Tibetan Buddhism practice of inner fire meditation as recorded in Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses

Abstract

This paper examines the content of the Tangut text in one of the largest joinable pieces of Tangut fragments with Tibetan phonetic glosses, Fr. 3(8), Fr. 9(14), and Fr. 1(6) from инв. 8363 of the Archives of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscript, Russian Academy of Sciences. A detailed sentence-based translation of the Tangut text is provided. The interpretation of these fragments suggests that the Tangut text is an instruction for vase breathing and inner fire meditation, which is also known as “tummo.” This text should relate to the Six Yogas of Nāropa, which was mainly practiced by the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism during the Tangut era. The content of the text should help further study on the identification of the origin of the text, and on the examination of the date of the fragments, which would be critical in the study of the Tibetan phonetic glosses of the Tangut characters.