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MA GCIG LAB SGRON Ma’s Many LIvEs
pa bka’ brgyud pa’? who were important transmitters of the gcod teachings. He was
the last of the so called Shangs pa’i rin chen rnam bdun, the “Seven Jewels of the
Shangs pa.’”””° For various reasons, the Shangs pa bka’ brgyud pa may well provide
the link to the Mongolian transmission. First, in the gcod transmission lineages the
Shangs pa bka’ brgyud pa and the Dalai Lama lineages merge. As already Gene
Smith noted,”' the rebirth of the First Dalai Lama as the son of Grub chen Kun dga’
rgyal mtshan resulted in the end of the hereditary line of Shangs pa bka’ brgyud pa
lamas. They were incorporated into the dGe lugs pa. Therefore, Kun spangs brtson
‘grus seng ge aka Sangs rgyas ston pa figures also in the transmission list of the
Second Dalai Lama dGe ‘dun rgya mtsho (1475-1542), the gCod bstan thog gcig
ma (“Principle Doctrine of gCod”), as teacher of gcod.” Secondly, according to the
Zab lam ni gu chos drug gi bla ma brgyud pa’i gsol ‘debs byin rlabs sprin phung
(“Accumulation of Clouds of Blessing, the Invocation to the Master Lineages of the
Profound Path, the Six Tenets of Ni gu [ma]’”),”* Sangs rgyas ston pa also belongs to
the Jo nang pa transmission which in the person of Taranatha and his rebirth in the
First Jebtstindamba khutagt (rJe btsun dam pa qutuytu) merged with the dGe lugs pa
school.™ And thirdly, the Gangpa (Gangs pa) masters of the Shangs pa bka’ brgyud
pa bestowed the gcod teachings on the Karma bka’ brgyud masters who, as we will
see later, played an important role in the early history of Buddhism in Mongolia.
An addition to the colophon of our text states that the work was composed, in the
sense of “edited,” by Blo bzang bstan pa chos ‘phel dpal bzang po, on the advice
of the spiritual tutor of the Jaya Pandita.”> “Jaya Pandita” may allude here to the
Fifth Khalkha Dsaya Pandita Luwsanchoijiwanchig (Tib. Blo bzang chos kyi dbang
A general overview about the Shangs pa provides Kapstein, Matthew: The Shangs-pa bKa‘-brgyud:
An Unknown Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In: Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson.
Ed. by Michael Aris — Aung San Suu Kyi. Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD, New Delhi 1980, pp.
138-144.
Smith, E. Gene: The Shangs pa Bka’ brgyud Tradition. In: Among Tibetan Texts. History and Literature
of the Himalayan Plateau. Ed. by Kurtis R. Schaeffer with a foreword by Jeffrey Hopkins. Wisdom
Publications, Boston 2001, p. 54.
Smith: Shangs pa, p. 55.
De Rossi-Filibeck, Elena: The Transmission Lineage of the Gcod teaching according to the Second
Dalai Lama. In: Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy. Proceedings of the
Csoma de Körös Symposium held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981, Vol. 2. Ed. by
Ernst Steinkellner — Helmut Tauscher. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi1995, p. 54.
3. Written by the Seventh ‘Brug chen bKa’ brgyud ‘phrin las shing rta (1718-1766), see Smith: Shangs
pa, p. 284, n. 131.
Bareja-Starzynska, Agata: The Biography of the First Khalkha Jetsundampa Zanabazar by Zaya
Pandita Luvsanprinlei. Studies, Annotated Translation, Transliteration and Facsimile. Elipsa, Warsaw
2015, p. 64.
For the title and the incarnation lineage see Bareja-Starzynska, Agata: The Reincarnation Lineage
of Zaya Gegeen. In: History, Architecture and Restoration of Zaya Gegeenii Khiiree Monastery in
Mongolia. Ed. by Isabelle Charleux. Bulletin du Musée d’anthropologie préhistorique de Monaco,
Supplement No. 5. Editions du Musée d’anthropologie préhistorique de Monaco, Monaco 2016, pp.
43-51.
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