I just wanted to comment that in the gryud bla ma, g.yung drung translates the Sanskrit śāśvata, one of four similar adjectives for “permanent” ascribed to the suviśuddhaḥ sattvadhātuḥ (the four are nitya, dhruva, śiva, and śāśvata).

The Ratnagotravibhāga explains these terms as the dharmakāya being free from birth, death, sickness, and old age, respectively . It’s interesting to note the similarity to the hermeneutical strategy adopted by the Dunhuang manuscript, especially considering the RGV was traditionally considered lost pre-11th century.

So I just wanted to note that, given the importance of the rgyud bla ma, especially in the gzhan stong pa and bka’ bryud pa traditions, g.yung drung has been alive and well in later Tibetan Buddhism.

Many thanks for your comments. I can at least come down from the clouds for long enough to see that you must be right about the yungdrung of substances. And I’m willing to consider “perfect” and “imperfect” as better translations of yang dag and yang dag ma yin. It’s always nice to see how the Dunhuang materials can be linked to contemporary practices, expecially in “Bon”.

I believe I have the solution for your puzzle about the “yungdrung of substances”. Since you have been abiding in the lofty heights of rdzogs chen, you perhaps don’t notice the gtor mas and banging drums of the everyday temple. This is the material yungdrung, the swastika which would be ritually used as the symbolic support for eternity/longevity, as it still is today. We have been working on a contemporary longevity ritual in which a yellow swastika is put in the south-west of the mandala and acts as the shrine of the life-spirit (bla yi rten mkhar). The phrasing here is quite typical of commentaries on ritual texts: the material vajra is the material vajra; the material phur pa is the material phur pa; self-explanatory so no need of further explanation. You have a slightly “incorrect” (or imperfect) nuancing of yang dag pa here, I think. And the word you give as lha in the final line looks perhaps like lta instead (but I’m only looking at the image, so the original might make lha clearer?) Either could work, but assuming it is lta, here is my amended version of your translation:
“Yungdrung comprises perfect yungdrung and imperfect yungdrung. Of these, imperfect yungdrung itself comprises the yungdrung of words and the material yungdrung. The yungdrung of words means all of the names drawn from yungdrung. The material yungdrung means the material yungdrung symbol [ie. the swastika symbol]. Even though this is also yungdrung, it is imperfect yungdrung.
Perfect yungdrung means the following: when you are abiding as the Bhagavan Vairocana and his entourage of bodhisattvas, you enter into the essential meaning of the unborn nature of phenomena, so you are no (longer) subjected to birth or death. When (you) partake in the view (of) the eternity/yungdrung of the (deity’s) lifespan, this is perfect yungdrung.”

Thanks for bringing our attention to these Dunhuang understandings of g.yung drung. With the sku tshe in the final part, it looks to me like we already have in place something like the longevity rituals we have now, which accomplish relative longevity through focusing on the immortality of realisation.

Cathy

The arms of the Bonpo swastika go left (anticlockwise).

Daoist attitudes concerning immortality were/are quite varied.

The ‘waidan’ external alchemy, may have had more to do with living a long life, ingesting pills (often containing mercury); whereas the ‘Neidan’ internal alchemy was more refined (medtative) and has many similarities to recognising the deathless nature of mind (Rigpa). Livia Kohn is a good source for these discussions.

http://yungdrung-rignga-ling.forums-free.com/

This forum has very famous moderators and members with Phd and professor title and can guarantee a professional answer on all your questions regarding the Bön culture like: Dzogchen, Tantra and Sutra.

Best wishes.

In Bön:
Kalden Yungdrung

As for g.yang, I found in one Dunhuang scroll of tantric prayers the term g.yang-’dren, an old word meaning “to invite” (or to “conduct” to “blessing/prosperity”?). Surprise, another near homophone for g.yung-drung…

And phye-ma-leb is etymologized as ‘flour flats’ or ‘powder planks.’ Although it just means parpar, or butterfly.

I like the idea that some vowel harmony might be involved. I think it does happen in Tibetan, and not only in Mongolian where it’s the rule rather than the exception.

You also have the wonderful word g.yang, that has some kind of meaning of ‘blessing’ in the sense of prosperity. Do you have it in Dunhuang with a more abstract meaning than ‘livestock’ (sheep & goats… in SE Asia it [yang] also seems to be a ’spiritual’ concept at times, and don’t you have it in Chinese?).

I was thinking of yun-ring, actually, since it means a long duration, which would fit with the ‘unchanging’ or ‘eternal’ meaning of g.yung-drung…

I think we’re circling around, which might be getting somewhere.

You think it might be a ‘dod-rgyal after all?

Your
Dab

Drung(s) as ‘root’ seems plausible. And then there’s drang(-po), meaning straight, upright, honest, and so on. It’s a bit of a stretch, but seems to be the kind of meaning that ought to be associated with the Tibetan kings and their rule.

As for g.yung: thinking of the swastika symbol and its left (or sometimes right, I know) turned ’spokes’ I wonder if there is anything in the similarity between g.yon (left), g.yas (right) and g.yung? There is a family resemblance here, don’t you think, especially g.yon/g.yung? And if we allow a little more vowel fluctuation, can we move from drung to drangs (‘to lead / pull’)? Then we could have a description of the swastika symbol ‘leading’ to the ‘left’, or anticlockwise (counterclockwise for those in the US). Fanciful, I know.

Are we getting anywhere–or just going round in circles?

It’s kind of unusual, isn’t it, for a truly two-syllable (with the 2nd syllable also being an identifiable word and not just a functional affix like -ba) not to be etymologizable. (Like me-tog, ‘flower’ being analyzable as ‘fire tip.’) It sure doesn’t look like a borrowing or a calque translation for something in another language. These possibilities being eliminated as unlikely, I guess it must have been of local formation.

So why not attempt its etymology as such?

I imagine some alternative forms of spelling, like g.yu-rung (try the THDL online translation tool for it), might be relevant to the effort.

Then there’s what is supposed to be an obsolete term for it, gzha’-gsang, which is glossed by g.yung-drung already in the relatively early “old-new” vocabulary by Dbus-pa Blo-gsal, as studied by Prof. Mimaki-san. This, too, is a rather odd word, don’t you think?

You know that g.yung and rgod are common in your Old Tibetan texts, with the first meaning ‘civilian’ & the 2nd meaning military.

Drung[s] has been listed in some vocabularies as meaning ‘root’ (rtsa-ba).

Are we getting anywhere?

Your
Dab