The Angered Protector Deity
Last year, when I was collecting books and texts for the library, a group of villagers led an adventure to the newly discovered caves on a nearby cliff. They brought back many texts from the originally hidden caves, but because of the Gregorian New Year celebration, we did not look at them very carefully and simply stored them in the local monastery. A few days ago, a group of monks and nuns in the monastery sent a report to our village committee, telling us that one of the texts found in the caves was the record of our village history and indicated a location on the edge of the village where there used to be a cairn to the local protector deity. The monastery then sent a few monks to check the place, it turned out that the cairn had already been destroyed by thunderbolt. Since no one repaired the cairn in a timely manner, the local protector deity felt angry and cursed the entire area; this was the cause for both the hailstorm in last winter and the following Naga illness in the neighbor village. The protector deity warned the monks that if no one came to repair the cairn and perform the rituals to soothe him, then he would continue to bring bad luck to the area so all the newly founded facilities such as the library, printing press, and medicine factory would haunt and eventually be brought down to ashes. Upon receiving this letter, an emergent meeting was at once held by the village head Frances. Different villagers with different professions all need to take part in rescuing the village from the anger of the protector deity. As a trader whose secondary skill is in scholarship, it is my responsibility to provide necessary materials to the builders for the reconstruction of the cairn and to instruct the ritualists on the procedures of the rituals that could propitiate the protector deity. After gathering all the materials required by the builder community, I decide to stay overnight at the library to read through all the texts related to mandala offering, wind horse, and related smoke purification rituals called bsang. Lucky enough, some of texts from the caves are on these topics.
Next morning, a lecture for our ritualists was held at the large meeting room of the local monastery. I was invited to deliver a speech on the propitiating rituals I had read last night. Firstly, I talked about the mandala offering. The word mandala can be broken into two parts. The first part, manda, means “essence” or “center;” the second part, la, means “taking hold of.” So, by putting them together, mandala means, “taking hold of the essence.”[1] By offering mandala, it will help to perfect entirely the six transcendent perfections, namely generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom.[2] In order to make it, one needs first to put the index finger and middle finger into a bowl of oil, then draw a circle on a block of polished, mirror-like metal. The most common seen mandala offering is the so-called 37 heaps mandala offering. Just as its name suggests, it is composed by 37 piles of salt on the surface of the metal block. The 37 heaps represent 37 important points in the Buddhist universe. Heap number 1 is the Mount Meru, number 2 to 5 are the four continents, number 6 to 13 are the eight subcontinents, number 14 is the jewel mountain, number 15 is the wish-fulfilling tree, number 16 is the wish-fulfilling cow, number 17 is the harvest that needs no sowing, number 18 to 24 are the seven attributes of royalty, number 25 is the case of the great treasure, number 26 to 33 are the eight offering goddesses, number 34 is the sun, number 35 is the moon, number 36 is the precious umbrella, and finally number 37 is the royal banner victorious in all directions.[3]
Then, I proceeded to lecture on the wind horse. The wind horse is a particular type of prayer flag that can be seen in many Tibetan settlements. It is called rlung rta in Tibetan. The image of the wind horse prayer flag is usually printed either on cotton or paper according to their different uses. If it is printed on cotton, then the prayer flag will be attached to tall trees or other high places; if it is printed on paper, then it will be threw into the air at the end of the smoke purification rituals.[4] It is said that there are five principle figures on a typical wind horse prayer flag; a horse with a wishing jewel on its back will be placed in the middle, an eagle, a dragon, a tiger, and a lion will be placed in the four corners with the eagle and dragon at the upper corners and lion and tiger at the lower corners. These four animals occupying the four corners of the flag are called the “four great gnyan.”[5] The depiction of the four animals can also be seen in Mipham Rinpoche’s verses on the offering of the wind horse flag that, “In the four directions, a tiger, lion, garuda and dragon, taking flight and soaring in the sky.”[6] Then I told the ritualists that the wind horse prayer flag plays an important role in the bsang ritual; together with the offering of the wind horse flag, the ritual is often called ri bsang rlung rta, which literally means, “the ‘fumigation offering and (the throwing into the wind or planting) of the rlung rta high up in the mountain.”[7] Therefore, it is important for them, the rutialists, to get such prayer flags before they go to perform the bsang ritual to the protector deity. Our artists will be glad to make them.
Finally, I discussed the bsang practice, or the smoke purification ritual. In order to be precise, I read to the ritualists a guide to the practice written by Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima. The guide points out that the offerings for the sang should be, “of noble origin, fine substance and beautifully arranged.”[8] By ‘noble origin,’ it means the offerings should be untainted, “by wrong livelihood and stinginess.” By ‘fine substances,’ it means we should offer the things that were precious to ourselves; things that we do not like or we will not even touch should not be offered. By ‘beautifully arranged,” it means the sang burner and the place where the sang is burnt and offerings are arranged should be neat and clean.[9] Besides, Nyima points out that, “we must co-ordinate the actions of our body, speech and mind;” otherwise the offering will be pointless.[10] There are seven steps of the ritual, namely taking refuge in the Three Jewels, generating the Awakened Mind and the Heart of Bodhicitta, taking the seven aspects of devotional practices, self-visualization as the yidam, purification and blessing of the sang offering, the formal sang offering, and a conclusion practice.[11] Four types of guest should be invited to attend the sang offering. First of all, we should invite the rare and supreme ones that include the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya buddhas, the Dharma and the sangha, and all the gurus, yidam deities, and dakinis; then, we should invite the protectors like the eight great nagas, the right great rahus, the four great kings etc. Then, the six classes of beings (gods, human beings, demi-gods, animals, pretas, hell-beings) should also be invited. Last but not least, the obstructing forces to which we own the karmic debts must be invited; this obviously includes our angered protector deity. And one of the benefits of completing the sang practice is that the debts we own to the obstructing forces will be repaid; “debts that plague us with illness” will be repaid. The obstructing forces, in our case the protector deity, will be, “freed from their karmic vision and all their suffering, and, in particular, they are freed from their malicious intentions and tendencies to harm others.”[12] In other words, the protector deity will be soothed and the curse from him will be put to an end.
After the lecture, I took lunch with Leah, the head teacher of the monastery. I asked her when would the ritualists go to the cairn to perform the ritual, and she told me that they would go there after another 3 days, at the meantime they would familiarize themselves with all the ritual procedures. I am happy to know they will go there in a timely manner, but I am also a little bit worried since if something goes wrong, then the situation may be worsened. The only thing I can do now is to pray and trust the ability of our ritualists.
Bibliography
Karmay, Samten G. The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals, and Beliefs in Tibet. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 1998.
Mandala Offering. Rigpa Shedra. Last modified July 28, 2013. http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Mandala_offering#cite_note-2
Nyima, Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe. A Guide to Sang Practice. Translated by Adam Pearcey. Rigpa Translations, 2006.
Rinpoche, Mipham. The Swift Fulfillment of All Wishes — Offering the Flag of Windhorse.
Thirty-seven Point Mandala Offering. Rigpa Shedra. Last modified April 14, 2010. http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Thirty-Seven_Point_Mandala_Offering.
[1] Mandala Offering, Rigpa Shedra, last modified July 28, 2013, http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Mandala_offering#cite_note-2
[2] Ibid.
[3] Thirty-seven Point Mandala Offering, Rigpa Shedra, last modified April 14, 2010, http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Thirty-Seven_Point_Mandala_Offering.
[4] Samten G. Karmay, The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals, and Beliefs in Tibet (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 1998)., 415.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Mipham Rinpoche,. The Swift Fulfillment of All Wishes — Offering the Flag of Windhorse.
[7] Karmay, The Arrow and the Spindle., 417.
[8] Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima, A Guide to Sang Practice, trans. Adam Pearcey (Rigpa Translations, 2006).
[9] Nyima, A Guide to Sang Practice.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
