phyag bgyi'ol -Padma dKar-po 2 /. Introduction According to Sa-skya PancHta, the White Panacea {dkar-po chig-thub) is a mahdmudrd doctrine newly adopted by unnamed persons, evidently the bKa'-brgyud-pas as specialists in mahdmudrd, and bearing a suspicious relationship with the noxious doctrines of Hva-shang Mahayana, the Chinese Ch'an master defeated by Kamalsaslla at the bSam-yas debate. 3 As a result of this debate, the Buddhist doctrines officially permitted in Tibet were those of the

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... l, staged (rim-gyis-pa'i) variety; and Sa-skya Pancjita is complaining that doctrines of the sudden (cig-car-ba'i) variety are being reintroduced into Tibet by the bKa'-brgyud-pas and the rNying-ma-pas. The colloquial use for dkar-po chig-thub is of a medical plant, perhaps ginseng. Now the point of the analogy between ginseng and mahdmudrd is not merely that just as ginseng cures all diseases, mahdmudrd cures all defects of the personality. When the bKa'-brgyud-pas use the word on their own account, as does Zhang Tshal-pa (1123-93) in his important mahdmudrd work Phyag-chen lam-mchog mthar-thug, 4 the idea is rather that once the disease, whatever it was, has been cured by means of ginseng there is no need to take any further medicine to cure it, and similarly 27 28 JIABSVOL. 10NO.2 once mahdmudra has been attained there is no need to do anything further in order to remove defilements. Thus, following attainment it is unnecessary and useless to enquire what the defilements were; in this form the analogy is connected with an old Buddhist one, according to which the person who is suffering from a disease wants it cured, and does not want to be told its name. Ginseng {mahdmudra) is the cure. In more specifically vajraydna language, the White Panacea (dkar-po chig-thub) is thus connected with seals (mudrd). However, in the sDom-gsum rab-dbye Sa-skya Pancjita ignores the views of the bKa'-brgyud-pas and takes the word to stand for a complete quietism, a "do-nothing" attitude towards the doctrine, and claims further that this is the heresy of the Hvashang. The present paper presents Padma dKar-po's replies to some of these attacks, mainly as given in his Phyag-chen ganmdzod. Evidence will be given for the following theses: A. The term dkar-po chig-thub was used by Zhang Tshal-pa in the Phyag-chen lam-mchog mthar-thug in the sense of" {mahdmudra as) the only cure for defilements" {klesa, nyon-mongs), that is, to convey the idea that once mahdmudra has been attained, there is no more effort to be made, and the practitioner should act effortlessly (anabhogacdrya, Ihun-gyu grub-pa i spyod-pa). The text of the dKar-po chig-thub chapter of this work is in Appendix A, and a summary is in Section 1 below; it is straightforward, and the thesis stated here is plainly supported by it. From the materials given in Appendix A we see also that the notions of "sameness" (rnnyam-pa-nyid) and non-duality are precisely not dealt with under the White Panacea (dkar-po chig-thub) but in an earlier chapter of the iMm-mchog mthar-thug. B. There is no evidence for the systematic use of dkar-po chig-thub by bKa'-brgyud-pas earlier than Zhang Tshal-pa. The word has certainly been used once or twice by sGam-po-pa, but not in any technical sense or as part of a doctrinal scheme. C. dKar-po chig-thub used by Padma dKar-po only when replying to the attacks of Sa-skya Pancjita and to questions from people in other traditions. Padma dKar-po never uses the term on his own account. It plays no independent role in the bKa'brgyud-pas' own rather complex conception of mahdmudra (part of which is sketched below). Nevertheless, Padma dKar-po does