Adam Krug, Ph.D. (UC Santa Barbara) serves as editor and translator for the non-profit organization 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha and has published widely on tantric Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.
"Adam Krug's study and translation of The Seven Siddhi Texts is an extraordinary achievement. Krug has studied the texts and contexts of The Seven Siddhi Texts with great care over many years and in bringing them fully to light here, he has performed an invaluable scholarly service. His insightful introduction, thorough annotations, and fluent translations are a joy to read, and add significantly to our appreciation of both the Indic roots of Tibetan Mahāmudrā and of how late Indian Buddhists understood and applied the profound, complex, and sometimes transgressive teachings of the Mahāyoga and Yoginī tantras. The Seven Siddhi Texts is a vital addition to the library of essential books on both Mahāmudrā and Buddhist tantra, and should be a cherished part of the collection of anyone concerned with understanding and/or practicing these traditions.”—Roger R. Jackson, John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion, Emeritus, Carleton College
“In The Seven Siddhi Texts, Adam Krug opens a window onto one of the most profound traditions of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, making a foundational set of Mahāmudrā teachings available in English for the first time. Accessible and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for anyone curious about meditation, tantra, or the deeper currents of Buddhist thought.”—Klaus-Dieter Mathes, University of Hong Kong
“This volume is a pioneering foray into these intricate works that will prove to be an essential tome on the shelf of every scholar, student, and practitioner of tantric Buddhism. Krug achieves an ideal balance between readability and philological rigour, allowing the texts to speak for themselves while providing a most valuable and much-awaited contextualisation.”—Péter-Dániel Szántó, department of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies and associate professor, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
THE SEVEN SIDDHI TEXTS
Mahāmudrā Instructions from the Oḍiyāna Mahāsiddhas
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The first English-language translation (with rich historical introduction and extensive annotation) of a key group of Indian Buddhist tantric texts that have had profound influence on the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
The Seven Siddhi Texts is a key collection of Indian Buddhist tantric exegetical treatises that have shaped the interpretation of unexcelled yoga tantra and Mahāmudrā (Great Seal) practice in Tibet from the eighth century ce to the present. The scholar-yogi authors of these seven texts—drawing upon their scriptural knowledge and personal insight—clarify the intended meanings underlying cryptic, seemingly antinomian passages in root tantras such as the Esoteric Community Tantra (Guhyasamāja-tantra) pertaining to sex, violence, and magical powers, which have proved controversial for many traditional and modern scholars. These seven treatises come from the famed mahāsiddha (great adept) tradition, which often defied the rigid social, religious, and gender norms of premodern India in quest of nondual wisdom. The translator’s introduction places the collection in its Indian sociohistorical context, traces its reception in Tibetan Mahāmudrā practice lineages, and addresses modern misinterpretations. As a window into the earliest Indian Buddhist tantric communities, the Seven Siddhi Texts is a treasure for both practitioners and scholars of these increasingly popular subjects.
This volume is part of the Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series, copublished by the American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS) and Wisdom Publications in association with the Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies and Tibet House US. You can learn more about the series here.
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The Sound that Perceives the World
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Musings and autobiographically informed commentary on the human condition through the lens of the Kannon-gyo—chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra—connecting Zen and Pure Land Buddhism through the practice of venerating and chanting the names of buddhas and bodhisattvas.
The Kannon-gyo is chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, and its focus is the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, known in China as Guanyin, and in Japan as Kannon or Kanzeon. The text describes the many ways in which calling out the bodhisattva’s name—Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu—can relieve suffering.
Most schools of Zen Buddhism, and especially the Soto school, eschew such practices as chanting the names of buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with venerating such figures.
The eminent Soto Zen master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, however, while doing hard physical labor early in his career, could not practice zazen—that is, formal sitting meditation. He came to appreciate the Kannon-gyo and the practices related to it. In particular, he took to reciting Kannon’s name, as recommended in the text of the Kannon-gyo.
Later in life, Uchiyama Roshi suffered from illness that again prevented him from practicing formal Zen, so he returned to the Kannon-gyo and the practice of chanting. He went so far as to assert that chanting Kannon’s name is completely equivalent to zazen, that the two practices are simply two sides of the same coin—a revolutionary idea seemingly at odds with Zen.
Chanting practice is especially accessible, as it can be done while working, traveling, or suffering from illness, and other activities that would ordinarily get in the way of formal Zen practice.
With these practices, the Kannon-gyo, and Kannon herself as a backdrop, Uchiyama Roshi muses about the purposes of religion, the goals of religious practice, and the meaning of enlightenment—and their relation to suffering itself.
The Perfection of Wisdom in First Bloom
See the formative years of Mahayana Buddhist literature through the lens of the Perfection of Wisdom, expertly analyzed by the venerable scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo.
In this work we have a rare perspective on the early history of Mahayana Buddhism and the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita), as far as this is still accessible in surviving texts. With his characteristic clarity and precision, Bhikkhu Analayo critically analyzes early Perfection of Wisdom literature based on the earliest extant versions of the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita, or the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, one in Chinese and the other in Gandhari—one of the oldest surviving Mahayana manuscripts discovered to date. In reading this text from the viewpoint of early Buddhist literature, the author shows that what has generally been considered a sharp rupture in the formation of the Mahayana turns out to be more of a gradual evolution.
With his command of the languages of the ancient Buddhist world, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo sifts through the layers of history and unveils new perspectives on the ideas and figures in early Perfection of Wisdom and Mahayana literature, covering such topics as the rhetoric of emptiness and the emerging bodhisattva ideal, as well as the status of women and the practice of self-immolation. In doing so, Bhikkhu Analayo reveals fresh insights into the gradual development that informs the emergence of early Perfection of Wisdom literature. This is a rare opportunity to peer through a window at the beginnings of Mahayana thought—before the traditions had coalesced into the familiar forms we see today.
Sakya Paṇḍita
A set of classic biographies of Sakya Paṇḍita—one of Tibet’s greatest scholars and religious masters.
Sakya Paṇḍita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182–1251) was a renowned Tibetan polymath, scholar, statesman, and religious master, and one of the most famous and consequential figures in the history of Tibet. The three classic biographies included here contain fascinating firsthand accounts of key events in Sakya Paṇḍita’s life, covering his family ancestry, early education, interactions and debates with other sects, travels to Mongolia and his diplomacy at the Mongol court, and a detailed account of the miraculous events that occurred in the last weeks of his life.
The Lion’s Roar of a Yogi-Poet
An exultant song of realization by one of Tibet’s greatest yogis, explained and elaborated upon by a beloved contemporary Tibetan teacher.
Jetsun Rinpoche Dragpa Gyaltsen (1147–1216)—revered as one of Tibet’s greatest yogis and one of the founding figures of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism—composed his Great Song of Experience as a way to distill and communicate the essence of the Buddhist path to enlightenment. Shimmering with double meanings, seeming tautologies, and ribald references, Dragpa Gyaltsen’s verses resound with insights thrown out like bolts of lightning: “When mind itself is comprehended, that is Buddha; do not seek elsewhere for the Buddha!”
Beloved teacher Lama Migmar Tseten’s newly updated translation of Dragpa Gyaltsen’s Great Song brings these verses to life with a clarity and immediacy that belies the underlying challenge that these verses pose to our ordinary ways of thinking and being.
In his extensive verse-by-verse commentary, Lama Migmar unravels Dragpa Gyaltsen’s terse, enigmatic verses with clarity and humor, bringing Rinpoche’s ecstatic realization and pointed insights into conversation with twenty-first-century concerns, showing how the experiential teachings of a twelfth-century Tibetan yogi can help us understand and counteract the modern pressures of wanton consumerism, greed and inequality, isolation and loneliness, and environmental degradation. Lama Migmar’s insightful commentary opens the door to the radical vision presented by Dragpa Gyaltsen’s poetic teachings, showing us a view of the mind without center or limits, as bright as the sun, and clear and open as space.
In addition to Lama Migmar’s extensive verse-by-verse commentary, the book includes facing-page English and Tibetan editions of the root text of Great Song of Experience, and the laudatory poem Praise to Jetsun Rinpoche Dragpa Gyaltsen by Dragpa Gyaltsen’s nephew and student, the great Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251).
Perfect Awakening
The Long Discourses, or Dīrghāgama, is a collection of the Buddha’s most well-known sermons that has circulated widely in the Buddhist world. Parallel collections in Pali and Chinese have long been known to scholars and practitioners, but it was not until the 1990s that a Mūlasarvāstivāda manuscript transmitted in Sanskrit was discovered, a major find with the potential to reshape our understanding of Buddhism in India and Central Asia. The present volume is the first in a three-volume series to present this rare manuscript, with a study, translation, and critical edition of two of the sūtras in the collection.
Around thirty years ago, a rare bookseller in London parceled out birchbark leaves of a manuscript bundle representing an ancient scripture that had likely been unearthed in the Gilgit region of Pakistan. Even as the fragile folios entered collections in Japan, Norway, and the United States, they were identified by a scholar as belonging to the previously lost Sanskrit Dīrghāgama, the Collection of Long Discourses of the Buddha, of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. Although the forty-seven separate sūtras in this āgama have parallel transmissions extant in the Pali Digha-nikāya and the Chinese Chang ahan jing, this Sanskrit witness, copied in the eighth century, was previously known only from partial quotations and from translations in Tibetan and Chinese. The discovery was thus one of major significance in the study of Buddhist literature.
This book, one of the first presentations of this manuscript in English, provides a translation, critical reconstruction, and study of two of the sūtras in the Dīrghāgama: the Prāsādika-sūtra and the Prasādanīya-sūtra. Both sūtras offer what appears to have been late teachings of the Buddha on the nature of faith and the preeminence of the Buddha over all other teachers. The Buddhist community was evidently concerned about the coming passing of the Buddha and, in these scriptures, laid the foundation for the tradition to continue with the Buddha at the center. The Prasādanīya-sūtra, in particular, is the locus classicus for the doctrine that only one Buddha and his teachings can exist in a world system at a time, ensuring that the Buddhist community would not be tempted to follow any other teacher who had not realized perfect awakening but would hold true to the Dharma of the Buddha.
These sūtras from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition are made available to the public for the first time in over a thousand years with philological reconstructions and translations. They are accompanied by synoptic parallels from the corresponding Pali Long Discourses of the Theravāda tradition and the Chinese Long Discourses of the Dharmaguptaka tradition along with citations and related passages from elsewhere in Buddhist literature. In addition, the work contains a full transliteration of the birchbark folios, an introduction to the two sūtras with a study providing paleographic and textual analysis of the manuscript, and notes providing insight and explanation throughout.
The Reason Sixty
The Reason Sixty: Second Edition presents two key Indian Buddhist philosophical masterpieces that integrate the Buddhist ethos of wisdom and compassion, with their profound relevance to contemporary thought clarified by a renowned scholar of contemplative science.
This volume contains English translations of two critical treatises of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) Buddhist philosophical school: the Reason Sixty, by the most important of Indian thinkers Nāgārjuna (2nd century CE), and the commentary by his most influential successor, Chandrakīrti (7th century CE). These two treatises emphasize the non-foundationalist reasoning for which Madhyamaka thought is famed, here within the context of that quintessential Buddhist topic, universal compassion, thereby illuminating the nondual nature of these two fundamental components of Indian Buddhist thought. The full import of Nāgārjuna’s verses are brought to life by Chandrakīrti, whose influence in Tibetan Buddhist educational institutions remains profound to the present. Translator Joseph Loizzo, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhologist, elucidates the relevance of these two treatises to the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy and emphasizes their practical, therapeutic possibilities. Comparing in particular the deep resonances between Chandrakīrti’s commentary and Wittgenstein’s later work, Loizzo presents a masterful analysis in cross-cultural thought that highlights the transformative potential of philosophy.
This volume is part of the Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series, copublished by the American Institute of Buddhist Studies (AIBS) and Wisdom Publications in association with the Columbia University Center for Buddhist Studies and Tibet House US. You can learn more about the series here.
The Kālachakra Mandala
A detailed, beautifully illustrated presentation of the construction and symbolism of the famed Kālachakra mandala, the crown jewel of the Indo-Tibetan tantric traditions.
This volume contains an extensive analysis of the construction and symbolism of the mandala of the Kālachakra tantric system, the most intricate and explicit of the Indian Buddhist unexcelled yoga tantras, the most advanced teachings within the Indo-Tibetan tradition. Indo-Tibetan tantric traditions, particularly the unexcelled category, depend on imagery and visualization for the processes of purifying cyclic existence, and Kālachakra is the most detailed. The late scholar-practitioner Edward Henning, one of the earliest Western specialists on this material, offers this labor of love as a testament to the genius of the Tibetan tradition in preserving and transmitting these teachings over a thousand years. Well known internationally now due to the Dalai Lama’s many public initiations, the Kālachakra mandala serves as a primary focal point for meditators both new and seasoned. Henning draws primarily from the Jonang tradition of Kālachakra practice, particularly the modern master Banda Gelek, to elucidate and clarify inconsistencies across traditions and literature, including the authoritative Indian commentary Stainless Light (Vimalaprabhā), regarding the construction and visualization of the three-tiered mandala with its hundreds of deities. In addition to providing detailed information on the images to be visualized, Henning provides in the final chapter a clear and extensive explanation of the symbolism of the habitat and inhabitants that are to be animated during the meditation session. An excellent companion to the translations of the Kālachakra Tantra and Stainless Light chapters co-published by the American Institute of Buddhist Studies and Wisdom Publications, this beautifully illustrated volume is a must-have for scholars and practitioners alike.
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.
Ratnakīrti’s Proof of Momentariness by Positive Correlation (Kṣaṇabhaṇgasiddhi Anvayātmikā)
The Kṣaṇabhaṇgasiddhi is a masterpiece of skillful reasoning by the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Ratnakīrti. This renowned scholar taught at the great Buddhist University of Vikramaśīla and was a master of almost every classical philosophical school that preceded him.
The present work is informed by centuries of debate between Buddhist advocates of momentariness and archrival Nyāya philosophers who believed that both selves and things endure.
This book is the first published translation of Ratnakīrti’s proof based on positive correlations, and includes a commentary explaining each step of his reasoning.
The Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature (Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra)
The Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature (Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra) was transmitted from the bodhisattva Maitreyanātha to Āryā Āsaṅga, the fourth-century Indian Buddhist scholar-adept. The most foundational of the set of the famous Five Teachings of Maitreya, the Discourse Literature is considered the wellspring of what the Tibetans call the “magnificent deeds trend of the path,” the compassion side, which balances the “profound view trend of the path,” the wisdom side. The Discourse Literature is also considered to be metaphysically aligned with and foundational for the Idealist (Vijñānavādin) school of Mahāyāna thought. Translated from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese by Lobsang Jamspal, Robert Thurman, and the AIBS team, the present work contains a fully annotated, critical English rendition of the Discourse Literature along with its commentary (bhāṣya) by Āsaṅga’s brother, Vasubandhu. It also includes an introduction covering essential historical and philosophical topics, a bibliography, and a detailed index. This long-awaited work is the founding cornerstone of the AIBS Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series.
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.
Click here to explore other volumes available in The Sounds of Innate Freedom series.
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.
Private: Nāgārjuna’s Reason Sixty (Yuktiṣaṣṭikā)
A new edition of The Reason Sixty will be available in August 2024. Learn more here.
The Reason Sixty is the most concise philosophical work by the second-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna. It is one of that master’s works most often cited by Centrist (Madhyamaka) commentators, and it is included in the Sixfold Canon of Reason (rigs tshogs drug) which forms the textual basis for Centrist studies in the Tibetan philosophical curriculum. Standing midway between his other masterpieces on philosophy and religion, in the Reason Sixty Nāgārjuna describes the central thrust of his therapeutic philosophy of language—the elimination of cognitive bias and affective resistances to the gradual cultivation of nondualistic wisdom and compassion.
The seventh-century Centrist master Chandrakīrti, concerned with applying his language therapeutic method to define the social epistemology of Centrism, likewise links the critical hermeneutic-pedagogy and the practical therapeutic-anthropology of his other works in his acclaimed Reason Sixty Commentary.
Includes detailed introductory essays, annotated translations, critical Tibetan editions, trilingual glossary, intellectual-historical and biographical tables, bibliography, and index.
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.
Learn more about the Classics of Indian Buddhism series.
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.
The Esoteric Community Tantra with The Illuminating Lamp
This volume is a translation of the first twelve chapters of The Glorious Esoteric Community Great King of Tantras (Śrī Guhyasamāja Mahā-tantra-rāja), along with the commentary called The Illuminating Lamp (Pradīpoddyotana-nāma-ṭīkā), a commentary in Sanskrit on this tantra by the seventh-century Buddhist intellectual and tantric scholar-adept Chandrakīrti. Regarded by Indo-Tibetan tradition as the esoteric scripture wherein the Buddha revealed in greatest detail the actual psycho-physical process of his enlightenment, The Esoteric Community Tantra is a preeminent text of the class of scriptures known to Indian Buddhist scholar-adepts as great yoga tantra, and later to their Tibetan successors as unexcelled yoga tantra. The Illuminating Lamp presents a system of interpretive guidelines according to which the cryptic meanings of all tantras might be extracted in order to engage the ritual and yogic practices taught therein. Applying its interpretive strategies to the text of The Esoteric Community Tantra, The Illuminating Lamp articulates a synthetic, “vajra vehicle” (vajrayāna) discourse that locates tantric practices and ideals squarely within the cosmological and institutional frameworks of exoteric Mahāyāna Buddhism.
