Analysis Of Fount Of Scripture And Reasoning By Sokdokpa

1. Thesis Introduction

This thesis is a translation and study of the text called “Fount of Scripture and Reasoning: Responses to the Questions Posed [by the Treasure revealer Ratna Lingpa] in ‘Exquisite Palace of Vaijayanta’”. This work was composed around 1590 by possibly the greatest polemicists of the Old School tradition, Sokdokpa Lodro Gyaltsen (1552-1624). This work intermingles some of the thorniest questions about the Buddhist doctrine raised by Ratna Lingpa by the middle of the sixteenth century with Sokdokpa’s replies. According to its characteristics, which will be studied in detail throughout the next chapters, the Fount of Scripture and Reasoning can be considered as an archetypical sample of the Tibetan classical genre of “doctrinal

Upon the patronage of the Tsang rulers, Sokdokpa (Tib. Sog bzlog pa, or “the one who turned back the Mongols”) spent nearly half of his life performing violent rituals passed through his master Shikpo Lingpa against the Mongol armies. Conversely, in a more intellectual domain, Sokdokpa as a scholar was motivated by the critiques that the Old School had received at that time and he thus set himself up as a defender of its objects, practices and texts by dint of his erudition. Since the Fount is an apologetic text, Sokdokpa’s scholasticism is the role that this thesis will be specially concerned

Indeed, his identity is characterized by the extraordinary combination of different factors, intrinsic and extrinsic, that eventually allowed Sokdokpa to become a distinguished figure within the traditional spheres of Tibetan Buddhism until our days. In particular, the identity of Sokdokpa was built on the four central roles previously explained (i.e. ritualist, scholar, physician, and Great Perfection master) which continuously participated with each other, in a proactive way, in the unfolding of the events of his life. However, probably more motivated by the historical circumstances than his personal aspirations, Sokdokpa got also entrenched in the need to assume, under the umbrella of those four main roles, the responsibility of a guardian of borders. This concern is certainly key in order to understand the reasons behind the production of Fount. It is possible to acknowledge the factors that influenced Sokdokpa to undertake such pursuit by means of explaining the interaction with his