UC Berkeley

Scholars have long recognized the influence of canonical Indian tantras and their attendant sādhanas and vidhis on the formation of new Buddhist traditions in Tibet. The impact of the more popular tantric preliminaries has, however, received far less attention. This dissertation argues that the Tibetan preliminary practices that are so widespread today are historically rooted in the rise of the lay tantric guru. In early medieval India, lay gurus were controversial, so much so that even a well-known collection of devotional practices for relating to such figures—Fifty Verses on the Guru—cautions against bowing to them in public. In eleventh- and twelfth-century Tibet, however, influential lay lamas came to serve as respected heads of monastic institutions. Throughout this period, preliminary practices were an important site for innovation, where Indians and Tibetans alike worked out the changing place of the guru within Buddhism. In Tibet, the popularization of preliminary rites such as guru yoga (bla ma’i rnal ‘byor) reflected the elevated status of the lama in the new (gsar ma) Buddhist schools. By the thirteenth century, preliminary practice systems (sngon ‘gro) that were almost entirely focused on the lama—lay or monastic—had become a mainstay of Tibetan Buddhism.