Tsongkhapa

The new standard work and definitive biography of Tsongkhapa, one of the principle founders of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism--the school of the Dalai Lamas. In this groundbreaking addition to the Lives of the Masters series, Thupten Jinpa, a scholar-practitioner and long-time translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, offers the most comprehensive portrait available of Jé Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), one of the greatest Buddhist teachers in history. A devout monastic, Tsongkhapa took on the difficult task of locating and studying all of the Indian Buddhist classics available in Tibet in his day. He went on to synthesize this knowledge into a holistic approach to the path of awakening. In an achievement of incredible magnitude, he integrated the pivotal yet disparate Mahayana teachings on emptiness while retaining the important role of critical reason and avoiding the extreme of negating the reality of the everyday world. Included in this volume is a discussion of Tsongkhapa’s early life and training; his emergence as a precociously intelligent Buddhist mind; the composition of his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Great Exposition of Tantra, and many other important works; and his founding of the Lhasa Prayer Festival and Ganden Monastery. This is a necessary resource for anyone interested in Tsongkhapa’s transformative effect on the understanding and practice of Buddhism in Tibet in his time and his continued influence today.

Je Tsong Khapa (1357-1419) is revered as one of the most significant Tibetan Buddhist teacher whose eclectic and analytic studies and meditations in all the major schools of Tibetan Buddhism resulted in the founding of the Gelugpa system of the Tibetan Buddhist heritage. The Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa brings together for the first time a number of extremey important and useful works by and on Tsong Khapa touching transcendental aspects of Sutra, Tantra and Insight Meditation, including mystic conver sations with great Bodhisattvas and deeply spiritual songs in praises of Manjushri and Maitreya etc. The anthology concludes with a number of intensely moving songs in praise of Tsong Khapa and his immeasurable contribution to Tibetan Buddhism by such realised and remarkable Tibetan Buddhist personalities like the Seventh Dalai Lama, Eighth Karmapa, Dulnagpa Palden and Khaydrub Je etc. Ably translated by a number of Western Buddhist translators in association with Tibetan Buddhist scholars, The Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa edited by Professor Robert Thurman, fulfils a long standing need of the contemporary Dharma community of both the East and the West.

A must-read for students of Tibetan Buddhism, The Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa provides a thorough exploration of the great teacher’s wisdom. In The Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa, you’ll discover Tsongkhapa’s teachings on transcendental aspects of sutra, tantra, and insight meditation, mystic conversations with great bodhisattvas, deeply spiritual songs in praise of Manjushri and Maitreya, and much more. The anthology concludes with a number of intensely moving songs in praise of Tsongkhapa and his immeasurable contribution to Tibetan Buddhism by such realized and remarkable Tibetan Buddhists as the Seventh Dalai Lama, the Eighth Karmapa, Dulnagpa Palden, and Khedrup Je. This edition has been substantially corrected by Robert Thurman and contains a new introduction and a bibliography of all the works referenced in the text.

The new standard work and definitive biography of Tsongkhapa, one of the principle founders of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism--the school of the Dalai Lamas. In this groundbreaking addition to the Lives of the Masters series, Thupten Jinpa, a scholar-practitioner and long-time translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, offers the most comprehensive portrait available of Jé Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), one of the greatest Buddhist teachers in history. A devout monastic, Tsongkhapa took on the difficult task of locating and studying all of the Indian Buddhist classics available in Tibet in his day. He went on to synthesize this knowledge into a holistic approach to the path of awakening. In an achievement of incredible magnitude, he integrated the pivotal yet disparate Mahayana teachings on emptiness while retaining the important role of critical reason and avoiding the extreme of negating the reality of the everyday world. Included in this volume is a discussion of Tsongkhapa’s early life and training; his emergence as a precociously intelligent Buddhist mind; the composition of his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Great Exposition of Tantra, and many other important works; and his founding of the Lhasa Prayer Festival and Ganden Monastery. This is a necessary resource for anyone interested in Tsongkhapa’s transformative effect on the understanding and practice of Buddhism in Tibet in his time and his continued influence today.

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Tib. Lam rim chen mo) is one of the brightest jewels in the world’s treasury of sacred literature. The author, Tsong-kha-pa, completed it in 1402, and it soon became one of the most renowned works of spiritual practice and philosophy in the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Because it condenses all the exoteric sūtra scriptures into a meditation manual that is easy to understand, scholars and practitioners rely on its authoritative presentation as a gateway that leads to a full understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. Tsong-kha-pa took great pains to base his insights on classical Indian Buddhist literature, illustrating his points with classical citations as well as with sayings of the masters of the earlier Kadampa tradition. In this way the text demonstrates clearly how Tibetan Buddhism carefully preserved and developed the Indian Buddhist traditions. This second of three volumes covers the deeds of the bodhisattvas, as well as how to train in the six perfections.

Tantra, or Vajrayana, Buddhism is a set of esoteric practices that involve mantra recitation and complex visualizations. Tantra constitutes the fabric of a Tibetan Buddhist's daily practice, but no practice of tantra can be successful without adherence to the tantric precepts, the highest of three complementary sets of vows. Tsongkhapa is perhaps the greatest philosopher ever produced by Tibet's Buddhist culture, and this book is a translation of his explanation of the tantric precepts.

Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the author of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and the teacher of the First Dalai Lama, is renowned as one of the greatest scholar-saints that Tibet has ever produced. He composed his poetic Praise for Dependent Relativity the very morning that he abandoned confusion and attained the final view, the clear realization of emptiness that is the essence of wisdom. English monk Graham Woodhouse, a longtime student of Buddhism, was living near the Dalai Lama's residence in northern India when he translated Tsongkhapa's celebrated text, and he conveys for modern readers the explanation of it he received from his teacher, the late Venerable Lobsang Gyatso.

Tsongkhapa's A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages (1419) is a comprehensive presentation of the highest yoga class of Buddhist tantra, especially the key practices - the so-called five stages (pancakrama) - of the advanced phase of Guhyasamaja tantra. Beginning with a thorough examination of the Indian sources, Tsongkhapa draws particularly from the writings of Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Candrakirti, and Naropa to develop a definitive understanding of the Vajrayana completion stage. Whereas in the generation stage, meditators visualize the Buddha in the form of the deity residing in a mandala palace, in the completion stage discussed in the present volume, meditators transcend ordinary consciousness and actualize the state of a buddha themselves. Among other things, Tsongkhapa's work covers the subtle human physiology of channels and winds along with the process of dying, the bardo, and rebirth. This definitive statement on Guhyasamaja tantra profoundly affected the course of Buddhist practice in Tibet.