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Approaching the Numinous: Rudolf Otto and Tibetan TantraAuthor(s): Donald S. Lopez, Jr.Source: Philosophy East and West , Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 467-476Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1398815

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Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Approaching the numinous: Rudolf Otto and

Tibetan tantra

In Oriental art there may be no more evocative portrayal of what Rudolf Otto

calls the mysterium tremendum than the wrathful deities of Tibetan Tantric

Buddhism. Fearful in form, wreathed in flames, adorned with garlands of

human heads, and brandishing dagger and skull-cup, their painted images

conjure the feelings of dread and fascination which Otto describes in The Idea

of the Holy. In this seminal work, he sets out to describe the central element

of religious experience such that there is no religion in which it does not live

as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the

name. 1

This article will be an inquiry into whether the holy, described as mys-

terium tremendum, does indeed stand as the core of the tantric path of

Tibetan Buddhism and will be a comparison of the methods of approaching

the holy or numinous as set forth by Otto and Tibetan scholars. The

presentation of tantra given here will follow that of the Gelukba order of

Tibetan Buddhism, relying especially on the writings of Tsong-ka-pa

(1357-1419), its founder.

In The Idea of the Holy Otto rejects the views held by many psychologists,

historians of religion, philosophers, and anthropologists that religion is a

fact in nature and, to be understood, must be seen as a product of the same

laws of nature that determine other natural phenomena. 2 Nor does he see

religion, as does Clifford Geertz, as a system of conceptions formulated by

man in response to ignorance, pain, and injustice.3

Rather, Otto sees religion as a sui generis category, which stands above all

natural processes and whose essence is irreducible and unevolvable. He writes

that if there is any single domain of human experience that presents us with

something unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly it is

that of religious life. 4 This essence he calls the numinous, which is the

object of religious experience, and which we cannot but feel 5 for it eludes

the conceptual way of thinking. 6

Throughout Otto draws sharp distinctions between the natural and the

supernatural and between the rational and the nonrational. The numinous

is not a natural phenomenon and our knowledge of it cannot be gained

empirically; instead, it issues from the deepest foundation of cognitive

apprehension that the soul possesses, and though it of course comes into

being in and amid sensory data and empirical material of the natural world

and cannot anticipate or dispense with those, yet it does not arise out of them,

but only by their means. 7 Further, the numinous is nonrational and com-

pletely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts 8 and can only be sugges-

ted by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of

feeling. 9

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is a doctoral candidate in Buddhist Studies and an instructor in the Department

of Religious Studies, University of Virginia.

Philosophy East and West 29, no. 4 (October, 1979) ( by The University Press of Hawaii. All rights reserved.



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468 Lopez

It is Otto's view that religion cannot be fully understood through reason

and rational thought. To support his claim, he looks not to scripture or

theological treatise, but instead finds his affinity in the words of the mystics,

Weber's religious virtuosos, because they stress the non-rational or supra-

rational elements in religion. 10

The numinous cannot be known through ratiocination; awareness of it

comes only through the feelings it evokes. Consequently, Otto devotes a great

part of The Idea of the Holy to a description of these feelings, the first of

which centers in the subject's sense of creature-consciousness, the emotion of

a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to

that which is supreme above all creatures. 1 It is a recognition of one's

insignificance in the face of the absolute, exemplified by Arjuna's response to

the theophany in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-g£ta.

Next Otto considers the experience of the mysterium tremendum, which

carries with it a complex of feelings, with mysterium denoting that which is

hidden and esoteric, that which is beyond conception or understanding,

extraordinary and unfamiliar. 12 Tremendum evokes a peculiar dread of

something uncanny, aweful, weird, eerie, and absolutely unapproachable,

causing the flesh to creep. Throughout his description, Otto stresses that

although these feelings may have analogs among natural moments of

consciousness, there is a qualitative difference between them. For example, he

characterizes the dread of the tremendum as something other than natural

fear, a terror fraught with an inward shuddering such as not even the most

menacing and overpowering created thing can instil. 13

As the object of these feelings, the numinous is endowed with might,

power, transcendence, absolute overpoweringness, majesty, and a plenitude

of being surpassing any created thing. It has urgency, energy, passion, and

emotional temper. Because it is that which is quite beyond the sphere of the

usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, 14 it is called the wholly other

which brings forth feelings of wonder, amazement, and astonishment. The

numinous produces a captivating attraction in one sensitive to it-the

element of fascination. Otto finds these feeling-responses to be common to all

forms of mysticism.

Not only does he enumerate these various reactions to the numinous, he

also emphatically contends that these feelings are the only media through

which the numinous, or reality, can be known. Words, concepts, reasoning,

and rational thought are incapable of producing true experience of the wholly

other, which can only be firmly grasped, thoroughly understood, and

profoundly appreciated, purely in, with, and from the feeling itself. 15

Otto traces these experiences of the numinous to the most primitive

religious consciousness, where the feeling-response was one of daemonic

dread. This crude consciousness of the numinous evolved over the centuries

to a more elevated and noble experience. Throughout this process of religious



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evolution, however, the object of these feelings remains the nonrational

numinous, and the element of dread felt by the primitive savage, though

superseded by other responses, does not disappear on the highest level of all,

where the worship of God is at its purest. 16 And although this process of

evolution has occurred in all the great religions, it has reached its culmination

in Christianity, which stands out in complete superiority over its sister

religions. 7 Thus, against all those who would see the rise of religion

emanating from any number of natural factors, Otto holds the numinous to

be the basic factor and basic impulse underlying the entire process of

religious evolution. 18

Although Otto discounts reason as having any relation to the numinous

whatsoever, he discovers a close relationship between the feeling of the

numinous and aesthetic experience. He finds the feelings of the sublime, the

beautiful, and the experience of music to be nonconceptual, nonrational, and

wholly other, much like that of the numinous.

Weber also notes such a similarity between religion and art. However,

Weber observes that for the mystic the indubitable psychological affinity of

profoundly shaking experience in art and religion can only be a symptom of

the diabolical nature of art. 19 The mystic is seeking to transcend all form in

order to achieve union with a reality that is beyond form. Weber perceives a

contradiction between religion and art, with the result that the more religion

has emphasized either the supra-worldliness of its God or the other-

worldliness of salvation, the more harshly has art been refuted. 20

Otto on the other hand, far from refuting art, suggests that aesthetic

feelings reveal the transcendent reality, that in great art the point is reached

at which we may no longer speak of the 'magical,' but rather are confronted

with the numinous itself, with all its impelling power, transcending reason,

expressed in sweeping lines and rhythm. 21

Nonetheless, the numinous is a purely a priori category, underivable and

irreducible. It cannot be explained but only presupposed. This numinous

undergoes a process of development whereby it becomes moralized, gaining

ethical meaning through being endowed with rational qualities of absolute-

ness, completeness, morality, purpose, justice, goodness, and love. The wholly

other numinous, having become completely permeated and saturated by

these rational qualities, becomes what Otto calls the holy. He finds these

rational qualities also to be a priori and not to be 'evolved' from any sort of

sense perception. 22 Further, the connection of the numinous to these ethical

qualities, the relation of the nonrational to the rational, is not to be derived

from reasoning, but is also a priori.23

Finally, our capacity for experience of the numinous is a priori as well. The

object of religious experience is the numinous, of which we are aware through

numinous feelings. Objectively, the numinous seems to act as a stimulus for

these feelings. However, from the subject's side there exists an a priori



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470 Lopez

potency which allows the numinous to be experienced. This Otto calls a

hidden, substantive source, from which the religious ideas and feelings are

formed, which lies in the mind independently of sense-experience. 24 It is a

primal element of our psychical nature that needs to be grasped in its

uniqueness and cannot itself be explained by anything else. 25

Despite philosophical problems that may inhere in such a wholesale

attribution of the a priori category to all things religious,26 it is important to

consider Otto's purpose at this point. The Idea of the Holy is not intended as a

philosophical treatise proving the existence of the numinous; rather it is an

apology for the intuitive element of religious experience. Otto does not intend

to persuade the unconvinced with his arguments. His words are offered only

to kindred spirits, those whose innate capacity for the numinous has been

awakened, for whom he eloquently verbalizes the experience of the holy, the

feeling which remains where the concept fails. 27 At the very outset, Otto

invites the reader to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious

experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness.

Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience,

is requested to read no further. 28 It is his purpose then, to suggest this

unnamed Something to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself

feel it. 29

Thus, having stressed the intuitive aspect of religious experience, having

presented numinous feeling for the sake of awakening that feeling, Otto in the

end makes his appeal to feeling. The numinous is something which the

'natural' man cannot, as such, know or even imagine, 30 and no intellectual,

dialectical dissection or justification of such intuition is possible, nor indeed

should any be attempted, for the essence most peculiar to it would be

destroyed thereby. 31 Rather, the numinous must be directly experienced to

be understood.

Once experienced, there need not be doubt concerning the validity of these

numinous feelings for they are a priori by which Otto means that as soon as

an assertion has been clearly expressed and understood, knowledge of its

truth comes into the mind with the certitude of first-hand insight. 32 In short,

religious experience is autonomous, self-validating, and infallible. When the

numinous feelings that Otto describes are experienced, there is immediate

certainty that this is a realization of the deepest truth; religious experience

represents a perception which provides its own evidence. 33

It is Otto's contention that the numinous and the feelings it evokes are

common to all religions. To test this claim in the case of Tibetan tantra, it is

first necessary to identify the numinous element in Buddhism.

According to the Prasangika-Madhyamika school, the highest system of

tenets in Tibet, every object of knowledge, permanent or impermanent, is a

phenomenon (dharma). Even the highest nature of an object, its emptiness, is



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a phenomenon. Taking phenomena in this sense, there are no noumena apart

from phenomena in Buddhism, and our inquiry is cut short.

However, if we take the view found in Western metaphysics that pheno-

mena refer to sense objects and that behind the phenomena which present

themselves in everyday experience, there lie realities whose existence and

properties can be established only by the use of the intellect and which can

hence be described as noumena, 34 we then have a distinction between

noumena and phenomena that can be applied to the Prasangika-

Madhyamika view. That is, impermanent things or products (samskrta), the

appearing objects of direct perception (pratyaksa), are phenomena and those

objects which initially must be known through relying on inference (anumdana)

are noumena.35 For the purpose of comparison with Otto, we may consider

only the most important of such objects-emptinesses (sunyatd)-the ul-

timate truths (paramdrthasatya) of the Prasangika-Madhyamika system, the

realization of which leads to liberation from cyclic existence (samsdra). Otto

identifies emptiness as the numinous element in Buddhism, writing that the

'void' [emptiness] of the eastern, like the 'nothing' of the western, mystic is a

numinous ideogram of the 'wholly other.' 36

An emptiness, according to Prasangika, is an object's lack of inherent

existence (svabhava-siddhi); and when it is realized what appears to the mind

is a clear vacuity accompanied by the mere thought, 'These concrete things as

they now appear to our minds do not exist at all.' 37 In the direct realization

of emptiness, the mind and emptiness are said to be mixed like fresh water

poured into fresh water.38

Since Buddhism is an atheistic religion in the sense that it denies the

existence of a preexistent creator deity, the experience of the numinous does

not carry with it the feeling of creature-consciousness which Otto describes.39

Emptiness is a mere negative, a lack of a falsely conceived predicate of

existence.40

Reference is made in Prasafigika to a fear which arises in the practice of

emptiness. It is said that a person with a slight understanding of emptiness

becomes fearful because the phenomenon suddenly appears to his mind as

not existing at all. 41 When emptiness is realized directly, however, all fear is

dispelled because the source of fear-the conception of true existence-has

disappeared. This fear bears little resemblance to the dread and terror that

Otto describes which produces creeping flesh and which never disappears,

even at the highest level of mystical experience.

Emptiness is neither shrouded in mystery, nor is it a numinous ideogram

of the wholly other. 42 An emptiness is not other than the phenomenon it

qualifies in that they are of the same entity. Through the practice of the path,

emptiness can be realized in a direct, nonconceptual, nondualistic experience

free of doubt and mystery.43



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472 Lopez

Otto holds the mysterious to be an essential attribute of religious ex-

perience and for support points to a mode of manifestation that in every

religion occupies a foremost and extraordinary place, 44 namely, miracle.

Although the settings and circumstances of many Buddhist suitras, especially

in the Mahayana, may be termed magical or miraculous, miracles are not a

central teaching technique of Buddha.

Buddhas neither wash sins away with water

Nor remove beings' suffering with their hands

Nor transfer their realizations to others; beings

Are freed through the teaching of the truth, the nature of things.45

Regarding miracles, it is noteworthy to compare the reactions of Christ and

Buddha in a similar situation-being request to restore the life of a dead

child. Christ resurrected Jairus' daughter,46 while Buddha, in the Parable of

the Mustard Seed,47 used the opportunity to teach the mother of the child the

all-pervasive nature of suffering. In both cases, it can be assumed that one

result was that witnesses were inspired to follow the teaching, although the

techniques of the two teachers were quite different.

Weber notes a more general difference in the style of teaching of Buddha as

compared to those of Jesus and Muhammad:

Neither the short parable, the ironic dismissal, or the pathetic penitential

sermon of the Galilean prophet, nor the address resting on visions of the

Arabic holy leader find any sort of parallels to the lectures and conversations

which seem to have constituted the true form of Buddha's activity. They

address themselves purely to the intellect and affected the quiet, sober

judgement detached from all internal excitement; their factual manner

exhausts the topic always in systematic dialectical fashion.48

The emphasis on reason and analysis which Weber observes in the

Theravada sutttas is also an essential element in the tantric path. In Tsofig-

kha-pa's major work on tantra, The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra, he

explains that before beginning practice one must have firm conviction that the

system one has chosen to follow is correct. A choice between two systems is

not an act of partisanship but should be based on reasoned analysis.

Specifically, the scriptures of the two systems are what are to be analysed to

find which does or does not bear the truth; thus, it would not be suitable to

cite them as proof (of their own truth). Only reason distinguishes what is or is

not true. 49

Citation of scripture, mere belief, or respect are not suitable bases for

strong conviction in a system of practice, as is evident in this quotation from

the Buddha:

Monks and scholars should

Well analyze my words,

Like gold (to be tested) through melting, cutting, and polishing,

And then adopt them, but not for the sake of showing me respect.50



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Reasoning is also essential to the practice of emptiness, through which the

wisdom is generated which bestows liberation from suffering. According to

Tsong-kha-pa's Ge-lug-pa order, it is a basic tenet of all three Buddhist

vehicles-Hinayana, Perfection, and Mantra (or Tantra)-that direct re-

alization of emptiness is gained through an initial acquaintance with an

inferential realization of emptiness gained through reasoning, the basis of

which is empirical. The fourteenth Dalai Lama, the current leader of the

Gelukba order, states that the generation of a conceptual consciousness

realizing emptiness must depend solely on a correct reasoning.

Fundamentally, therefore, the process traces back solely to a reasoning, which

itself must fundamentally trace back to valid experiences common to our-

selves and others. 51 Such reasonings are those set forth by Nagarjuna in his

Treatise on the Middle Way (Madhyamakasdstra).

According to Ge-lug-pa, the many reasonings presented by Nagarjuna are

explicitly intended for the purpose of destroying the conception of inherent

existence, the root cause of suffering. As far as this false conception forms the

basis of philosophical systems, it can be said that Nagarjuna's arguments

refute the positions of those systems. Nevertheless, the fundamental purpose

of reasoning in Prasafigika-Madhyamika is to generate the wisdom which

eradicates suffering and its causes. Refutations of opposing tenet systems are

subsidiary.

A number of differences are thus evident between Otto and the Buddhist

Ge-lug-pa position regarding the numinous element of religious experience.

Otto's observations are astute when applied to the Abrahamic religions and

theistic Hinduism. Yet the strength of his argument often relies on the

existence of a creator deity endowed with the qualities of transcendence,

majesty, and power, from whom man seeks atonement, which Otto sees as a

longing to transcend this sundering unworthiness, given with the self's

existence as 'creature' and profane natural being. 52

It is difficult to construe a parallel with Buddhism, which lacks such a

creator god of whom we are creatures. The religious impulsion in Buddhism

is not a priori, but a natural reaction to suffering and the practice of a

prescribed set of teachings to escape that suffering, for the sake of oneself in

Hlnayana, for others in Mahayana.53 The dharma is not an end in itself but,

like a raft, is to be discarded upon reaching the further shore.54

According to Malinowski's distinction between magic and religion, one is

then forced to assign Buddhism to the category of magic, which he defines as

a practical art consisting of acts which are only means to a definite end

expected to follow later on 55 and which are not ends in themselves. This is

not to suggest that Buddhism is indeed magic, but rather to point out the

difficulty, also encountered in Otto, in making general statements which are

intended to hold true for all religions.

Returning to Otto, the more important point, however, is his contention



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that reasoning has no part in religious experience, where coercion by proof

and demonstration and the mistaken application of logical and juridical

processes should be excluded. 56 For him, the absolute exceeds our power

to comprehend; the mysterious wholly eludes. 57 The nonconceptual, non-

rational numinous cannot be approached with conceptuality and reason;

mysticism has nothing to do with 'reason' and 'rationality.' 58

According to the Ge-lug-pa position, the direct experience of emptiness, in

both the sutra and tantra systems, is nonconceptual. Yet without relying on

reasoning and analysis, such an experience is impossible. In answer to how

analysis and thought can serve as a cause for nonconceptuality, the fifth Dalai

Lama (1617-1682) cites the Kasyapa Chapter Sutra (Kdayapa-parivarta):

Kashyapa, it is thus: For example, fire arises when the wind rubs two

branches together. Once the fire has arisen, the two branches are burned. Just

so Kashyapa, if you have the correct analytical intellect, a superior's faculty

of wisdom is generated. Through its generation, the correct analytical intellect

is consumed. 59 That is, conceptual thought can lead to experience of the

nonconceptual, that which is beyond thought.

Reasoning alone, however, is not sufficient; the process of insight is not

merely an intellectual exercise. Reasoning is an essential element of wisdom,

the third element in the triad of ethics (sTla), meditative stabilization (sam-

ddhi), and wisdom (prajida), all of which are necessary for realization of

emptiness. For example, a bodhisattva of the suitra system must engage in

limitless forms of the six perfections (paramita)-giving, ethics, patience,

effort, concentration, and wisdom-over many aeons in order to accumulate

the merit which will empower his mind to penetrate emptiness and eventually

overcome all obstructions.60 In the tantra system, a special technique-deity

yoga-is taught which allows this accumulation of merit to proceed more

quickly.61 Thus, the process of reasoning must be conjoined with ethical and

meditative practices to yield realization of emptiness.

Reasoning must be used because emptiness is a hidden phenomenon

(paroksa), unable to appear to direct perception without initially depending

on reasoning.62 For Otto too, the numinous is hidden in the sense that it is

something which has no place in our scheme of reality but belongs to an

absolutely different one, and which at the same time arouses an irrepressible

interest in the mind. 63 For him, reasoning cannot be the key to the

experience of the numinous because our knowledge has certain irremovable

limits. 64

We find then, two different approaches to this hidden numinous, in-

accessible to ordinary sense perception. For the Ge-lug-pas, the process of

reasoning and analysis leads to the experience of reality. For Rudolf Otto,

reasoning must be discarded, for reality-the holy-is only to be known

through feeling.



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NOTES

1. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University

Press, 1976), p. 6.

2. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Religion. An Anthropological View (New York: Random House,

1966), p. vi.

3. Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, in Reader in Comparative Religion: An

Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, 3d ed. (New York: Harper

and Row, 1972), pp. 171-174.

4. Otto, p. 4.

5. Ibid., p. 5.

6. Ibid., p. 2.

7. Ibid., p. 113.

8. Ibid., p. 5.

9. Ibid., p. 12.

10. Ibid., p. 22.

11. Ibid., p. 10.

12. Ibid., p. 13.

13. Ibid., p. 14.

14. Ibid., p. 26.

15. Ibid., p. 34.

16. Ibid., p. 17.

17. Ibid., p. 142.

18. Ibid., p. 15.

19. Max Weber, Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions, in From Max

Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 342.

20. Ibid., p. 343.

21. Otto, p. 67.

22. Ibid., p. 112.

23. Wach notes that critics have found this to be the weakest element in Otto's presentation.

See Joachim Wach, Types of Religious Experience Christian and Non-Christian (Chicago, Illinois:

University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 222. For an analysis of this relationship between the

numinous and morality and of the process of schematization whereby the numinous becomes

endowed with rational qualities see John P. Reeder, The Relation of the Moral and the

Numinous in Otto's Notion of the Holy, in Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays, ed.

Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 255-292.

24. Ibid., p. 114.

25. Ibid., p. 124.

26. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Otto, Rudolf, by William J. Wainwright.

27. Ibid., p. xxi.

28. Ibid., p. 8.

29. Ibid., p. 6.

30. Ibid., p. 51.

31. Ibid., p. 147.

32. Ibid., p. 137.

33. Joachim Wach, Understanding and Believing: Essays by Joachim Wach, edited with an

Introduction by Joseph M. Kitagawa (Boston, Massachusetts: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 8.

34. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Metaphysics, Nature of, by W. H. Walsh.

35. Geshe Lhundup Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins, Practice and Theory of Tibetan Buddhism

(Rider: London, 1976), p. 134.

36. Otto, p. 30.

37. Tenzin Gyatso, The Buddhism of Tibet and the Key to the Middle Way (New York: Harper

and Row, 1975), p. 77.



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476 Lopez

38. Tsong-ka-pa, Tantra in Tibet: The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra (London: Allen and

Unwin, 1978), p. 191.

39. Ninian Smart criticizes Otto on this point using the example of Theravada Buddhism. See

Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1969), p. 113.

40. Tenzin Gyatso, p. 77.

41. Ten-dar-hla-ram-pa (bsTan-dar-lha-ram-pa), A Presentation of the Lack of One and Many,

an Elimination of Error Collected from the Ocean of Good Explanations (Gcig du bral gyi rnam

gzhag legs bshad rgya mtsho las btus pa'i 'khrul spong bdud rtsi'i gzegs ma) (Lhasa: Great Press at

the base of the Potala, Fire Dog Male year of the sixteenth cycle), blockprint of 43 folios, pp.

3a-3b.

42. Otto, p. 30.

43. Tsoiig-kha-pa, pp. 191-192.

44. Otto, p. 63.

45. Kensur Lekden, Meditations of a Tibetan Tantric Abbot, trans. and ed. Jeffrey Hopkins

(Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974), p. 109.

46. Mark 5:21-43.

47. Sutta Nipdta, trans. V. Fausb6ll, in Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1881), Vol. 10, pt. 2,

pp. 11-15.

48. Max Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, trans. and ed.

Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 225.

49. Tsofig-kha-po, p. 87.

50. Tenzin Gyatso, p. 55.

51. Ibid., pp. 55-56.

52. Otto, p. 55.

53. Tenzin Gyatso, pp. 28-29.

54. Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-Nikdya), trans. I. B. Horner, Pali Text Society

Translation Series, No. 29 (London: The Pali Text Society, 1976), 1:173-74.

55. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (New York: Anchor

Books, 1954), p. 88.

56. Otto, p. 145.

57. Ibid., p. 141.

58. Ibid., p. 4.

59. The Fifth Salai Lama, The Practice of Emptiness, trans. Jeffrey Hopkins (Dharamsala,

India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974), p. 21.

60. Na-wang-pel-den (Ngag-dbang-dpal-ldan), Presentation of the Grounds and Paths of the

Four Great Secret Tantra Sets (gSang chen rgyud sde bzhi'i sa lam gyi rnam gzhag rgyud gzhung

gsal byed) (modern blockprint, rGyud smad par khang, date and place of publication not given),

pp. 7a3-8al.

61. Tsoiig-kha-pa, p. 60.

62. Ibid., p. 32.

63. Otto, p. 29.

64. Ibid., p. 59.

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