Jose Ignacio Cabezon, XIVth Dalai Lama Professor, UC Santa Barbara
"A truly masterful work."
Back Cover copy
Esoteric Tibetan Buddhist scriptures teach practitioners to visualize themselves as deities residing within a mandala. By doing so, they assert, the practitioner will eventually become the deity itself. But are sentient beings intrinsically pure, or does visualization practice and contemplation of the deity qualities make them pure? In this eleventh-century commentary, the renowned Nyingma (Ancient School) scholar Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo sets out his analysis of the nature of purity. This penetrating study, directed towards scholars and serious practitioners, contains Koppl's English-language translation of Rongzom's original text and her explication of his views.
Koppl's incisive analysis offers a description of Rongzom's career and works and gives special attention to his critique of Madhyamaka philosophy, comparing his position to the work of his Nyingma successors. Some of Rongzom's approaches, Koppl shows, are unconventional even in a Nyingma context.
Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo is considered the greatest Nyingma scholar of the eleventh century.
Heidi Koppl is a translator and scholar of Tibetan Buddhist texts associated with the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. She lives in Kathmandu, Nepal.
