The 20th century German legal theorist and Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt famously wrote that “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt, 5), a statement which draws on European Christian theologies of divine action to justify a politics defined by the executive’s absolute authority. This paper approaches the problem of authoritarianism that Schmitt raises by focusing on a paradigmatic figure of power and exceptionality in Tibetan Buddhist political and religious thought, that of the bodhisattva. Examining how Tibetan Buddhist thinkers working in three different time periods and political environments theorize the bodhisattva’s power, this paper asks how such framings of bodhisattva power illuminate Tibetan debates regarding the moral dimensions of charisma and leadership, and the possibilities for freedom with respect to the state.
The power of advanced Buddhist practitioners, bodhisattvas, and Buddhas has been a topic of sustained attention for Tibetan intellectual traditions since the early centuries of Buddhism in Tibet. Parallelling, bolstering, or challenging royal authority and resources, and offering exemplars of both fierce efficacy and gentle benevolence, the figure of the enlightened bodhisattva overlaps in significant ways with the figure of the ruler. This paper suggests that descriptions of bodhisattva power and practice are crucial sites where Tibetan exegetes theorize power more broadly. In such thematizations of bodhisattva activity, the potentially limitless power of enlightened beings serves as a touchstone for negotiating ambivalences about the political power of rulers and governments, their morality, and the possibility of restraining their actions.
Tibetan thinkers build on Indian tantric taxonomies to map enlightened activity across what are known as the Four Activities (‘phrin las rnam bzhi). These activities include those that are pacifying (zhi ba), enriching (rgyas pa), magnetizing (dbang ba), and subduing or wrathful (drag po). Actions in these four modes may be enacted by Buddhas and enlightened bodhisattvas for the benefit of others, or ritually and imaginatively engaged in by practitioners on the bodhisattva path as part of their tantric practice. The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s (in part retroactive) association with the Tibetan emperors and later with the Dalai Lamas, among many other figures, offers the best-known example of this repertoire of conceptual tools, through which Tibetan thinkers negotiate challenging ethical questions surrounding power’s uses. As Mills (2012) and Lopez and Rockefeller (1987) discuss, Tibetan authors at multiple periods have seen the Four Activities as touchstones for reflecting on the morality of a ruler’s or religious leader’s power, in particular the morality of military and juridical violence.
At the same time, the figure of the bodhisattva provides resources for critiquing and contesting the actions of powerful people, in particular via the rhetoric and practice of renunciation and altruism. Renunciation and altruistic intention, cornerstones of Mahayana Buddhist practice in general, are often invoked in this context as guardrails for the proper use of power. This paper examines three well-known texts that elucidate bodhisattva power in light of the Four Activities from varying vantage historical points, all turning in various ways on the tension between a bodhisattva’s renunciatory restraint, and his or her capacity for unrestricted power.
The first text discussed, The Thirty-seven Practices of The Bodhisattva (rgyal sras lag len so bdun ma), by Gyelse Tokme Zangpo (rgyal sras thogs med bzang po, 1295-1369), establishes a rhetoric of altruism and renunciation that serves as a delimiting moral framework for bodhisattva activity. The second text is a portion of the Essence of Clear Light commentary on the Guhyagarbha Tantra (gsang 'grel phyogs bcu'i mun sel gyi spyi don 'od gsal snying po), by Ju Mipam Gyatso ('ju mi pham rgya mtsho, 1846-1912, himself notable for other works that directly address questions of political power and morality), that analyzes the Four Activities within the context of the bodhisattva’s compassionate intentionality. This text acknowledges both the dimension of restraint and the dimension of decisive action. The third text discussed is the 13th Dalai Lama’s last Testament, in which the Dalai Lama predicts the crises Tibet will face and describes his own actions as Tibet’s protector.
Only one text considered here is by an explicitly political figure in an explicitly political genre. Yet read together, these three texts offer an incisive commentary on the imaginal dynamics that link the figures of bodhisattva and ruler. In so doing, all three texts highlight the ambivalent nature of the figure of the sovereign. These Tibetan approaches to the exercise of political power have a further relevance as well. Offering philosophical resources for rejecting authoritarianism that go beyond those found in continental European political thought, these Tibetan theories of bodhisattva power emerge as generative for a range of contemporary contexts.
Sources:
ʼJu mi pham ʼjam dbyangs rnam rgyal rgya mtsho. “gSang ʼgrel phyogs bcuʼi mun sel gyi spyi don ʼod gsal snying po.” gSung ʼbum mi pham rgya mtsho, vol. 19, Lama Ngodrup And Sherab Drimey, 1984–1993, pp. 3–274. Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC), purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW23468_11370F. [BDRC bdr:MW23468_11370F]
“rGyal sras lag len so bdun ma.” rGyal sras thogs med kyi bkaʼ ʼbum thor bu, Kun bzang stobs rgyal, 1975, pp. 108–13. Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC), purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW2CZ6641_A450BE. [BDRC bdr:MW2CZ6641_A450BE]
Lopez, Donald S., et al. 1987. The Christ and the Bodhisattva. State University of New York Press.
Mills, Martin A. 2012. “Ritual as History in Tibetan Divine Kingship: Notes on the Myth of the Khotanese Monks.” History of Religions 51:3, 219-220
Schmitt, Carl. 2005 (1922). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tā laʼi bla ma 13 thub bstan rgya mtsho. "lugs gnyis kyi blang dor bslab byaʼi rtsa tshig gi rim pa phyogs bkod lhaʼi rnga dbyangs (ji)." In gsung ʼbum thub bstan rgya mtsho. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1981–1982. Vol. 4: 338–342
Influenced by European Christian conceptions of divine power, the 20th century German legal theorist and Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt famously wrote that “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt, 5). This paper approaches the problem of authoritarianism that Schmitt raises by focusing on a paradigmatic figure of power and exceptionality in Tibetan Buddhist political and religious thought, that of the bodhisattva. Examining how Tibetan Buddhist thinkers in three different time periods and political environments theorize bodhisattva power, intentionality, and action, this paper asks how these framings illuminate Tibetan debates regarding the moral dimensions of charisma and leadership, and the possibilities for freedom with respect to the state.