Bhutanese Mahāmudrā
If you [can] not tame your rigid mind [resembling] a bowl of [hot] oil
—A Timely Message from the Cave, p. 87.
[How can you] tame the mind of others, you low-minded fool?
Bragging about being wise, without [properly] explicating the Dharma discourse
[Better to] conceal [your] qualities inside, cave hermit!
My first monograph, A Timely Message from the Cave, addressed the long-lasting debate about the Mahāmudrā doctrine and meditative system first brought up in Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251)’s systematic critique in the 13th century. Through my translation, the positions of eminent Bhutanese Drukpa Kagyü masters between the 18th and 20th centuries are made accessible to an English-speaking readership for the first time. In addition, the Tibetan text corpus I worked with shows how oral discourses transformed into new elite Buddhist textual traditions addressing Mahāmudrā and how they then gained trans-regional and trans-cultural relevance among both Tibetan and Bhutanese Buddhist masters in the 18th century.
As a result, the reader is able to access one of the lesser-known and under-researched scholastic traditions, the Bhutanese Drukpa Kagyü school and their detailed interpretation of Mahāmudrā, the paramount teaching in all Kagyü schools, which is practiced globally and very popular today. Remarkably, the Tibetan text corpus also deals with the entire spectrum of controversial topics crucial to Mahāmudrā. Some of these topics had been discussed for centuries, and, as such, my book serves as an intricate roadmap to many of these earlier philosophical disputes in Tibet and India. A Timely Message from the Cave thoroughly introduces the reader to this important debate.
Besides conducting archival research and identifying unknown text witnesses of these Mahāmudrā works at the National Library and Archives (NLAB) in Thimphu, I was also able to travel and carry out field research in West and Central Bhutan in October and November 2014.
I also document and discuss the life and vast literary and scholastic heritage of the 69th Chief Abbot of Bhutan, Geshe Drapukpa Gendün Rinchen (1926–97). As an author, scholar, teacher, and practitioner, this eminent Buddhist master significantly contributed to the doctrinal innovations and modernization of religious educational institutions of the Drukpa Kagyü school in Bhutan in the second half of the 20th century.
The research on and publication of A Timely Message from the Cave were made possible through the generous support of the Khyentse Foundation, the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS) in Hamburg, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies, and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation). For my M.A. thesis on the Bhutanese Madyamaka interpretation of the 69th Chief Abbot of Bhutan, on which A Timely Message from the Cave was built, I received the Khyentse Foundation Award for Excellence in Buddhist Studies 2012.
To learn more about A Timely Message from the Cave, please read the Q & A or listen to an in-depth interview in the New Books in Buddhist Studies Series.
Book details:
Dagmar Schwerk, A Timely Message from the Cave: The Mahāmudrā and Intellectual Agenda of dGe-bshes Brag-phug-pa dGe-’dun-rin-chen (1926–1997), the Sixty-Ninth rJe-mkhan-po of Bhutan. Indian and Tibetan Studies 11. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2020. ISBN: 978-3-945151-10-5. Monograph, hardcover, xv + 425 pp., 25 pp. col. illus., 2 apps., ind., 25cm. Price: USD 50.00/open-access e-book. Please purchase the book/download the e-book here: To the publication