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Pema Lingpa
Ugyen Pema Lingpa (1450-1521) was one of the most illustrious and controversial tertons or "treasure finders" of Vajrayana Buddhism. The most eloquent response to Pema Lingpa's detractors is found in The Treasure Revealer of Bhutan: Pemalingpa, The Terma Tradition and its Critics, published by Bibliotheca Himalayica in 1995. One of the authors, the former Director of Bhutan's National Library is the scholar and monk, Lopon Pemala (Padma Tshewang). At the end of his translation of much of Pema Lingpa's life story, he closes his essay with an incisive discussion on the nature of "deception."
Lopon Pemala's piece is actually a direct response to scholar Michael Aris, whose book Hidden Treasures and Secret Lives contained an annotated translation of the lives of Pemalingpa and the Sixth Dalai Lama. Aris took a strong stand as a scholar fed up with what he saw as a combination of superstition and manipulation within this Tibetan tradition, and his arguments (though entirely speculative due to the fact that he was neither a practitioner nor a contemporary of these two famous tulkus) are entirely consistent in their claims that belief in such things as "spiritual treasures" and their discoveries amounts to nothing but intellectual dishonesty. Although he tries to speak to the ambivalence of these figures, he makes it clear he means only that some people benefited because of a kind of placebo effect based on their need to believe and that the activities of these tulkus were for the sole purpose of bolstering their wealth and reputation.
In response, Lopon Pemala writes:
"By understanding the Buddhist doctrines correctly, however, what one could indeed say is that Pemalingpa deceived people indirectly. That is to say that his feats, exercised out of compassion, disturbed people from their lives and their duties, turning them towards the dharma.
Miracles may have this function, as witnessed within many cultures. One could say that the everyday, samsaric world is itself like a deception, and that the only way to transform that world, to transform peoples' way of perceving it is to take them out of their deception, sometimes shocking them into a new perception of Reality. But for one who only sees and believes in the everyday world as real, such activity will naturally tend to be interpreted as a kind of trickery.
Ugyen Padma is the name of the one who concealed the Treasures; and Ugyen Padma the name of the one who revealed them. But the first is Guru Rinpoche, Ugyen Padma Jungne, and the second is Ugyen Padma Lingpa. Sometimes the difference between truth and deceit may seem equally small. It demands deep study as well as compassionate understanding in order to discern correctly.
Reality is understood just as the samsaric world deceives us; and in another way, Absolute Reality, that which is beyond such categories, also decieves.
One can play with words and say, "deceit is truth, and truth is deceit"; but one can only know by trying in practice. In other words, the Path is there for motivated people in order to lead them to a transmutation of the self; terms, doctrines or concepts such as those we use, are only like the steps of a ladder: they are purposive. Their composition or nature is ultimately, secondary to the task of actual spiritual progress.
In its nature, the whole universe as we experience it is a process, in which conceptions, appearances, tendencies, constantly form and unform, fold and unfold around us in interdependence, in an apparent field consisting of objects of cognition and object-perceivers.
A deception, too, is such an object of cognition, and the one who feels himself deceived is such an object-perceiver. Thus is samsara! [the realms of endless suffering/dissatisfaction]
Pemalingpa like other Tertons revealed Treasures from many sites: thus some cliffs and lakes, that appeared to be ordinary phenomenal objects containing nothing special, were shown by Terton Pemalingpa to be deceptions.
Those beings who believe in Pemalingpa are said to be irrevocably set upon the way to Enlightenment, sure to reach it in time. By this it is meant that once a true seed is planted in fertile ground, it cannot fail to grow.
In order to be freed of the delusions under which human beings constantly labour, that is desire, hatred and ignorance, it is necessary to deceive them: into faith, out of their selves, or whatever one like to say about it. Transformation is in essence, a deception of what was.
Mind becomes Truth, Thought becomes Divine Word.
The saints, such as Ugyen Pemalingpa, contemplate our delusion; then they delude us into contemplation.
So I, too, long to be deceived by Pemalingpa."