Books by Geshe Sonam Rinchen

Atisha, the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist scholar and saint, came to Tibet at the invitation of the king of Western Tibet, Lha Lama Yeshe Wo, and his nephew, Jangchub Wo. His coming initiated the period of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, formative for the Sakya Kagyu and Gelug traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Atisha's most celebrated text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, sets forth the entire Buddhist path within the framework of three levels of motivation on the part of the practitioner. Atisha's text thus became the source of the lamrim tradition, or graduated stages of the path to enlightenment, an approach to spiritual practice incorporated within all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

We all want to find happiness and be free from suffering. Happiness comes from positive mental states and actions, and suffering from the opposite. The twelve-part process of dependent arising shows how actions underlain by ignorance propel us from one rebirth into another, keeping us trapped in suffering, and how through understanding reality correctly we can break this cycle. The four noble truths, the twelve links of dependent arising, and the two truths regarding conventional and ultimate reality, all interrelated, form the very core of the Buddha's teaching. The many different practices of sutra and tantra become meaningful and purposeful only when they are based on a good understanding of these fundamental and seminal principles. This oral teaching by Geshe Sonam Rinchen is based on the Rice Seedling Sutra and the twenty-sixth chapter of Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle Way.