The Gathering of Intentions

Jacob Dalton’s new book, The Gathering of Intentions, which began life as the author’s University of Michigan doctoral dissertation in 2002, presents a useful companion to his earlier book, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (Yale University Press, 2011). In that work, Dalton examined the important role of themes relating to “demon taming” in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Central to his narrative was the myth of the demon Rudra, whose most elaborate version, translated by Dalton in an appendix to The Taming of the Demons, is derived from a little known and puzzling scripture of Tibetan esoteric Buddhism entitled The Sūtra of the Gathering of Intentions (Mdo dgongs-pa ’dus-pa; hereinafter The Gathering). The book reviewed here seeks to situate that text, which appeared at some point during the last two centuries of the first millennium, in its specific ritual and doctrinal contexts in the history of the Nyingmapa order of Tibetan Buddhism, to whose tantric canon The Gathering belongs. Dalton begins his account with what is known in regard to the origins of The Gathering and traces its course down to the present day. The story he relates is based on admirably thorough research on a sprawling and mostly unstudied body of Tibetan doctrinal, ritual, and historical literature

Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Demon · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Order (exchange) · Tantra · Classics · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy

• Contemplative Practice, Doxographies, and the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism

  Open Access•Manuel López, Manuel Villegas López•Religions•2018

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