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Establishing Appearances as Divine: Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo on Reasoning, Madhyamaka, and Purity
Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo's concise treatise, Establishing Appearances as Divine, sets out to prove the provocative point that everything that appears is actually the deity manifest. Transformation of both one's identity and the environment is an important principle of Tantric Buddhist philosophy. In Tantric scriptures, one is instructed to visualize oneself as a deity, a divine identity who resides in a perfect sphere. By repeatedly training in this visualization, one perfects the transformation and ultimately becomes the deity itself.
Do the Tantric teachings hold sentient beings to be intrinsically pure and divine, or do they consider them initially flawed to be later purified through the visualization of divinity? Is the practice of deity yoga merely a means, or is it more fundamentally connected to the nature of things? These questions were among the main concerns of Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo, the illustrious philosopher of the Nyingma School of the Early Translations. Establishing Appearances as Divine sets out to prove the provocative point that the tradition still highly regards the point of view that everything which appears is actually the deity manifest. Many books on Tibetan Buddhism address the important themes of mind training, compassion, and proper conduct. This book goes beyond that in its aim to bring the reader face to face with his or her divine and pure nature. Its method is unusual: the author uses reasoned philosophical arguments to argue for esoteric Tantric Buddhist ideas and practices. The result itself is an unusual book held in high esteem for nearly a thousand years. The comprehensive introduction explores Rongzom's philosophy of purity by juxtaposing it with his view of Madhyamaka, while also relating the discussion to his assessment and application of reasoning. For readers of Tibetan, the book contains a comparative edition of the Tibetan text as well.
Establishing Appearances as Divine, translated here for the first time, embarks on the project of unraveling the magical interplay between rationality, truth, and divinity, bringing to light the view that underlies Tantric Buddhist practices.
Do the Tantric teachings hold sentient beings to be intrinsically pure and divine, or do they consider them initially flawed to be later purified through the visualization of divinity? Is the practice of deity yoga merely a means, or is it more fundamentally connected to the nature of things? These questions were among the main concerns of Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo, the illustrious philosopher of the Nyingma School of the Early Translations. Establishing Appearances as Divine sets out to prove the provocative point that the tradition still highly regards the point of view that everything which appears is actually the deity manifest. Many books on Tibetan Buddhism address the important themes of mind training, compassion, and proper conduct. This book goes beyond that in its aim to bring the reader face to face with his or her divine and pure nature. Its method is unusual: the author uses reasoned philosophical arguments to argue for esoteric Tantric Buddhist ideas and practices. The result itself is an unusual book held in high esteem for nearly a thousand years. The comprehensive introduction explores Rongzom's philosophy of purity by juxtaposing it with his view of Madhyamaka, while also relating the discussion to his assessment and application of reasoning. For readers of Tibetan, the book contains a comparative edition of the Tibetan text as well.
Establishing Appearances as Divine, translated here for the first time, embarks on the project of unraveling the magical interplay between rationality, truth, and divinity, bringing to light the view that underlies Tantric Buddhist practices.
- GenresBuddhismSpirituality
160 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 26, 2026
Rongzompa is one of the most interesting and unique Tibetan voices I've ever encountered. Writing in the 11th century, he was an apologist for what would come to be called Nyingnma Buddhism at a time when it was coming under sectarian and political pressure. A near-contemporary of Atisha, Rongzompa was active as the new wave of early Indian tantras were rising to prominence and Chandrakirti's Madhyamaka was rapidly gaining ascendancy as the preeminent view of emptiness.
Rongzompa's works are slowly becoming available to an English-speaking audience, and this work, by Heidi Köppl, is the earlierst important work for the general reader that has appeared, as far as I know. Köppl is a longtime student of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche and currently runs the Tara's Triple Excellence online meditation program, and this work is based on the master's thesis she wrote at the University of Hamburg under Dorji Wangchuk, one of Europe's most significant scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.
The work itself is a fairly short text of about 15 pages called "Establishing Appearances as Divine." It begins by noting that within tantric practice, all appearances whatsoever are taken as manifestations of the deity and its mandala, and Rongzompa explores the question of what this means, exactly. In her commentary, Köppl anachronistically considers Mipham Rinpoche's use of this text as a counter-position to the Gelukpa view of deity yoga, which essentially holds that when one arises as a deity in tantric practice, one is more or less pretending to have achieved the fruitional state in order to develop a karmic affinity for such a result. In contrast to this position, Mipham Rinpoche, following Rongzompa, asserts that such a view cheapens the profundity of tantric meditation, which does not contrive divine purity as the nature of all things, but discovers it, and experiences it as a veridicatl and vital insight into the nature of reality.
As an aide, as with most polemics, I'd say this isn't completely fair to the Gelukpa view. It is true that the Gelukpa holds deity yoga as a kind of imaginiative exercise, but it is also true that Je Tsongkhapa affirms deity yoga as an occassion for the actual apprehension of phenomena as empty appearances, with both emptiness and appearance appearing to consciousness at one time. This appearance is itself precisely the primordial union of appearance and emptiness that Nyingma polemicists sometimes deny occurs within new translation tantras, and is basically of the same significance as the affirmation of appearances as primordially divine, which Rongzompa will defend. In other words, the same basic point is made by both Galuk and Nyingma, in my view - it is merely made in different ways.
I would say the most important thing about this book is the long introduction, about 80% of the entire work, which does a fantastic job of contextualizing Rongzompa's work in the context of Buddhist thought. Ronzompa wrote at a time when Tibetan Buddhist thought had not been consolidated into a standardized set of terms and disputes, and this is indeed one of the thrilling things about it - he often writes outside of the calcified framework of the later tradition. But it also means that it's not always easy to understand what he's getting at on a basic level, because he often uses familiar terms in surprising ways, or works with problems that will later be structured into conventional terms that don't yet exist. Add to this his terseness as a writer and his legendary use of a very large vocabulary that at times includes words drawn from nomad slang, for example, and he can be quite difficult to read.
This leads me to one of my two criticisms of this outstanding book. Köppl does an excellent job of contextualizing Rongzompa's thought, but is much less effective in explicating the actual work that she translates. Her commentary is somewhat cursory, and focuses almost exclusively on the set of four reasons that Rongzompa uses to demonstrate the actual divinity of appearances. At times, even this area of focus remains under-explained, such as when she briefly mentions that for Rongzompa, pure appearances are somehow "more valid" than afflicted appearances, even though he strongly rejects any notion of conventional validity again and again. There are many difficult points in this work that pass without comment in either her commentary or the numerous endnotes, and there are some uncommented passages that I literally cannot understand on a basic level, even after several re-readings.
My other complaint about this book is its exhorbanant price. It currently costs 30 euros for a 160 page book; that's simply absurd. Dominic Sur's 650-page study of Rongzompa costs 36.
Still, it's a terrific, incredibliy useful book. To a newcomer to Rongzompa, it's an ideal entry point, and it would be extremely helpful to read this before reading Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, it will absolutely answer questions in advance that you absolutely will have when reading that work - questions like "What does Rongzompa even mean when he says 'Madhyamaka'? Who does he mean?"
Rongzompa's works are slowly becoming available to an English-speaking audience, and this work, by Heidi Köppl, is the earlierst important work for the general reader that has appeared, as far as I know. Köppl is a longtime student of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche and currently runs the Tara's Triple Excellence online meditation program, and this work is based on the master's thesis she wrote at the University of Hamburg under Dorji Wangchuk, one of Europe's most significant scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.
The work itself is a fairly short text of about 15 pages called "Establishing Appearances as Divine." It begins by noting that within tantric practice, all appearances whatsoever are taken as manifestations of the deity and its mandala, and Rongzompa explores the question of what this means, exactly. In her commentary, Köppl anachronistically considers Mipham Rinpoche's use of this text as a counter-position to the Gelukpa view of deity yoga, which essentially holds that when one arises as a deity in tantric practice, one is more or less pretending to have achieved the fruitional state in order to develop a karmic affinity for such a result. In contrast to this position, Mipham Rinpoche, following Rongzompa, asserts that such a view cheapens the profundity of tantric meditation, which does not contrive divine purity as the nature of all things, but discovers it, and experiences it as a veridicatl and vital insight into the nature of reality.
As an aide, as with most polemics, I'd say this isn't completely fair to the Gelukpa view. It is true that the Gelukpa holds deity yoga as a kind of imaginiative exercise, but it is also true that Je Tsongkhapa affirms deity yoga as an occassion for the actual apprehension of phenomena as empty appearances, with both emptiness and appearance appearing to consciousness at one time. This appearance is itself precisely the primordial union of appearance and emptiness that Nyingma polemicists sometimes deny occurs within new translation tantras, and is basically of the same significance as the affirmation of appearances as primordially divine, which Rongzompa will defend. In other words, the same basic point is made by both Galuk and Nyingma, in my view - it is merely made in different ways.
I would say the most important thing about this book is the long introduction, about 80% of the entire work, which does a fantastic job of contextualizing Rongzompa's work in the context of Buddhist thought. Ronzompa wrote at a time when Tibetan Buddhist thought had not been consolidated into a standardized set of terms and disputes, and this is indeed one of the thrilling things about it - he often writes outside of the calcified framework of the later tradition. But it also means that it's not always easy to understand what he's getting at on a basic level, because he often uses familiar terms in surprising ways, or works with problems that will later be structured into conventional terms that don't yet exist. Add to this his terseness as a writer and his legendary use of a very large vocabulary that at times includes words drawn from nomad slang, for example, and he can be quite difficult to read.
This leads me to one of my two criticisms of this outstanding book. Köppl does an excellent job of contextualizing Rongzompa's thought, but is much less effective in explicating the actual work that she translates. Her commentary is somewhat cursory, and focuses almost exclusively on the set of four reasons that Rongzompa uses to demonstrate the actual divinity of appearances. At times, even this area of focus remains under-explained, such as when she briefly mentions that for Rongzompa, pure appearances are somehow "more valid" than afflicted appearances, even though he strongly rejects any notion of conventional validity again and again. There are many difficult points in this work that pass without comment in either her commentary or the numerous endnotes, and there are some uncommented passages that I literally cannot understand on a basic level, even after several re-readings.
My other complaint about this book is its exhorbanant price. It currently costs 30 euros for a 160 page book; that's simply absurd. Dominic Sur's 650-page study of Rongzompa costs 36.
Still, it's a terrific, incredibliy useful book. To a newcomer to Rongzompa, it's an ideal entry point, and it would be extremely helpful to read this before reading Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, it will absolutely answer questions in advance that you absolutely will have when reading that work - questions like "What does Rongzompa even mean when he says 'Madhyamaka'? Who does he mean?"
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May 10, 2010A commentary on the short text of the same name makes up the bulk of this book. It is well put together, placing Rangzom's thought within the larger context of Nyingma and Buddhist thought. Unfortunately for us, Candrakirti's seminal text had not yet been introduced into Tibet, so much of Rongzompa's "beef" with madhyamaka analysis seems to have been undone by Candrakirti, which is to say Rangzompa seems to have been inventing Prasangika of sorts on his own. How great it would have been to hear his thoughts on the avatara.
March 22, 2025
My problems with Rongzom's argument can be summarised by Bertrand Russell:
"Skepticism, while logically impeccable, is psychologically impossible, and there is an element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which pretends to accept it."
Rongzom is trying to argue that all appearances are themselves a part of ultimate truth, which is a position I'm sympathetic to. But his method for doing that is arguing that because people perceive things differently, then any appearance is as good as any other.
And I'm sorry but that's just flagrantly untrue, and ultimately a performative contradiction: Rongzom might claim that someone could mistake a rope for a snake, but if there truly were a venomous snake before him, he would not be reassured by my suggestion that it actually is a rope. He does not eat dirt or faeces, or drink pus because the hungry ghosts in his example view water and food as such.
No one actually lives like this or actually believes this, and even on top of this, differences in appearance, when not clouded by dogma, self-interest and prejudice, are almost always reconcilable. That most people are unable to have such an honest conversation is not proof that such knowledge is impossible.
"Skepticism, while logically impeccable, is psychologically impossible, and there is an element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which pretends to accept it."
Rongzom is trying to argue that all appearances are themselves a part of ultimate truth, which is a position I'm sympathetic to. But his method for doing that is arguing that because people perceive things differently, then any appearance is as good as any other.
And I'm sorry but that's just flagrantly untrue, and ultimately a performative contradiction: Rongzom might claim that someone could mistake a rope for a snake, but if there truly were a venomous snake before him, he would not be reassured by my suggestion that it actually is a rope. He does not eat dirt or faeces, or drink pus because the hungry ghosts in his example view water and food as such.
No one actually lives like this or actually believes this, and even on top of this, differences in appearance, when not clouded by dogma, self-interest and prejudice, are almost always reconcilable. That most people are unable to have such an honest conversation is not proof that such knowledge is impossible.
January 7, 2020
A short but very dense text. Definitely warrants another read, maybe more!
November 1, 2013
A struggle with unfamiliar terminology and approach for this Gelugpa. The Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism has gotten the lion's share of attention from Western scholars. It is time for the riches of the Nyigma to be made more available.
July 2, 2013
Interesting source text, but bizarre translation.
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June 5, 2016I just didn't understand it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews