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Category: Palden Sherab Rinpoche

  • Palden Sherab Rinpoche

    Venerable Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche

    Venerable Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche (1938-2010) was a renowned scholar and meditation master of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in 1938 in the Doshul region of Kham, eastern Tibet. Around age four, before joining Gochen monastery, he began to read, write and lean chants and ritual ceremonies from his grandfather Lam Tharchok and his father Lama Chimed Namgyal. At the age of fourteen he entered the prestigious Riwoche monastic university where he excelled in Tibetan Medicine and literature, Sanskrit, and the Buddhist philosophy of all nine Yanas.

    In 1959, Khenchen Rinpoche and his family left their homeland in Tibet and made their way to India. After the tumultuous period following their exodus in 1967 he was appointed head of the Nyingma department of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath by H. H. Dudjom Rinpoche. He held this position of abbot for seventeen years, dedicating all his time and energy to ensure the survival and spread of the Buddha’s teachings. Ven. Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche moved to the United States in 1984 to work closely with H. H. Dudjom Rinpoche. In 1985 he and his brother, Ven. Khenpos Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche, founded Dharma Samudra Publishing. IN 1988, they founded the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center. Together the Khenpo Rinpoches founded Pema Samye Ling in New York, Padma Samye Chokhor Ling monastery and Orgyen Samye Chokhor Ling nunnery in Sarnath, India. They erected the Miracle Stupa in Shravasti, India, and rebuilt Gochen monastery in Tibet.

    Khenchen Rinpoche has co-authored over twenty Dharma books in English with Venerable Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche and authored many other texts in Tibetan. He worked tirelessly his entire life to pass on the ancient and authentic practice traditions of Buddhism to inspire thousands of practitioners world-wide and to leave behind a community dedicated to peace, love and wisdom.

    216In June 2010, displaying profound signs of his realization, Rinpoche entered mahaparinivana peacefully at Padma Samye Ling. Truly; he was a warrior who conquered all negativities to fully accomplish the wishes of Buddha Shakyamuni and Guru Padmasambhava. We will honor and revere him and his legacy forever. A more extensive biography and full list of Rinpoche’s works can be found at www.padmasambhava.org 

  • MADHYAMAKALAMKARAVRITTI: Shantarakshita’s commentary on his Ornament of the Middle Way

    by Abbot Shantarakshita

    “Scripture, without a logic that is based on
    the evidence of things, will not satisfy even
    faithful followers.”
    —Shantarakshita
    Shantarakshita follows in the footsteps of Buddha Shakyamuni who stated that no one should accept his view without testing it as a goldsmith tests gold. In this seminal 8th century text he deconstructs, illucidates and defends Madhayamaka as the essence and central philosophical bases of Mahayana, as elaborated by Nagurjuna—which work preceded the advent of a Buddhist age over much of Asia for a 1000 years. It’s tenets still remains relevant today with discoveries and inventions based on science investigating the ‘nature’ of nature.
    In the Madhyamakalamkaravritti, his commentary on his root text The Adornment of the Middle Way, Shantarakshita aims to completely clarify the position that, while ultimately reality eludes our comprehension, conventional knowledge is useful as a tool for navigating appearances all of which are no more real than the reflection of the moon in water.
    His method of establishing this relies almost exclusively on one tool: To be real an entity must be one or many. If he can show that all the candidates for the real, such as atoms, matter, space, time, God, the soul, subject, object and causal relations fail this test, that if they cannot be said to be one, because the one is not substantial, then it cannot function to produce many.
    Shantarakshita’s motivation for this radical destruction of our basic and cherished beliefs, is to liberate us from anything that can cause us suffering. If we cling to our illusory world, it will fail us, because it is impermanent.
    In sloka 16, Shantarakshita does make one positive assertion about reality, when he asserts self-awareness. But he is careful not to become trapped in the classic Buddhist model of subject, object and activity. Self-awareness, he argues, cannot be understood in this way. Subject and object are not distinct nor identical, not one, not many. Self-awareness has no substantial existence.

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  • Tattvasiddhi and Madhyamakalankara by Shantarakshita with Commentary

    by Ven. Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Ven. Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche

    Tattvasiddhi: The Attainment of Suchness and Madhyamakalankara: The Ornament of the Middle Way
     
    Includes English translations of the root text of both works by Shantarakshita, with detailed commentary by the Venerable Khenpo Rinpoches, as well as Tibetan and Sanskrit versions of the root texts.
     
    Edited by Marie-Louise Friquegnon and Arthur Mandelbaum in collaboration with Geshe Lozang Jamspal
     
    “By tasting of the feast of reasoning contained therein, One will become a crown and summit of the many learned ones Who on the path of reasoning for many lives,
    Through many hardships came to mastery in proof and refutation, Uprooting every falsehood.
     
    Even in the noble land this master’s like was rarely found. Ah, such was the great fortune of the people of Tibet He was invited by their king and sovereign! And as I think of it my mind Is helplessly transported with a wondrous joy!”
    -Je Tsongkhapa
     
    “I venerate the great abbot Shantarakshita, whose skill opened the way of using logical reasoning, to explain to his disciples in accordance with their dispositions, the Middle Way path of emptiness, devoid of duality. He spread the conqueror’s teachings in the Land of the Snows.”
    -His Holiness the Dalai Lama
     
    “Glorious Shantarakshita, the sacred holder of the vows, Padmasambhava, the master of both yoga and accomplishment, Losel Wangpo and Kamalasila: these are second Buddhas in this age of decadence.”
    -Sakya Pandita

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