The Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa

An anthology of the transformative life and useful teachings of Tsongkhapa (for both nonspecialists and scholars) that fulfills a longstanding need of the contemporary Dharma community in the East and West. 

Tsongkhapa is revered as one of the most significant Tibetan Buddhist teachers, whose eclectic and analytic studies and meditations in all the major schools of Tibetan Buddhism resulted in the founding of the Gelugpa system of the Tibetan Buddhist heritgage. The Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa brings together for the first time a number of extremely important and useful works by and on Tsongkhapa, touching on transcendental aspects of sutra, tantra, and insight meditation, including mystic conversations with great bodhisattvas and deeply spiritual songs in praise of Manjushri and Maitreya. The anthology concludes with a number of intensely moving songs in praise of Tsongkhapa and his immeasurable contribution to Tibetan Buddhism by such realized and remarkable Tibetan Buddhists as the Seventh Dalai Lama, the Eighth Karmapa, Dulnagpa Palden, and Khaydrup Je.

This edition has been substantially corrected by Robert Thurman and contains a new introduction and a bibliography of all the works referenced in the text.

Robert Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, the president of Tibet House US, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and president of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a nonprofit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific treatises from the Tibetan Tengyur. He is considered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism and is the author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics, and culture, including The Central Philosophy of Tibet, Circling the Sacred Mountain, Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, Worlds of Transformation, Inner Revolution, Infinite Life, The Jewel Tree of Tibet, Why the Dalai Lama Matters, and with Sharon Salzberg, Love Your Enemies.