Category Archives: dictionary

Je Tsongkapa

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Je Tsongkapa (1357-1419) was born in Eastern Je TsongkapaTibet. Tsongka means onion fields and refers to the place he is from.  Je is an honorific meaning Lord.

At age three he received lay ordination as a Kagyu. At 24 he was ordained as Lobsang Drakpa in the Sakya tradition. He studied with all the greatest teachers of his day in many different traditions. He is the founder of the Gelupa School of Tibetan Buddhism (the school of the Dalai Lamas).

Je Tsongkapa had three famous disciples: Gyaltsab Je (1362-1432), First Dali Lama: Gyalwa Gendun Drup(1391-1475), and Kedrup Je (1385-1438)

The story of how Gyalstab Je and Kedrup Je became his students is a good on:  Gyaltsab Je and Kedrup Je both went to challenge Je Tsongkapa. One of them got up on the throne as Je Tsongkapa was teaching to imply he could teach as well. Then after a few minutes of listening he stepped down, a while later he made prostrations, and then finally took off his hat and asked to by Je Tsongkapa’s student.

Geshe Michael Roach claimed in 1993 that Gyaltsab Je’s books were so deep that despite yearly study sessions for the last 22 years in the monastery (lasting 30 days straight and 16 hours a day) no one has reached the ending chapters.  So if the student was so adept, imagine the teacher.

Je Tsongkapa wrote 10,000 pages of commentaries on Buddhism – with only 5 -10% translated.  His holiness the 14th Dalai Lama commends the great and detailed work that Je Tsongkapa did.  Like no one in the history of Buddhism, he took every difficult point and explained them clearly in an irrefutable manner.  Indeed, in the gelupa tradition if Je Tsongkapa said it, then it is taken as truth – much like the word of a buddha.

 

The Four Truths

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The Four Truths are most frequently heard referred to as the Four Noble Truths, although a more accurate translation would be Four Arya Truths.  In brief, the Four Truths are:

  1. There is suffering
  2. Suffering has an origin
  3. Suffering has an end
  4. There is a way to end suffering

 

The Four Truths are a concise description of the worldview that leads to liberation.  Part of the attainment of stream-entry is the realization of these truths (hence the name Four Arya Truths).

The Buddha in his first teaching (Dhammacakka Sutta) said the following about the First Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

The Second Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the origin of suffering: It is craving which produces rebirth, bound up with pleasure and greed. It finds delight in this and that; in other words, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence or becoming and craving for nonexistence or self-annihilation.

The Third Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering. It is the complete cessation of suffering, the giving up, renouncing, relinquishing, detaching from craving.

and The Fourth Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering. It is simply the Aryan Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration.

The first book that I picked up on Buddhism was Venerable Rewata Dhamma’s The First Discourse of the Buddha.  I highly recommend it.  It is a pith book that clearly outlines the Arya Eightfold Path and has a nice section on “right concentration” that describes the jhanas and other essentials.

Reference:  Rewata Dhamma (1997) The First Discourse of the Buddha.  Wisdom Press, Somerville Massachusetts.


Arya

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An ayra or stream-enterer is a person that has eliminated the first three fetters.  These are

  • view that one is a separate self
  • belief that rites and rituals alone could lead to liberation
  • doubt or uncertainty, especially about the teachings regarding liberation (i.e. the noble eightfold path)

 

When we run into the word “noble” as in the eightfold noble path or the four noble truths, these are unfortunate translations of the word arya.  While an arya is noble, they are not nobility in our normal use of the word to mean royalty or a member of the aristocratic class.

The classic method of attaining stream-entry (aryahood) is to experience ultimate reality directly.  During this experience all cognition and sensing naturally ceases.  It is unclear how one know something has happened, but people do.  This experience can lead to a deep realization of how things really exist and the four arya truths (four noble truths) that the Buddha taught.  After the experience the practitioner has confidence in the path to liberation and although they experience themselves as a separate self, they no longer believe it at all.

An arya is called a stream-enterer, because they have reached a state which naturally flows to liberation.  The arya cannot fail to become enlightened, although I suppose it is possible to purposely revert back.