RECENT MASTERS
GESHE YESHE WANGCHUK | | Print | |
Very few people alive today are capable of even reading and comprehending the Commentary on Valid Perception, so we are fortunate to have in Geshe Yeshe Wangchuk a scholar who is moreover qualified to write a commentary that gives us a door to travel back into the increasingly more difficult earlier explanations. Gyaltsab Je's Light on the Path, for example, is so deep and packed with analysis that only a handful of students in the traditional monastic curriculum ever get further than the second of its four chapters, despite the fact that a month of intense debate is devoted to the book every year in the course of a monk's philosophical studies, which take up to two decades. And without understanding this generation of commentaries, it is difficult to grasp accurately the Indian commentaries, without which the original sutras can hardly be appreciated in depth. Readers' Comments
Geshe Yeshe Wangchuk was born in 1928 in the Tarlam region of Kham, eastern Tibet, and entered the monastic life at the age of eight. When he was 15, he travelled to Lhasa, the national capital, and entered the Sera Mey college of Sera Monastic University, considered one of the greatest educational institutions of the country. For 17 years, he devoted himself to an intense study of the classical texts of Buddhism, winning honors in every area of the traditional curriculum. He became an accomplished debater, and gave successful defenses of his knowledge in public oral examinations at every one of the great Gelugpa colleges. At an early point in his scholastic career he had already taken on students of his own. His knowledge was not gained without great effort. He would devote long and tireless hours to the college debate ground, where student monks meet to review their daily lessons in heated philosophical debates. His free time was given almost entirely to memorization of the great philosophical texts, a traditional requirement of a monk's training. He would recite his texts from memory late into the night, and to keep himself from falling asleep would perch high in a tree, or on a large boulder, where the self-imposed punishment for dozing off would be a nasty fall. In this manner Geshe Wangchuk was able to commit to memory literally thousands of pages of the original works, and became something of a walking encyclopedia. As a result of his philosophical acumen and vast store of knowledge, he received the highest honors in the final examinations that mark the end of the long course to become a Geshe, or master of Buddhist philosophy. In the difficult period following the loss of Tibet, Geshe Wangchuk suffered greatly. He was imprisoned for some time and then, during the Cultural Revolution, assigned to hard labor. In 1977, he was appointed to the Bureau of Cultural Preservation, where he devoted himself to a research of written and physical antiquities. He has travelled to China on various occasions and, with the relaxation of some of the previous restrictions, has visited Japan and India. In recent years, Geshe Wangchuk has made exceptional efforts to help preserve the Buddhist religion in Tibet. He has played a leading role in the restoration of the literary classics of the country, and has served in Beijing as a university professor of Buddhist philosophy, as well as performing the duties of a traditional Lama by teaching many students in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet. He also assisted the late Panchen Lama in his efforts to gain the release of the many monks imprisoned during demonstrations for a free Tibet. Among the notable events of his life, Geshe Wangchuk includes the traditional acts of generosity he has performed for monks and monasteries during his trips to India. Despite his limited means, he has made donations to help build new temples and support needy refugee monks. The most important part of any Buddhist's life is the success of his relationship with his spiritual instructors, and in his autobiography Geshe Wangchuk describes his studies under some 30 great religious teachers. In his usual modest way he concludes that "On the good side, I have never once in my life deprecated one of my Lamas; and yet, on the bad side, I don't feel that I was able to pay proper service to any one of them either." Geshe Wangchuk has composed a great many original works. In his student days, he wrote a eulogy of Je Tsongkhapa and essays on difficult points of the Madhyamika and Vaibhasika schools of Buddhist thought; all these papers were destroyed in the upheaval during the loss of Tibet. Throughout the 1960s, he continued writing on various subjects, but again these manuscripts were all burned during the chaotic Cultural Revolution. Since this time, he has been a prolific writer, publishing works on the comparative study of the classical philosophical schools of Buddhism; a historical essay of 21 great Tibetan monasteries; numerous articles in Buddhist journals; versed petitions and prayers to eminent Lamas; and a summary of the 500-year history of Sera Mey College. In the past few years, Geshe Wangchuk has been allowed to travel outside of Tibet for extended teaching tours, and has greatly benefited the students and teachers of the Tibetan refugee community in India. Within the last year, he has given an extensive public discourse on the entire text of Liberation in Our Hands, an immense description of the Lamrim or steps on the path to Enlightenment, composed by the illustrious Pabongka Rinpoche, Dechen Nyingpo. He has also found time to give public teachings on the subjects of logic and valid perception set forth in the present book. It is greatly hoped that he will enjoy the freedom and health to continue this great work. The details of Geshe Wangchuk's life mentioned here have been summarized from a brief autobiographical work currently under publication by the press of Sera Mey College. The final pages of this text contain exquisite verses that describe his own life and practice, and it would not be inappropriate to include a few of these lines here, to show the value of modesty in the thinking of a great man: It is an excellent thing It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a thing of goodness It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a thing of goodness It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a thing of goodness It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a thing of goodness It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a nice thing people speak It's though a thing that makes me sad It is a true thing, that if you It's though a thing that makes me sad But of course he does, and in the present work Geshe Wangchuk shows himself as one of the greatest living scholars of the Buddhist logic tradition. Source : http://www.asianclassics.org/release6/flat/S0039F_E.TXT
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OTHER RECENT MASTERS
- H.E. DHENMA LOCHOE RINPOCHE
- THE VENERABLE GESHE NGAWANG DHARGYEY
- DOMO GESHE RINPOCHE LOSANG JIGME NGAK-GI WANGCHUK
- GADEN TRISUR LUNGRIK NAMGYAL
- LAMA MICHEL RINPOCHE
- LAMA YESHE