Georgios Halkias’ Luminous Bliss represents an admirable and critical piece of scholarship, which has brought a long-awaited attention to the textual and ritual traditions of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet. It is an essential read not only for those specializing in Pure Land Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism, but also for those interested in the broader themes of Mahāyāna and tantric traditions of South, Central, and Inner Asia. In his preliminary remarks in “Buddhisms and Other Conventions,” Halkias articulates his hesitation in employing the term “Pure Land Buddhism” with reference to Tibet due to the term's common association with the East Asian Mahāyāna development of a devotion to Amitābha and his Sukhāvatī. Nevertheless, he settles on the term “Tibetan Pure Land Buddhism” as a generic term for reasons of comparison with Pure Land developments in South and East Asia and to differentiate Amitābha-centered trends from those associated with other deities. Halkias does not want the reader to assume that this term and his analysis of the given material suggest that there was a self-conscious and doctrinally independent movement of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet. With the term “Pure Land Literature,” he refers to the body of the relevant Tibetan texts, such as prayers for rebirth in Sukhāvatī, commentaries on the Pure Land doctrine, and devotional texts to tantric deities, which express the ideas of faith and liberation in Amitābha's buddha-field. Although Amitābha's buddha-field receives primary attention in the book, Halkias, following Nattier's argument of 2003, demonstrates his awareness that the term “Sukhāvatī” may stand for any of the countless buddha-fields in different world-systems. The book challenges us to think of Pure Land Buddhism as a broader category that permeates diverse strands of Buddhism in diverse geographical and cultural regions.
Outlining the history of Pure Land literature in Tibet, Halkias seeks to achieve two objectives. One is to clarify and problematize certain aspects of the Pure Land tradition in Tibet and its theoretical foundations; and the other is to remedy the misconceptions of the Pure Land soteriology as merely devotional or as antithetical to the early Buddhist ideas of self-reliance and to Mahāyāna's call to a Bodhisattva's continued perseverance in saṃsāra. Halkias' textual analysis of a spectrum of selected, influential works related to Sukhāvatī found in all major schools of Tibetan Buddhism involves their contents, historical situatedness, and, when appropriate, their practical applications. Texts are selected from the canonical and paracanonical sources, collected works of individual authors, and from ritual cycles of teachings. The reader is also introduced here to the important Tibetan authors of the relevant sources.
The organization of the book follows a historical and a traditional Tibetan line of classification. The book is structured into six chapters grouped into three main parts, each containing two chapters. Part 1, titled “Early Pure Land Traditions in India, Tibet, and Central Asia,” gives a general overview of the historical milieus in which the expressions of a devotion to Amitābha and his Pure Land emerged. Part 2, “Pure Land Texts in Tibetan Contexts,” is devoted to the analysis and English translation of the short Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra from Tibetan and to the descriptions of Pure Land commentarial literature in Tibet. In Part 3, titled “Pure Lands and Pure Visions,” Halkias concerns himself with tantric appropriations of Sukhāvatī. The material is chronologically divided. The book begins with Indian antecedents, particularly with the formulation of various Indian Mahāyāna views of Pure Lands and with a brief analysis of archeological and textual sources that suggest diverse origins of Amitābha and his association with solar deities and solar-cult rites in India. Chapter 2 addresses the first diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet, laying out a historical background to cultural and religious exchanges and intrareligious contacts in Central and Inner Asia, where some of the finest expressions of Pure Land Buddhism came to light. This is followed by a discussion of the second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet, and the developments of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet are discussed in Chapters 3–6, where the material is divided into sūtra (Chapters 3–4) and tantra (Chapters 5–6). Halkias dedicates a considerable portion of the book to historical narratives that have shaped and reinforced Tibetan beliefs about Pure Lands and Pure Land doctrines and practices.
Halkias' analysis of the earliest records of Tibetan translations of the long and short Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras from Sanskrit, listed with different titles and sizes in the imperial Denkarma and Phangthangma Catalogues, shows that two different Sanskrit texts were consulted for the translation of the long Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra into Tibetan. The exact origins of the two different Sanskrit versions and what happened to them remains unknown, since texts from Central Tibet dating to the imperial period have not survived. His analysis of different editions also suggests that available Tibetan translations were most likely prepared in the ninth century. In the case of each, the long and short Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, colophons in different editions of the Tibetan canon show discrepancies concerning their Tibetan translators, about whom they tell us very little. Thus, uncertainties regarding the translators in question and the more precise dates of translations remain unsolved.
Chapter 3 is dedicated exclusively to the short Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra. Halkias gives here an overview of the various editions of the short Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra from the eight different collections of the bKa' ‘gyur and the analysis of the contents and structure of the Tibetan version of the text, followed by his translation of the sūtra based on the Derge edition. Annotations to the text are provided in the endnote section of the volume. In the following chapter, we are introduced to nine well-known Tibetan authors who wrote on Pure Land doctrine and practice in their commentaries, based on the short and long Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras. The chapter also introduces the reader to selected aspirational prayers for rebirth in Sukhāvatī and practical guides on Amitābha meditations. The authors, whose dates vary, ranging from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century, are among the most prominent representatives the four main traditions of the Tibetan Buddhism. Halkias’ selection of authors is also inspired by the two-volume Anthology of Aspirational Prayers (bDe smon phyogs bsgrigs), published in China in 1994. The first mentioned among them is Tsong kha pa, whose Prayer for Birth in Sukhāvatī: Opening the Door of Sublime Field, composed in 1395, significantly influenced the bde smon genre and inspired commentaries from Tibetan scholars of traditions other than dGe lugs. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the texts composed by three Sa skya masters, namely, Sakya Paṇḍita's Meditation on Amitābha, Go rams bsod nams seng ge's Pure Land Eulogy, and ‘Jam dbyangs mkhyen rtse's Abridged Sleep-Meditation on Amitābha. Summaries of the Pure Land texts of the authors from other traditions are also provided in this chapter.
Halkias’ examination of the tantric material associated with Aparamitāyus lineages, Amitābha, and his Pure Land in Chapters 5 and 6 is especially noteworthy. In Chapter 6, he brings to the reader's attention an array of material associated with tantric practices in which Sukhāvatī plays a part. These are dhāraṇīs connected to mortuary rites, life-extending rituals, fire rituals, tantric sādhanas, and texts on ‘pho ba practices, “treasure” literature (gter ma) that recounts celestial encounters with Amitābha, and tantric ritual texts for reaching Sukhāvatī and invoking its protectors. In the epilogue, Halkias recognizes that it is tempting to read signs of millennialism or collective social distress in the emergence of devotion to Amitābha in Tibet, especially when looking at the intersections of Pure Land cosmography, Mahāyāna soteriology, and religious and political strategies of state building. But he correctly notes that spatial metaphors that describe both physical and semantic space are as diachronically appealing as they may be synchronically relevant.
The book also contains three appendices and copious and informative footnotes. In conclusion, the Luminous Bliss creates a milestone for research on Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet. It is written in an accessible manner and should be on syllabi of graduate courses in Tibetan Buddhism.
