Buddhist Philosophy Between Worlds: Gelug Presentations of Buddhist Philosophy at the Tibetan Monastery and the North American Dharma Centre

The curricula of the Gelug monasteries are rooted in the presentation of the scholar-practitioner Tsongkhapa (tsong kha ba blo bzang grags pa, c. 1357–1419 BCE), who emphasized the importance of the Classical Treatises (rgya gzhung) as the “supreme and authentic instructions for those who desire liberation” (1410, p.51). These texts were written in Sanskrit by great Indian scholars (paṇḍitas) between the 4th and 6th centuries CE and translated into Tibetan beginning in the 9th century CE.

The Gelug monastic culture, inspired in part by the curriculum of the tenth century Kadampa monastery of Sangpu, positions five key rgya gzhung as the roots of its educational system (Cabezón and Dorjee, 2019). These texts, and their associated explanatory volumes known as yig cha composed by later Tibetan scholars remain at the centre of the monastic curriculum up to the present day.

The Tibetan approach to understanding these texts is through the lens of two intellectual modes of training: "the explanation of texts through commentary and the investigation of their meaning through dialectical debate" (Dreyfus, 2003, p. 99). Upon the completion of the curriculum emphasizing these great texts and their Tibetan commentaries over a period of eighteen to twenty years, monastic graduates receive the title of Geshe (dge bshes).

Since the late 1960s, Tibetan monastic scholars have been teaching Buddhism in contemporary secular societies such as North America. In the subsequent decades, the Vajrayāna tradition of Buddhism has emerged as a significant spiritual tradition with a "global mandala" that transcends borders (Zablocki, 2005). As Buddhism has become more established in the global West, people from a variety of ethnicities and social backgrounds have emerged as Vajrayāna teachers. Along with this development, a tension between difficult to definite categories of “modern” and “traditional” Buddhism has emerged.

 The cross-cultural transfer of Tibetan Buddhist knowledge has also moved beyond the walls of the monastery or dharma centre and into fields as diverse as neuroscience, psychology, wellbeing, and education (Epstein, 2013). Buddhism is presented in these contexts as a rational, non-religious, and even scientific religion (Ng, 2016). These developments have led to questions regarding adaptation and appropriation as Tibetan Buddhism becomes established in Western countries.

My conversations Tibetan teachers over the course of my research have highlighted their concerns regarding the secularization of the Buddhist teachings and the potential consequences of adulteration. The opinions of these teachers occupy a central focus in my research, as their indigenous perspectives offer a counterbalance to the “whiteness problem” identified in Buddhist studies by several contemporary scholars of Buddhism (Gleig, 2019; Kassor, 2021).

In response to my questions about these tensions around adulteration and adaptation of Buddhism, the majority of the Geshes have mentioned maintaining the central role of the rgya gzhung classical texts as crucial to the long-term stability of the tradition. This paper takes as its starting point the emphasis Tibetan Buddhist teachers continue place on these ancient treatises in the present day.

It examines their experiences when presenting these traditional teachings to diverse modern audiences, and the challenges they face in the process. The ideals of monastic students from heritage Buddhist backgrounds and Westerners educated in secular societies are vastly different, and profoundly impact how Buddhism is received in different cultural contexts (Berzin, 2020). In other words, what students expect to get from Buddhist teachings differs greatly in diverse environments.

Cultural disconnects are one the main barriers Geshes face when presenting traditional teachings to Western audiences. Daniel Cozort relates an example “Once when His Holiness the Dalai Lama was teaching at Harvard, he was asked to advise students dealing with self-hatred and had to confer at length with several advisors to address a concept theretofore absent from his understanding of human nature. And the Dalai Lama probably knows as much about the Western mind as any Tibetan teacher anywhere" (2003, p. 222).

Considering the traditional material contained within the Classic Texts (rgya gzhung) and the challenges of presenting their at times conservative standpoints to modern audiences, what are the commonalities between human beings at Tibetan monasteries in India and those living in North America that make the material relevant to both audiences? How do Tibetans adapt their pedagogies to facilitate the explication of the texts in a totally different environment?

My interlocutors have shared that the commonalities of the problems of all human beings across cultures and time periods, that of reducing suffering and finding lasting happiness, can be solved through the teachings contained within these volumes. According to the Mahāyāna Buddhist teachings “there is not a single being in… this immense ocean of suffering who in the course of time without beginning has never been our father or mother” (Patrul, 1998, p. 7), a good teacher has a responsibility is to present the unadulterated message of the texts that can genuinely lead them to liberation.

Based on my conversations with a number of experienced Tibetan teachers over the course of my doctoral research, I plan to share further insights regarding the Classical Texts and their presentation in North America at the AAR. In the story of Buddhism in the West to date, the views of monastically trained Tibetan teachers have been underrepresented and are key to understanding how traditional Buddhist philosophy interacts with modern secular audiences.