Portable Sacred Items for Pragmatic and Transcendent Goals

Portable amulet boxes filled with sacred objects, or gau in Tibetan, such as the one pictured here with its contents, are among the most ubiquitous features of Tibetan Buddhist culture. The contents of amulet boxes are referred to in Tibetan as ten, meaning “receptacle,” for their role in encapsulating the “blessings” (jinlab) and “power” (tu) of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and revered lamas.1 Gaus come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny pendants to larger miniature reliquaries.2 Their materials and decorations also vary considerably, reflecting the social status, religious role, and gender of their owners, and sometimes the region of their origin.3 

The gau pictured here was a personal gift from the Tsike Chokling, Fourth Karma Mingyur Dewe Dorje (1953–2020) to two of his students (fig. 1).4 Judging by its size and shape, fashioned in imitation of a Buddhist reliquary or chorten (Sanskrit: stupa), this is a men’s gau. Men’s gaus can range in size from an inch (two and a half centimeters) to over fourteen inches (thirty–five centimeters) in height. Smaller gaus like this one are worn around the neck, while larger gaus are hung over the chest or under the arm, suspended from a leather strap or cloth band.5 The flat base enables them also to function as makeshift shrines when traveling, and as centerpieces for home or temple shrines, where they can house especially revered objects in initiations and other tantric Buddhist rituals. 

The contents of gaus vary widely, depending on their owner and function, but they typically house an assortment of sacra collected over time, such as miniature statues; photographs of lamas; votive plaques; amulets; Sanskrit mantras or sacred incantations written on small pieces of paper; relic pills; materials from sacred sites; and fragments of silk scarves, fabrics, strands of hair, or anything else once in contact with a revered person, place, or thing.6 Gaus used in initiation rituals might house only a single object, such as a miniature statue or ritual object associated with a famous tantric master from the past. 

The gau pictured here was handselected by Chokling Rinpoche, who specially prepared its contents and consecrated it in Kathmandu, Nepal, during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its metal surface is decorated with the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel above the window and offerings below it, flanked on the right and left by a pattern vaguely suggestive of the Eight Auspicious Symbols, the gau’s most common decorative motif (fig. 2).7 Its contents include 1) an amulet diagram encased in cords of five colors, together with three dark brown pills of unknown origin and constitution; 2) two reddish brown pills composed of relics said to be from the eighth-century Indian tantric master Padmasambhava and his core group of disciples in the Tibetan imperial court known as the Twenty-Five Figures of King Tri Songdetsen (742–ca. 800) and his subjects (Orgyen jebang nyernga), which belonged to the late Dudjom Rinpoche, Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje (1904–1987);8 and 3) two small golden pills of unknown origin and constitution (fig. 3). Unlike most gaus, which display in their window an enclosed image, such as the statue of a buddha or the photograph of a lama, this one displays through its window the amulet, with its other contents concealed behind it. 

Amulets and Their Purpose

The owners of this gau report that Chokling Rinpoche gave it to them for the express purpose of protection. Protective amulets (sungwa, sungkhor) like this one are geometric diagrams drawn on paper with a combination of mantra formulas and images, and consecrated through contemplative ritual proceedings, before being folded up, wrapped in cords of five colors with sacred substances, and distributed for use. They can be included among the contents of amulet boxes or worn separately. Tibetans have used them to protect against misfortune during travel, injury during battle, illness, harmful spirits, and any other potential calamity.9 The manufacture of such protective amulets has been so prevalent among Buddhists in Tibet through the ages that it might have influenced the advent of Muslim amulet use in the twelfth century.10 

Gaus and the amulets they house have a range of other functions, too. They can be worn to extend longevity, personal power (wangtang), and good fortune (lungta), and to enhance wealth and intelligence, among other desirable aims. Their functions can also be coercive or destructive. They can be made to seduce a potential partner, influence a powerful political leader, or destroy an enemy.11 In the latter instances, the charm would not be worn by the owner but secretly placed close to the intended target (figs. 4, 5, and 6).

Amulets are sometimes made using astrological calculations to tailor them to specific individuals and functions. In such instances, the date of birth of the wearer or target is tallied according to the sixty-year astrological cycle of the various combinations of twelve animals and five elements. An amulet is then specially produced to manipulate negative and positive influences according to personal and temporal specifications.12       

Tibetan Buddhist ritual experts who produce amulets tend to frame their diversity of aims according to the rubric of the “four tantric activities” of pacifying (Tibetan: zhiwa; Sanskrit: shantika), enriching (Tibetan: gyepa; Sanskrit. paushtika), subjugating (Tibetan: wangwa; Sanskrit: vashikarana), and destroying (Tibetan: ngoncho; Sanskrit: abhichara), whereby protection figures primarily as an act of quelling potential adversities.13 Moreover, these categories are often understood as multivalent, so that the notion of protection partakes of a broader doctrinal understanding, extending also to protection against karmic obstacles that thwart positive rebirth and spiritual obstructions that interfere with the attainment of awakening. The tendency to intertwine these three orientations—the pragmatic, karmic, and transcendent—in one and the same object and practice has been highlighted as a unique feature of tantric Buddhist traditions.14 

Sacred Pills and Their Purpose 

Sacred pills like the ones pictured here are as commonplace in Tibetan Buddhist cultural regions as amulets. The Tibetan practice of concocting, consecrating, consuming, and wearing sacred pills in gaus originates from Indian Buddhist tantric traditions brought to Tibet beginning in the eighth century that had integrated Buddhist relic veneration with pan-Indian medical and alchemical practices.15 

Dudjom Rinpoche, from whom the relic pills in this gau originate, composed a short text for the production and consecration of pills that includes compounds consecrated previously by Padmasambhava and his twenty-five disciples of King Tri Songdetsen and subjects, and by the first Chokling Rinpoche, Chokgyur Dechen Zhikpo Lingpa (1829–1870). This might very well describe the pills housed in this gau (fig. 7). 

As Dudjom describes, his pills need not be consumed to bring about effects. Like amulets, their governing principle of efficacy is physical contact, and they protect not only against mundane dangers, but also against rebirth as an animal, anguished spirit, or hell being.16 Ultimately, Dudjom promises, his pill concoction can confer awakening in this very lifetime, without the need even to cultivate it, but through just tasting or coming into contact with the minutest trace of a single pill.17 To help reach this goal, he adds, practitioners are advised to connect with it devoutly by means of contemplative practice. While eating it, for example, the consumer visualizes herself as a tantric deity and the pill as flowing from the sexual union of two buddhas to pervade her subtle body with the immaculate great bliss of awakening.18 In this and other ways, Dudjom insists, interacting with such pills should not be disregarded as a palliative done in lieu of genuine Buddhist practice, but as part of a rich contemplative tradition connected with the loftiest goals of Vajrayana Buddhism. 

This gau and its contents thus serve as a powerful illustration of the Tibetan Buddhist penchant for integrating mundane pragmatic concerns with the aspiration for ultimate awakening. Here they are combined in a single portable box.