View source for The Buddha From Dolpo

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== List of Illustrations ==

Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen. Brass statue with silver and copper inlaid. 16.5 cm. Kept in the collection of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet.(Photo by Ulrich yon Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures of Tibet , 2 Volumes. Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publ., 2000.) [[BuddhaDolpoIllus1|View]]


1.1 The Great Stupa* of Jonang. Built by Dolpopa during the years 1330 to 1333. Extensive damage repaired in recent years. (Photo by Andy Quintman) [[BuddhaDolpoIllus2|View]]


2.1 Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen. Detail of a 15th century painting of the Kalacakra* mandala* . Henss Collection, Zurich. (Photo by Michael Henss) [[BuddhaDolpoIllus3|View]]

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== Preface and Acknowledgments ==

This book is the product of a lingering fascination with several topics that have remained largely unexplored by Western students of Tibetan religion and history. When I first began my own study of Tibetan literature in the early 1970s I occasionally came across brief references to an intriguing fourteenth-century figure known as Dolpopa, or the Buddha from Dolpo, and usually hostile descriptions of his unique vision of the nature of reality. The fact that his tradition had been effectively censured by the Tibetan government in the seventeenth century only served to pique my curiosity. My teacher, the late Dezhung Tulku Rinpoche, was at first somewhat reticent to speak about Dolpopa's theories, no doubt in large part due to my obvious lack of the necessary skills to engage in such a discussion. Rinpoche was a peerless example of the nonsectarian approach to realization, and as the years passed I was fortunate to learn from him an appreciation of the wide range of views contained in all the ancient traditions of Tibet, including that of Dolpopa's Zhentong lineage. I am deeply grateful for Dezhung Rinpoche's inspiring example.

While living in Nepal in the 1980s I found a large volume of Dolpopa's miscellaneous writings for sale in the monastery of my teacher, the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who had recently published it in Bhutan. This collection contained both of the texts that I have translated in the present work. I am particularly thankful to Khyentse Rinpoche for personally encouraging me to read Dolpopa's writings.

During the following years in Nepal I continued to be nagged with curiosity about Dolpopa and his ideas, and returned periodically to

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the volume of his writings. Then in 1988 my teacher Chogye Trichen Rinpoche begin teaching the Kalacakra* Six-branch Yoga of Dolpopa's tradition according to the instruction manual written by Jonang Taranatha* . During the next two years Rinpoche taught the Six-branch Yoga in Nepal, Borneo, and the United States, and as his interpreter I had the unique opportunity to study these teachings and have many conversations with him about their practice. I then began to delve more deeply into Taranatha's* other writings, which led me back to Dolpopa, his great predecessor. I am extremely indebted to Chogye Rinpoche for his exceptional kindness, and for sharing his profound insight into the practice of Buddhist tantra.

After my return to the United States in 1991 I gradually began to concentrate on the study of Dolpopa's life and teachings. This became much more feasible with the 1992 publication of Dolpopa's voluminous Collected Works, which had been recovered from eastern Tibet by Professor Matthew Kapstein. In addition, Prof. Leonard van der Kuijp graciously made available to me copies of a number of extremely important rare manuscripts from his own collection, and carefully read through an earlier version of this book. Without access to the works recovered by Professors Kapstein and van der Kuijp a study of this type would have been impossible. I should also like to thank Dr. Jeffrey Schoening for his thoughtful reading of this work, and his many helpful comments and suggestions. The insightful suggestions and references from Mr. Hubert Decleer are also very much appreciated. I am likewise grateful to Professor Collett Cox, Professor Richard Salomon, and Dr. Dan Martin for their helpful readings of an earlier manuscript. Professor John Newman, Professor David Germano, and Dr. Franz-Karl Ehrhard were also very generous with their comments and references. I would also like to thank Khenpo Apey, Guru Lama, Mr. Kurtis Schaeffer, Ms. Marilyn Kennell, Mr. Jérôme Edou, and Mr. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch for providing copies of rare texts, directing me to references, or making editorial suggestions. I am also grateful to Professor David Jackson for his helpful comments and for locating photographs of an old image and painting of Dolpopa. Mr. Michael Henss, Mr. Ulrich von Schroeder, and Mr. Andy Quintman all deserve my thanks for kindly allowing their photographs to be used in this book. And finally, I must acknowledge that much of this work was written under the influence of the divine music of Franz

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List, Frank Zappa, Ludwig van Beethoven, Miles Davis, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

This book is based on my Ph.D. dissertation entitled ''The Buddha from Dolpo and His Fourth Council" (University of Washington, 1996). However, many corrections, revisions, and additions have been made for the present work, most significantly the study and translation of Dolpopa's A General Commentary on the Doctrine , which was not included in the dissertation.

In the main text of this book all Tibetan names have been phoneticized for the convenience of the reader, but in the annotations the correct Tibetan spellings have been retained. Both forms are listed in the Index. The phonetic rendering of Tibetan words is a problematic area. No great effort has been made here to establish a fixed phonetic system, since this would presuppose a standard pronunciation for terms whose actual pronunciation varies widely in different regions of Tibet. When a passage from an original Tibetan text has been translated from an unpublished manuscript the Tibetan has usually been reproduced in italicized transliteration in the annotations. No attempt has been made to "correct" the spellings found in the original texts. All Sanskrit terms are transliterated in the standard fashion.

I hope that some of the charismatic force of Dolpopa's character may be glimpsed in the following description of his life and ideas, and that this initial attempt to present a small portion of his controversial and inspiring insights will contribute toward further investigations by others in the future. Since even Dolpopa's own Dharma heirs were said to have experienced difficulties in grasping the full range of their master's genius, I am certain the present work is far from perfect. But at least in the eyes of interested students of Buddhism, Dolpopa and his spiritual legacy may now begin to emerge from the long shadows of official Tibetan history.

== Introduction ==

One of the major sources of tension in the interpretation of late Indian Buddhism as it was received in Tibet was the apparently contradictory descriptions of emptiness (sunyata * , stong pa nyid ) found in scriptures and commentaries identified with different phases of the tradition.1 The notion of an enlightened eternal essence, or Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha* , bde bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po ), present within every living being, was in marked contrast to the earlier traditional Buddhist emphasis on the lack of any enduring essence in sentient beings. For followers of Mahayana* and Vajrayana* Buddhism in Tibet, the interpretation and reconciliation of these two themes in the doctrinal materials they had inherited from India, and elsewhere, was of crucial importance.

In fourteenth-century Tibet the concern with these issues seems to have finally reached a point of critical mass. There was a burst of scholarly works dealing in particular with the question of the Buddha-nature and the attendant implications for the Buddhist traditions of practice and explication. What forces were primarily responsible for the intense interest surrounding these issues at this specific point in Tibetan history is not yet clearly understood. What can be seen is that many of the prominent masters of this period who produced the most influential works on these subjects were both intimately involved in the practice and teaching of the Kalacakra * tantra , and either personally knew each other or had many of the same teachers and disciples. Among the most important of these masters were the third Karmapa hierarch Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339), Budön Rinchen Drup (1290-1364), Dolpopa

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Sherab Gyaltsen (1292-1361), Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1364), Lama Dampa Sönam Gyaltsen (1312-1375), and Barawa Gyaltsen Balzang (1310-1391).2

Without question, the teachings and writings of Dolpopa, who was also known as "The Buddha from Dolpo" (Dol po sangs rgyas), and "The Omniscient One from Dolpo Who Embodies the Buddhas of the Three Times" (Dus gsum sangs rgyas kun mkhyen Dol po pa), contain the most controversial and stunning ideas ever presented by a great Tibetan Buddhist master. The controversies that stemmed from his teachings are still very much alive today among Tibetan Buddhists, more than six hundred years after Dolpopa's death.

When attempting to grasp the nature and significance of Dolpopa's ideas and their impact on Tibetan religious history, it is important to recognize that he was one of the towering figures of fourteenth-century Tibet. He was not a minor figure whose strange notions influenced only the members of his own Jonang tradition, and whose maverick line of hermeneutic thought died out when that tradition was violently suppressed by the central Tibetan government in the middle of the seventeenth century. Although this is perhaps the orthodox version of events, there is, on the other hand, abundant evidence that Dolpopa's legacy spread widely, and had a profound impact on the development of Tibetan Buddhism from the fourteenth century to the present day.

Whenever Dolpopa's name comes up, whether in ancient polemic tracts, or in conversation with modern Tibetan teachers, it is obvious that he is remembered first and foremost for the development of what is known as the Zhentong (gzhan stong ) view. Until quite recently this view has been familiar to modern scholars largely via the intensely critical writings of later doctrinal opponents of Dolpopa and the Jonang school.3 As such, in the absence of the original voice for this view—that is, Dolpopa's extensive writings, which have only been widely available for the last few years—even Dolpopa's name, and the words Jonang and Zhentong , have come to often evoke merely the image of an aberrant and heretical doctrine, which thankfully was purged from the Tibetan Buddhist scene centuries ago.4 In this way an extremely significant segment of Tibetan religious history has been swept under the rug. One of the main aims of the present work is to allow Dolpopa's life and ideas to speak for themselves.

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Dolpopa used the Tibetan term gzhan stong , "empty of other," to describe absolute reality as empty only of other relative phenomena. This view is Dolpopa's primary legacy. And there is always a strong reaction to it, whether positive or negative. Although there were no doubt others before him who held much the same opinion, in both India and Tibet, Dolpopa was the first to come out and directly state what he thought in writing, using terminology which was new and shocking for many of his contemporaries. His new "Dharma language" (chos skad ), which included the use of previously unknown terms such as gzhan stong , ''empty of other," will be discussed in chapter 2.

In Dolpopa's view the absolute and the relative are both empty, as Buddhism has always proclaimed, but they must be empty in different ways. Phenomena at the relative level (samvrti, kun rdzob ) are empty of self-nature (svabhavasunya* , rang stong ), and are no more real than the fictitious horn of a rabbit, or the child of a barren woman. In contrast, the reality of absolute truth (paramartha* , don dam ) is empty only of other (*parabhava-sunya* , gzhan stong ) relative phenomena, and not itself empty. With the recent availability of a large number of writings by Dolpopa it is now becoming clear that he was not simply setting up the viewpoints of an emptiness of self-nature (rang stong ) and an emptiness of other (gzhan stong ) as opposed theories located on the same level.5 He obviously viewed the pair as complementary, while making the careful distinction that the view of an "emptiness of other" applied only to the absolute, and an 'emptiness of self-nature" only to the relative. Both approaches were essential for a correct understanding of the nature of samsara* and nirvana* . Dolpopa's quarrel was with those who viewed both the absolute and the relative as empty of self-nature (rang stong ), and who refused to recognize the existence of anything which was not empty of self-nature. From this point of view the notion of an emptiness of other relative phenomena (gzhan stong ) did not fit the definition of emptiness.

Dolpopa further identified the absolute with the Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha * ), which was thus seen to be eternal and not empty of self-nature, but only empty of other. The Buddha-nature is perfect and complete from the beginning, with all the characteristics of a Buddha eternally present in every living being. It is only the impermanent and temporary defilements veiling the Buddha-nature

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that are empty of self-nature, and that must be removed through the practice of a spiritual path in order to allow the ever-present Buddha-nature to manifest in its full splendor.

This view was in accord with many Mahayana* and Vajrayana* scriptures, but most of the scholars in Tibet during Dolpopa's life disagreed with him. They viewed such scriptural statements to be of provisional meaning (neyartha* , drang don ), and in need of interpretation for the true intended meaning to be correctly comprehended. This was, for example, the opinion of the mainstream Sakya tradition, to which Dolpopa belonged before he moved to the monastery of Jonang. As such, for some time Dolpopa tried to keep his teachings secret, realizing that they would be misunderstood and cause great turmoil and uncertainty for those who had closed minds and were accustomed to certain styles of interpretation that differed greatly from his own. Dolpopa often remarked that the majority of buddhas and bodhisattvas agreed with his viewpoint on these issues, but that the majority of scholars in Tibet were opposed to him.6 For instance, the general Sakya position is that the Buddha-nature is present in living beings as a potential, or seed. This seed can be caused to ripen through the various practices of the spiritual path and come to final fruition as perfect buddhahood. If left in a box without any water, light, warmth, soil, and so forth, the seed will never bear fruit. However, if it is planted in the proper soil, receives the right amount of sunlight, water, and so forth, it will grow into a healthy plant and finally bear its fruit. From this viewpoint, the Buddha-nature is a fertile seed in every living being, which has the potential to expand and manifest as a result of spiritual practice but is not complete and perfect already, as Dolpopa maintained.7

In regard to the two truths, the absolute and the relative, Dolpopa saw no difference between speaking of the absolute as totally unestablished and saying that there is no absolute. He asked whether a relative is possible without an absolute, the incidental possible without the primordial, and the entities of existence (dharma, chos ) possible without a true nature (dharmata* , chos nyid ). If, he asked, their existence is possible without an absolute, then would those relative, incidental entities of existence themselves not constitute an omnipresent reality or true nature? There would, in such a situation, be nothing else. This, of course, is an unacceptable conclusion, and Dolpopa's doctrinal opponents would

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have to respond by saying that everything is not the relative, for there is of course an absolute truth as well. But, Dolpopa would respond, if it is impossible for there to be no absolute, does that not contradict the notion of an absolute which is totally unestablished?8 Everything cannot be simply empty of self-nature, for then there would be no difference between the absolute and the relative. As Dolpopa stated in his autocommentary to The Fourth Council (Bka' bsdu bzhi pa ):

Why is the realization that everything is empty of self-nature not the same as no realization?
Why is the explanation of everything as empty of self-nature not the same as no explanation?
Why is writing that everything is empty of self-nature not the same as not writing?9

Dolpopa saw the only solution to these sorts of problems to be the acceptance of the absolute as a true, eternal, and veridically established reality, empty merely of extraneous relative phenomena.

Descriptions of reality, or the Buddha-nature, in these terms are common in a number of scriptures which the Tibetan tradition places in the Third Turning of the Dharma Wheel,10 and in the Buddhist tantras. Nevertheless, no one before Dolpopa in Tibet had ever simply said that absolute reality was not empty of self-nature. This was what caused all the trouble. In answer to the objections of his opponents, Dolpopa noted that his teachings, and the Dharma language (chos skad ) he was using, were indeed new, but only in the sense that they were not well-known in Tibet. This was because they had come from the realm of Shambhala to the north, where they had been widespread from an early date.11 He explicitly linked his ideas to the Kalacakra * tantra and its great commentary, the Vimalaprabha * , composed by the Shambhala emperor Kalkin Pundarika* , which were not translated into Tibetan until the early eleventh century. Dolpopa clearly felt that earlier interpreters of the Ka1acakra* literature had not fully comprehended its profound meaning. As will be discussed in the first chapter, he even ordered a new revised translation of the Kalacakra * tantra and the Vimalaprabha * , for the purpose of making the definitive meaning (nitartha* , nges don ) more accessible to Tibetan scholars and practitioners. In this respect he was attempting through a revised translation to

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remove the results of accumulated mistaken presuppositions that had informed the earlier translations in Tibet, and thus provided the basis for many erroneous opinions concerning the true meaning of the Kalacakra .12

The views of Dolpopa and the Jonang tradition, and their influence in Tibet, have attracted only modest attention in the published research of modern scholars. D. S. Ruegg has touched upon these topics more than anyone else, although usually from the viewpoint of the determined Geluk and Zhalu opponents of the Jonang position. M. Kapstein has both summarized the life of Dolpopa and briefly discussed his ideas in his recent catalogue to the newly discovered collection of Dolpopa's complete works. S. Hookham has studied the Zhentong approach to the interpretation of the Uttaratantra , and M. Broido has very briefly outlined some of Dolpopa's views on Madhyamaka as found in Dolpopa's major work, The Ocean of Definitive Meaning (Nges don rgya mtsho ).13 Until now there has been no detailed study of Dolpopa's life and the Zhentong tradition in Tibet, nor any translations of his major works.

The following work is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with Dolpopa's life and teachings. In chapter 1 Dolpopa's life is discussed in a more complete fashion then has been the case to date. This has been made possible by the recent publication of one full-length Tibetan biography of Dolpopa and the recovery of another unpublished manuscript biography, both by direct disciples who witnessed much of what they describe. Numerous other Tibetan sources have also been utilized for this discussion. The presentation of a somewhat detailed version of Dolpopa's life provides essential background for an appreciation of his spiritual and intellectual development and his personal character, as well as his tremendous influence in fourteenth-century Tibet.

Chapter 2 provides a summary of the historical development of the Zhentong tradition in Tibet. Some of the earlier Tibetan precedents for the view of ultimate reality as an emptiness only of other relative phenomena are briefly discussed. Dolpopa's unique use of language and the major influences on his development of the Zhentong theory are presented in some detail. The fate of the Jonang tradition after Dolpopa is described, as well as the significance of several of the most important adherents to the Zhentong view from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries.

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Chapter 3 is a discussion of Dolpopa's view of the nature of absolute reality as empty of phenomena other than itself (gzhan stong ), and of the relative as empty of self-nature (rang stong ). In connection with these ideas, there is also a discussion of Dolpopa's attempt to redefine the views of Cittamatra* and Madhyamaka in Tibet, and his own definition of what constitutes the tradition of the Great Madhyamaka (*mahamadhyamaka* , dbu ma chen po ). Finally, there is a brief presentation of two opposing views of what actually brings about enlightenment. Dolpopa maintained that enlightenment occurs only when the vital winds (vayu* , rlung ) normally circulating through numerous subtle channels in the body are drawn into the central channel (avadhuti* ) through the practice of tantric yoga. He strongly objected to the view that enlightenment could be achieved merely through a recognition of the nature of the mind, without the necessity for the accumulation of the assemblies of merit and gnosis through the practice of the spiritual path. These topics are discussed with the intention of providing the reader with background information necessary for an understanding of the following translations.

Part 2 contains the first translations of two major works by Dolpopa, both originally composed in verse. The first work is A General Commentary on the Doctrine (Bstan pa spyi 'grel ), one of the earliest texts composed by Dolpopa to present his unique vision of the entire structure of the Buddhist tradition.14 An introduction to the translation will discuss the circumstances of the composition and the reasons for its significance. The translation of A General Commentary on the Doctrine is annotated from the detailed commentary by Nyaön Kunga Bal (1285-1379), who was one of Dolpopa's most important disciples.15 The second translation is of a work entitled The Fourth Council (Bka' bsdu bzhi pa ).16 The circumstances surrounding the actual composition of the text at the request of the Sakya hierarch Lama Dampa Sönam Gyaltsen are discussed in the introduction to the translation. The Fourth Council itself was composed in the last years of Dolpopa's life, and may be viewed as a final verse summation of the ideas he considered most important. The entire text of his own condensed commentary (bsdus don 'grel pa ) on the work is included here with the translation. Annotations to the translation are drawn from a number of sources, but particularly from Dolpopa's own autocommentary (rang 'grel ) to The Fourth Council .

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== Part One—The Life and Teachings of the Omniscient Dolpopa ==
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Figure 1.1<br>
The Great Stupa* of Jonang. Built by Dolpopa during the years
1330 to 1333.<br>Extensive damage repaired in recent years.<br>(Photo by Andy
Quintman)
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=== Chapter One—The Life of the Buddha from Dolpo ===


The Buddhist tradition is steeped in the marvelous. Belittled by some schools and exaggerated by others, the marvelous is ubiquitous. We have accepted it as such without attempting to eliminate it in the name of western rationalism. To disregard it would be to offer the reader a caricature of Buddhism and still not attain historical truth. It is not enough to discard the legend in order to discern the reality of the facts. By leaving the marvelous the place it has always occupied in the sources, we believe we have given a more faithful image of the mentality of the Buddha's disciples. And it is this mentality which is the true object of our research and not a fleeting and elusive historical certainty.
—History of Indian Buddhism, É. Lamotte1

In the year 1309 a seventeen-year-old novice monk ran away from home in the Dolpo area of present-day Nepal and endured a harrowing journey north to the region of Mustang (Glo) in quest of spiritual guidance from a great Buddhist master. No one could have imagined that in less than twenty years he would be enthroned as the leader of Jonang monastery in the Tibetan province of Tsang, where he would soon construct the largest stupa* temple (sku 'bum ) ever seen in Tibet, and proclaim his vision of the nature of reality in a series of treatises that would rock the Tibetan Buddhist world. As an indispensable foundation for understanding Dolpopa's ideas and influence, the first thing that is required is a clear picture of his life and the cultural environment in which he lived.2 Fortunately, two primary sources provide us with crucial information. These are the biographies of Dolpopa composed by two of his main disciples, Gharungwa Lhey Gyaltsen (1319-1401)

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and Kunpang Chödrak Balzang (1283-1363), both of whom were witnesses to many of the events they describe and who record Dolpopa's own statements about his life and experiences. Later sketches of Dolpopa's life in historical works by Jetsun Taranatha* (1575-1635) and Mangtö Ludrup Gyantso (1523-1596) also supply interesting material, although they are sometimes at odds with the earlier sources.3



==== Childhood and Early Education ====

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==== Studies at the Great Monastery of Sakya ====

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==== The Move to Jonang ====

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==== Raising Mt. Meru and Revealing the Zhentong View ====

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==== The Initial Reception of the Zhentong Teachings ====

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==== The New Jonang Translation of the Kalacakra* Tantra and the Vimalaprabha* ====

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==== Years of Retreat and Teaching ====

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==== Invitation to China by the Yüan Emperor Toghon Temür ====

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==== Changes in the Jonang Leadership and the Beginning of the Journey to Lhasa ====

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==== Teachings in Central Tibet and the Return to Tsang ====

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==== The Aborted Meeting with Budön Rinchen Drup ====

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==== The Last Months at Jonang ====

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=== Chapter Two—A Historical Survey of the Zhentong Tradition in Tibet ===

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==== The Zhentong Tradition in Tibet before Dolpopa ====

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==== Dolpopa and the Zhentong View ====

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==== The Zhentong Tradition after Dolpopa ====

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=== Chapter Three—The Doctrine of the Buddha from Dolpo ===

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==== Emptiness of Self-Nature and Emptiness of Other ====

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==== A Redefinition of Cittamatra* and Madhyamaka ====

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==== Two Approaches to Enlightenment ====

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== Part Two—Texts in Translation ==

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=== Introduction to the Translation of A General Commentary on the Doctrine ===

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=== The Supplication Entitled A General Commentary on the Doctrine ===

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=== Introduction to the Translation of The Fourth Council ===

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=== The Great Calculation of the Doctrine Which Has the Significance of a Fourth Council ===

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== Notes ==

175

== Bibliography ==

273

== Index ==

293