“Cyrus Stearns is the perfect scholar-practitioner to bring this monumental work to life for contemporary readers. While Dölpopa was universally acknowledged as a master scholar and practitioner of the Kalacakra Tantra, in a culture that traditionally frowns upon anything deemed novel or ‘self-styled,’ his seemingly radical views and terminologies of shentong (‘other-emptiness’) received critiques from several corners of the Tibetan Buddhist world. Others in this world, however, praised him for bringing to the fore the single most important—and radical—essence of all the teachings by the Buddha: at heart, we all are buddhas already; we just don't realize it yet. To understand and gain confidence in this message is the indispensable foundation of the view, meditation, and fruition of the entirety of Vajrayana, Mahamudra, and Dzogchen. Hence the significance of making Dölpopa’s teachings, squarely based on the sutras and tantras, available to contemporary audiences cannot be overestimated.”
Description
A brilliant annotated translation of Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s Mountain Dharma that opens a masterpiece of the Jonang tradition to Western readers and presents Dölpopa’s provocative ideas about a true, eternal, and established reality that still impact Buddhism today.
The controversial master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen shook Buddhist Tibet when he taught that an eternal enlightened essence, or buddha nature, exists in full form in all living beings. The ideas discussed in Mountain Dharma are still as provocative now as when Dolpopa first taught them, impacting Buddhism to this day. Dolpopa identified the ultimate with the buddha nature, or sugata essence, which he held to be eternal and not empty of self-nature. The buddha nature is perfect, with all its characteristics inherently present in all living beings. It is only the impermanent and temporary afflictions veiling the buddha nature that are empty of self-nature and must be removed through the practice of the path to allow it to manifest. Dolpopa establishes the validity of his theories with an ocean of quotations selected from Indian Buddhist scriptures and treatises of indisputable authority, showing us that the ultimate is a true, eternal, and established reality, empty merely of other relative phenomena.
Reviews
“Cyrus Stearns’s elegant translation of Mountain Dharma: An Ocean of Definitive Meaning reveals the brilliance of Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, one of Tibet’s most profound yet controversial thinkers. Mountain Dharma showcases Dölpopa’s distinctive vision of an eternal buddha nature within all beings and his presentation of emptiness of other and emptiness of self-nature as complementary rather than opposing views. Stearns’s meticulously researched and highly readable translation of Dölpopa’s magnum opus will be treasured by scholars and practitioners alike.”
“Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361) is among the most admired and, at the same time, contested figures in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His radical reinterpretation of the concept of ‘emptiness,’ grounded in the vision of a pervasive and permanent buddha nature, has provided a challenge to Tibetan thinkers of all schools and a continuing source of inspiration for practitioners of Buddhist tantric meditation and yoga. With Cyrus Stearns’s exemplary new translation of his masterwork, Mountain Dharma: An Ocean of Definitive Meaning, Dölpopa’s thought becomes accessible to contemporary readers as it has not been before.”
