Five Tibetan Rites - Disputed Origins

Disputed Origins

Although the origin of the Five Rites before the publication of The Eye of Revelation is disputed between practitioners and skeptics, a comparison of illustrations of the postures shows a remarkable similarity between the Rites and authentic Tibetan 'phrul 'khor exercises from a system rendered into English as Vajra Body Magical Wheel Sun and Moon Union (Tibetan: རྡོ་རྗེ་ལུས་ཀྱི་འཕྲུལ་འཁོར་ཉི་ཟླ་ཁ་སྦྱོར, Wylie: rdo rje lus kyi 'phrul 'khor nyi zla kha sbyor). Chris Kilham, whose 1994 book The Five Tibetans helped respark the Rites' popularity, says, "As the story has it, they were shared by Tibetan lamas; beyond that I know nothing of their history." Even though the historic lineage of the Rites before the publication of Kelder's booklet remains to be ascertained, the Rites have nevertheless been affirmed by a lama and scholar of the Sa skya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as being "a genuine form of yoga and were originally taken from an authentic Indo-Tibetan tantric lineage, namely a cycle of yantra-yoga associated with the Sadnadapadadharma." However, it has been argued that the Five Rites predate yoga as we know it today by as much as seven hundred years or more and, therefore, could not have derived from either Tibetan or Indian forms of yoga. Moreover, it has been suggested that the Rites are more likely to have originated from a system of Kum Nye which, like the Rites, date back 2,500 years. Nevertheless, Kilham states that "he issue at hand, though, is not the lineage of the Five Tibetans. The point is their immense potential value for those who will clear 10 minutes a day to practice."