Tag Archives: mantra healing

Foundations of Sowa Rigpa: Dr Nida’s New Book on the Root Tantra of Tibetan Medicine

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It’s been a very long time since I last posted, in part because I’ve been working for a good while on a Sky Press publication which is now finally available for purchase, so consider this an announcement! The book in question is called ‘Foundations of Sowa Rigpa’: A Guide to the Root Tantra of Tibetan Medicine’ and it offers a wonderful distillation of Dr Nida’s twenty-five odd years of teaching Tibetan medicine to students from all over the world. The book presents Dr Nida’s extensive commentary on the six chaptersof the first and most foundational ‘Tantra’ (volume or treatise) of the Tibetan medical textbook known as the Gyü Zhi (‘The Four Medical Tantras’). Compiled in the twelfth century CE, this four-volume manual still forms the better part of Sowa Rigpa curricula around the world today. ‘Foundations of Sowa Rigpa’ offers over 600 pages of original commentary, translations, charts and diagrams, and other resources for students. I served as editor and translator for the book, working closely with Dr Nida to condense together hours of oral transcripts and various translations into text that could serve as a companion volume to the Root Tantra and introduction to Sowa Rigpa more generally. In preparing the book, Dr Nida, my colleagues at Sky Press and I aimed to create something that would be useful and accessible to both casual readers and current or future students of Sowa Rigpa. Our goal was to produce a textbook that could support non-Tibetan students in their study of Sowa Rigpa and Tibetan language on the one hand, and provide resources and inspiration for Tibetan and Himalayan Sowa Rigpa students and practitioners who work in cross-cultural contexts and engage with English-speaking students, colleagues, and patients on the other. We hope that the book will help students to understand and internalize the core principles of Tibetan medicine, that it will help them to understand how the individual volumes and sections of the Gyü Zhi relate to one another and to Tibetan and global healing traditions more broadly, and that, above all, it will inspire in readers a profound appreciation and reverence for Sowa Rigpa, and help them to live healthier and happier lives and benefit others as well.

One of the most striking and unique features of this book and Dr Nida’s teaching is the strong emphasis he places on making Sowa Rigpa relevant to individual patients’ and healers’ lives. I’m delighted that we can finally share the book with the world and I am certain it will be of interest and benefit to a wide range of readers. You can see the front and back covers, read the contents list, view a few sample pages, read the Introduction, and read a little about Dr Nida here, on the Sky Press website.

Both the physical and e-book versions of the text will be available for purchase from Monday, February 12th 2024 (Orders made between now and Monday will receive a pre-order discount as well!). Purchase of the e-book includes access to an online mini-course hosted through the Sowa Rigpa Institute as well, which includes printable versions of key diagrams in the book as well as several extra audio-visual resources.

Steve James of the Guru Viking podcast just did a great interview with Dr Nida about the book as well, which is a great listen:


Losar Tashi Delek and much love to you all, and please watch this space for more regular posts in the new Wood Dragon year! I have a bunch of unfinished blog post drafts to share with you on all kinds of topics and I remain deeply grateful for your continued interest and support.


Second Guru Viking Interview on Ngakpa: Definitions, Vows, and Tantric ‘Magic’

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File:Guru padmasambhava statue.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

(A photo from the building of the statue of Guru Rinpoche, the ‘original ngakpa’, on Samdruptse hill in Namchi, Sikkim. The statue is 135 feet tall and is said to be the largest statue of Guru Rinpoche currently in existence. More here)

Just a quick post to let everyone know that my second interview with Steve James of the ‘Guru Viking’ podcast is now up. In this one I talked (as usual, a lot), about definitions of ngakpa (sngags pa, སྔགས་པ), or Tibetan Buddhist tantric yogi householders, and their social roles. We also skimmed the surface of the broad lake of the topic of samaya or tantric vows, ngakpas’ hair, clothing and comportment, and the siddhi, or the spiritual acommplishments or powers that are thought to come from their dedicated practice of tantric yogic disciplines.

Here’s Steve’s breakdown of the episode, along with the YouTube video, and a link to the various places the interview can be found:
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Tibetan Spells for Calling Vultures to a Corpse: On Human-Bird Relations and Practicing Magic

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Himalayan griffon vulture running

(A Himalayan vulture coming in for landing)

A day or two ago I was looking through a compilation of simple Tibetan healing rituals when I came across a short entry on a genre of Tibetan magic that I find quite lovely and interesting: vulture summoning spells.  I thought I would share these spells here and offer some reflections on why I found them significant. Continue reading →

Tantra as Religion, Tantra as Medicine, Tantra as Technique: Reflections on the Globalization of Tibetan Buddhist Esotericism

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A few weeks ago I travelled to Washington D.C. for the first time to attend the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, which is one of the largest conferences for anthropologists in the U.S. and maybe the world (that said, while the conference is decidedly more international than the title might imply, it’s also a lot less international than some attendees seem to think, so let’s just go with that there were over 7000 attendees there, presenting and networking over five days from sunrise to sundown, and more gaudy scarves crammed into a single hotel space than you could shake a Margaret Mead wizard staff at)

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(Famous American anthropologist Margaret Mead might not have worn colourful scarves at conferences as all genuine cultural anthropologists are known to do today, but she sure knew how to hold – and shake – a stick)

For the conference this year (which was christened ‘Anthropology Matters’) I organized a panel titled ‘Reframing Ritual and Ritualizing Return: Where, When, and How Religion Matters’. Theorizing religious difference has been a concern of anthropology since the very beginnings of the discipline, but it’s still quite rare to find whole panels devoted to ‘religion’ at the AAA. Continue reading →

Some Dos and Don’ts of Mantric or Tantric Healing

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nyingma yogi chapman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(A photograph of an itinerant Nyingmapa yogi with prominently displayed trengwa or Buddhist prayer beads, one of the central tools of mantra healing, taken in 1936 in Lhasa by British army officer Frederick Spencer Chapman, 1907-1971. Chapman visited the Tibetan capitol between 1936 and 1937, where he served as personal secretary to Basil Gould, the British Raj Political Officer to Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. Gould went to Tibet in the hopes of persuading the then 9th Panchen Lama to return to Tibet from China, to where he had fled after the 13th Dalai Lama had clamped down on his power and holding due to political differences) 

In the post that follows I offer yet another translation of a chapter from Tibetan tantric yogi and traditional doctor Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s book on Tibetan Mantra Healing (I’ve already provided translations of a number of chapters from this book, called rten ‘brel sngags bcos rig pa in Tibetan, here on my blog – you can find these posts by searching under the tags ‘dr nyida chenaktsang’ and ‘mantra healing’). In this short chapter Dr Nida provides an overview of ‘things to avoid and things to take up’ (spang blang) when doing mantra healing, using a traditional Buddhist turn of phrase which I’ve rendered more colloquially and chattily here as ‘dos and don’ts’. In the sections that follow, Dr Nida outlines suggested everyday behaviour and dietary prohibitions for tantrikas and mantrins and describes common ritual taboos connected with mantra healing practice as well as the optimal times and locations to do different kinds of tantric or mantric rituals.

Central to Dr Nida’s explanations is the concept of ngaki nüpa (sngags kyi nus pa) or ‘mantric/tantric power’ or ‘efficacy’. Anyone can recite the syllables of a mantra, but according to Tibetan cultural understanding there are a number of factors which contribute to whether or not a mantra will actually produce tangible results Continue reading →

The White-Robed, Dreadlocked Community: Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s Introduction to and Defense of the Ngakpa Tradition

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rigzin rabpel ling

(Ngakpa or non-celibate tantric yogis from the Rebkong ngakmang or tantric community performing rituals at Rigzin Rabpel Ling in July 2016)

Existing readers of this blog will know that my PhD research is concerned with ngakpa and ngakma (sngags pa/ma, the name for make and female long-haired, non-celibate tantric Buddhist vow-holders, ritual specialists and yogis). Ngakpa have been a crucial part of Buddhism in Tibet since the point of its very inception in that country, yet there continues to be a lot of misunderstanding about who ngakpa and ngakma are, what they do, what vows they hold and what role they have had or should have in Tibetan communities.

Dr Nida Chenagtsang is a ngakpa, traditional Tibetan doctor, scholar and teacher who hails from Malho in Amdo, North-Eastern Tibet. As I have mentioned elsewhere, for many years, he and his brother have committed themselves to preserving and promoting the Ngakpa tradition of non-celibate tantric practice both in Tibet and beyond. Continue reading →

Embodying Healing: Tantric Ritual Short-hand and the Training of Anthropological Attention

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AH syllable.jpg

Elaborate ritual procedures are a hallmark of Indo-Tibetan tantra. Tantric rites are often long and complex. Ceremonies typically involve multiple parts or stages, replete with lengthy chanted liturgies, extensive visualizations and gestures, and the making of both physical and imagined offerings. The ability to memorize such procedures, and to properly and elegantly execute the intricate choreographies of body posture and movement, recited mantras, and imagined forms which they require, is crucial to tantric expertise. Large-scale and extended rituals which involve a lot of people, ritual trappings, and processes are important in Tibetan Buddhist contexts and are conducted frequently. Yet the prevalence of externally elaborate ritual performances should not be taken to mean that smaller, quicker and more ‘internal’ rites are not also a vital part of Tibetan ritual specialists’ work. Continue reading →

The Magic of Interdependence: A general description of the view of how mantras produce results

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(Guru Rinpoche, the Precious Guru Padmasambhava surrounded by his own mantra, and the mantra of Dependent Origination)

In an earlier post, I mentioned Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s new book on the subject of mantra healing, which was written with Yeshe Drolma and published in December of last year by the Beijing People’s Press. The book, whose full title is “The Science of Interdependent Connection Mantra Healing’ (rten ‘brel sngags bcos thabs kyi rig pa), is a significant achievement. While there is no small number of mantra collections (sngags ‘bum) and tantric grimoires (sngags kyi be’u bum) within Tibetan literary tradition, these are, by and large, books of mantras and magical rituals, and not books about them. Dr Nida’s 339 page volume is thus ground-breaking. It represents one of the first Tibetan language treatments of its kind, in which a native practitioner and scholar of Tibetan traditional medicine and tantric ritual provides a general overview of mantra healing in theory and practice, and supplies a fuller range of interpretive frameworks and historical context for Tibetan approaches to mantra use. Continue reading →

Tibetan ‘Yogi-Doctors’ Today: Professor Gojo Wangdu’s Preface to Dr Nida’s new book on Mantra Healing

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The following is a translation of Professor Gojo Wangdu’s preface to Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s new Tibetan-language volume on the ‘Interdependent/Auspicious Science of Mantra Healing’. In his preface, the Professor supplies a brief overview of Dr Nida’s upbringing, education, and achievements. He describes the important contributions that Dr Nida has made to re-invigorating Tibetan traditional medicine, like his efforts to preserve and revive lapsed oral lineage practices such as the ‘stick-therapy’ methods that were taught by Padampa Sangye and others centuries ago. The Professor makes a strong case for why Tibetan doctors today should practice as the founding lineage masters of Tibetan traditional medicine did, as ‘yogi or ngakpa doctors’, that is, as practitioners who seamlessly integrate mantra healing rituals, yogic practice, and medicine. He also responds to questions readers might have about the issue of secrecy, and of the pre-requisites – the transmissions and training – required to put mantra healing into practice to benefit beings. While the Professor follows the traditional Tibetan style of modestly talking-down his own achievements, he is a highly respected and learned scholar, and his endorsement of Dr Nida’s book speaks to its value.

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Mantra Healing is an Indispensable Branch of Tibetan Traditional Medicine

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mantra healing indispensable

(An image of a tantric practitioner providing a life-enhancing empowerment to a patient, from the medical paintings commissioned by Desi Sangye Gyatso, 1653-1705, to accompany his commentaries of the root-tantras of the Tibetan medical tradition)

One of the first things that someone visiting Tibetan communities tends to encounter -whether they’re a foreign visitor or a transmigrating Tibetan baby – is mantras. These set-apart forms of speech, made up of specific patterns of sacred and largely untranslatable phrases and syllables, are performed with special kinds of cadence and affect which distinguish them from other sorts of utterance.

As their Sanskrit etymology suggests, mantras are ‘instruments of the mind’; holding awareness firm they help to generate various effects and qualities in the one who recites them. While many mantras are the specific sound-embodiment of deities and Buddha-beings, others are more action-based and ‘worldly’, and exist as powerful spells that in the hands of trained experts who have properly ‘activated’ them are supposed to be able to produce all kinds of results.

Many people today are familiar with Indo-Tibetan mantras but are perhaps less familiar with where exactly mantras come from. Below I have attached my very rough and inadequate translation of the first part of a three-part Tibetan blog-post which appeared on a website about Tibetan culture in 2013 (cf here). This essay which was written by Dr Nida Chenagtsang some years ago in Lhasa (and which someone called Rinchen shared independently on the website above) essay discusses the history of the use of mantras for healing (སྔགས་བཅོས་ཐབས་ ngakchö tuhp) in Tibet. Dr Nida stresses that notwithstanding Sowa Rigpa or Tibetan medicine’s investment in strongly ’empirical’ and ‘secular’ therapeutic methods, mantra healing is nonetheless an indispensable element of Tibetan medical history and practice. His piece also acknowledges that healing mantras are not unique to Buddhism, and thus shows how magic and ritual healing are areas of Tibetan cultural life which are uniquely hybrid and non-sectarian and which perhaps span beyond Buddhist hegemonies. In general, mantra healing points to a rich and complex field of history and practice, one that comprises both elite and everyday ‘folk’ actors and knowledge systems, which intertwine in fascinating ways.

Anyway, here’s the translation: Continue reading →