Books that Support Study and Practice
In recent years, the Yeshe De Project has focused on preparing books that support a comprehensive educational program. These books are typeset in Tibetan script and printed in the pothi (loose-leaf) format traditionally used for sacred texts. More than one million of these books have been distributed to individuals and to more than 3,300 Buddhist monasteries and retreat centers in Asia.
Encouraging The Quest for Knowledge
In Tibet, the quest for knowledge is the highest and most noble of human aspirations. Traditionally, this quest has been nurtured in monasteries, where education focuses on the most fundamental questions of existence and seeks to free individuals from greed, aggression, and confusion. Rigorous programs of study activate the wide range of human capacities—physical, psychological, and spiritual. They cover both religious subjects and the classical arts and sciences, including history, literary arts, mathematics, medicine, ritual arts, sacred music, and dance.
The study of Buddhism can be organized into three general aspects of training: Vinaya, Sutrayana, and Mantrayana. Vinaya, or moral discipline, is traditionally associated with the Arhat, who attains freedom from emotional obscurations. Sutrayana is associated with the Bodhisattva, the great being who works for the enlightenment of others and cultivates the profound, self-transcending wisdom that supports this intention. Mantrayana is associated with the Vidyadhara lineage of realized masters and the tantric teachings, which focus on the development and completion stages and the integration of merit and wisdom, bringing relative and absolute truth into complete harmony. Each of these major approaches encompass vast subjects set forth in hundreds of texts. These topics are studied by all schools of Tibetan Buddhism as a foundation for cultivating the view, meditation, and conduct that support the path to enlightenment.
Texts that Support Study and Practice
Texts that establish, support, and deepen students’ understanding of Vinaya, Sutrayana, and Mantrayana are based on the Buddha’s teachings and commentaries by Indian masters. Shaped into a systematic program of study at Nalanda, Vikramashila, and other Buddhist monastic universities between the fourth and eleventh centuries, these texts were brought to Tibet and translated to form a comprehensive foundation for the advanced practices of the Mantrayana.
Teachings relating to the Mantrayana (Tantras and their commentaries and associated rituals and practices) are studied in monasteries according to their practice lineages, while the Vinaya and Sutra teachings are a precious heritage shared by all Tibetan traditions. The Sutrayana includes many hundreds of texts that support the study of five major subjects: Logic and Epistemology, Vinaya, Abhidharma, Madhyamaka, and Prajnaparamita. The teachings in these shastras have been supplemented through the centuries by the contributions of outstanding Tibetan masters.
Logic and Epistemology, traditionally viewed as the gateway to Buddhist studies, establish the valid means of knowledge and promote understanding of the distinctions between reality and illusion and truth and falsehood. Often viewed as the science of knowledge, they are impartial and have no position to promote or uphold. Focused on the correct discernment of truth, they protect the teachings from distortion and confusion.
Vinaya encompasses the monastic discipline that supports mindfulness and the balancing and refining of body, speech, and mind. Based on an understanding of karma, the path of conduct expressed in these texts is regarded as the essential basis for embodying the teachings and bringing them to fulfillment. Monks and nuns studying the Vinaya, as well as laypersons, are encouraged to study events in the life of the Buddha and the disciples as well as the Jatakas, accounts of past lives that illustrate the connection between cause and effect.
Abhidharma analyzes the structures that pattern both perception and the physical world. The operation of emotionality and the workings of karma are carefully traced out, the reality of the personal, autonomous self is closely questioned, and the inner patterns of the ego are unerringly observed.
Madhyamaka is the Middle Way that transcends the conceptual extremes of nihilism and eternalism and reveals the contradictions inherent in all views. The study of Madhyamaka completes the analytic process of Abhidharma, supporting practices that penetrate the dualistic structures of the self and its manifestations of hatred, desire, pride, confusion, and fear. Release from these structures opens the gateway to Prajnaparamita.
Prajnaparamita, the deep and profound teaching known as the Perfection of Wisdom, is an inexhaustible treasury of spiritual attainment, a sacred, healing spring that never runs dry. The Prajnaparamita Sutras, and the shastras based on them, detail how illusion is cleared away, revealing the path to perfect freedom. They set forth a whole range of Dharma study and practice, from the initial stages of turning the mind toward Dharma through the five paths of accumulation, linking, seeing, contemplation, and no more learning. The shastras, composed by realized masters, systematize the teachings of the Sutras. Explaining how to perfect the six or ten paramitas, qualities that align body, speech, and mind with the Bodhisattva’s aspiration, they clarify how these enlightened qualities manifest on the ten stages of the Bodhisattva Path. This entire body of sacred wisdom serves to awaken Bodhicitta, the intention to attain enlightenment that connects the student to the enlightened lineage.
Closely related are texts that clarify the purpose, nature, and result of the Bodhisattva path so as to support meditation. These include:
Biographies describing the acts of the Buddha and the lives of the great Arhats, Mahayana teachers, and siddhas inspire emulation and reveal a wide variety of approaches to realization. The Lalitavistara Sutra, the Buddha's account of his early life, enlightenment, and first teaching, links the Buddha’s accomplishments to the lives of all practitioners. Biographies of Padmasambhava, founder of Buddhism in Tibet, illustrate the transformation of consciousness, and accounts of the great siddhas demonstrate how to benefit fully from a teacher’s guidance.
Mind Training Lojong texts, based on the “four insights that turn the mind toward Dharma,” are essential guides for entering and following the Bodhisattva path. They clarify the meaning of refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; set forth the practice of the Three Trainings (moral conduct, concentration, and wisdom) strengthen the students' intention to take the vow of the Bodhisattva, and guide the student’s practice of the six perfections: giving, morality, patience, vigor, meditation, and wisdom.