What do you think, David? You're the historian.

Second century AD. and developing to the middle of the fifth. Thereafter, it reached its fullest flower.

Dates in Indian history are always a mess. One can never arrive at a correct date. With Buddhist texts, for instance, the only fixed dates are arrived at through the Chinese translations, because we know the Chinese were very good on their records. If we have a translation of a particular text done by a particular date, then we know that's the date before which the book existed. But sometimes it's difficult.

That's right. People are not even sure whether there was one or more Vasubandhus. But all those things are secondary, in some sense. The date situation is quite interesting, especially for Indians and Tibetans. I don't even know when I was born. And I'm still alive.

We'll be going into that. The mind that the Yogacarins and tantrikas are talking about is not the mind that we normally experience. We experience the temporal, linear sequence of our thoughts and perceptions taking place each moment, but something gives ground for thoughts and images to take place. There's something beyond our temporary experience of thoughts and images. The Sanskrit term for it would be manas, wouldn't it Doctor?

As a matter of fact, there are two: manas and citta. I think both of them are essentially the same.

In Tibetan, sems nyid is used to distinguish the mind that provides the ground for both subject and object from the ordinary mind, which is just called sems. So, sems and sems nyid are quite different. In mahamudra, especially, this distinction is made very clear.

The traditional biography of Asanga is as fantastic as any biography of the Buddhist masters. Buddhism was dying out in India. A Buddhist nun was so overwhelmed by this fact that she slept with a king and gave birth to Asanga. After that, she slept with a Brahman and gave birth to Vasubandhu. All in order to preserve the Buddhadharma, mind you. Asanga, from childhood, was inspired to preserve the Buddhist tradition. He decided to become a monk and became familiar with the Mahayana tradition. He would have had his training in Madhyamika philosophy. According to the traditional story, Vasubandhu was following Hinayana discipline, until Asanga converted him. Asanga was totally fascinated by the future Buddha. He was fascinated to the extent that it drove him to go into the mountains and meditate in a cave. He would start meditating and wait for some kind of vision from the future Buddha, but nothing would happen. He spent three years in a cave and then finally got sick of it.

So, he left the cave and started going home. He came across a man polishing a gigantic iron staff. Asanga asked "What are you doing?" and the man said, "I'm just trying to make a needle out of this." Asanga thought, "What! Make a needle out of that? I must be too impatient." So, he went back into the cave and again meditated for three years. Then, he got sick of it, because nothing would happen, and he came out again. He became thirsty, so he decided to drink water from a stream and noticed this drip has made a gigantic hole in the rock. He thought, "Even this gentle water drop can produce such a hole in the rock. I must be totally impatient." So, he went go back again. Finally, he just gave up and started walking home and, of all things, he stumbled across a bitch(dog) with a rotten behind. There were maggots crawling into the body. Asanga was so moved by this sight that he cut off a piece of flesh from his thigh. He started licking out the maggots and placed them on the piece of flesh, so that they wouldn't die, so that they could live on his provision. Then, suddenly, Maitreya exhibited himself in front of Asanga.

He was so engrossed in his task that at first he didn't notice, but when he looked up, there's Maitreya. Asanga fell on the ground and started prostrating. He said, "Why haven't you revealed yourself to me before?" Maitreya said, "Because you didn't have enough compassion." That was it: "Because you didn't have enough compassion. Now that you have performed this task, I have revealed myself to you." Then, the story goes that Maitreya taught him the five Treatises, the five major Yogacara philosophical texts or treatises. Asanga supposedly heard all that from Maitreya, so the author is normally regarded as being Maitreya, rather than Asanga. After receiving the teachings, Asanga went off and started his own school. With his brother, with joint effort, they wrote some other texts, things such as the Abhidharmasamuccaya. The Abhidharmasamuccaya wasn't part of Maitreya's texts, it was written by Asanga. That's the end of the story. It's a fascinating one. It's amazing.

That's right. Myths have their own function, too. It doesn't have to be a story about a saint or an enlightened being, it could be a myth about some sea serpent or dragons, whatever. They have their own function, too, for the human mind. I think that without myths, human beings would go berserk. It keeps them sane, as well as insane, in some ways. That's why people keep producing more and more myths, all the time. Myths are fairy tales for adults.

There are about four limbs of the Taisho Tripitaka on the biographies of monks and nuns. The Chinese normally devoted a lot of time to history and fact, rather than fiction, but it's interesting that they have preserved the biographies of monks and nuns. They really are a strange style of story. I think the Tibetan Tripitaka, too, has preserved some of those stories, of the saints and the lives of the monks.

Yes, sure. There are others that are outside the Tripitaka, too. Within each Tibetan school, there would be innumerable biographies and autobiographies of different spiritual masters, every single one of the them totally dramatic. It's interesting. Yes, David?

I think you could say that in the Tibetan Tripitaka, in the Vinaya volumes, a lot of the stories of monks and nuns are illustrative. They illustrate a point of order or a point of some importance in the running of a monastery or in the running of a monk's life. At another level, the type of stories such as you told of Asanga and Vasubandhu is inspirational, purely inspirational and wonderful and we'd be a lot poorer without them. At another level, the stories of the saints, the mahasiddhas, are inspirational to a certain extent, but are also in many respects instructional, part of the direct teaching. Without the stories and a knowledge of the stories and insight into what they mean, the teaching is not complete. So, there are three levels. I suppose there are other levels, too.

That's right. That's precisely what the Tibetans say, as you know. The inner, outer and secret biography of a spiritual master. When you say that the lama gazed at the earthen pot and it cracked, the outer meaning is for people to just get inspired by such an act. On the inner level, it has a symbolic meaning and, from the secret point of view, it would mean something about the master's own spiritual experience, not a physical act as such. So, there are those three levels. Rnam-thar or Tibetan biography literally means story of liberation. It's supposed to tell you the gradual development of the master, how he worked with himself, how he advanced and then finally attained liberation.

Mainly because I thought Western Buddhists, especially Tibetan Buddhist students, generally didn't know very much about Yogacara and Buddhist tantra. Most of them are familiar with the Madhyamika system. That is the predominant type of practice. Not enough thought or attention is really given to this topic. Also, it's not just that Yogacara philosophy or tantra taken separately have been neglected, but it's also the facts about their inter-relationship or how Yogacarins really anticipated tantric concepts. People don't know how much tantra owes to Yogacara. This is my personal feeling. But, I could be wrong.

In relationship to your point about the anticipation of tantra, Rinpoche, I think it's very important and has certainly got me very interested,. The dating of tantra is impossible. How does it start, where does it end, where does it flower? The generally accepted view seems to be the sixth to seventh century AD., which in the light of what we've talked about, the dating of Asanga and Vasubhandu, is very, very important. Although the tantras are considered to have been spoken by the Buddha, which is a contentious issue to some and not to others, certainly their fulfilment owes an immense amount to Yogacara, which predated them by some centuries.

That's the thing. Either people assert, rather than prove, that tantra was taught by the Buddha or see some kind of local cult influence on Buddhist tantra. People say maybe local cults in India gradually influenced Buddhists and tantra developed from there, but they haven't really tried to work out the possibility of one Buddhist school anticipating another Buddhist school. I'm sure there have been a lot of external influences on the ritual side, the iconographical side, but as far as the real tantric philosophical concepts are concerned, people should try to trace them back to Yogacara as much as possible, I think.

Transformation takes place without rejecting the negative energies. That's why Yogacarins and tantrikas are different from other Buddhist schools. In other Buddhist schools, as in all spiritual traditions or disciplines, the negative is something to be suppressed or, better still, disposed of. Yogacarins and tantrikas say that by accepting it, you transform it. You can't relate to your negative energy by being negative towards it. You respond to your negative energies with a positive attitude. So, transformation takes place automatically, in some sense. As they say, they turn into wisdom. We'll get into this later on.

I'd like to say something, Rinpoche. I'm not going to talk about the Buddhist schools that I don't know about, but in the one that I do know about, certainly, negative energies are recognised as such and their transformation comes about just as you say, through recognising them as such. They certainly can't be suppressed, or anything like that. There's no question. I don't understand then, how one can draw a distinction between what you were saying about tantra and Yogacara and my experience, for instance, with Theravada. There doesn't seem to be any difference there. My experience with Theravadin teachers in the forest is that that's exactly what they teach. They teach the transformation of negative energies. If you try to suppress them or treat them in a negative way, you certainly end up worse than you started.

Well, I'll take that back.

There's a book by Walpola Rahula, Zen and the Taming of the Bull, that gives you a lot of the Mahayana ideas found in the Pali sources.