Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages (Rim lnga rab tu gsal ba'i sgron me)

Abstract

Since in the case of this work, I am the introducer, translator, as well as the author of the English version of Tsong Khapa' s master work, this Preface will be a bit longer than usual. In 1970-1 971, I spent a year in India with the American Institute of Indian Studies, working on a translation and study of Tsong Khapa' s Essence of True Eloquence, Differentiating the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings of the Buddha's Discourses. During that year I had the privilege and pleasure of working closely on the Tibetan edition of that text in frequent meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was given excellent instruction in the difficult points and deeper meanings of Buddhist Central Way hermeneutical thought. After his experience instructing a Westerner such as me in those ideas, His Holiness wrote his own book on the topic (with me working on the first draft of the English version), published eventually as T he Key to the Middle Way. When I had to leave India, His Holiness charged me to take up the responsibility to see to the translation of the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons. I most enthusiastically committed myself to undertake the task. I returned to America and received the hearty approval of this project by my root teacher, the Venerable Geshe Ngawang Wangyal. He further urged that, in order for contemporary philosophers and practitioners to appreciate the work of Tsong Khapa and his followers, they would need to have access to the Tengyur, the vast collection of Tibetan translations from the Sanskrit of the thousands of treatises of the great masters of Indian Buddhism. When I wryly said "Thanks a lot!" to that huge expansion of the burden, he said, "Of course, not just b􀁧· yourself all alone ... in your lifetime you just set up a system and get it started.·· The next step that led to the present work happened during my completion of the Essence of True Eloquence. I was getting a lot of help from an excellent commentary written by a certain Losang Puntsok (bLo bZang Phun tshogs). While studying that commentary, I came upon a statement by that lama scholar saying that he also was going to write a commentary on Tsong Khapa 's Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Fi,·e Stages, the Tantric equivalent of the Essence of True Eloquence. It analyzed the five stages of the perfection stage of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra. focusing on the Esoteric Community noble tradition descending from Nagarjuna. The moment I read that, I formed the resolve to translate this Tantric master-treatise of Tsong Khapa 's. In 1 978, I applied again to the American Institute of Indian Studies to spend a year in India to study the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras through this text. I thought that, in order to understand this great treatise, I would have to complete the Esoteric Community studies which I had begun long before when I was a Buddhist monk. During that year in India, I began the study and translation of the work, producing also drafts of a number of associated works. Consultations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on this second big text were extremely rewarding, as to be expected. However, toward the conclusion of that year of studies, I decided not to rush to publish it, due to the esoteric nature of its teachings. His Holiness' senior teacher, the Ganden Throne-holder Kyabjey Lingtsang Rinpochey, transmitter to him (and me) of various Esoteric Community teachings, was strongly opposed to the general publication of such works. Clearly I have not rushed to publish this work, begun thirty years ago. I do so now, since almost all the main practices of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras have been described and published - with varying degrees of clarity and explicitness - though the huge variety and immensely rich and sophisticated detail of their millennial sciences are like an ocean still largely unexplored. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has reasoned that misunderstanding of Tantra already abounds, and so it is desirable and even necessary to be fully transparent about the authentic teachings. Also, in a project to make available the Complete Works of Tsong Khapa and Sons, a large percentage of them do concern the Tantras, so one cannot avoid them. Some esoteric secrets keep themselves : they are incredible to Author's Preface· xiii some, incomprehensible to others, and often are approached as the romantic fantasy or science fiction of a far away ancient culture. Further, a determined researcher will find almost anything nowadays. if they look hard enough. Thus, it is my hope, and my intention in publishing this book now, that they should find authentic and accurately clarified information about the amazing "mental" or "inner" science of the Indian and Tibetan masters, scientists, and yogT/nTs of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras of Universal Vehicle (Mahayana) Buddhism! In regard to the various sub-series to be included in our Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences list , we are hereby delighted at long last to add another: the Complete Works of Tsang Khapa and Sons, each of which builds upon the Indian works in the Tengyur. As mentioned above. it was planned at the very beginning of the idea for the Tengyur translation project. As it is decades behind schedule, it is a great relief to launch it with this book. The Essence of True Eloquence was my first translation of one of Tsong Khapa' s key books. The publication still remains with the Princeton University Press, and they licensed an Indian edition to Motilal Banarsidass publishers in Delhi. Eventually, I hope to improve that work further and bring it back into this series.