Do you really wish that, Doris?" he asked.
Her face flushed slightly, but her voice did not tremble.
"I do really wish it," she replied. "If papa were willing we would be
married this summer, and we could go away, Earle, to some far-off
land; then—when we had been happy for some time—we could
come home again. I should have grown quite strong by then, and I
should have found health, strength, and peace, all with you."
There was a strange mingling of doubt and rapturous happiness on
his face.
"Do you really mean this, Doris?" he asked. "Would you—the queen
of the season, the fairest object of man's worship—would you give
up all your triumphs, all your gayeties, and prefer to live in quiet and
solitude with me?"
There was a slight hesitation for one half moment; he was so noble,
so true. It was pitiful to use his great love for the obtaining of her
own ends; but she must save herself—she must do that.
"You may believe me, Earle," she replied, gently; "if it could be, I
would far rather it were so."
"Then, darling, it shall be—my head grows dizzy with the thought of
it—you, my peerless, my beautiful Doris, will be my own wife when
the summer comes. Why, Doris, listen! oh, listen, love! Do you know
that I never fully realized that I was to make you my wife, though I
have loved you so passionately and so well? You have always
seemed of late far above me, like a bright shining star to be
worshiped, hardly to be won. When I said to myself, that at some
time or other you should be my wife, it has been like a dream—a
bright, sweet, unreal dream. I do not know that I ever fancied you,
sweet, with bridal veil and orange-blossoms; yet now, you say, you
will marry me in the summer!"
"That I will, Earle," she replied.
"Heaven bless you, my own darling! Heaven speed the happy
summer. Why, Doris, I can see the gold on the laburnums, I can
hear the ring-doves cooing, I can see the smile of summer all over
the land! Mine in the summer, dear; Heaven, make me worthy!"
"There is but one thing, Earle," she said; "I—you will think I have
changed, but I cannot help that—I want a quiet marriage. It would
please me best if nothing were said, even about our engagement,
but if we could go quietly to Linleigh and keep the secret of our
marriage to ourselves; that is what I should really like, Earle."
"Then it shall be so, my darling! Now, do not give yourself one
moment's anxiety. Shut those beautiful eyes and sleep all night,
dreaming only of summer roses and your lover, Earle. I shall see
your father to-morrow, and I shall tell him; he will be quite willing, I
am sure."
"You are very good to me, Earle," she said, gratefully. "How foolish I
was ever to think that I did not care for you, and to run away from
you, was I not?"
"That is all forgotten, love," he said, and she felt that she would
have given the whole world if it had never happened.
 CHAPTER LXVIII.
A CLEW AT LAST.

The morning that followed was beautiful. The Lady Doris felt more
cheerful than she had done for many long days. Earle would manage
it all for her; she should find a way out of all her difficulties. Lord
Vivianne would not follow her to Linleigh; even if he did, she could
foil him again and again. When once she was Earle's wife, she could
defy him; it was not likely that she would fear him then.
Her heart and spirits rose alike, she smiled at her own fair image in
the glass; early as it was, a fragrant bouquet of white hyacinths lay
on the toilet table, sent by some adoring lover who evidently hoped
that the flowers would say for him what he could not say for himself.
She smiled over them, inhaling the rich odor with delight, thinking to
herself the while, "What a poet Earle is; what a rapture he went into
last night about flowers and summer."
She felt better. The sun was shining in at her windows, the sweet
breath of the hyacinths reached her. It seemed impossible that
sorrow or death should come into such a bright world. She smiled to
herself when she heard that Earle was with her father.
"He has most certainly lost no time," she said to herself.
Yet, nearly an hour passed before the earl left the library; then,
owing to strangers being present, he could not speak to her of what
had passed. He merely touched her hand.
"Doris," he said, "I have been having a long talk with Earle, and I
must have one with you before dinner."
"I will remember, papa," she said.
Then as the day was so fine Earle prayed her to ride out with him.
"An hour in the park would be so pleasant," he said.
And Lady Linleigh thought the same. Doris was quite willing to go.
When they were under the shade of the trees, Earle went more
slowly.
"My darling," he said, "I knew that you would be anxious to hear
what has passed. I think," he continued, bringing his handsome face
on a level with hers, "I think that I shall make an excellent
diplomatist in time."
"I never doubted it," replied Doris.
"I was quite pleased with myself," Earle went on to say; "I made
quite an impression on the earl."
Her lips grew pale, and parted with a long, quivering sigh; she
looked at him anxiously.
"In one word, Earle, is it to be as I wished or not?"
"Yes," he replied, "in every particular."
Then she resigned herself to listen.
"I never mentioned you at all in the matter," he continued. "I told
him that I had observed your health and strength failing, and that I
felt quite convinced, unless you rested at once, you would suffer
seriously from the effects of over-fatigue. He agreed with me, and
said that Lady Linleigh had remarked the same thing, and was
equally anxious over you; and said that the wisest thing to do was to
leave town at once, and go to Linleigh."
"But would he and Lady Linleigh be willing to give up the remainder
of the season?" she asked.
"They care more for you than for the season," he replied. "My
opinion is, that Lady Linleigh secretly enjoys the idea of leaving
town."
"And about—you know what I mean, Earle."
"About our wedding, darling? It is to be in the sweet summer-time,
that is, if you are willing. I urged it; and the countess joined me.
Lord Linleigh—Heaven bless him!—did not raise the least objection.
He said he would speak to you, and was perfectly kind and good
about it; it will be for you to tell him, dear, your wish to have it all
managed very quietly, and to speak of going abroad. Now, is not
that glorious news for a bright sunshiny day? How green the trees
are, and how blue the sky! Was the world ever so fair, love—ever
one-half so fair?"
Suddenly he saw her start, and looking at her, saw an angry flush on
her face, a bright light in her eyes. She was looking intently at some
one who returned the glance with interest.
Following the direction of her eyes, Earle saw Lord Vivianne
watching her most intently. There was a smile that was yet half a
sneer on his lips, he was talking to a gentleman whom Earle
instantly recognized as Colonel Clifford.
"There is your bete noir, Doris—Lord Vivianne," he said.
"I see him," she replied, quietly.
He did not know the hot impulse that was on her, he did not
understand why she clinched the little jeweled whip so tightly in her
hand. She would have given the whole wide world if she dare have
ridden up to him, and have given him one stroke across the face
with her whip—one stroke that would have left a burning red brand
across the handsome, insolent face! She would have gloried in it.
She could fancy how he would start and cry out, the coward!—how
he would do his best to hide the shameful mark given to him by a
woman's hand.
In all her life Lady Doris Studleigh never had such difficulty in
controlling an impulse as she had in controlling that.
Then she was recalled to herself by a bow from Lord Vivianne and a
look of unqualified wonder on her lover's face.
"Doris," he said, "my dear child, what are you going to do to Lord
Vivianne? You look inclined to ride over him."
"So I am," she replied, with a smile.
But the beauty of the morning had gone for her—there was no more
warmth in the sunshine, no more fragrance in the flowers and trees,
no music in the birds' song; the sight of that handsome face, with its
evil meaning, had destroyed it all, had made her heart sink. Oh! to
be away from him, where she should never see him or hear of him
again.
"I am tired, Earle," she said.
"Tired so soon!" he replied.
But one look at her told him the words were quite true.
"We will ride back again, Doris. Tell me why do you dislike Lord
Vivianne so much?"
"I am not sure that I dislike him," she replied.
"You do, sweet; your face quite changed when you saw him."
"Did it? I do not like him because he teases me so with compliments.
I dislike many people; he is no great exception."
Earle laughed.
"It is very unfortunate to admire you, Doris, if admiration brings
dislike."
They rode home again, while Colonel Clifford turned with a smile to
his companion.
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