Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages—(Rim Lnga Rab Tu Gsal Ba'i Sgron Me) : Practical Instruction in the King of Tantras, the Glorious Esoteric Community

The present work is the cornerstone of our Jey Yabsey Sungbum Collection, a subset of our Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series. Comprised of the collected works of Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa (1357-1419) and His Spiritual Sons, Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen (1364-1432) and Khedrup Gelek Pelsang (1385-1438), this Collection is a voluminous set of independent Tibetan treatises and supercommentaries, all based on the thousands of works contained in the Kangyur and Tengyur Collections.

The Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages (Rim lnga rab to gsal ba'i sgron me) is Tsong Khapa's most important commentary on the perfection stage practices of the Esoteric Community (Guhyasamaja), the Tantra he considered fundamental for the practice of the "Father Tantra" class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras. It draws heavily on Nagarjuna's Five Stages (Paiicakrama) and Aryadeva's Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryamelapakapradipa), as well as a vast range of perfection stage works included in the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur collections. It is an important work for both scholars and practitioners.

The annotated translation is supplemented with extensive glossaries and other support materials. A companion volume of the critically edited Tibetan text, annotated with the found quotes from Tengyur and Kangyur texts in Tibetan and Sanskrit where available, will soon be published in a limited edition, and as an e-book.

Robert A.F. Thurman is Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University