Mipham:
One of Tibet's Very Greatest Scholar-Yogis
with Guy Newland
Not known for scholarship or for Buddhist philosophy, the Nyingma tradition produced in the late 19th century one of Tibet’s very greatest thinkers: Ju Mipham Gyatso (1846-1912).
Most Nyingmapas treat tantric teachings (especially Dzogchen) as absolutely superior to Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka view of emptiness. Mipham, however, is like Tsongkhapa: a genius who gives us a grand synthesis of tantric teachings and Madhyamaka emptiness.
Mipham studied with the greatest teachers of eastern Tibet’s Non-Sectarian (ri-mé) movement. On this basis, he criticizes Tsongkhapa from an unusually well-informed perspective; he really knows what Tsongkhapa is doing and why it is important–but he still disagrees.
We will explore Mipham’s Buddhist system, his critique of Tsongkhapa, and talk about how his philosophy looks to Tsongkhapa’s followers.
Additional Materials
An important and readable text, perhaps in some sense the root text for the upcoming teachings, is Douglas Duckworth’s Jamgon Mipam: His Life and Teachings. This authoritative and well-written book is designed for the non-scholar who has some background and wants to see how Mipham fits into the big picture.
Recordings
This is a playlist. To jump to a particular session, click the playlist icon (near the top-right corner) of the video frame to select video.
About the Teacher
Guy Newland, Ph.D., is a scholar of Tibetan Madhyamaka whose teachers include Jeffrey Hopkins and Loling Geshe Palden Drakpa. He is a translator and editor of Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teachings on that text, From Here to Enlightenment. Guy is the author of Introduction to Emptiness, Appearance and Reality, The Two Truths, and A Buddhist Grief Observed.
