Sur, D.
From Buddha-Nature
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Dominic Sur
Dominic D. Z. Sur is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, teaching courses in world religions and Buddhism. Dr. Sur's recent publications include Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna (2017). He is presently working on a study of the rise of scholasticism and sectarian identity in eleventh century Tibet. (Source Accessed Jan 27, 2020)
- Recent Publications:
- Constituting Canon and Community in Eleventh Century Tibet: The Extant Writings of Rongzom and His Charter of Mantrins (sngags pa’i bca’ yig). Religions (2017) 8, 40. doi:10.3390/rel8030040
2 Library Items
Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle
Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo wrote this treatise in the eleventh century during the renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet that was spurred by the influx of new translations of Indian Buddhist texts, tantras, and esoteric transmissions from India. For political and religious reasons, adherents of the “new schools” of Tibetan Buddhism fostered by these new translations cast the older tradition of lineages and transmissions as impure and decadent. Rongzompa composed the work translated here in order to clearly and definitively articulate how Dzogchen was very much in line with the wide variety of sutric and tantric teachings espoused by all the Tibetan schools. Using the kinds of philosophic and linguistic analyses favored by the new schools, he demonstrates that the Great Perfection is indeed the culmination and maturation of the Mahāyāna, the Great Vehicle.
The central topic of the work is the notion of illusory appearance, for when one realizes deeply that all appearances are illusory, one realizes also that all appearances are in that respect equal. The realization of the equality of all phenomena is said to be the Great Perfection approach to the path, which frees one from both grasping at and rejecting appearances. However, for those unable to remain effortlessly within the natural state, in the final chapter Rongzompa also describes how paths with effort are included in the Great Perfection approach. (Source: Shambhala Publications)
Sur, Dominic, trans. Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna. By Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo (rong zom chos kyi bzang po). Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2017.
Sur, Dominic, trans. Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna. By Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo (rong zom chos kyi bzang po). Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2017.;Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle;Dzogchen;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Tibetan Buddhism;Rong zom chos kyi bzang po;Dominic Sur; Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo;རོང་ཟོམ་ཆོས་ཀྱི་བཟང་པོ་;rong zom chos kyi bzang po;rong zom pa;rong zom paN+Di ta;རོང་ཟོམ་པ་;རོང་ཟོམ་པཎྜི་ཏ་;Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna;Rong zom chos kyi bzang po
The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows-Review by Sur
Sur, Dominic. Review of The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows: Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the Buddha-Nature Treatise, by Tsering Wangchuk. Reading Religion, August 9, 2017. http://readingreligion.org/books/uttaratantra-land-snows.
Sur, Dominic. Review of The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows: Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the Buddha-Nature Treatise, by Tsering Wangchuk. Reading Religion, August 9, 2017. http://readingreligion.org/books/uttaratantra-land-snows.
Sur, Dominic. Review of The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows: Tibetan Thinkers Debate the Centrality of the Buddha-Nature Treatise, by Tsering Wangchuk. Reading Religion, August 9, 2017. http://readingreligion.org/books/uttaratantra-land-snows.;The Uttaratantra in the Land of Snows-Review by Sur;Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Tibetan Buddhism;Dominic Sur
Affiliations & relations
- Utah State University · workplace affiliation
