Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship
The Incredible Feat of the Fast Feet (in Tibetan, rkang mgyogs), Its Textual Sources, and the Question of Madame David-Neel’s Credibility
29 May 2019
Photo: Orna Almogi
May 29th, 2019 - 16.15h Universität Hamburg, Raum 117, Alsterterrasse 1, 20354 Hamburg
The supernormal power known as Fast Feet is a prominent theme in certain Tibetan literary sources. To give two examples: The Great Mask biography’s account of the Tibetan monk Vairocana’s introduction of Mind Series rDzogs-chen teachings from India in the late 8th century is one source with claims to some age, albeit with a problematic transmission history.Although absent from the earliest available biographies of the Great Translator Rin-chenbzang-po (958–1055 CE), the verse biography of the 15th century mentions his employment of the practice in order to cover great distances. The main questions to be considered include first, just how far back into history is this practice known to exist? Then, what were the roles of certain Tibetan teachers such as g.Yung-ston rDo-rje-dpal (1284–1365) and others in promoting it? And finally, how well does the personal observation and discussion by Alexandra David-Neel (1868–1969) of the phenomenon she knows as rlung sgom correspond to what we know about an event in the ritual calender of Zhwa-lu Monastery starting in around the 14th century called the Ma-he’i-mchod-pa, or Offering Rites of the Water Buffalo,* an annual observance that has been discontinued since the 1950’s?
* Perhaps the most important source on this Ma-he’i-mchod-pa practice is the history of the Zhwa-lu abbots by Zhwa-lu Ri-phug-sprul-sku Blo-gsal-bstan-skyong (1804–ca. 1874) entitled dPal zha lu pa’i bstan pa la bka’ drin che ba’i skyes bu dam pa rnams kyi rnam thar lo rgyus ngo mtshar dad pa’i ’jug ngogs, as reproduced by T. Y. Tashigang in Leh, Ladakh in 1971. This text has been studied and partly
translated (the first two chapters only) in a doctoral dissertation recently defended by Puchung Tsering at University of Oslo.
