When Buddhas dissociate: A psychological perspective on the origins of great perfection Buddhism (rDzogs Chen)

Abstract

This contribution brings psychological theories to bear on complex textual materials in order to provide new perspectives on the formative years (ca. eighth to eleventh centuries) of the famous Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). Recovering a frequently underestimated trope of “trauma” in the tradition’s early corpus of tantric scriptures, the article modulates earlier scholarship, which argued that Dzogchen is a mystical religious movement that premises its teachings and practices on the disclosure and instantaneous liberation. Employing a critical and interdisciplinary approach, the study presents mythic narratives, historical sources, and evidence from cognitive science in order to argue that Dzogchen coalesced not under banner of “disclosure,” but rather under the pressures of “dissociation.” More specifically, the article focuses on the tradition’s central myth of the “epiphany of the ground” (gzhi snang) to show that it 1) represented an attempt to encode socio-political trauma, 2) served to process a series of specific symptoms of dissociation, 3) points to significant correlations between dissociative trauma suffered by the “Ancients” (rnying ma) and the practical power of tantric techniques imported by the “New Schools” (gsar ma) of Tibetan Buddhism after the eleventh century.