The Adventures of a Late Indian Siddha
April and May 2002

It is generally believed that Buddhism ceased to exist in India by the 13th century CE. However, the remarkable Indian yogi-siddha Buddhaguptanatha, teacher of the renowned Tibetan historian Taranatha, converted to Buddhism as late as the early 16th cent CE. His biography depicts an India apparently untouched by the previous Muslim invasions, an India still filled with marvelous places and wondrous Buddhist saints. Buddhaguptanatha's amazing wanderings around India, Central Asia, Tibet and beyond are recorded in his biography, never before fully translated, and it is this, which forms the basis for this series of talks.

Apart from Buddhaguptanatha's life, the series of talks will explore the legacy of Buddhism retained in India in this late period, and briefly deal with teaching lineages which seem to have never been transmitted to Tibet, known today only by name.

This course looks at the way Tibetans have managed to write such complex works and the problems encountered when recording a sublime life in mundane words.

It would be easy to dismiss the mahasiddhas as the "clown princes" of Buddhism, good for a laugh or a story, but somehow less serious than our approach to Buddhism. In doing this we would miss much of the core or flavour of this most important means of transmitting the teachings.

These talks look at the nature of both Indian vajrayana and the so-called "later or developed" tantric practices of Tibet in a largely informal fashion and develop some interesting sidelights in the transmission of the teachings.