Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen
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Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (Tibetan: དོལ་པོ་པ་ཤེས་རབ་རྒྱལ་མཚན་; Wylie: Dol-po-pa Shes-rab Rgyal-mtshan) (1292-1361), known simply as Dolpopa, the Tibetan Buddhist master known as "The Buddha from Dolpo," is often seen as the founder of the Jonangpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. However, the origins of the Jonangpa tradition in Tibet can be traced to early 12th century master Yumo Mikyo Dorje, but they became much wider known with the help of Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen.
Dolpopa was one of the most influential and original Tibetan teachers. Originally a monk of the Sakya order, he developed a teaching known as Shentong or Zhentong, which is closely tied to the Indian Yogacara school. He is considered to be one of the greatest exponents of the Kalachakra or "Wheel of Time."
His controversial definition of the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā (usually translated as "emptiness" or "voidness") as being two-fold, including "emptiness of self-nature" applying only to relative truth, while absolute truth was characterised by "emptiness of other," was later heavily suppressed by the dominant Gelukpa order, although the suppression was actually for politial reasons rather than doctrinal.
[edit] References
- Gruschke, A. Geir Smith (2000). The Jonangpa Order - Causes for the downfall, conditions of the survival and current situation of a presumably extinct Tibetan-Buddhist School. Ninth Seminar of The International Association for Tibetan Studies
- Hopkins, Jeffrey (2006) Mountain Doctrine: Tibet's Fundamental Treatise on Other-Emptiness and the Buddha Matrix - by: Dolpopa, Jeffrey Hopkins, Snow Lion Publications, Hardcover, 832 Pages. ISBN 1-55939-238-X
- Stearns, Cyrus (1999). The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-4191-1 (hc); ISBN 0-7914-4192-X (pbk).
