Library of Tibetan Classics – serie

A brilliant annotated translation of Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s Mountain Dharma that opens a masterpiece of the Jonang tradition to Western readers and presents Dölpopa’s provocative ideas about a true, eternal, and established reality that still impact Buddhism today.The controversial master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen shook Buddhist Tibet when he taught that an eternal enlightened essence, or buddha nature, exists in full form in all living beings. The ideas discussed in Mountain Dharma are still as provocative now as when Dolpopa first taught them, impacting Buddhism to this day. Dolpopa identified the ultimate with the buddha nature, or sugata essence, which he held to be eternal and not empty of self-nature. The buddha nature is perfect, with all its characteristics inherently present in all living beings. It is only the impermanent and temporary afflictions veiling the buddha nature that are empty of self-nature and must be removed through the practice of the path to allow it to manifest. Dolpopa establishes the validity of his theories with an ocean of quotations selected from Indian Buddhist scriptures and treatises of indisputable authority, showing us that the ultimate is a true, eternal, and established reality, empty merely of other relative phenomena.

An annotated translation of five key texts of the Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön school selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché that includes scriptural teachings, a root tantra based on revealed teachings of the unconditioned absolute, a canonical commentary on the root tantra, an exposition of the Yungdrung tantric system, and the oral instructions on Bön meditation practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems.This authoritative annotated translation of five key texts of Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön by Marc des Jardins opens up a relatively unknown tradition that, since the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, has undergone great transformations in its philosophy, doctrinal teachings, and meditative practices. Each text represents an important aspect of the tradition. The first text, by Drogön Azha Lodrö Gyaltsen (1198–1263), presents the grounds and paths of the Greater Vehicle of the Bön tradition and represents the philosophical ideology of its teachings based on the scriptures contained in the Bön canon. The second text is a short root tantra attributed to revealed teachings from Kuntu Zangpo, the personification of the unconditioned absolute. The third text is a commentary on this root tantra attributed to Drenpa Namkha (fl. eighth century), a Bönpo sage contemporary with Padmasambhava. The fourth text, by Nyamé Sherap Gyaltsen (1356–1415), presents a general exposition of the tantric system according to Yungdrung Bön. The final text, by Drutön Gyalwa Yungdrung (1242–90), pertains to the oral instructions on the meditation practices of Bön, especially on the cycle of practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems. All five texts have been selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché, Lungtok Tenpai Nyima (1927–2017), the thirty-third abbot of Menri Monastery, the central institution of the Yungdrung Bön school.

The power and promise of enlightened altruism, a life lived for the benefit of all beings, is on full display in this collection of Buddhist works on the heroic way of the bodhisattva.One of the most revolutionary aspects of Mahayana Buddhism is what many contemporary writers on Buddhism call the “bodhisattva ideal.” This refers to a spiritual outlook and way of life rooted in a resolute vow and dedicated to the welfare of all sentient beings. This volume features authoritative Tibetan presentations of the ideal based on key Indian Buddhist treatises, especially Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way and Compendium of Training, Maitreya’s Ornament of Mahayana Sutras, and Asanga’s Bodhisattva Ground. Together, the nine Tibetan texts translated here embrace the complete spectrum of the bodhisattva ideal as understood, taught, and practiced in Tibetan Buddhism. From first generating the faith of admiration toward the compassionate teacher, the Buddha, by recollecting his altruistic deeds in former births (jatakas) to generating the awakening mind (bodhicitta) followed by the solemn act of taking the bodhisattva vow, from cultivating oneself through everyday mindfulness rooted in an altruistic outlook to the specifics of living life according to the bodhisattva’s moral precepts, and from the initial stages of training in the six perfections to the full flowering of the union of awakening mind with the wisdom seeing things as they are, this volume offers a comprehensive roadmap to making the bodhisattva ideal an animating reality in the practitioner’s own life. The volume includes celebrated commentaries, including Thokmé Sangpo on Guide to the Bodhisattva Way, Tsongkhapa on the Compendium of Training, Gyaltsab on the Precious Garland (fully translated here), and Chankgya Rolpai Dorje on the bodhisattva precepts. It also contains a lucid structural comparison of Ornament of Mahayana Sutras and the Bodhisattva Ground, along with inspiring verses on the Buddha’s past births, mind training, and the altruistic aspiration. Finally, it contains a fresh translation of Thokme Sangpo’s famous Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattva and Dza Paltrul’s verse distillation of the bodhisattva vows.

The foremost translator of Perfection of Wisdom literature from Tibetan today presents three foundational works that formed the basis for the Tibetans’ study of Mahayana scripture and the bodhisattva path.The perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita) is a key element of the path in Mahayana Buddhism. Wisdom here is the transcendent wisdom of a bodhisattva who has penetrated the nature of reality, the emptiness (shunyata) of all things. Sutras that take the Perfection of Wisdom as their name emerged in the centuries before and after the start of the Common Era and became foundational for the nascent Mahayana. These include the well-known Heart Sutra and Diamond Cutter Sutra as well as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in eight thousand and a hundred thousand lines. Study of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in Tibet has historically been through commentaries on the Ornament for the Clear Realizations (Abhisamayalamkara), a short verse distillation in eight chapters attributed to Maitreya that was expanded in India by such figures as Asanga, Haribhadra, and Arya-Vimuktisena. The three works in the present volume reflect the diversity of the Tibetan commentarial tradition on these Indian works. Ngok Loden Sherab’s (1057–1109) Topical Summary marks the beginning in Sangphu Monastery of the most influential Perfection of Wisdom commentarial tradition. Ngok’s short work leads the reader briskly through the Abhisamayalamkara’s seventy topics, presenting what would become the standard framework for explaining the Perfection of Wisdom in Tibet. The entirety of Haribhadra’s Vivrti commentary has been embedded in Ngok’s text. Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen’s (1364–1432) Way to Practice the Sequence of Clear Realizations, structured as a defense of the meditation system set forth by his guru Tsongkhapa in the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, links the stages of the path expanded into the seventy topics with the actual practices of an accomplished yogi. Working outward from the middle of the Abhisamayalamkara’s fourth chapter, it explains how the Perfection of Wisdom is integrated into a total and complete meditational practice for the attainment of buddhahood. The great Drukpa Kagyu scholar Kunkhyen Pema Karpo’s (1527–92) Sacred Words of Lord Maitreya is the most detailed and systematic of the three works, supplementing explanations of the Perfection of Wisdom based on the Abhisamayalamkara with verses from the Mahayanasutralamkara (Ornament for the Mahayana Sutras) and the Uttaratantra (Sublime Continuum). This work as presented here includes within it a complete translation of the Abhisamayalamkara’s eight chapters.