We began our fieldwork for the Searching for the Lotus Born Master movie series by searching for Padmasambhava’s early manifestation as Pema Gyalpo, the Lotus King, in the ruins of Taxila in Pakistan. Here, archeologists have been uncovering Gandhara-era art among the ruins of the theorized Oddiyana area for decades. This was a sophisticated Buddhist kingdom with striking art similarities with Greek statuaries and motifs, a legacy from the Hellenistic era’s Indo-Greek kingdoms (c. 180 BC–10 AD).

The million-dollar question, which could affect our entire understanding of civilization itself, is this: Was it the Greeks who influenced Oddiyana, or the Oddiyana people who influenced the Greeks? This is where unlocking the source of the Lotus-Born Master’s own teachings may lead us to a re-think of all our assumptions of the evolution of Western civilization and our interconnected world history.  

Said to be born on a lotus on Lake Danako, located in the Kingdom of Oddiyana (now the Swat Valley in Pakistan), Pema Gyalpo was discovered as an orphan by the king Indrabhuti and brought into the palace of Oddiyana, where he grew up to become Pema Gyalpo, the Lotus King. It is said that the bodhisattva Vajrapani appeared to him in a dream and conveyed that if he stayed in the comfort of his own kingdom, he would benefit its citizens. However, if he left and experienced the entire matrix of tantric practices, he would one day benefit all in the world. Knowing what to do, the Lotus-Born Master engineered an excuse and left his own palace, in much the way Lord Shakyamuni Buddha had done centuries before, and went to the charnel grounds to learn from yogic ascetics. The Lotus King was deriving his core teachings from a culturally rich and diverse kingdom, giving him an openness of mind that many other royals and nobles of other kingdoms would never have shared at the time.

The ancient kingdom of Oddiyana was a nexus of the overland or Northern Silk Road. It had extensive diplomatic relations with Chinese dynasties and also with the Greek city-states of the Hellenistic period. It was a tantric Buddhist kingdom, and was said to have over 1,400 Buddhist temples along the Swat River.

However, given its vibrant commercial interactions, it absorbed many different traditions into its society’s own understanding of Buddhism. Unlike the more institutionalized Theravada or Mahayana of the time, it was eclectic and syncretic. Hindu Brahmins were teaching mantras. Zoroastrian influences of fire worship brought the fire puja. Tantric rituals of wine inebriation with Dakini consorts may very well have been influenced by Dionysian rituals with nymphs and Delphi oracles in Greece. In turn, when Islam entered the Swat Valley, the concept of djinn or geni, female energy emerging from an oil lamp to persuade one’s dreams or achieve one’s desires, may very well have evolved from the Dakini concept that was so embedded in Swat Valley culture.

In the Kingdom of Oddiyana, women often lived as yoginis in the mountains, caring for shrines and liberating the minds of yogis who came to them for tantric yogic practice. It was a liberal kingdom, fusing everything from Buddhist, Hindu, Shamanist and Zoroastrian rituals into a fabric of “Tantrayana.” This would be the spiritual core from which the Lotus-Born Master would develop his own Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, which further evolved when he arrived in Tibet in roughly 747–49 AD.

The stuff of legend and historic speculation

Why was Alexander the Great (356–23 BC) so fervent on fighting his way across the Persian Empire into the tribal landscape of the Himalayas, with almost no sense of wanting to turn back? What was he looking for? As an explorer who has directed numerous films with the theme of “Searching for . . .,” I must say that I understand this urge to uncover the unknown, to pierce the darkness of a seeming web of knowledge, something that lies beyond one’s own reach, but something that you are certain is out there.

My deeper inquiry reveals that the Kingdom of Oddiyana may very well have been a secret Hellenic kingdom, tied to the Mediterranean through the network of silk routes that formed the main commercial freeway across Eurasia for thousands of years until Islamic kingdoms and later Europeans came up with deep hull ships that could navigate the ocean faster than caravans of camels and donkeys. Certainly, there was a deep interconnected fabric of spiritual interaction along with the exchanges of trade.

I was surprised to uncover that many great Greek philosophers were studying from teachings promulgated by Indic Brahmins and Buddhist yogis. They in turn, were influenced by the wisdom of the Himalayan traditions. Aristotle, Plato and others were deeply affected by these yogic messiahs from the east. Or more properly, the word is not messiah, the anointed one in Hebrew tradition, but mahasiddha, or great masters. . . those with psychic powers enhanced through yogic and meditation training.

Sure enough, many of the Greek gods were actually drawn from precursors that gave rise to the ancient Vedic tradition. We can see the king of the gods Zeus holding his thunderbolt and then we realize that this is Indra with his Vajra. These same symbols were absorbed into the tantric Buddhist tradition that the Lotus-Born Master would one day bring to Tibet. Apollo and Diana are the sun and moon symbols that are always associated in tantric tradition with the male and female energies, the Yab and Yum, Yang and Yin, Shiva and Shakti, all inseparable reflections of each other in a synchronic oneness that dispels duality as an overriding tantric principle.

The Muses are Dakinis. Aphrodite, accompanied by Cupid with his bow and arrow, are an aspect of the magnetizing Dakini Kurukulle, who shoots arrows of flowers harnessing love. The very Greek symbol for medicine is still used today by the medical profession globally. Sure enough, these are two Naga encircling the central line chakras, the Kundalini rising itself. If you can get your Kundalini to open all your chakra, you probably don’t even need a doctor, because that means all your energy channels are open and in good energy flow and high-powered health. The Greeks knew something. And yes, they got it from Oddiyana.

When walking down the ancient streets of Taxila, I noticed that the foundations of buildings dating back to Alexander the Great were still intact. Sure enough, when he decided to return to Greece, Alexander left an army of Greeks here in Taxila, where they converted to Buddhism and Jainism. They then began carving statues of Buddha with curly hair and aqualine noses. They wore robes that were clearly Mediterranean. Is it possible that the Gandhara prototype image of the future Buddha, standing in Grecian robes with hand raised, is inspired by the facial expression and gestures of Alexander the Great?  

Regardless of whether traditions were travelling east from west, or west from east, Oddiyana was the place that they were travelling through. It became an incubation ground for the Tantrayana that Lotus-Born Master would one day bring with him across India, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Tibetan regions of western China, founding what we know today as Tibetan Buddhism.

A future documentary of Shambhala Studio is now in production. Sure enough, we have named it, Lotus Born Master: The Oddiyana Source Code.

Related features from BDG

Dance Is Evidence: Rethinking History Through the Moving Body – Gandhara, Buddhism, and The Greeks
A Movie Series Stirs to Life: Starting the Search for the Lotus-Born Master
Alexander the Great and the Buddha: A Cross-Cultural Evolution

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Interview: Prof Georgios Halkias on the Mutual Influence between Hellenism and Buddhism

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