Draft:Another Bundle on Severance/Introduction

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Introduction to Another Bundle on Severance and Vajra Play

Another Bundle, attributed to Machik Lapdrön, takes the form of a dialogue or question and answer session, perhaps written down or remembered in verse by her son Gyalwa Döndrup, said in several sources to be the interlocutor. In the catalogue of The Treasury of Precious Instructions, Kongtrul traces his transmission lineage back to him. "Another" or "further" bundle (yang sthom) indicates that it is another collection following the Great Bundle. In The History of Pacification and Severance, Khamnyön Dharma Senge calls Another Bundle "the esoteric instructions on that [Great Bundle]." (f. 68a). An alternate title that is given in the colophon is Another Bundle of Twenty-Five Instructions as Answers to Questions, shortened in certain other sources to Another Bundle of Twenty-Five. However, one finds here twenty-eight questions, and I'm not sure if this is some kind of alternate Tibetan way of counting, or if the bundle tends to gain and lose questions with each reprint like a loose bunch of flowers. 

This version of Another Bundle is also found in a collection of Severance texts called Practices of the Severance Collection and So Forth (gCod tshogs kyi lag len sogs) from Limi monastery (pp. 33-43). (TBRC W23390). Although there are many minor differences in these two editions that are sometimes mentioned in my endnotes, they are comparable in format. However, there is another text preceding that indicated merely with the words "Bundle of Precepts" (bKa' tshom). (pp. 15-31). The colophon to that text calls it "Thirty-five Questions and Answers on the Bundle of Precepts, the Quintessence of the Mother's Super Secret Heart-Mind." It goes on to add the following: "This esoteric instruction is a word-continuum. If it spreads to everyone it will be of no benefit. Keep it restricted like a mute's speech. Depend on the heirs[s] that holds the lineage." And, "This quintessence of the heart-mind [as] questions and answers, was gladly bestowed by great realized guru[s] on the Shakya monk Sang rdor and I wrote it well." This may be the same author as that of the Profound Heart Essence, Jamyang Gönpo, who typically signs off as "the Shakya monk, holder of the vajra."

While this text bears almost no resemblance to the Great Bundle of Precepts (bKa' tshom chen mo), it is strikingly similar to Another Bundle in that it is a series of questions and answers and in fact many of them are basically the same questions. Of the thirty-five questions (and this time they got the number right!), twenty-six of them appear in Another Bundle, at least in content, with sometimes two questions being combined into one. Three of the responses to questions resemble sections in Essential Bundle, and six questions seem to be unique to this text, although parts of their answers can be found elsewhere. If this is an earlier or different "bundle", it makes more sense out of the title of "another bundle" of our DNZ text, since they are both in the same format of dialogue and may just represent two versions that were circulating in Tibet. In cases where Khamnyön Dharma Senge quotes Machik in The History of Pacification and Severance, the wording is identical to this Bundle of Precepts, and not to The Great Bundle or Another Bundle. Since Khamnyön Dharma Senge was contemporary with Jamgön Kongtrul, this just indicates that both versions were available in the nineteenth century without confirming their relative dates. It seems likely that Machik's teachings were remembered and later recorded in many versions that were constantly shifting and reforming during nearly a millennium of transmission.

Another example of this is Vajra Play, appended to Another Bundle in the Treasury of Precious Instructions, but not indicated in the table of contents nor in its catalogue, An Ocean of Auspicious Renown. In fact I have not found reference to it in any source, nor any other edition. Vajra Play consists of eighteen questions, with their answers delivered in short and even cryptic prose. Only a few of the questions echo those in the other collections, and this set may have a different source. But we may never know.