SARAHA’S SPONTANEOUS SONGS
With the Commentaries by Advayavajra and Mokṣākaragupta
“Completely abandon thought and no-thought, and abide in the natural way of a small child.” —Saraha
To find liberation and realize the true nature of reality, the Indian Buddhist master Saraha says we must leave behind any conceptual assessment of reality, since no model of it has ever been known to withstand critical analysis. Saraha’s spontaneous songs, or dohās, represent the Buddhist art of expressing the inexpressible. The most important collection of Saraha’s songs is the Dohākoṣa, the Treasury of Spontaneous Songs, better known in Tibet as the Songs for the People, and the Tibetan mahāmudrā tradition, especially within the Kagyü school, has done the most to preserve the lineage of Saraha’s instructions to the present day.
But Saraha was also widely cited in Indian sources starting around the eleventh century, and one Indic commentary, by the Newar scholar Advayavajra, still exists in Sanskrit. In addition, we have independent root texts of Saraha’s songs in the vernacular Apabhraṃśa in which they were recorded. These Indian texts, together with their Tibetan translations, are here presented in masterful new critical editions, along with the Tibetan translation of the commentary no longer extant in Sanskrit by Mokṣākaragupta. Finally, both commentaries are rendered in elegant English, and the authors offer a brisk but comprehensive introduction.
Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs provides the reader with everything needed for a serious study of one of the most important works in the Indian Buddhist canon.
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About Author
Klaus-Dieter Mathes earned his doctorate at Marburg University and is a Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He previously worked as a research fellow and lecturer at the Asia Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and as a Professor of Tibetology and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research in progress deals with the Indian origins of Tibetan Mahāmudrā traditions. He is also a regular contributor to the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.
Péter-Dániel Szántó started his studies at ELTE Budapest (Tibetology, Indology). He read for a DPhil in Oxford, where he also held two junior research fellowships (Merton College, All Souls College). He also worked as a postdoc in Hamburg and Leiden and was visiting professor at Leiden and Vienna. He is currently associate professor at ELTE Budapest, where he is also head of the Department of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. His main research areas include esoteric Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Sanskrit belles-lettres, and medieval South Asian history.
Book Information
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How to Live and Die
What death is, how we die, what minds we need at death and what happens after death—only by knowing about death and rebirth can we actually fully understand what life is and so learn how to live fully.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
There is arguably no truth more foundational to Buddhism than this: everything is impermanent. We can see this in the world all around us; old systems break down, relationships change. Death comes for those we love and, inevitably, for us.
In this book, the late, beloved teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche walks us through the traditional, revelatory practices of meditating on the fact of impermanence and even—especially—on death itself. Rather than shy away from this reality, we look straight at it, and thus we learn not only how to not fear death, but how to live.
The Vajrabhairava Tantra
A groundbreaking work on the little-studied Indian origins of an influential tantric Buddhist practice along with a fresh English translation.
The deity Vajrabhairava, or Yamantaka, is well known as the central figure of tantric practice in multiple lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and is also found in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Less is known about its foundational Indian context. The Vajrabhairava Tantra, dedicated to the buffalo-headed deity Vajrabhairava, arose around the eighth century and had a considerable impact on the formation of religious praxis in the medieval Indian Buddhist world. This book contains a translation of the Vajrabhairava Tantra from the recently discovered Sanskrit text and a comprehensive study of its elements, of its origins and Indian commentators, and of the history of its transmission to Tibet. The annotation to the translation excerpts all six Indian commentaries on the tantra found in the Tibetan canon.
One highly innovative contribution this work makes to the fields of tantric Buddhist studies and, more generally, to South Asian religions is the way it breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries between tantra and magic. It shows that the genesis of tantric traditions cannot be reduced to a one-way influence of Hindu Shaivism on Buddhism or vice versa, but indicates a widespread “culture of magic,” a common “ritual syntax,” that crossed sectarian, linguistic, and socio-cultural boundaries, one that came to be significantly diminished in later Shaiva and Buddhist tantras.
The study comprises the first half of the book, and the second half is the translation, which explains the construction of the mandala, the magical applications of the practice, the extraction of the mantra, the visualization, and the preparation of the pata painting and the homa fire ritual. A dozen color plates illustrate Vajrabhairava in his Solitary Hero and other forms along with mandalas of five different lineages, keys for which are provided in the appendix.
The only previous study of the Vajrabhairava Tantra relied solely on Tibetan and Mongolian sources. By relying on the newly discovered Sanskrit manuscript, this new translation is able to correct numerous inaccuracies. Moreover, the earlier study included only three of six canonical commentaries on the root text incorporated here, passing over the key commentaries by Akṣobhya and Kṛṣṇācārya.
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Minding the Buddha’s Business
Colleagues and former students of Gregory Schopen honor his path-breaking contributions to Buddhist studies with these articles on the early Mahayana, the monastic codes, and Buddhism’s art-historical and epigraphical remains.
This volume honors the profoundly transformative influence of Gregory Schopen’s many contributions to Buddhist studies. Eighteen articles by former students and colleagues focus on the areas of Schopen’s most noteworthy influence: the study of the Mahayana, particularly of its early sutra literature; the study of Vinaya, especially the narratives accompanying the rules for monks and nuns; and the study of Buddhist epigraphy and art history. Contributors demonstrate the ongoing significance of Schopen’s scholarship, including his very first article, on the cult of the book in the early Mahayana, published fifty years ago.
Schopen has repeatedly shown how the study of Buddhism has too often focused on scriptures and normative doctrines and not enough on the practical ideas and contexts that significantly impacted the lives of actual Buddhists. He sought to reveal these lived concerns in the massive trove of Buddhist inscriptions, which often expose the habits and ideas of the tradition’s most prominent donors (many of whom were monastics), as well as the everyday concerns of monks and nuns, whose views did not always dovetail with canonical sources. Even in his treatment of canonical sources, Schopen has shown that the standard portrait of a Buddhist monk or nun fails to match a careful reading of their law codes—his work on the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya has required scholars to substantially reimagine the legal and ritual obligations, as well as the economic concerns, that preoccupied the minds of Buddhist jurists.
Schopen has, in essence, brought the Buddha down to earth, revealing that this is precisely where most Indian Buddhists encountered him. The contributions in this celebratory volume reflect this legacy and Schopen’s considerable impact on our understanding of Buddhists in India.
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The Power of Meditation
What is meditation, and how do we practice it?
In The Power of Meditation, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, beloved teacher and co-founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, offers clear explanations and instructions for the life-changing practice of meditation.
From preparatory procedures, such as selecting a space and adopting the proper motivation, to the details of posture and how to focus the mind, Rinpoche offers step-by-step instruction that serves as both a starting point for beginners and a new vantage on familiar techniques for more experienced sitters. In his own direct and plain-spoken style, Rinpoche offers concise explanations for different kinds of meditation, such as shamatha, or calm abiding meditation, and vipashyana, or insight meditation, delineating their specific techniques and applications. And finally, Rinpoche presents tips for bringing our newfound clarity off of the cushion and into our daily lives, making each moment meaningful.
The Wisdom Culture Series, published under the guidance of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, provides English-language readers with key works for the study and cultivation of the Mahayana Buddhist path, especially works of masters within the lineage of Lama Tsongkhapa and the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.
Sounds of Innate Freedom, Vol. 2
The second volume in a historic six-volume series containing many of the first English translations of the classic mahāmudrā literature compiled by the Seventh Karmapa.
Sounds of Innate Freedom: The Indian Texts of Mahāmudrā are historic volumes containing many of the first English translations of the classic mahāmudrā literature. The texts and songs in these volumes constitute the large compendium called The Indian Texts of the Mahāmudrā of Definitive Meaning, compiled by the Seventh Karmapa Chötra Gyatso (1456–1539). Translated, introduced, and annotated by Karl Brunnhölzl, acclaimed senior teacher at the Nalandabodhi community of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, the collection offers a brilliant window into the richness of the vast ocean of Indian mahāmudrā texts cherished in all Tibetan lineages, particularly in the Kagyü tradition, giving us a clear view of the sources of one of the world’s great contemplative traditions.
This volume 2 (thirty-four texts) contains two long-established sets of Mahāmudrā works: “The Sixfold Pith Cycle” and short texts of Maitrīpa’s “Twenty-Five Dharmas of Mental Nonengagement,” which present a blend of Madhyamaka, Mahāmudrā, and certain tantric principles, as well as two commentaries by Maitrīpa’s students. The vital focus of this volume is the accomplishment of true reality.
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Ocean of Attainments
This commentary on Guhyasamāja tantra is the seminal guide to deity yoga and tantric visualization for the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Guhyasamāja Tantra, called the king of all tantras, is revered in Tibet, especially by the Geluk school. Ocean of Attainments, a commentary on Guhyasamāja practice, was composed by Khedrup Jé Gelek Palsang (1385–1438), a key disciple of the Geluk school founder, Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa. It explores the creation stage, a quintessential Buddhist tantric meditation that together with the completion stage comprises the path of unexcelled tantra.
In the creation stage, meditators visualize themselves as buddhas at the center of the celestial maṇḍala, surrounded in all directions by male and female buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other enlightened beings. Yet creation-stage practice is not merely visualization but deity yoga—indivisibly uniting the meditation on emptiness with the visualization of the maṇḍala. The creation stage uses the conceptualization in visualization to overcome conceptualization, thereby creating a nonconceptual and nonerroneous direct perception. Such a mind, profound and vast, can bring about a transformation that stops saṃsāric suffering. How can visions generated as mental constructs not be erroneous? To the awakened eye, the buddhas and other beings who dwell in the maṇḍala are “reality,” and in a sense they are more than real.
While the previously published Essence of the Ocean of Attainments is a concise exposition on the practice of the Guhyasamaja sadhana, Ocean of Attainments is far more detailed, providing extensive scriptural citations, clear explanation of the body maṇḍala, arguments on points of contention, reference to other tantric systems, and critiques of misinterpretations. With its extensive and clear introduction, this volume is a vital contribution to the growing body of scholarship on Guhyasamāja and on Buddhist tantra in general.
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Histories of Tibet
The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of Leonard van der Kuijp, whose groundbreaking research in Tibetan intellectual and cultural history imbued his students with an abiding sense of curiosity and discovery.
As part of Leonard van der Kuijp’s research in Tibetan history, he patiently and expertly revealed treasures of the Tibetan intellectual tradition in fourteenth-century Tsang, seventeenth-century Lhasa, or eighteenth-century Amdo. The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of the honoree and express the comprehensive research that his international cohort has engaged in alongside his generous tutelage over the course of forty years. His inquisitiveness can be experienced through every one of his writings and can be found as well in these new essays in intellectual, cultural, and institutional history by Christopher Beckwith, Yael Bentor, the late Hubert Decleer, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Jörg Heimbel and David Jackson, Nathan Hill, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Matthew Kapstein, Todd Lewis, Kurtis Schaeffer, Peter Schwieger, Gray Tuttle, Pieter Verhagen, Michael Witzel, and others.
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The Sublime Continuum and Its Explanatory Commentary
The original Sublime Continuum Explanatory Commentary was written by Noble Asanga to explain the verses received from the bodhisattva Maitreya in the late fourth century CE in northern India. Here it is introduced and presented in an original translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan, with the translation of an extensive Tibetan Supercommentary by Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen (1364–1432), whose work closely followed the view of his teacher, Tsong Khapa (1357–1419).
Contemporary scholars have widely misunderstood the Buddhist Centrist (Madhyamaka) teaching of emptiness, or selflessness, as either a form of nihilism or a radical skepticism. Yet Buddhist philosophers from Nagarjuna on have shown that the negation of intrinsic reality, when accurately understood, affirms the supreme value of relative realities. Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen, in his Supercommentary, elucidates a highly positive theory of buddha nature, showing how the wisdom of emptiness empowers the compassionate life of the enlightened, as it is touched by its oneness with the truth body of all buddhas. With his clear study of Gyaltsap’s insight and his original English translation, Bo Jiang completes his historic project of studying and presenting these works from Sanskrit and Tibetan in both Chinese and, now, English translations, in linked publications.
Living Treasure
Senior scholars and former students celebrate the life and work of Janet Gyatso, professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School. Inspired by her contributions to life writing, Tibetan medicine, gender studies, and more, these offerings make a rich feast for readers interested in Tibetan and Buddhist studies.
Janet Gyatso has made substantial, influential, and incredibly valuable contributions to the fields of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. Her paradigm-shifting approach is to take a topic, an idea, a text, a term—often one that had long been taken for granted or overlooked—and turn it inside out, to radically reimagine the kinds of questions that might be asked and what the answers might reveal. The twenty-nine essays in this volume, authored by colleagues and former students—many of whom are now also colleagues—represent the breadth of her interests and influence, and the care that she has taken in training the current generation of scholars of Tibet and Buddhism. They are organized into five sections: Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Biography and Autobiography; the Nyingma Imaginaire; Literature, Art, and Poetry; and Early Modernity: Human and Nonhuman Worlds. Contributions include José Cabezón on the incorporation of a Buddhist rock carving in Central Asian culture; Matthew Kapstein on the memoirs of an ambivalent reincarnated lama; Willa Blythe Baker on Jikmé Lingpa’s theory of absence; Andrew Quintman on a found poem expressing worldly sadness on the forced closure of a monastery; and Padma ’tsho on Tibetan women’s advocacy for full female ordination. These and the many other chapters, each fascinating reads in their own right, together offer a glowing tribute to a scholar who indelibly changed the way we think about Buddhism, its history, and its literature.
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Stages of the Path and the Oral Transmission
A major contribution to the literature on Buddhist practice according to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism from its foremost interpreter.
Although it was the last major school to emerge in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the Geluk school has left an indelible mark on Buddhist thought and practice. The intellectual and spiritual brilliance of its founder, the great Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), has inspired generations of scholars and tantric yogis to place him at the heart of their daily meditative practice. The Geluk tradition’s close ties to the Dalai Lamas have also afforded it an outsized influence in all aspects of Tibetan life for centuries. At its peak, its combined monasteries boasted a population in the tens of thousands, and its sway encompassed the religious landscape of Mongolia and much of Central Asia.
This widespread religious activity fostered a rich literary tradition, and fifteen seminal works are featured here representing four genres of that tradition. The first are works on the stages of the path, or lamrim, the genre for which the Geluk is most renowned. Second are works on guru yoga, centered around the core Geluk ritual Offering to the Guru (Lama Chöpa). Third are teachings from the unique oral transmission of Geluk mahāmudrā, meditation on the nature of mind. Fourth are the “guide to the view” (tatri) instructions. The volume features well-known authors like Tsongkhapa, the First Panchen Lama, and the Fifth Dalai Lama, but also important works from lesser-known figures like Gomchen Ngawang Drakpa’s stages of the path in verse and Gyalrong Tsultrim Nyima’s extensive commentary on the Lama Chöpa that interweaves precious explanations from the Ensa Oral Tradition he received from his own teacher.
Your guide to these riches, Thupten Jinpa, maps out their historical context and spiritual significance in his extensive introduction.
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The Source of Supreme Bliss
The Source of Supreme Bliss contains the first English translations of important commentaries on the Highest Yoga Tantra system of the Heruka Chakrasamvara five deity practice.
Included is a lucid, practical, and deeply profound explanation of the generation stage by Ngulchu Dharmabhadra. This is followed by an extremely rare and profound commentary by the First Panchen Lama Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen on the completion stage, along with a commentary on how to perform a proper Chakrasamvara retreat. The second half of the book comprises translations of the ritual texts associated with the commentaries.
Indispensable for anyone who undertakes this practice, The Source of Supreme Bliss will also provide rich and profound insights for those interested in Highest Yoga Tantra.
The Dechen Ling Practice Series from Wisdom Publications is committed to furthering the vision of David Gonsalez (Venerable Losang Tsering) and the Dechen Ling Press of bringing the sacred literature of Tibet to the West by making available many never-before-translated texts.
A History of Buddhism in India and Tibet
The first complete English translation of an important thirteenth-century history that sheds light on Tibet’s imperial past and on the transmission of the Buddhadharma into Central Asia.
Translated here into English for the first time in its entirety by perhaps the foremost living expert on Tibetan histories, this engaging translation, along with its ample annotation, is a must-have for serious readers and scholars of Buddhist studies. In this history, discover the first extensive biography of the Buddha composed in the Tibetan language, along with an account of subsequent Indian Buddhist history, particularly the writing of Buddhist treatises. The story then moves to Tibet, with an emphasis on the rulers of the Tibetan empire, the translators of Buddhist texts, and the lineages that transmitted doctrine and meditative practice. It concludes with an account of the demise of the monastic order followed by a look forward to the advent of the future Buddha Maitreya.
The composer of this remarkably ecumenical Buddhist history compiled some of the most important early sources on the Tibetan imperial period preserved in his time, and his work may be the best record we have of those sources today. Dan Martin has rendered the richness of this history an accessible part of the world’s literary heritage.
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Sounds of Innate Freedom, Vol. 4
Sounds of Innate Freedom: The Indian Texts of Mahāmudrā are historic volumes containing many of the first English translations of classic mahamudra literature. The texts and songs in these volumes constitute the large compendium called The Indian Texts of the Mahāmudrā of Definitive Meaning, compiled by the Seventh Karmapa, Chötra Gyatso (1456–1539). The collection offers a brilliant window into the richness of the vast ocean of Indian mahamudra texts cherished in all Tibetan lineages, particularly in the Kagyü tradition, giving us a clear view of the sources of one of the world’s great contemplative traditions.
Besides the individual dohās (couplets), vajragītis (vajra songs), and caryāgītis (conduct songs) in this second volume in publication, the three extensive commentaries it contains brilliantly unravel enigmas and bring clarity not only to the specific songs they comment on but to many other, often cryptic, songs of realization in this collection. These expressive songs of the inexpressible offer readers a feast of profound and powerful pith instructions uttered by numerous male and female mahāsiddhas, yogis, and ḍākinīs, often in the context of ritual gaṇacakras and initially kept in their secret treasury. Displaying a vast range of themes, styles, and metaphors, they all point to the single true nature of the mind—mahāmudrā—in inspiring ways and from different angles, using a dazzling array of skillful means to penetrate the sole vital point of buddhahood being found nowhere but within our own mind. Reading and singing these songs of mystical wonder, bliss, and ecstatic freedom, and contemplating their meaning, will open doors to spiritual experience for us today just as it has for countless practitioners in the past.
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In Vimalakīrti’s House
Over the course of nearly half a century, Robert A. F. Thurman has left an indelible mark on numerous fields of study, including Buddhist literature, Tantric Buddhism, Tibetan studies, and the comparative sciences of mind. To celebrate his seventieth birthday, Thurman’s students and colleagues have come together to pay tribute to these contributions and to Thurman’s ongoing leadership in these fields by assembling a collection of essays of their own that extend and supplement his groundbreaking research.
In Vimalakīrti’s House is the result of this collaboration and represents a broad spectrum of cutting edge studies in areas central to Thurman’s own scholarly project. The resulting volume is itself a kind of “treasury of the Buddhist sciences,” insofar as its authors explore wide-ranging problems in art, literature, epistemology, history, ritual, buddhology, and lexicography.
Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra (Sngags rim chen mo)
Tsong Khapa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of Mantra (Sngags rim chen mo)—considered by the present Dalai Lama to be one of Tsong Khapa’s two most important books (along with his Lam rim chen mo)—is his masterful synthesis of the principles and practices of all four classes of Tantra, which formed the basis of his innovation in creating the esoteric “Tantric College” institution and curriculum in the early fifteenth century. With detailed reference to hundreds of works from the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur, the chapters presented and studied in this volume concern his treatment of the creation stage (bskyed rim) meditations of Unexcelled Yoga Tantra. This includes a detailed analysis emphasizing how and why such creation stage practices—utilizing deity yoga to transform death, the between, and life into the three bodies of buddhahood are indispensible to creating a foundation for successfully entering the culminal yogic practices of the perfection stage. (A subsequent volume will present the perfection stage chapters of this essential masterwork.)
An important work for both scholars and practitioners, this annotated translation is supplemented with extensive support materials.
The Adamantine Songs (Vajragīti)
Presented here in English for the first time is a set of three of Saraha’s “Adamantine Songs” (Skt. Vajragīti; Tib. rdo rje’i glu), poetic works that play a central role in the Great Seal (mahāmudrā) tantric tradition of both India and Tibet. The tantric adept (siddha) Saraha was among the most notable figures from India’s late first millennium, a time of rich religious and literary activity. His influence on Buddhist practice and poetry extended beyond the Indian subcontinent into Tibet, where it continues to affect every tradition that engages the practice and philosophy of the esoteric Great Seal.
In these songs, Saraha’s views on the nature of mind are presented as both evocative poetry and theoretical exegesis. These songs offer a new perspective on the religious life of Buddhist India and the figure of one of its most famous adepts.
Braitstein opens the door to this important set of texts by Saraha through her elegant translation, critical edition of the Tibetan texts, and in-depth analysis of the three poems. She situates Saraha and his work both in the Tibetan Buddhist sphere and in a broader South Asian literary and religious context, closely treating the central themes in Saraha’s poems, highlighting the specific siddha worldview espoused in his oeuvre, and at the same time unpacking the cryptic references contained in the songs’ individual verses. With this book, Braitstein substantially increases the amount of Saraha’s poetry available to an English-speaking audience and contributes to the ever-increasing movement to explore the culture of the tantric adepts.
Questioning the Buddha
In the forty-five years the Buddha spent traversing northern India, he shared his wisdom with everyone from beggar women to kings. Hundreds of his discourses, or sutras, were preserved by his followers, first orally and later in written form. Around thirteen hundred years after the Buddha’s enlightenment, the sutras were translated into the Tibetan language, where they have been preserved ever since. To date, only a fraction of these have been made available in English. Questioning the Buddha brings the reader directly into the literary treasure of the Tibetan canon with thoroughly annotated translations of twenty-five different sutras. Often these texts, many translated here in full for the first time, begin with an encounter in which someone poses a question to the Buddha.
Peter Skilling, an authority on early Buddhist epigraphy, archaeology, and textual traditions, has been immersed in the Buddhist scriptures of diverse traditions for nearly half a century. In this volume, he draws on his deep and extensive research to render these ancient teachings in a fresh and precise language. His introduction is a fascinating history of the Buddhist sutras, including the transition from oral to written form, the rise of Mahayana literature, the transmission to Tibet, the development of canons, and a look at some of the pioneers of sutra study in the West.
Sutras included in this volume are: Four Dharmas Not to Be Taken for Granted; The Benefits of Giving; The Exposition of Four Dharmas; The Merit of the Three Refuges; Four Dharmas Never to Be Abandoned; Advice for Bodhisatva Dharmaketu; Advice for Bodhisatva Jayamati; Sūtra Comparing Bodhicitta to Gold; Bodhisatva Maitreya’s Question about the Gift of the Dharma; Four Summaries of the Dharma Spoken to the Nāga King Sāgara; The Stanza of Dependent Arising; The Heart Formula of Dependent Arising; Prediction of the Boy Brahmaśrī’s Future Buddhahood; Kṣemavatī’s Prediction to Future Buddhahood; The City Beggar Woman; An Old Woman’s Questions about Birth and Death; The Questions of Śrīmatī the Brahman Woman; The Questions of the Laywoman Gaṅgottarā; Brahmā Sahāṃpati’s Question; Advice to King Prasenajit; Passage to the Next Life; Instructions for King Bimbisāra; Instructions for King Udayana; Buddhas as Rare as a Grain of Golden Sand; and Predictions on the Eve of the Great Final Nirvāṇa.
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The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa)
The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa) by Āryadeva, is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Community Tantra (Guhyasamāja-tantra) as espoused by the Noble (Nāgārjuna) tradition, an influential school of interpretation within Indian Buddhist mysticism. Equal in authority to Nāgārjuna’s famous Five Stages (Pañcakrama), Āryadeva’s work is perhaps the earliest prose example of the “stages of the mantra path” genre in Sanskrit. Its systematic path exerted immense influence on later Indian and Tibetan traditions, and it is widely cited by masters from all four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.
This volume presents the Lamp in a thoroughly annotated English translation. It includes an introductory study discussing the history of the Guhyasamāja and its exegetical traditions, surveying the scriptural and commentarial sources of the Nāgārjuna tradition, and analyzing in detail the contents of the Lamp. The book also features a detailed, trilingual glossary.
Simultaneously presented online for scholars are a version of its Sanskrit original, critically edited from recently identified manuscripts, and a critical edition of the eleventh-century Tibetan translation by Rinchen Zangpo, including notes on readings found in “lost,” alternative translations.