About 1,000 years ago, the great Indian pandit and yogi, Dipamkara
Shrijnana (Atisha), was invited to Tibet to reestablish the Buddhadharma
which had been suppressed and corrupted for almost two centuries. One of
Atisha's main accomplishments in Tibet was his writing of the seminal
text A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, in which he extracted the
essence of all 84,000 teachings of the Buddha and organized them into a
clear, steplike arrangement that makes it easy for any individual
practitioner to understand and practice the Dharma. This genre of
teachings is known as lam-rim, or steps of the path, and forms an
essential part of every school of Tibetan Buddhism.
In this book His Holiness the Dalai Lama gives a commentary to not only
Atisha's revolutionary work but also to Lines of Experience, a short
lam-rim text written by Lama Tsong Khapa who was perhaps the greatest of
all Tibetan lam-rim authors. In bringing together the teachings of
Atisha, Lama Tsong Khapa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this book
offers listeners one of the clearest and most authoritative expositions
of the Tibetan Buddhist path ever published. It is highly recommended
listening whether you are at beginning, the middle, and the end of the
path. These teachings were given by His Holiness in Los Angeles in 2000
and were sponsored and published by Thubten Dhargye Ling in partnership
with the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive (LYWA) is the collected works of Lama
Thubten Yeshe and Kyabje Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. The Archive was
founded in 1996 by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the Archive's spiritual director,
to spread the Dharma for the happiness and benefit of all beings in as
many ways as possible. Visit us online at www.LamaYeshe.com.
