Indian Sources of Mahāmudrā: The Seven Texts on Siddhi

Indian Sources of Mahāmudrā: The Seven Texts on Siddhi

Adam Krug (Religious Studies, UCSB)
Friday, May 22 / 4:00 PM
6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building

The Seven Texts on Siddhi  (ca. ninth to tenth centuries) were influential in both the development of Vajrayāna Buddhism in India and the later emergence of the mahāmudrā meditation traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Considered both the expression of the highest view in the Buddhist Tantras and the only means to attain realization of that view, the proper approach to teaching and practicing mahāmudrā quickly became a point of contention in Tibet. As sectarianism took root in Tibet, The Seven Texts on Siddhi and a large number of other works were gradually identified as a part of an Indian “canon” of mahāmudrā texts specific to the Kagyu tradition, reaching their full status as a unified body of literature in the Seventh Karmapa Chödrak Gyamtso’s three-volume collection Indian Mahāmudrā Works. This lecture will address this trend through the topic of “super-canonization,” or the creation of sect-specific canons in Tibet, as it applies to the recognition of The Seven Texts on Siddhi as Indian sources for the practice of mahāmudrā in the Kagyu tradition.

Adam Krug is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at UCSB whose research interests focus on Buddhist traditions in South Asia and Tibet.

Sponsored by IHC South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group and Buddhist Studies
Website: https://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/southasian/