Je Tsongkhapa

Je Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa lived from 1357 to 1419. He was born in Tsongkha in Amdo, in the northeast of Tibet, and at sixteen travelled to central Tibet to study, never returning home. He is honoured as the founder of the Gelug school, and traditional biographies describe him as an emanation of Manjushri.

He studied with more than fifty teachers from many traditions: Kadam, Sakya, Kagyu, Jonang and Nyingma masters among them. One of his main teachers was the Sakya master Rendawa Zhönnu Lodrö. Tsongkhapa composed the Miktsema verse in praise of Rendawa, who, according to tradition, offered it back to him as better suited to Tsongkhapa himself. The Geluk faithful still use it as the principal way to invoke Tsongkhapa’s blessings.

His best-known work is the Lamrim Chenmo, the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, written in 1402 at Reting Monastery. Modelled on Atisha’s Lamp for the Path, it sets out the sutra path step by step. Its tantric companion, the Great Exposition of Secret Mantra, followed in 1405. In the Ocean of Reasoning he comments on Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika. His collected writings fill eighteen volumes, most of them on tantra. For a short text, Three Principal Aspects of the Path sets out renunciation, bodhicitta and the wisdom that realises the nature of things in a few pages.

In 1409 he instituted the Great Prayer Festival (Monlam Chenmo) in Lhasa, and Ganden Monastery, founded at his students’ request, was consecrated the following year. Students of his founded Drepung in 1416 and Sera in 1419. His students included Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen, his successor at Ganden, Khedrup Gelek Pelzang and Gendün Drup, later recognised as the First Dalai Lama.

He placed great weight on philosophical study and logic, and on monastic discipline; both became defining marks of the Gelug school. Teachers outside the Gelug school also revere him. Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, for example, wrote two praises to him.

The Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee’s English translation is published by Snow Lion in three volumes.