Description:
Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the author of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and the teacher of the First Dalai Lama, is renowned as one of the greatest scholar-saints that Tibet has ever produced. He composed his poetic Praise for Dependent Relativity the very morning that he abandoned confusion and attained the final view, the clear realization of emptiness that is the essence of wisdom. English monk Graham Woodhouse, a longtime student of Buddhism who lives near the Dalai Lama's residence in northern India, translates Tsongkhapa's celebrated text and conveys for modern readers the teachings he received from his teacher, the late Venerable Losang Gyatso.
Brief description: Lobsang Gyatso was born in 1928 in a small village in eastern Tibet. He became a monk at the age of eleven and in 1945 traveled to central Tibet to study at Drepung Monastery. Fleeing Tibet in 1959, he eventually settled in Dharamsala, India, where he went on to found in 1974 the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, which he guided until his death in February 1997.
Review Quotes: "It is written in exalted reverence and awe for the realization that phenomena come about and cease due to their relationship with other forces, thereby lacking any essence of their own, like flowers in the sky. Though several versions of this praise exist in English translation, this translation by Graham Woodhouse carries the particular terse quality of these Tibetan verse, and with the supplemental commentary by the Geluk lama Losang Gyatso, this makes a valuable text for studying the Prasangika Madhyamaka view."-- "Buddhadharma"