Benevolence and Bodhicitta: Displays of Compassion in Tibetan Lamas as Children

Introduction

Tibetan Buddhists believe that suffering permeates all of life and one’s individual liberation is experienced by helping other sentient beings be freed from the cycle of birth and death. This level of compassion is reflected in attributes and actions within the lives of enlightened masters. Some Tibetan biographies and autobiographies contain episodes in which the subjects display extraordinary kindness or sensitivity to animals even as young children. This paper seeks to understand why these episodes are included in these texts. By examining biographical accounts of the early lives of Orgyan Chokyi, Nyagla Pema Dudul, and Lama Shabkar, I argue that childhood episodes of kindness towards animals are included in these texts because they suggest that these individuals had strong karmic links to Buddhism from past lives. This suggestion helped elevate these teachers’ credibility as spiritual exemplars and inspired their audience to deeper practice.

Section One: The Role of Tibetan Biography and Autobiography

Tibetan biography and autobiography play a compelling role in Tibetan literature in that they tell the story of a lama or spiritual master’s journey towards liberation. Whereas Western literature’s genre of biography portrays their subjects as relatable and even flawed, the biographical accounts of Tibetan lamas had to show their subjects as great enlightened beings. This genre is known as rangnam or namthar, which translates roughly as “full liberation.” The tone of these works is both diligent and reverent; they reveal to their audience private details of the path to enlightenment. Tibetan Buddhist scholar Janet Gyatso explains, “Virtually all of these kinds of Tibetan life stories, that is, stories of “full liberation,” share the presumption, or at least the suggestion, that the protagonist reached full liberation, and that the life story being told as an example for others.” Tibetan autobiography often depicts specific moments when, at a young age, the disciple gets weary of worldly life and seeks a spiritual path. The readers of such stories witnessed a teacher with convincing credibility, and worthy of their devotion. Moreover, because these exemplars proved that liberation was possible in human life, these stories fueled a stronger inclination towards practice. Gyatso also writes, “The interesting question about the Tibetan self-written life story, then, is not whether individualistic features are present, but what weight they are given.”³ In a number of these autobiographies, we encounter multiple stories of young practitioners exhibiting heightened concern for animals and their difficult situation as sentient beings.

Section Two: The Life of Orgyan Chokyi

Orgyan Chokyi [Chookie] was an 18th century Buddhist nun who, from her earliest recollections, showed great concern for the natural world and, specifically, for domestic animals. At age eleven, she worked as a goat herder and witnessedthe suffering of what she described as “pitiable” creatures. This was her primary reason for pursuing religious life. During one of her walks home, she expressed her sadness, “On the path I saw bugs on the backs of animals and an anthill on the ground, and I was sad and mournful.”⁴ As Orgyan Chokyi entered young adulthood, she witnessed the killing of a young foal she tended. While the mother horse wailed, Orgyan Chokyi wept as her compassion deepened.

Orgyan Chokyi’s responsibilities kept her confined to working in the kitchen, without being able to pursue spiritual aims. She made offerings, hoping she’d eventually be able to leave and go on retreat. One day she was told, “Now you are ready… Go do whatever is good for the animals in the mountains.” She was overjoyed. She immersed fully into her life as a monastic, and lived for many years isolated in Himalayan caves. Orgyan Chokyi’s kindness towards animals was a fundamental aspect of her practice, and she took refuge in the Dharma. The practice of non-harming helped her reconcile the sorrow she encountered when seeing animals who suffered. Because of her plight as a female in a primarily male monastic community, Orgyan Chokyi maintained a disciplined and devoted spiritual practice. She was an exemplar for her community, and while she’d only occasionally leave the cave for teachings, many in the region knew she was nearby, steeped in meditation, prepared to help other sentient beings.

Section Three: The Life of Nyagla Pema Dudul

Nyagla Pema Dudul’s birth was an auspicious one. Rainbows appeared across the region, a fragrance swept through the air, and right after his birth, his biography claims, Pema sat up and uttered sacred mantras. As a child, he was already viewed as a supreme saint, fully prepared to embark on a life dedicated to the Dharma. However, at the age of fifteen, Pema Dudul’s [Doodle’s] father and siblings passed away, and the wealth and possessions of his family was mostly plundered by thieves. His response to this sudden poverty was to turn towards the Buddha’s teachings; he avoided depression and misery by devoting his time to practice. In a moment of insight, Pema Dudul made the decision to not partake in any harmful act towards other sentient creatures. In a translation of Pema Dudul’s biography The Cloud of Nectar, Oriol Aguilar writes, “If he accidentally killed one of the fallen beings such as animals or insects he felt great anxiety, and his feelings at the sacrifice of a large animal cannot even be expressed.” When Pema was thirty years old, he is said to have retreated to a mountain cave for nine years. He sustained himself on minimal food, water, gifts from birds and honey bees, and eventually on meditation alone. Pema emerged as a fully realized master.

Pema Dudul continued to live in the natural world, teaching in forests and caves, near rivers and mountains. His compassion towards animals influenced how he instructed his disciples. In one account, while speaking to fisherman on a river bank, Pema Dudul had them vow to protect, rather than kill, the very fish they hunted. He taught how difficult it was to obtain a human birth, emphasized the importance of abandoning negative acts, and became an exemplar who furthered liberation for all sentient beings. He used much of his community’s patronage to free animals intended for slaughter, and one of his most significant contributions to Tibetan Buddhist literature is titled “Song of Advice for Giving up the Eating of Meat.”

Section Four: The life of Lama Shabkar

As depicted in his autobiography, Lama Shabkar embodies the true definition of a bodhisattva. The humble and luminous account of Shabkar’s personal liberation story continues to inspire his audience, both monastics and lay people. Similar to Orgyan Chokyi and Pema Dudul’s childhood experiences with suffering, Shabkar declared his allegiance to non-harming after seeing sheep being slaughtered during harvest. Shabkar described the account; “This grim spectacle horrified me and filled me with compassion.” He decided to practice the Dharma and turn away from all destructive actions. Shabkar became an exemplar for the ideal practitioner, and began going on retreat at age sixteen. Descriptions of his experiences with animals, and also plants, take us right to heart of a fiercely compassionate human being; we simply don’t see this same level of empathy within our other two biographies.

In The Life of Shabkar: A Biography of a Tibetan Yogin, Matthew Ricard writes “The most dramatic and pervasive method Shabkar has to provoke a natural response, however, is conversing or singing with natural beings, such as crows, bees, a cuckoo, donkeys, and even a flower. These beings actively listen to Shabkar and often answer him with songs in sustained dialogue about teachings of the Dharma.”⁷ Shabkar learned at a young age that taking the life of a sentient being is the most evil of all misdeeds, and he instructed that releasing animals from slaughter was more noble than killing animals for consumption or ritual. Shabkar’s greatest and most influential accomplishment was ransoming the lives of at least a hundred thousand animals, from goats and yaks, to bird and fish.

Section Five: Purpose of Teacher as Exemplar

These three accounts of Tibetan Buddhist biographies support my claim that biographers and autobiographers make a point to include childhood episodes of kindness towards animals in order to further the greatness of their subject. As these children grow to become established spiritual teachers, they become exemplars due to their lifelong practice of empathy and compassion towards sentient beings. Including these displays of compassion in Tibetan autobiography is critical, since concern for animals at a young age remains an essential trait to exhibit if one is to be a bodhisattva. The bodhisattva vow recognizes that one’s individual liberation is tied up in the liberation of other sentient beings. Because these stories reveal a longevity and commitment to the path, and exemplify the actual practice of living with compassion, these teachers become exemplars. Their lives exhibit the possibility of liberation by offering concrete examples of action that inspire practitioners and devotees. Faith in one’s teacher and the traditional lineage is amplified because biographers elevate the possibility for goodness in practical life.

Section Six: Animal Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism

Animal compassion is a virtue in Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, the Buddha is believed to have been extraordinarily compassionate towards animals. In the Jakata tales, from the Pali Canon, there is a story that tells of the Buddha walking with his disciples and encountering the relics of human bones. The Buddha explains that these bones were his very own from a previous life. He tells the story of his death. While wandering with his brothers in the forest, they came across a starving tigress and her cubs. In a remarkable act of selflessness, he used a piece of bamboo to slice his own throat and placed himself before the tigress so that she could feast on his body and, eventually, feed her cubs.

It makes sense that animal compassion is virtuous given that Buddhism conceives of suffering as any experiential harm. In her article, “The Compassionate Treatment of Animals,” published in the Journal of Religious Ethics, 2017, Holly Gayley explains that: “Unlike enduring debates among European philosophers over the moral status of animals, Buddhists across Asia have long presupposed that all sentient beings, down to the smallest insect, experience suffering and seek release from it.” If one is fully dedicated to the Buddha, compassion for all beings is an essential component of practice.

When attention is directed away from oneself, the recognition of interdependence arises, and overall suffering is reduced. Through generosity and kindness towards all sentient beings, ignorance and egoic affliction are alleviated for Buddhist practitioners. Fortunately, there are many opportunities to practice non-harming and compassion towards animals, such as choosing a vegetarian diet. As Geoffrey Barstow explains in his book Food of Sinful Demons, “It is the fact that animals experience suffering in ways that are familiar to us that makes them appropriate objects of compassion.” Humans encounter non-human suffering in ordinary life, the extent of which provides a rich field of opportunity to exercise compassion. This is particularly helpful given the Buddhist belief in karma.

Section Seven: Karma

As the story of the starving tigress reveals, a central aspect of the belief in non-harming concerns the concept of rebirth. Paradoxically, however, the Buddha did not consider rebirth to be akin to an ever present, unchanging soul traveling through lifetimes. According to Traleg Kyabgon, in his book titled Karma, the Buddha rejected the notion of the reincarnation of a soul as a distinct entity transferred between lifetimes. Instead, rebirth includes only “trace elements, a collection of psychic materials, transferred from one life into the next.”

Karma is the law of cause and effect. Our everyday actions result in positive, negative, or neutral karma. Previous karma influences present experience, and present choices set up future conditions. If karmic elements are included in each individual’s rebirth, then karma from previous lives influences the conditions for one’s present life. Because the early lives of Orgyan Chokyi, Pema Dudul and Lama Shabkar exhibit extraordinary animal compassion at such a young age, it follows that these conditions were set prior to rebirth. The experience of the early lamas suggest a link to past Buddhist lives, because it is precisely Buddhist practice that cultivates such fortunate conditions.

Conclusion

These childhood episodes of kindness towards animals are included in Tibetan biography and autobiography because they elevated the teachers’ credibility, and establish them as genuine Buddhist masters. In addition, the accounts of these spiritual masters inspired their audience to engage in consistent and devoted practice. Lamas and nuns became exemplars of how to navigate life with great compassion, and their teachings extend straight into contemporary Western culture. The human predicament of suffering, birth and death is forever relevant, and reading the stories of Orgyan Chokyi, Pema Dudul and Shabkar encourages one to examine their relationship with other sentient beings and commit to improved modes of living. Our present day choices inform our future experience. Will ours be a society of disregard or respect? Egoism or connection? Violence or compassion? The eight century Buddhist monk, Shantideva, illuminates what is possible.

And with gladness I rejoice

In the ocean of virtue from developing an Awakening Mind

That wishes all beings to be happy,

As well as in the deeds that bring them benefit.

References

1. Min Bahadur, “Namo Buddha And Its Environs: A Legacy of Great Compassion,” Buddhist Himalaya Journal, Vol. 11, 2001–2007.
2. Janet Gyatso, “From the Autobiography of a Visionary.” Religions of Tibet in Practice. (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1997).
3. Janet Gyatso, Apparition of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary: A Translation and Study of Jigme Lingpa’s “Dancing Moon in the Water” and “Ḍākkis Grand Secret-talk. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
4. Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 160–164.
5. Yeshe Dorje, Cloud of Nectar: The Life and Liberation of Nyagla Pema Düdul (Arcidosso: Shang Shung Institute, 2013) 88.
6. Tshogs-drug-raṅ-grol, Źabs-dkar, Matthieu Ricard, Constance Wilkinson, and Michal Abrams. The Life of Shabkar: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Yogin (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2001).
7. David Germano, “An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism.” Lecture, University of Virginia, Virginia, September 7, 2010.
8. Holly Gayley, “The Compassionate Treatment of Animals.” Journal of Religious Ethics 45, no. 1 (2017): 29–57., 30.
9. Geoffrey Barstow, Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet (S.l.: Columbia University Press, 2019) 72.