Jamgön Kongtrul's ten-volume Treasury of Knowledge is a unique
encyclopedic masterpiece embodying the entire range of Buddhist
teachings as they were preserved in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhist teachers
expected their students to study Buddhist philosophical texts as well as
practice reflection and meditation; present-day students have also
realized that awakening has its source in study as well as in reflection
and practice.
Foundations of Buddhist Study and Practice comprises Book Seven and
Book Eight, Parts One and Two of the Treasury of Knowledge. Book Seven
elucidates the various keys needed to correctly interpret, understand,
and contemplate Buddhist teachings, including the secret teachings of
the Vajrayana. Parts One and Two of Book Eight explain how the teachings
are to be integrated into one's life through the practice of meditation,
which unites a state of one-pointed attention with profound insight into
emptiness. Jamgön Kongtrul's evenhanded, elegant, and authoritative
statement of such controversial doctrines as unqualified emptiness
("self-empty") and qualified emptiness ("other-empty"), provisional and
definitive meaning, and conventional and ultimate truth as presented in
the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism will appeal to both serious
Dharma practitioners and advanced students and scholars.