New Book
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.
About the Author:
Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo (eleventh century) was an important translator and exegete of New Translation School literature and the first defender of the Old Translation School. His works, whether translations from Sanskrit, commentaries on canonical texts, or original compositions such as Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, sit on both sides of the Old School/New School boundary. He is remarkable among Old School figures in that the majority of them confined their literary output to the esoteric traditions of their past, whereas Rongzom engaged extensively with the New School literature and philosophy. He is regarded as one of the two archetypal figures for the Nyingma by no less an authority than the nineteenth-century scholar and adept Ju Mipham.
Dominic Sur on Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo’s Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle
Dominic Sur on Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo’s Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle from Shambhala Publications on Vimeo.
Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle by Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo Reviews:
“Dominic Sur presents an outstanding study and translation of a renowned treatise by one of the greatest luminaries of Tibetan literature, the great Rongzompa. Starting with the Mahāyāna corpus, this volume illuminates how all the vehicles relate with, and culminate in, the Great Perfection. It is an invaluable addition to Buddhist literature in the West.”—Tulku Thondup, author of The Heart of Unconditional Love
“The nature of suffering; the distinction (or lack thereof) between illusion and reality; the value of reason for the spiritual path: all of these essential Buddhist topics are treated with creativity and freshness in this key early work of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Sur’s incisive English prose renders this rich philosophical work accessible while still retaining the precision and complexity of the original.”—Kurtis Schaeffer, University of Virginia
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