The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Volume 3) [Paperback]

The third volume of the fifteenth-century spiritual classic that condenses the enormous breadth of Buddhist teachings into one easy-to-follow meditation manual.

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Tib. Lam rim chen mo) is one of the brightest jewels in the world’s treasury of sacred literature. The author, Tsong-kha-pa, completed it in 1402, and it soon became one of the most renowned works of spiritual practice and philosophy in the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Because it condenses all the exoteric sūtra scriptures into a meditation manual that is easy to understand, scholars and practitioners rely on its authoritative presentation as a gateway that leads to a full understanding of the Buddha’s teachings.

Tsong-kha-pa took great pains to base his insights on classical Indian Buddhist literature, illustrating his points with classical citations as well as with sayings of the masters of the earlier Kadampa tradition. In this way the text demonstrates clearly how Tibetan Buddhism carefully preserved and developed the Indian Buddhist traditions.

This third and final volume contains a presentation of the two most important topics in the work: meditative serenity (śamatha) and supramundane insight into the nature of reality (vipaśyanā).Editor's Preface
PART ONE: MEDITATIVE SERENITY
1. Serenity and Insight
2. Preparing for Meditative Serenity
3. Focusing Your Mind
4. Dealing with Laxity and Excitement
5. Attaining Serenity
6. Serenity as a Part of the Path
PART TWO: INSIGHT
7. Why Insight Is Needed
8. Relying on Definitive Sources
9. The Stages of Entry into Reality
10. Misidentifying the Object to Be Negated
11. Dependent-Arising and Emptiness
12. Rational Analysis
13. Valid Establishment
14. Conventional Existence
15. Production Is Not Refined
16. Not Negating Enough
17. The Actual Object to Be Negated
18. Misinterpretationsl£)