"In 2008, to commemorate the completion of the English translation of Tsongkhapa's classic text "Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment" (Tib. Lam Rim Chen Mo), the Dalai Lama gave a six-day teaching on this text at Lehigh University. "From Here to Enlightenment" makes this momentous event available for a wider general readership. The basic topics of Buddhism are woven together for his Western audience. With dependent relatedness as the primary theme of the teachings, the Dalai Lama explores this from ...
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"In 2008, to commemorate the completion of the English translation of Tsongkhapa's classic text "Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment" (Tib. Lam Rim Chen Mo), the Dalai Lama gave a six-day teaching on this text at Lehigh University. "From Here to Enlightenment" makes this momentous event available for a wider general readership. The basic topics of Buddhism are woven together for his Western audience. With dependent relatedness as the primary theme of the teachings, the Dalai Lama explores this from various viewpoints throughout the book. True to the Dalai Lama's profound sense of compassion, these fundamental issues of Buddhism are always presented within the context of basic human values and concerns"--
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The Dalai Lama has become a revered spiritual teacher to many people, Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Some of his many books are written on an almost secular, general level with little explicitly sectarian content, for example "Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World". Other books deeply explore Buddhism, specifically Tibetan Buddhism. The book under review here, the Dalai Lama's "From Here to Enlightenment: An Introduction to Tsong-Kha-Pa's Classic Text 'The Great Treatise on the stages of the Path to Enlightenment" is in the latter category. The book is based on the Dali Lama's 2008 lectures at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania.
Some background is necessary to understand the scope of the Dalai Lama's teaching in this volume. Tsong-Kha-Pa was a Tibetan monk who wrote prolifically about Buddhism, with his "Great Treatise" appearing in 1402. It is a massive work of 1200 pages. A committee of scholars translated the work into English for the first time in three volumes published in 2000, 2002, and 2004: "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Volume 1)" ; "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Volume 3);" "The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Volume 2)". The Dalai Lama agreed to give a series of teachings on the book to celebrate the completion of the translation. The "Great Treatise" was personally important to the Dalai Lama as it was one of the few works he was able to carry with him into exile when he fled Tibet in 1959. He has taught the book several times but never in the United States with the degree of detail of the 2008 lectures.
The lectures were given through an interpreter. Then, Guy Newland, Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Philosophy of Religion, Western Michigan University, translated and edited the work for publication from the Dalai Lama's Tibetan manuscript. Newland also added extensive notes and cross-references to other Tibetan and Indian sources. Newland participated in the translation of the "Great Treatise" and he has written on the concept of emptiness which plays the central role in "The Great Treatise."
At about 200 pages, the Dalai Lama's book is short but dense and difficult. The "Great Treatise" was written to synthesize the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and its different schools and the Indian philosophy from which Tibetan Buddhism derived. The Dalai Lama begins with a long introduction about the book and how it presents themes of interdependence and religious harmony which he finds critically important. He advises his audience that Tibetan teachings differ substantially from the theism of Judaism and Christianity in its stress on causality and interdependence as opposed to a transcendent creator God. The goal of the lectures is not to convert, which the Dalai Lama in fact discourages, but to explain.
The Dalai Lama quotes heavily and expounds on Tsong-Ka-Pha's text and discusses as well many other early Tibetan and Indian sources. The book moves from the relatively simple to the profoundly difficult. The Dalai Lama finds the key teaching of Buddhism to lie in the nature of selflessness, a difficult teaching with many possible interpretations that will be hard to grasp for Westerners. The Dalai Lama discusses at length the Buddha's teaching of Dependent Origination which is likewise central to the book and, as the Buddha himself warned his followers, deep and difficult. The book then ties these broad teachings into an exploration of the Four Noble Truths, into a discussion of the meaning of life, the path of the Bodhisattva, serenity and insight meditation and -- the nature of emptiness which is derived largely from the doctrine of Dependent Origination. The latter parts of the book explore briefly notoriously difficult eptistemological, metaphysical, and logical questions that arise from the teaching of emptiness.
The book is written lucidly, with modesty, and with the Dalai Lama's wonderful good humor and kindness. As an oral introduction to a long unfamiliar text, it is difficult reading indeed. The Dalai Lama advises his hearers that the Tsong-Kah-Pah's teachings take months if not years to understand and to try to practice. The effort is ongoing. For readers emboldened to read the three-volume work for themselves, the Dalai Lama counsels slow, deliberate reading studying perhaps one page per day. This pace would require between three and four years to work through the book.
Throughout the book, the Dalai Lama emphasizes his belief in reason, analysis, and critical thinking as a means to understanding, religious and otherwise. The book includes small sections of question and answer sessions between the Dalai Lama and his audience. In a passage I thought captured much of the book, an interlocutor says he is new to the study of Buddhism and asks the Dalai Lama how he might attain greater understanding. Here is part of the Dalai Lama's response.
"Read more. There are translations of Buddhist texts into English, as well as French, German, Spanish, and of course Chinese-- although I think there are fewer translations into Chinese than into English. There are many new translations into English. Read such texts daily for an hour or at least a half hour. Then turn your mind inward and contemplate what you have learned. Examine and investigate, comparing what the text says with your usual way of thinking and living."
This daunting book by the Dalai Lama is for readers with a serious interest in Buddhism and in Tibetan texts. Careful reading offers great insight into Tibetan Buddhism and, for those readers so inclined, into one's own practice.
