Recent Essays/Post-56

Kyotön Monlam Tsultrim's Meaning of Luminous Essence

[[ |300px|thumb| ]] The Kadampa master Kyotön Mönlam Tsultrim authored several short works related to buddha-nature and the Ultimate Continuum. One of them is the Meaning of Luminous Essence (འོད་གསལ་སྙིང་པོའི་དོན།), a text which provides a clear and concise account of buddha-nature. He presents the work under three subheadings of:

1. How the luminous nature of mind is naturally awakened
2. How to clear the adventitious stains of thoughts
3. How the essential pristine wisdom arises

He illustrates the first point through explaining the three points of dharmakāya, reality, and spiritual gene, the nine similes and three stages of buddha-nature at the ordinary level when it is fully impure, on the transcendental path when it is partially pure, and on the level of buddhahood when it is fully pure.

The second topic covers the process of eliminating the adventitious stains by following the path. Unfortunately, the only copy of this text available to us is the one recently obtained from the Nechu library in Drepung monastery, and this text abruptly ends while discussing the path to remove the adventitious stains. Despite being incomplete, the text gives a clear idea of how Kyotön Mönlam Tsultrim adopts a cataphatic approach to buddha-nature as the nature of mind, which, like space, cannot be pinpointed but is at the same time the inconceivable and inexpressible luminous presence which constitutes the eternal, absolute, peaceful, and adamantine nature free from mentation and conceptual construction.

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