I’m a little disappointed that our tempest in a teapot sputters out so quickly.

We could have kept this going longer, this pretense of resolute opposition.

I 100% agree that there is plenty of evidence that Tibetan historians were often critical with their sources (thinking hard about where the author is coming from), some more than others, just as historians today often are, some more than others. If anything, they probably had a lot more training in (and respect for) logic, and therefore rationality, than most of our contemporaries, including the historians. I’m with you there, but I think there are not so many people together with us on this issue.

But when I subject the opposing narratives of the origins of kingship (likewise the opposing narratives the origins of Dharma) in Tibet to hard (perhaps we could say rational) thinking, I see the apparently (well, for many) irrational account of sky-origins to be the most believable candidate for being original and therefore the etymon, the ‘true story’ that as historians is one of the things we most try to find out.

That’s about all I wanted to say. But wait, aren’t there some biologists who believe in the sky-origins of DNA? Are they being rational?

The academics are mostly looking for the approval of their peers. They don’t want to be laughed off the podium. Sometimes they seem to be expending most of their rationality on that particular goal of theirs, which is quite a different one from finding out what’s somehow true or beautiful or useful or right.

Dab’s 2 cents. He feels a tad better 2 day.

Yours,
Dab

When the Great Fifth defends the original version of the Lhatotori story, he accepts that it is “beyond thought”. Though he points to the stupidity of anyone who would reject a historical story on those grounds alone, he seems to accept that there is a distinction there.

So what? Well I suppose it’s that ‘traditional’ Tibetan historians are sometimes characterized as naïve in their acceptance of historical stories that aren’t amenable to rational analysis (the so-called ‘legends’). Nelpa Paṇḍita’s treatment of the Lhatotori story shows that this is wrong (and there are many other examples that would do the same work). On the other hand the Great Fifth shows that we should try to understand how most Tibetan historians accepted the validity of such stories while at the same time accepting that they went beyond rational thought (bsam las ‘das pa).

Not that I think I’m introducing anything new to you here, but I don’t agree that the story of the dharma falling from the sky is the more rational. I think, like the Great Fifth, we should preserve the distinction between stories that are acceptable to reason and those that go “beyond thought”. But like him, we do not need to reject the latter out of hand; one account of what happened in the prehistory of Tibet shouldn’t be favoured over another purely because it has the flavour of ‘rationality’.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

I think the *only* genuinely old true stories are the ones that involve things or persons coming from the sky.

Like in the story of the first Tibetan Emperor in the BCE’s. The ‘rational’ stories are all borrowed from Indian legendary accounts, not Tibetan traditions.

And the ‘rational’ story of the first introduction of Buddhist sacred objects is that it descended from the sky.

Why so?

Because the story of the 2 human visitors is, I think, just a borrowing from (and slight transformation of) the story of the origins of Buddhism in China, in which two people come with a white horse bearing scriptures.

But we know that Dharma/scriptures did come from the sky already in India. See Paul Harrison’s marvelous article “Mediums and Messages” in The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. vol. 35, nos. 1-2 (2003), pp. 115-151, at footnote no. 51 on p. 142. According to this, there is a quote from the Dharmasaṅgīti Mahāyāna Sūtra (‘Phags pa chos yang dag par sdud pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo) that is contained in the Śikṣā Samuccaya (Bslab pa kun las btus pa), for which Harrison gives the Sanskrit along with the English translation:

“For one whose resolve is perfect, lord,
if there are no Buddhas
the sound of the dharma
emanates from the sky and
from the trees in bud.
For the bodhisattva whose resolve is pure
all instructions and admonitions
emanate from his [or *her*!] own imagination.”

I’ve seen this same verse (well, the part about “the trees in bud” reads instead ‘walls and trees’… Deuteronomy came out of a wall, for instance) quoted at least twice by defenders of the ‘revealed treasures’ (gter-ma) in response to their critics.

To sum up, the real story is that things and persons come from the sky. Dharma in particular can come straight from the heart of space. ET of all people ought to know this. That what Dab say. Bad Dab day, OK?

Yours,
Dab