An extension of our sites database and interactive satellite map of Jonang sites, we are happy to announce the launch of our 3D map of the campus of Takten Phuntsok Damcho Ling Monastery in southern Tibet.

This map is the first in a multi-phased project that is visualizing Takten Monastery in an interactive three dimensional space. Takten Monastery was built by Tāranātha and completed in the year 1615. It served as headquarters for the Jonangpa until it was confiscated in 1650. This project utilizes digital architecture technology tools, images and blueprint sketches collected, and Tāranātha's own written descriptions to display a replica of this Buddhist cultural monument in Tibet.

Tsewang Norbu

The one who Hugh Richardson referred to in his 1967 article as “a Tibetan antiquarian” in describing his efforts to jot down stone pillar inscriptions in Lhasa and at Samye that date from the 8th and 9th centuries, the Nyingma master Rigzin Tsewang Norbu was a lover of rare books.^[1] In fact, it seems that he was a bit of a Buddhist bibliophile.

About a hundred years after Tāranātha's death in the spring of 1635, and seventy-five years after the confiscation of Takten Damchö Phuntsok Ling Monastery, the Dzogchen master from Kathog Monastery in Kham, Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu (1698-1755), made a visit to Jonang to print the books that were sealed-up in the printery. Most likely spurred by a conversation with his friend and disciple Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne (1699/1700-1774), this particular trip was actually Tsewang Norbu's third visit to Takten Ling.^[2]

The following post is by Connor McCarty, an honors student at the University of Alabama and contributor to Jonang Foundation.^[1]

Interactive Map of Jonang Sites

Working in collaboration with the University of Alabama, we at Jonang Foundation have developed an interactive satellite map of Jonang sites across Tibet. Providing precise geographic locations of key Jonang sites, this map allows users to navigate both historical and active Jonang monasteries, stupas, nunneries, meditation caves, and other relevant landmark sites like never before.

The following post is titled, Emptiness of Self-nature and Emptiness of Other by Cyrus Stearns, a contributing author to the Jonangpa blog. It is an excerpt from the reprint of The Buddha from Dolpo (Snow Lion Publications, 2010). Posted here with permission from the author. ^[1]

The key in Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen's approach is to link his view of the absolute as empty only of other relative phenomena (gzhan stong) to the teachings of the Kṛtayuga, as opposed to the teachings of the Tretāyuga and later eons that emphasize even absolute reality is empty of self-nature (rang stong). This he makes clear early in the Fourth Council:

Maybe its the dark magnetism of impending all hallows' eve, but I'm feeling a mischievous urge to rile up all the ghouls and goblins of unapologetic dogmatism and have them stare in unison — — into The Crystal Mirror. That is, The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems by Thuken Losang Chökyi Nyima (1737-1802). Fortunately, this classical Tibetan polemical text is now available to the English reading world due to the clear translation of Geshe Lhundup Sopa and the lucid editing of Roger Jackson under the umbrella of The Library of Tibetan Classics series (Wisdom Publications, '09).^[1]

Dakini Niguma

Commentators on earlier posts have asked or made reference to relationships between the Shangpa lineage and the Jonangpa.^[1] In response, I thought to sketch some of the overlapping threads among Shangpas and Jonangpas in order to draw a few historical connections.

The Shangpa lineage, as Tibetologist Matthew Kapstein has described, is like "some vine that adorns a whole forest without being able to stand by itself" so much so that it "may strike one who follows its twists and turns as being virtually an omnipresent element in Tibetan Buddhism."^[2] Being so, its fairly safe to say that transmissions from the Shangpa lineage have penetrated each of the mainstream Sarma (or "New School") traditions of Buddhism in Tibet while no institutionalized representation of the contemporary Shangpa tradition is known to survive in Tibet today. With striking parallels, transmissions associated with the Jonangpa are also like an unbroken vine complexly intertwined within many of today's mainstream traditions. However, despite the (still) common conception that the Jonangpa no longer endure as a living tradition, they maintain an institutional presence in contemporary Tibet.

The following is a transcript of a talk, The Legacy of the Jonangpa by Michael Sheehy at the Great Stupa of Jonang in Tibet on July 17, 2009.

Great Stupa at Jonang, '09

So, the actual name of this place is Jomonang, which is the name of the valley.^[1] It is named "Jomonang" because the female local protector deity here is known as Jomo Ngag Gyalmo, who is said to live in the upper ridge right above you, but she oversees this whole valley. In the 13th century, a few hundred years after Guru Rinpoche and Yeshe Tsogyal inhabited this place, she discovered that there was this man called Kunpangpa (Kunpang Thukjé Tsöndru) who was living in a cave about three valleys away from here, who was a Kalachakra master and whose meditative realization had reached a point of perfection. She went to visit Kunpangpa. I have been to this cave where they met. It is up on a ridge that is a straight vertical drop down into a rushing river, a thousand feet or so – very, very high – its a precipice. Kunpangpa was living up there and she came to visit and said to him, “Oh, great Kalachakra master, I invite you to come and live in my valley and your so doing will allow the Kalachakra teachings to flourish in the Land of Snows.” He then replied to her (something like), “Oh, thank you for the invitation, but I am very busy, as you can tell, and I have at least three more years I have to stay in this cave – some more realizations to accomplish, some more siddhis. But, after three years, if my meditation goes well, then I’ll come visit you in Jomonang.”

Without jumping the gun (as we continue to set the text), I thought to write a post with the hope to help contextualize a forthcoming publication in the Tibetan language on the essential zhentong works by the Jonang master from Dzamthang, Ngawang Tsoknyi Gyatso (1880-1940).^[1]

Zhentong — the contemplative view that the ultimate nature of reality is empty of all extraneous superficial characteristics while profusely full of the qualities that define enlightenment — has become a hallmark of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. From its early articulation by Tibetan forefathers of the Jonangpa in the eleventh century, up to Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s (1292-1361) formal codification, and on through later authors such as Tāranātha (1575-1635), zhentong philosophical thinking has revealed itself to be complex, nuanced, and manifold.

Kalachakra Mandala

One of my favorite themes in tantric Buddhism is the mandala. The replicated symmetry of a perfected space and the implicit dialogue between the deity and the various facets of its environment have always fascinated me.

Recently, I had a chance to look closely at one specific mandala of the Kālachakra, one that is unlike the typical depiction.^[1] This particular mandala was commissioned by Lhachok Sengé (1468-1535) from Ngor Evam Choden Monastery, and is one of the famous Ngor Mandalas associated with the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.^[2] I understand that Ngor Monastery was pretty much demolished during the Cultural Revolution and that the stupa that was known for its mandalas is no longer a place of rich artistic value. However, as we see through this mandala and other examples, the artistic tradition of Ngor was not in a vacuum but in fact was in exchange with many of its neighbors in Central Tibet, including the Jonangpas just a few valleys away.

There is an intriguing and somewhat mystifying narrative that has been popularized about the Tibetan Jonang master Tāranātha (1575-1635). This narrative suggests an account of Tāranāha's life story in which he traveled to Mongolia from his seat at Takten Damchö Ling Monastery in Central Tibet during the latter part of his life and that while there, he established several monasteries before finally passing away in Ulan Bator, the capital city in the republic of the Mongols.

This narrative on Tāranāha's travels and death in Mongolia has become so popular and widely accepted as factual that it is often the standard account given on the web and is commonly found in publications.^[1] Yet considering its regular appearance in English language sources, it became apparent to me a few years ago while in conversation with a Jonang lama in Amdo about the life of Tāranāha that this narrative was mostly unknown to contemporary Jonangpas in Tibet. So where did this narrative originate? Why? And what other narratives about the final days and death of Tāranāha do we find in Jonang sources?