A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages ─ Teachings on Guhyasamaja Tantra

Tsongkhapa’s Lamp is one of the most comprehensive and detailed presentations of the highest yoga class of Vajrayana Buddhism, especially the key practices in the advanced phase of Guyhasamaja tantra. Tsongkhapa draws extensively from Indian sources, especially the writings of Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Candrakirti, and Naropa, to systematize this quintessential practice of Buddhist esoterism. Traditionally the work belongs to a class of ?hidden texts” that are to be read only by those who have received initiations. Of the two stages of generation and completion, this volume focuses on the latter stage. In the generation stage, meditators visualize the Buddha in the form of the deity Guhyasamaja residing in a mandala palace. In the completion stage, meditators transcend ordinary consciousness and actualize the state of a buddha themselves. In tantra, this is achieved through manipulation of a subtle physiology of internal winds, or pra?a, and the channels they run through, and the highest realization occurs when the wind energies dissolve in the central channel at the heart chakra. For on the winds ride the consciousness, like a rider on a horse, and this dissolution initiates a dissolution of ordinary conceptuality and the dawning of the intrinsic nature of the mind, which is empty and luminous. Other topics, such as the Buddhist understanding of the process of death and dying, the intermediate state of existence, and rebirth, as well as complex theories of human psychology?such as the scope and dynamic of the emotions, dream states, and near-death experiences?are also addressed in detail in this work. This work was Tsongkhapa’s last major composition, completed in 1419, the year of his death.

Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa (1357?1419) is among the most influential and renowned of Tibet’s sages, founder of the lineage of the Dalai Lamas and a peerless commentator on all aspects of Buddhist thought and practice. He is the author of The Great Treatise of the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and many other works that have served as root texts for public teachings by the current Dalai Lama.

Gavin Kilty spent thirteen years (1971?84) in Dharamsala, India, studying Buddhism and learning the Tibetan language, eight of those at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics mastering the monastic curriculum through classes and formal debate. Since then he has worked as an English teacher and as well as a Tibetan translator and translation instructor. His translations are highly regarded for being both readable and reliable. This is his third volume for the Library of Tibetan Classics.

Thupten Jinpa was trained as amonk at Ganden monastic university and holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Cambridge University. He has been the principal English-language translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama for more than two decades and has translated and edited numerous bestselling books by the Dalai Lama. An adjuct professor at McGill University and a scholar at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, Jinpa is currently the president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics in Montreal.