The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary [Paperback]

Glenn H. Mullin (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

Anyone who has read more than a few books on Tibetan Buddhism will have encountered references tot he Six Yogas of Naropa. The six practices-inner heat, illsory bosy, clear light, consciousness transference, forceful projection and bardo yoga-gradually came to prevade thousands of monastaries, nunneries, and hermitages throughout Central Asia over the past five and a half centuries.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Anyone who has read more than a few books on Tibetan Buddhism will have encountered a reference to the Naro Choe Druk (Tib. na ro'i chos drug), a phrase that renders literally as "Naro's Six Dharmas," but is more often encountered in English translation as "the Six Yogas of Naropa." These six-inner heat, illusory body, clear light, consciousness transference, forceful projection, and the bardo yoga-represent one of the most popular Tibetan Buddhist presentations of yogic technology to come from India to the Land of Snows. The Tibetan word choe (Tib. chos) in the expression Naro Choe Druk is a translation"'of the Sanskrit term dharma, which means" doctrine," "teaching," "instruction" or "yogic training." Druk means" six." Thus the system can be called Six Dharmas, Six Doctrines, or Six Yogas. I generally use "the Six Yogas of Naropa," or simply "the Six Yogas," because these are the forms best known to Western readers. Occasionally I resort to the more literal "Naro's Six Dharmas," although whenever I do so I enclose the phrase in quotation marks in order to indicate that I am honoring the Tibetan form of the name, Naro Choe Druk. Tibetan literature randomly refers to the illustrious Indian Buddhist master after whom this tradition is named as Naro, Naropa, and Naropada (born 1016). Naropa was a disciple of the Indian mahasiddha Tilopa (b. 988). The lineages that Naropa gave to his Tibetan lay-disciple Marpa Lotsawa (lit. "Marpa Translator"; b. 1012), especially that of the Six Yo gas, came to pervade thousands of monasteries and hermitages throughout Central Asia, regardless of sect. This is certainly true within all the Sarmai Choeluk, or "New Schools, such as the Kadampa, Kargyupa, Sakyapa, Jonangpa and Gelukpa. In addition, the Six Yogas have also gradually become absorbed into most the Nyingma Choeluk, or "Older Schools." The treatise on the system written by Tsongkhapa the Great (1357-1419)-A Book of Three Inspirations: A Treatise on the Stages of Training in the Profound Path of Naro's Six Dharmas – is regarded as one of the finest on the subject to come out of the Land of Snows. Lama Tsongkhapa was the forefather of the Gelukpa school (Tib. dGe 'lugs; lit.. "Order of Excellence"), which quickly swept across Centrall Asia and became the largest single school of tantric Buddhism. He was also the guru of the First Dalai Lama (b. 1391). His treatise has served as the fundamental guide to the system of the Six Yogas of Naropa as practiced in the more than three thousand Gelukpa monasteries, nunneries and hermitages across Central Asia over the past five-and-a half centuries. The Gelukpa lineage came down over the generations to the present day. The principal transmission holder, when I arrived in India in 1972, was Kyabjey Trijang Rinpochey, the Junior Tutor of His Holiness the DalaiLama. He in turn passed it to numerous disciples. I was in Dharamsala in 1973 when Kyabjey Rinpochey delivered his last transmission on Naropa's Six Yogas. At the time I was studying Tibetan language, philosophy and meditation at the Buddhist Studies Program initiated by H. H. the Dalai Lama as part of the activities of his recently established Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala. A few months into the program it was announced that the Junior Tutor to His Holiness, the very venerable and very elderly Kyabjey Trijang Rinpochey, would be giving a teaching in the museum room, the largest space in the building. The subject would be the Six Yogas of Naropa, and the recipients would be a large group of Tibetan yogis, hermits, monks and nuns. We Westerners couldn't attend, but if we liked we could sit in an adjoining room and listen through the sound system. The Dalai Lama's Junior Tutor was considered to be one of the greatest living masters to come out of Tibet, and was regarded as a living buddha by the Tibetan community. News of his discourse had travelled throughout the refugee communities of India and Nepal and great lamas began to roll into town from all directions. One monk who was pointed out to me was said to have spent more than forty years in meditation in the mountains. There were dozens of others with twenty or more years of solitary retreat under their belts.

Rinpochey spoke six hours a day for many, many days, using the text of Lama Tsongkhapa as his focus. One day one of the yogis coming out of the room at the end of the session looked at me and said, "Really what a Buddha he is!" When this great lama passed away a few years later, the Tibetan spiritual community mourned.the loss of one of the last of the super-greats to come out of Tibet. When I think back twenty-two years ago to the faces in the front couple of rows at that teaching, many of them have today come to rank among the foremost lamas in the Gelukpa school.

From the Back Cover

Tsongkhapa's commentary entitled A Book of Three Inspirations: A Treatise on the Stages of Training in the Profound Path of Naro's Six Dharmas commonly referred to as The Three Inspirations.

Anyone who has read more than a few books on Tibetan Buddhism will have encountered references to the Six Yogas of Naropa, a preeminent yogic technology system. The six practices -- inner heat, illusory body, clear light, consciousness transference, forceful projection and bardo yoga -- gradually came to pervade thousands of monasteries, nunneries, and hermitages throughout Central Asia over the past five and a half centuries.

Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) was a prolific writer and one of Tibet's greatest yogis and philosophers. His discussion of the Six Yogas is regarded as one of the finest on the subject to come out of Tibet. Glenn's study of the history, substance, and philosophical legacy of the Six Yogas of Naropa, together with his translation of Tsongkhapa's treatise, provides an invaluable guide to this tradition.

Glenn H. Mullin is an internationally renowned Tibetologist, author, and expert on Buddhist meditation. Glenn lived in Dharamsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama, for many years, where he studied Tibetan language, literature, yoga, and meditation under twenty-five of the greatest masters of Tibet. He is author of over fifteen books on Buddhist topics and has led many pilgrimages to Nepal and Tibet in the last five years. He now divides his time between writing, lecturing, giving workshops, and leading pilgrimages to the power places of Central Asia.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Snow Lion Publications; annotated edition edition (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559392347
• ISBN-13: 978-1559392341
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: Explaining the Ineffable?, December 5, 2005

By 

Ian M. Slater "aylchanan" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary (Paperback)

Those fairly familiar with the (steadily growing) list of Tibetan Buddhist works in English translation may need to know only that this is a new release, with an altered title and change of cover art, of Snow Lion's 1996 volume of "Tsongkhapa's Six Yogas of Naropa," translated with a helpful introduction and useful notes by Glenn H. Mullin. If you belong to that group, and have that edition, you won't need this printing, which is apparently unchanged in any other way. (Including the omission of a Western-language bibliography; most of what is needed can be dug out of the notes, but the effort shouldn't be necessary. And, as in too many Snow Lion volumes, there is still no index.) But if you are, and DON'T have a copy, having it readily available again may be welcome news -- it was to me. Even if the full new title, "The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary entitled A Book of Three Inspirations: A Treatise on the Stages of Training in the Profound Path of Naro's Six Dharmas Commonly Referred to as The Three Inspirations," is a bit of a mouthful.

However, it does give fair warning that this is anything but a how-to manual; it is a theoretical work on techniques for very advanced students of yoga, and for initiates in tantric yoga to boot. Topics covered include production of mystical heat, sleep and dream yogas, soul-projection, and after-death experiences. Mullin supplies explanations of the conceptual background, often providing fairly extended quotations from other Tibetan works, including commentaries to Tsongkhapa. Mullin's 1997 companion volume, "Readings on the Six Yogas of Naropa," is currently still in print under its original title. A shorter volume, it contains earlier and later treatments, from India and Tibet, including a supplementary text by Tsongkhapa himself.

(Please note that transliterations of Tibetan are hardly uniform -- you may prefer Tsong-kha-pa, Tsongk-'a-pa, or any of several other ways of rendering this and other names. I am here following Mullin, at least by intent, if not always successfully uniformly.)

Those with a somewhat lesser familiarity with the subject may still recognize the names. Naropa (or, in a less Tibetanized form, Naro) was an Indian Buddhist sage, renowned in Tibet as one of the teachers of Marpa the Translator (born 1012), whose several disciples stand at the heads of many teaching lineages, and the Monastic Orders with which they or their own disciples are associated. (Milarepa is the most famous.) Lobsang Drakpa (1357-1419), known as Tsongkhapa (or Tsong Khapa chenpo, "the Great") was one of the most important expositors and systematizers of the legacies of Marpa and other key transmitters; renowned as a philosopher, a practicing yogi, and a monastic reformer. One of *his* disciples, known as the Gyalwa Gen-dun Drub (1391-1474) was later recognized as the First Dalai Lama, and Tsongkhapa is especially, although not uniquely, revered by the Gelukpa Order he founded, of which the line of Dalai Lamas is the (reincarnating) leader.

The Dalai Lamas became a dominant power in Tibet with the armed backing of Mongol "disciples" (whose predecessors had given them the name) in the mid-17th century, were further supported by Ming Emperors, and later were recognized by the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty as rulers of Tibet under each Qing Emperor's personal patronage. This is the origin of modern Chinese claims that Tibet is "really" Chinese territory. (So if China reinstalled the former Dynasty, and the new *Manchu* Emperor recognized the Dalai Lama as his Spiritual Preceptor, there would be a basis for discussion!) Translations of Tsongkhapa therefore are not without their political and sectarian implications; some of which Mullin explains.

(If none of this means anything to you, the present book will be meaningless, too; but if you are looking for an entry to Tibetan Buddhism, I suggest some introductory works, below.)

But Tsongkhapa was himself associated with older schools, and his intellectual and cultural importance was not dependent on later politics; the Gelukpa success reflected as much as enhanced it. Mullin points out in the beginning of his introduction that a common honorific form of reference to Tsongkhapa is Gyalwa Nyipa, "The Second Buddha." (Note that a vast multitude of Buddhas, and incarnate Boddhisattvas, are recognized, so this is not quite like the saying "The Second Jesus," or even "A Second Mohammed." But is rather stronger than, say, the Jewish praise of Moses Maimonides, "From Moses to Moses, no one like Moses.")

The "Six Doctrines/Yogas/Teachings of Naropa" are a set of advanced Tantric techniques, which Marpa is said to have received from Naropa; although there is some dispute over whether this synthesis was Naropa's or he himself had derived it from his teacher, Tilopa. (It combined practical instruction and initiation with theoretical exposition, and therefore could not be reduced to a fixed text, so that issue was more historical than practical.) In either case, the "Six Yogas" became common ground for many branches of Buddhism in Tibet, and many Tibetan expositions, and commentaries on expositions, were composed. One of the first useful volumes of English translation of esoteric Tibetan texts, W.Y. Evans-Wentz's "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines or Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path" (Oxford, 1935; revised 1958) included a presentation of the "Six Yogas" by Padma Karpo (Pema Karpo, 1527-1592), as Book III, which Mullin notes as one of the better translations by Kazi Dawa Samdup; and not too confused by Evans-Wentz's attempts at explication. (A related text on soul-transference was included there as Book IV; and most of the set of texts reflect a common teaching-tradition.)

Another exposition of the system available in English, representing a (supposedly) different line of transmission, was included in Mullin's "Selected Works of the Dalai Lama II: The Tantric Yogas of Sister Niguma," (Snow Lion, 1985), now out of print; the relevant contents of which (chapter six; which also supplied the volume's subtitle) may or may not be duplicated in another volume translated by Mullin, "The Second Dalai Lama: His Life and Teachings" (Snow Lion, 2005); I haven't had a chance to check for myself, and Snow Lion's description is frustratingly opaque. (They are not part of Mullin's translation of the Second Dalai Lama's poetry as "Mystical Verses of a Mad Dalai Lama" (Theosophical Publishing House, 1994). However, the "Sister Niguma" version of the "Six Yogas" includes references to Tsongkhapa's explanation of difficult points; so they are nicely complementary, rather than independent.

This is all fairly heavy going, even granted some familiarity with Buddhist Yoga and its Tibetan developments. A classic exposition of the system for western readers is available in H.V. Guenther's excellent (if now a little antiquated) "The Life and Teachings of Naropa" (Oxford, 1963), although this is focused on Indian origins. Tsongkhapa's treatment was translated previously, after a fashion (and Mullin is quite clear about what fashion) in Garma C. C. Chang's "Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantras" (Falcon's Wing Press, 1961). Mullin points to numerous basic errors in its understanding of the Tibetan text, which I can't comment on; but I concur that Chang's constant sniping at both Tsongkhapa and the Gelukpas is annoying, and certainly suggests that, as a supporter of a rival group, the translator didn't "waste his time" by trying to actually understand the text. (The translation was in any case published from an unrevised draft, which certainly did it no good.)

Chang was more complimentary about the extra-Tsongkhapa/non-Gelukpa version of the "Six Yogas" system included by Evans-Wentz, and wrote an introductory "Yogic Commentary" to Kazi Dawa Samdup's translations in the "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" volume. He seems to have passed by Evans-Wentz's editorial reliance on Hindu and Theosophical sources, which in fact don't seem as much in evidence as in some of the three other volumes of the "Oxford Tibetan Series."

My own efforts to make sense of the "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" version of the Six Yogas, more years ago than I like to remember (I used the Galaxy Book paperback of 1967, as reprinted in 1970), was greatly facilitated by Mircea Eliade's "Yoga: Immortality and Freedom" (1954; English translation 1958, second Edition 1969), which explained in intelligible detail the presuppositions of the yogic physiology, and the functionings of the "subtle body." The Foreword by Donald S. Lopez to the third edition of "Tibetan Yoga" (Oxford, 2000) would have been a welcome help, had it been available then!

For Tibetan contexts of the "Six Yogas," beyond Lopez's well-informed but brief summary of the esoteric tradition, Snellgrove and Richardson's "Cultural History of Tibet" (1968, 1980) is still an invaluable introduction, even if the latest revision seems indefinitely delayed. It does not, I think, require much in the way of previous knowledge.

It might be followed by Geoffrey Samuel's comprehensive, if controversial, "Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies" (1993) which I found helpful in figuring out how the culture and politics interacted (and why Chang was so hostile). Giuseppe Tucci's very slightly antiquated "Religions of Tibet" (1979, English translation by Geoffrey Samuel, 1980) offers a very good, and more conventional, view, in terms intelligible to Western students; with a higher proportion of doctrine to history and sociology. (Tucci's Chapter Four, "Doctrines of the Most Important Schools," Part 10, "The gcod tradition," and Part 11, "Conclusion. The special nature of the Lamaist teaching of salvation" analyze the "Six Yogas" and other material in "Tibetan Yoga... Read more ›

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars map to the edge of the world, May 19, 2006

By 

K. Franzen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary (Paperback)

I've been studying meditation systems for more than two decades, yet I'm fairly new to Tibetan Buddhist studies. "Tsongkhapa's..." solves a dilemma that I've seen crop up in other systems, that I've seen no clearer resolution to than in this keystone Tibetan text. The "dilemma" that I referred to is the conflict and bridge between systems that emphasize
1) energy cultivation,
2) emptiness/absolute schools or
3) some mix of both but without a clear bridge.

Emptiness schools often critique energetic schools for merely getting caught in other layers of cyclic existence (and worse, creating intense karma in those layers). Yet emptiness schools often don't admit the valid energetic part of the path.

The first yoga of the six, the crux and foundation of this 6-yoga system, explains steps that produce bliss - and resolve it into emptiness. This resolution occurs within the mysterious deep-centers, who reside along - and whose vitality is integrated through - the central channel.

The Seventh Dalai Lama wrote verse about the 6 yoga system, whose 1st paragraph follows. Much of it is of specific cultural reference, but the 4th and 7th lines speak to general theory:
"Namo guru daka dakini yeh!
O all-pervading Heruka and your mandala of bliss,
O Tilopa, also known as the sublimely wise Jnanabhadra
Who took the insight of ecstasy and void to its limits,
And Naropa, an emodiment of Chakrasamvara:
I request you, bestow blessings, that we may achive
The wisdom of ecstasy and void conjoined."
- (from page 96 of the book)

This text has tremendous implications for the classic theological dilemmas re: sensation.

(The above is my pasted review of the previous edition of this book, which still holds for this.)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's nice to have a translation of Je Tsongkapa's commentary to the Six Yogas, May 26, 2008

By 

Will Smith (Arlington, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary (Paperback)

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is always nice to be able to read anything by Lama Tsongkapa. As I was reading this book I was amazed at the detailed logical reasoning and valid scriptural citation that Lama Tsongkapa is famous for. I found the section on corpse reanimation quite amusing. I don't think that lineage exists any more. Could come in handy, I suppose!

As I always feel slightly unsure about the precise usage of words in any of the Tibetan translations I have read thus far, I prefer to use Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's Tantric Grounds and Paths: How to Enter, Progress On, and Complete the Vajrayana Path and Clear Light of Bliss : The Practice of Mahamudra in Vajrayana Buddhism as practical instruction as they are written with today's practitioner in mind. Also, Lama Yeshe's The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa is similarly written for today's practitioner.

All in all I find this a valuable cross-reference. If you have the appropriate empowerments and a good motivation it would be very worthwhile to receive teachings on The Six Yogas from a qualified Vajrayana master in order to get the blessing lineage of these practices into your mindstream.