The Summary of the Great Vehicle is perhaps the most representative text of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism. It presents the classic argument for the basic Yogacara themes on conscious interiority, attempting to reinterpret within this context the general Mahayana teachings of emptiness and dependent co-arising. It then proceeds to explain the etiology if imaginative illusion, sketch its reversal by offering an explanation of the nature of conversion, champion the recovered insight into depended co-arising in terms of the converted other-dependent pattern of consciousness, and thus allow for a valid, if limited, role for language-formed, conventional discourse, both commonsense and theoretical.
This is the second volume in Jeffrey Hopkins' valuable series on the Mind-Only School of Buddhism and a focal description of it in Dzong-Ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence. Dzong-Ka-ba (1357-1419) is generally regarded as one of the greatest Tibetan philosophers, and his Mind-Only discourse on emptiness is considered a landmark in Buddhist philosophy. In Volume I, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, Hopkins provided a translation of the introduction and the section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence. The present volume places this enigmatic and influential exposition in its historical and philosophical contexts. Reflections on Reality conveys the intellectual vibrancy of the different cultural interpretations of this text and expands the key philosophical issues it addresses. Hopkins, one of the leading scholarly voices in Tibetan studies, begins this volume with two introductory chapters contextualizing Tibetan scholarship in general. He then goes on to discuss in detail the religious significance of the central topic of the three natures in the Mind-Only School. He also considers various views on the status of reality, including the doctrine of other-emptiness promulgated by the fourteenth century Jo-nang savant Shay-rap-gyel-tsen. Presenting accurate and insightful translations of a large amount of material that has never been available in English before, he shows how these topics have been debated among scholars in Tibet over six centuries. Comparing these with presentations in Europe, Japan, and the United States today, he created a lively conversation between normally disparate voices.
The first English translation of a classic treatise on how the Tibetan practice of Dzogchen, or Great Perfection, is in fact the culmination of the path of Mahayana Buddhism. Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo wrote this treatise in the eleventh century during the renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet that was spurred by the influx of new translations of Indian Buddhist texts, tantras, and esoteric transmissions from India. For political and religious reasons, adherents of the “new schools” of Tibetan Buddhism fostered by these new translations cast the older tradition of lineages and transmissions as impure and decadent. Rongzompa composed the work translated here in order to clearly and definitively articulate how Dzogchen was very much in line with the wide variety of sutric and tantric teachings espoused by all the Tibetan schools. Using the kinds of philosophic and linguistic analyses favored by the new schools, he demonstrates that the Great Perfection is indeed the culmination and maturation of the Mahāyāna, the Great Vehicle. The central topic of the work is the notion of illusory appearance, for when one realizes deeply that all appearances are illusory, one realizes also that all appearances are in that respect equal. The realization of the equality of all phenomena is said to be the Great Perfection approach to the path, which frees one from both grasping at, and rejecting, appearances. However, for those unable to remain effortlessly within the natural state, in the final chapter Rongzompa also describes how paths with effort are included in the Great Perfection approach.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
The Buddhist masterpiece Ornament of the Great Vehicle Sūtras, often referred to by its Sanskrit title, Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, is part of a collection known as the Five Maitreya Teachings, a set of philosophical works that have become classics of the Indian Buddhist tradition. Maitreya, the Buddha’s regent, is held to have entrusted these profound and vast instructions to the master Asaṅga in the heavenly realm of Tuṣita. The Ornament provides a comprehensive description of the bodhisattva’s view, meditation, and enlightened activities. Bodhisattvas are beings who, out of vast love for all sentient beings, have dedicated themselves to the task of becoming fully awakened buddhas, capable of helping all beings in innumerable and vast ways to become enlightened themselves. To fully awaken requires practicing great generosity, patience, energy, discipline, concentration, and wisdom, and Maitreya’s text explains what these enlightened qualities are and how to develop them. This volume includes commentaries by Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham, whose discussions illuminate the subtleties of the root text and provide valuable insight into how to practice the way of the bodhisattva. Drawing on the Indian masters Vasubandhu and, in particular, Sthiramati, Mipham explains the Ornament with eloquence and brilliant clarity. This commentary is among his most treasured works.
"This is a scholarly tour de force, the likes of which are rarely seen in the academy."—José Ignacio Cabezón, Illif School of Theology "An exceptionally clear and detailed account of a central debate in Tibetan Buddhist scholastic philosophy."—Matthew Kapstein, University of Chicago "This is without question the finest and most complete discussion of the renowned Mind-Only school and its Tibetan context."—Anne C. Klein, author of Knowledge & Liberation, Path to the Middle "An important new contribution to our understanding of the development of Buddhist philosophical thought in Tibet."—Matthew T. Kapstein, author of The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory
Originating in India, Mahayana Buddhism spread across Asia, becoming the prevalent form of Buddhism in Tibet and East Asia. Over the last twenty-five years Western interest in Mahayana has increased considerably, reflected both in the quantity of scholarly material produced and in the attraction of Westerners towards Tibetan Buddhism and Zen. Paul Williams’ Mahayana Buddhism is widely regarded as the standard introduction to the field, used internationally for teaching and research and has been translated into several European and Asian languages. This new edition has been fully revised throughout in the light of the wealth of new studies and focuses on the religion’s diversity and richness. It includes much more material on China and Japan, with appropriate reference to Nepal, and for students who wish to carry their study further there is a much-expanded bibliography and extensive footnotes and cross-referencing. Everyone studying this important tradition will find Williams’ book the ideal companion to their studies.
Translated here for the first time into any language, Mountain Doctrine is a seminal fourteenth-century Tibetan text on the nature of reality. The author, Dol-bo-ba Shay-rap-gyel-tsen, was on of the most influential figures of that dynamic period of doctrinal formulation, and his text is a sustained argument about the buddha-nature, also called the matrix-of-one-gone-thus. Dol-bo-ba recognizes two important types of emptiness—self-emptiness and other-emptiness—and shows how other-emptiness is the actual ultimate truth. He justifies this controversial formulation by arguing that it was the favored system of all the early outstanding figures of the Great Vehicle. The translator's introduction includes a short biography of Dol-bo-ba and an exposition of nine focal topics in his religious philosophy. Note: The hardcover edition of Mountain Doctrine includes a "Detailed Outline in Tibetan" that is omitted in the eBook edition.
The Dalai Lama’s translator and author of the definitive biography of Tsongkhapa here presents the first translation of one of that master’s seminal and best-known works. This work is perhaps the most influential explanation of Candrakirti’s seventh-century classic Entering the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara). Written as a supplement to Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, Candrakirti’s text integrates the central insight of Nagarjuna’s thought—the rejection of any metaphysical notion of intrinsic existence—with the well-known Mahayana framework of the ten levels of the bodhisattva, and it became the most studied presentation of Madhyamaka thought in Tibet. Completed the year before the author’s death, Tsongkhapa’s exposition of Candrakirti’s text is recognized by the Tibetan tradition as the final standpoint of Tsongkhapa on many philosophical questions, particularly the clear distinctions it draws between the standpoints of the Madhyamaka and Cittamatra schools. Written in exemplary Tibetan, Tsongkhapa’s work presents a wonderful marriage of rigorous Madhyamaka philosophical analysis with a detailed and subtle account of the progressively advancing mental states and spiritual maturity realized by sincere Madhyamaka practitioners. The work remains the principal textbook for the study of Indian Madhyamaka philosophy in many Tibetan monastic colleges, and it is a principal source for many Tibetan teachers seeking to convey the intricacies of Madhyamaka philosophy to non-Tibetan audiences. Though it is often cited and well known, this is the first full translation of this key work in a Western language.
