A Triing Anachronism, on gcod in the rnying ma tradition

Fabian Sanders and Margherita Pansa

Having been initiated in the 11/12th century by the famous yogin! ma gcig lab sgron, the cutting
through or gcod practice should logically be understood to be a gsar ma tradition. Nevertheless it
has been widely practiced in the rnying ma school along a remarkable number of centuries. On the
basis of a range of texts discussing the gcod practice in the rnying ma school, starting from the most
ancient available, dated to the XIV century, through the main doctrinal cycles of more recent times,
this paper will try to assess the strategies that rnying ma masters have adopted to bypass the blatant
anachronism generated by their placing the origin of this teaching in a time long before the life of
its ofcial founder. Since the very beginning both bka ma and gter ma textual traditions of gcod
exist, in the rst the earlier example available up to now has been put into writing by Kun dga
bum pa and adopts the strategy of asserting that gcod falls in with the doctrines and practices
already existing in the rnying ma school. In particular the editor of this gcod cycle asserts that in the
treatises by Kun dga bum pa the tradition of Pha dam pa sangs rgyas and sKyo ston bsod nams bla
ma completes the teachings on the three series of inner tantras promulgated by gNubs chen sangs
rgyas ye shes.
Another strategy is found in the Bla ma dgons dus gter ma cycle discovered by Sang rgyas gling pa
in which it is very straightforwardly argued that these teachings had been taught by
Padmasambhava, hidden by Ye shes mtsho rgyal and nally rediscovered by Sangs rgyas gling pa in
a standard gter ma fashion. Another strategy yet is found in a text belonging to the gcod skor by
rDo rje gling pa, the only one in this collection to employ the standard shad in lieu of the gter tsheg.
This text, claiming to be a translation from sanskrit, argues that gcod was rst taught by T!r! and
Yum chen mo in the g.yu lo bkod pai khams zhing.
Going through the main histories of gcod (rDo rje gling pa, Karma chags med, Ngag dbang bstan
dzin nor bu, Dharma seng ge, Kong sprul blo gros mtha yas) we will briey appraise the origins of
gcod in the rnying ma school and examine the phrul gcod or khrul gcod tradition which is said to
have been taught by Padmasambhava himself and is consistently mentioned as being one of the
sources of gcod.