So, welcome back. This is going to kind of be two lectures clustered into one. It's part

two of week five and also week six. Now, I'm talking about the major Tibetan Buddhist

sects in part two of week five. I should sort of note a little bit of my personal background

and my approach to the material. I'm very much not a specialist in Tibetan Buddhist

theology or the developments of its philosophical schools. My relationship to Tibetan Buddhism

is more historical and ethnographic. So, what I'll discuss is some of the basics of each

major sect, where their strongholds were located, when they emerged, and some of the why, why

the sects were in fact different. And I think there's a common assumption now based on the

relatively homogeneous material culture of Tibetan Buddhist institutions that all sects

are basically the same, that they are, for example, a bit like Presbyterians, Episcopalians,

and Methodists in Christianity, or something like that, as though they have some minor

differences, but they're all united by a tradition and common cultural heritage like Protestantism.

So, there's not very much historical conflict between the sects. And this is very much not

true. The differences and divides between the different sects have, at points in history,

been much closer to those between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century. There

were armed conflicts, and for centuries there were very serious antagonisms between some

of the Tibetan Buddhist sects. So, I think it's important to understand a bit of the

who's who to put the development of Tibetan Mongolian relations, which we'll talk about

in the second half of the lecture, under the Yuan dynasty into context. Now, during the

Buddhist Renaissance, after the period of fragmentation, new sects emerged, known as

the Sarma schools, the new schools. This was fueled by the dissemination of Buddhism, its

movements from more of a court religion under the empire to a more popular, widely embraced

religion by the end of the period of fragmentation. Also, as Buddhist patrons sprang up in different

parts of Tibet, they had different understandings of Buddhism, and of course, different goals

and reasons for becoming Buddhist patrons. In large part, these movements rejected the

translations of Indian materials by the Nyingma, the first major Tibetan Buddhist sect. And

they set about undertaking their own new translations of Indian texts, all fueled, of course, by

the patronage and monastic expansion that we discussed last week during the second spread

of Buddhism. Historically speaking, the first and oldest Buddhist sect is the Nyingma school.

The word Nyingma means ancient or old school, and the sect is often referred to as the Ngangyur

Nyingma, the school of ancient translators. It emerged in the 8th century, and it traces

its lineage back to the figure of Padmasambhava, who we talked about a little bit last week.

And historically, the main Nyingma strongholds were in central and southeast Tibet, with

major monasteries in Utsang and Kham. During the Buddhist Renaissance, the Nyingma responded

to the emergence of new sects with the innovation of a concept called Thurma texts, or treasure

texts, which are extremely important. This is now a very common concept in Tibetan Buddhism,

but it's of, I think, particular importance to the schools that claim the greatest antiquity,

the Nyingma and the Bun. The idea, in brief, in the Nyingma tradition, for example, was

that during the lives of saints and highly experienced tantric adepts, they traveled

throughout Tibet, hiding texts and teachings that they felt society wasn't really ready

for. These would then be progressively, gradually discovered when the time was right, basically

when Tibetan Buddhist sects and cultures were ready for the teachings to be revealed. And

Padmasambhava is by far the most prolific figure in this regard. He's believed to have

hidden all kinds of textual treasures in different places throughout Tibet. So while the Sarma

sects were doing their own translation and composing their own new literature, the Nyingma

and a little bit later the Bun looked backwards, focusing on scripture that had an ancient

providence that, by virtue of being older, could claim higher authority than the newer

textual traditions. From an insider's perspective, the majority of these termid discoveries by

figures named Tertan, or treasure revealers, would be considered real and would demonstrate

the antiquity and legitimacy of your sect's translations of Indian Buddhist material,