The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of Leonard van der Kuijp, whose groundbreaking research in Tibetan intellectual and cultural history imbued his students with an abiding sense of curiosity and discovery. As part of Leonard van der Kuijp’s research in Tibetan history, as he patiently and expertly revealed treasures of the Tibetan intellectual tradition in fourteenth-century Tsang, or seventeenth-century Lhasa, or eighteenth-century Amdo, he developed an international community of colleagues and students. The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of the honoree and express the comprehensive research that his international cohort have engaged in alongside his generous tutelage over the course of forty years. He imbued his students with the abiding sense of curiosity and discovery that can be experienced through every one of his writings, and that can be found as well in these new essays in intellectual, cultural, and institutional history by Christopher Beckwith, the late Hubert Decleer, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Jörg Heimbel and David Jackson, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Nathan Hill, Matthew Kapstein, Kurtis Schaeffer, Michael Witzel, Allison Aitken, Yael Bentor, Pieter Verhagen, Todd Lewis, William McGrath, Peter Schwieger, Gray Tuttle, and others.

From the teachings of the early masters to the growth of the tradition in the West, this authoritative new reference tool contains over 900 entries supplying information on all the key doctrines, practices, and figures central to Buddhism.

This collection of guided meditations from eighteenth-century Tibet harnesses elements of tantric visualization to induce realizations while contemplating the steps on the path to buddhahood. The Swift Path by the Second Panchen Lama has long been heralded in the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism as one of the “eight great lamrims,” or works presenting the stages of the path to enlightenment, but it is the last to become widely available in English translation. Composed by a preceptor of two Dalai Lamas, this practical and systematic guide to meditating on the lamrim is based on the Easy Path, a more concise work by the First Panchen Lama. In The Swift Path, Panchen Losang Yeshé expands on the earlier Panchen Lama’s meditation guide with more detailed instructions on how to generate a clear and profound experience of the key recognitions that allow us to advance on our spiritual journey. These include the recognition of the opportunity afforded by our human existence, both its preciousness and its precariousness, and the way to adopt and live out the practices of a bodhisattva. The guided meditations here make use of a visualization of one’s teacher in the guise of Sakyamuni Buddha to unlock our own innate potential for buddhahood, complete enlightenment, to best benefit humanity and all living beings.

This new dictionary, now available in paperback as part of the best-selling Oxford Paperback Reference series, covers both historical and contemporary issues in Buddhism, and includes all Buddhist schools and cultures. Over 2,000 broad-ranging entries cover beliefs, doctrines, major teachers and scholars, place names, and artefacts, in a clear and concise style. The text is illustrated with line drawings of religious structures, iconographic forms and gestures, and ritual objects. Appendices include a chronology and a guide to canonical scriptures as well as a pronunciation guide for difficult names and terms.

The vast majority of monasteries in Tibet and nearly all of the monasteries in Mongolia belong to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism, best known through its symbolic head, the Dalai Lama. Historically, these monasteries were some of the largest in the world, and even today some Geluk monasteries house thousands of monks, both in Tibet and in exile in India. In Building a Religious Empire, Brenton Sullivan examines the school's expansion and consolidation of power along the frontier with China and Mongolia from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries to chart how its rise to dominance took shape. In contrast to the practice in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Geluk lamas devoted an extraordinary amount of effort to establishing the institutional frameworks within which everyday aspects of monastic life, such as philosophizing, meditating, or conducting rituals, took place. In doing so, the lamas drew on administrative techniques usually associated with state-making—standardization, record-keeping, the conscription of young males, and the concentration of manpower in central cores, among others—thereby earning the moniker "lama official," or "Buddhist bureaucrat." The deployment of these bureaucratic techniques to extend the Geluk "liberating umbrella" over increasing numbers of lands and peoples leads Sullivan to describe the result of this Geluk project as a "religious empire." The Geluk lamas' privileging of the monastic institution, Sullivan argues, fostered a common religious identity that insulated it from factionalism and provided legitimacy to the Geluk project of conversion, conquest, and expansion. Ultimately, this system succeeded in establishing a relatively uniform and resilient network of thousands of monasteries stretching from Nepal to Lake Baikal, from Beijing to the Caspian Sea.

With an annotated English translation and critical analysis of the Orgyan-gling gold manuscript of the short Sukhāvativyūha-sūtra Pure Land Buddhism as a whole has received comparatively little attention in Western studies on Buddhism despite the importance of “buddha-fields” (pure lands) for the growth and expression of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In this first religious history of Tibetan Pure Land literature, Georgios Halkias delves into a rich collection of literary, historical, and archaeological sources to highlight important aspects of this neglected pan-Asian Buddhist tradition. He clarifies many of the misconceptions concerning the interpretation of “other-world” soteriology in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and provides translations of original Tibetan sources from the ninth century to the present that represent exoteric and esoteric doctrines that continue to be cherished by Tibetan Buddhists for their joyful descriptions of the Buddhist path. The book is informed by interviews with Tibetan scholars and Buddhist practitioners and by Halkias’ own participant-observation in Tibetan Pure Land rituals and teachings conducted in Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Divided into three sections, Luminous Bliss shows that Tibetan Pure Land literature exemplifies a synthesis of Mahāyāna sutra-based conceptions with a Vajrayana world-view that fits progressive and sudden approaches to the realization of Pure Land teachings. Part I covers the origins and development of Pure Land in India and the historical circumstances of its adaptation in Tibet and Central Asia. Part II offers an English translation of the short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (imported from India during the Tibetan Empire) and contains a survey of original Tibetan Pure Land scriptures and meditative techniques from the dGe-lugs-pa, bKa’-brgyud, rNying-ma, and Sa-skya schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Part III introduces some of the most innovative and popular mortuary cycles and practices related to the Tantric cult of Buddha Amitābha and his Pure Land from the Treasure traditions in the bKa’-brgyud and rNying-ma schools. Luminous Bliss locates Pure Land Buddhism at the core of Tibet’s religious heritage and demonstrates how this tradition constitutes an integral part of both Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism.