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The hundred ways and thousand strategies

By Tenzin Nyinjey | Tibet Sun

Tenzin Nyinjey Photographer unknown

Thab gya jue tong is a Tibetan phrase, which literally means hundred ways and thousand strategies. It encapsulates the highly complex and advanced nature of the Tibetan mind and is very useful in our daily lives of struggle for freedom. It refers to those infinite strategies and means one can employ to accomplish one’s ultimate goal of freedom, happiness and prosperity.

To fully comprehend the wider implications of this phrase, let us simply think and visualize the physical appearance of Chenrezig, the Boddhisatva of compassion and the patron deity of Tibet. A random glance at this deity will strike us up its principle feature: the deity is blessed with thousand hands and thousand eyes! And to be precise all these thousand eyes and thousand hands symbolises the myriad or hundred ways and thousand strategies — thab gya jue tong — to accomplish the deity’s main task of invoking compassion in the hearts and minds of all sentient beings.

Let us look more closely at a few more examples. When we observe Tibetan Buddhism itself, what is amazing about this religious culture is its complexity and richness—the diversity among major Tibetan religious schools of thought. In other words, there are different approaches, depending upon one’s khams and moepa (mental dispositions), to achieve the fruits of enlightenment. Look at the lives of great saints of Tibet, who hailed from different religious denominations of Tibetan Buddhism, all with the same goal of achieving ultimate freedom, but employing hundred ways and thousand strategies—thab gya jue tong.

For instance, on one side of the pole, we have the great Thangtong Gyalpo, a mystic, scholar, poet, scientist, and founder of the Tibetan opera—in short who creates beauty and culture, a boddhisatva in action, building iron bridges to connect the whole physical and mental landscape of Tibet. Then there is the Great Lotsawa Marpa, the pioneer of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, who lived an ordinary human life. He got married, raised family, and ran a successful business, yet achieved enlightenment. For young, trendy and modern Tibetans, both these saints are near-perfect examples of how to live a free, happy and meaningful life!

Then on the other side of the extreme, we have Milarepa, the greatest yogi of Tibet, who achieved enlightenment in one single life. What is so inspiring about his life is that he belonged to a simple peasant family and was able to redeem his life and achieve enlightenment after committing unpardonable acts of mass murder in his early life. For those who feel they have ‘lost’ all hopes of redemption in their lives can draw profound lessons from Milarepa’s example. Then there is the nyompa genre of Tibetan Buddhism, the epitome of which is the great Tsangyon Heruka or the Madman from Tsang valley. He was literally a ‘madman’ who walked naked, ate human excrement and slept in burial grounds. But to the surprise of all and sundry, he turned out to be one of the legends of Tibetan Buddhism—a saint, scholar and mystic. To me, he is one of the greatest psychiatrists the world has ever produced!

Now let’s turn our attention to the female Boddhistavas and deities. The most famous of them, which has become a household name among Tibetans, is the Drolma—both the white and green drolmas. This deity symbolises the innate nature of Tibetan women, which is love and compassion. Budmed Lhantsog (Tibetan Women’s Association) did the right thing by choosing this deity as the title of its annual magazine, Dolma. Indeed the deeds of this female Boddhisatva is something Tibetan women should aspire for, but in order to fully comprehend the complex nature of Drolma, Tibetan women must understand Drolma’s thab gya jue tong, the deity’s hundred ways and thousand strategies to achieve her goal of freedom and enlightenment.

To realise this, Budmed lhantsog should take into account the fact that there are not just two Drolmas in Tibetan Buddhism—the Drolkar (white Tara) and Drol Jang (green Tara), both of whom represents the pacific virtues of love, compassion and feminine beauty. Indeed simply looking at the two deities makes us peaceful and at ease with ourselves. But due to the subtle and complex nature of Tibetan Buddhism we often fail to take into account one more Drolma, which is what I refer to as the Drolma Marpo (the red Drolma). Indeed the infinite pacific virtues of the white and green Taras—love, compassion and feminine beauty—transforms themselves into wrathful virtues of ‘anger’ and ‘aggression,’ if they are stretched too far. This red Tara is indeed the wrathful deity Palden Lhamo, whose intensely fearsome eyes can strike terror and awe even in the most courageous of men who dare to look at her. Therefore, during an informal chat on the issue of ‘domestic violence’ in our society with some leaders of Tibetan Women’s Association last year, I suggested that they should invoke this another aspect of Drolma—this wrathful Palden Lhamo—every now and then in their lives to fight not just domestic violence but other forms of oppression, both covert and overt, our women suffer in their daily lives.

All of the few examples above makes us clear that Tibetan culture is extremely complex and subtle and can embrace diverse of opinions, ways and strategies. In other words, our culture is not rigid and dogmatic. An infinite methods and processes are available in our treasure trove of culture to accomplish our goals! This thab gya jue tong, therefore, basically sums up the complex nature of the Tibetan psyche that was developed over thousands of years on the Tibetan plateau by our ancestors. This thab gya jue tong—hundred ways and thousand strategies—is indeed the essence of our culture. Like the cubist paintings of Picasso or the writings of post-modernist novelists, whose works inspire different forms of beauty and thoughts in viewers and readers in accordance with their different mental dispositions, Tibetan culture is so subtle, complex and varied, with its thab gya jue tong that it can withstand any challenges that we face in our lives, including China’s desperate attempt to wipe out our culture and identity! In short, thab gya jus tong is both the means and the end of freedom—not only freedom from or freedom to, but FREEDOM itself!

Copyright © 2010 Tenzin Nyinjey

Published in Tibet Sun