The spoken scholarship of Kensur Yeshey Tupden
Does a Bodhisattva's initial direct cognition of emptiness differ from subsequent ones? Can one "improve" a nondualistic understanding of the unconditioned and, if so, what role might subtle states of concentration play in the process? In material collected by Anne Klein over a seven year period, Kensur Yeshey Tupden addresses these and other crucial issues of Buddhist soteriology to provide one of the richest presentations of Tibetan oral philosophy yet published in English. Anne Klein's introduction to his commentary surveys oral genres associated with Tibetan textual study, and the volume concludes with a translation of the text on which Kensur bases his discussion of the "Perfection of Wisdom" chapter in Tsong kha-pa's "Illumination of thought translated here by Jeffrey Hopkins and Anne Klein.

Path to the Middle, Tubden, Hopkins, Klein, Suny Press, Paperback, 302 pages, $37.00

Anne C. Klein is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Rice University. Her books include Knowledge and Liberation and Knowing Naming and Negation, and the forthcoming Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self.

Kensur Yeshey Tupden (Ye-shes-thub-bstan, 1916-1988) was one of the most respected among the last generation of Gelukba scholars to complete their training in Tibet prior to the Chinese takeover in 1959. Kensur came into exile in India in the early 1960s, and during his ten years as abbot he oversaw the reestablishment of Loseling College, Drebung Monastery in Mundgod, India.

Acknowledgments

Technical Note

Prologue

Preface

Introduction. Oral and Textual Genres: Buddhist Philosophy and the Many Dimensions of Reading in Tibet

Part I: Kensur Yeshey Tupden on Emptiness and the Bodhisattva Path

1. Introduction to the Sixth Bodhisattva Ground
2. Three Features of Understanding
3. The Students of Emptiness
4. How Good Qualities Arise When Emptiness is Explained
5. Exhortation to the Students of Emptiness

Part II: Ken sur Yeshey Tupden on the Meaning of Emptiness

6. The Sameness of Things: Dependent Arising and Reality
7. Valid Existence and Analysis
8. The Svatantrika School on True Existence
9. The Magician's Illusion: Truth and Falsity for Worldly Persons
10. The Prasangika School of True Existence

Part III: Tsong-Kah -Pa's Text
Translated by Jeffrey Hopkins and Anne Klein, annotated by Jeffrey Hopkins

1. Introduction to the Profound Meaning
2. Dependent Arising and Reality
3. The Svatantrika School on True Existence
4. The Prasangika School on True Existence

Glossaries

English-Tibetan-Sanskrit
Tibetan-Sanskrit-English
Sanskrit-English-Tibetan

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Epilogue