The Perfection of Wisdom Tradition: Three Essential Works

The foremost translator of Perfection of Wisdom literature from Tibetan today presents three foundational works that formed the basis for the Tibetans’ study of Mahayana scripture and the bodhisattva path.

The perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita) is a key element of the path in Mahayana Buddhism. Wisdom here is the transcendent wisdom of a bodhisattva who has penetrated the nature of reality, the emptiness (shunyata) of all things. Sutras that take the Perfection of Wisdom as their name emerged in the centuries before and after the start of the Common Era and became foundational for the nascent Mahayana. These include the well-known Heart Sutra and Diamond Cutter Sutra as well as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in eight thousand and a hundred thousand lines.

Study of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in Tibet has historically been through commentaries on the Ornament for the Clear Realizations (Abhisamayalamkara), a short verse distillation in eight chapters attributed to Maitreya that was expanded in India by such figures as Asanga, Haribhadra, and Arya-Vimuktisena. The three works in the present volume reflect the diversity of the Tibetan commentarial tradition on these Indian works.

Ngok Loden Sherab’s (1057–1109) Topical Summary marks the beginning in Sangphu Monastery of the most influential Perfection of Wisdom commentarial tradition. Ngok’s short work leads the reader briskly through the Abhisamayalamkara’s seventy topics, presenting what would become the standard framework for explaining the Perfection of Wisdom in Tibet. The entirety of Haribhadra’s Vivrti commentary has been embedded in Ngok’s text.

Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen’s (1364–1432) Way to Practice the Sequence of Clear Realizations, structured as a defense of the meditation system set forth by his guru Tsongkhapa in the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, links the stages of the path expanded into the seventy topics with the actual practices of an accomplished yogi. Working outward from the middle of the Abhisamayalamkara’s fourth chapter, it explains how the Perfection of Wisdom is integrated into a total and complete meditational practice for the attainment of buddhahood.

The great Drukpa Kagyu scholar Kunkhyen Pema Karpo’s (1527–92) Sacred Words of Lord Maitreya is the most detailed and systematic of the three works, supplementing explanations of the Perfection of Wisdom based on the Abhisamayalamkara with verses from the Mahayanasutralamkara (Ornament for the Mahayana Sutras) and the Uttaratantra (Sublime Continuum). This work as presented here includes within it a complete translation of the Abhisamayalamkara’s eight chapters.

Gareth Sparham received a BA in English (Hons) from McGill University and PhD in Asian studies from the University of British Columbia. He studied formally at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala from 1974 until 1986 and remained closely associated with the institute until 1998. He then taught Tibetan and Sanskrit at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley, for twelve years, leaving to focus on translating Indian and Tibetan Perfection of Wisdom literature from Tibetan and Sanskrit into English. He has published numerous multi-volume translations of Perfection of Wisdom literature and translations of several key works of Tsongkhapa.

Ngok Loden Sherab (1057–1109). Also known as the Great Translator, Lotsawa Chenpo, for his translations in the Tibetan canon, Ngok Loden Sherab was a founding figure of the Kadampa school’s scholastic tradition based at Sangphu Monastery south of Lhasa.

Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen (1364–1432) trained in the Sakya school before becoming one of the most prominent disciples and interpreters of Tsongkhapa. He inherited the throne of Ganden Monastery after Tsongkhapa’s death in 1419.

Kunkhyen Pema Karpo (1527–92) is perhaps the most famous scholar of the Drukpa Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. His works fill twenty-five volumes, and his learning and meditative realization earned him the name Kunkhyen (“omniscient one”).