The Art of Imagination at the Intersection of pramāṇa & samaya: Normative Epistemology & Tantric Ethics in Early Dzogchen

Since the 19th century reforms associated with Ju Mipham, Nyingma philosophy has traditionally emphasized its use of normative epistemological discourse (pramāṇa) in the service of validating the tantric view of primordial purity, a practice Mipham traces to the translator, Rongzom (fl. 11th-12th c.), arguably the trend's Tibetan inaugurator. In his Beacon of Certainty (nges shes rin po che sgron ma), Mipham traces the Nyingma practice of tantric pramāṇa validating the inseparability of the two truths qua primordial purity as the distinctive providence of Old School Vajrayāna philosophy, a practice he roots in Rongzom's Establishing Appearance as Divine (snang ba lhar bsgrub pa), which was composed in a time when Buddhist Tibet was animated by absorption of two strains of thought: the esoteric ritual, of Vajrayāna and a normative pan-Indian epistemology, pramāṇa. There an unstudied trend prevalent in Tibet's Old School, authors, such as Rongzom, married the two trends, thus yoking pramāṇa to task of adjudicating and authorizing Vajrayāna. This paper details Rongzom's tantric pramāṇa––in terms of both classical epistemology and Nyingma tantra––and argues that, in classic vāda-śāstra style, the purpose of Establishing Appearance as Divine is less about the perspicacity of propositional epistemological logic or "right view" or winning a debate than it is about validating the ideology behind a practical epistemology of tantric ethics (samaya).