Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence is still considered so important to Tibetan Buddhists that the Dalai Lama keeps a copy with him wherever he goes. This book examines many fascinating points raised in six centuries of Tibetan and Mongolian commentary concerning the first two sections of this text: the Prologue, and the section on the Mind-Only School. By providing vivid detail, Jeffrey Hopkins reveals the liveliness of Tibetan scholastic controversies, showing the dynamism of thoughtful commentary and stimulating the reader's metaphysical imagination. In the process of examining 170 issues, this volume treats many engaging points on Great Vehicle presentations of the three natures and the three non-natures, including how to apply these to all phenomena, the selflessness of persons, and the emptiness of emptiness. It concludes with a delineation of the approaches through which the Mind-Only School interprets scriptures.


This stand-alone book is the final volume of a trilogy on Mind-Only that Hopkins composed over a period of twenty-two years. His heavily annotated translation of the first two sections of Dzong-ka-ba's text is contained in the first volume, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, along with a historical and doctrinal introduction, a detailed synopsis of the text, and a critical edition. The second volume, Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School, provides historical and social context, a basic presentation of the three natures, the two types of emptiness in the Mind-Only School, and the contrasting views of Dol-bo-ba Shay-rap-gyel-tsen of the Jo-nang-ba order of Tibetan Buddhism.

Absorption in No External World, Jeffrey Hopkins, Snow Lion Publications, Hardcover, 2006, 580 Pages, $59.95

Jeffrey Hopkins was Professor Emeritus of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he taught Tibetan studies and Tibetan language for more than thirty years. He received a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1963, trained for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America (now the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center) in New Jersey, and received a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. From 1979 to 1989 he served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama�s chief interpreter into English on lecture tours in the U.S., Canada, Southeast Asia, Great Britain, and Switzerland. He published more than fifty books, including Meditation on Emptiness, a seminal work of English language scholarship on Tibetan Madhyamaka thought, as well as translations of works by Tsongkhapa, Dolpopa, and His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At the University of Virginia he founded programs in Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. Jeffrey passed away on July 3, 2024.

Detailed Outline	ix
Preface	xx
Technical Note	xxiii
Monastic Inquiry	3
The Essence Is Emptiness	10
God of Wisdom and God of Gods	19
Identifying First-Whelled Teachings	25
Probing the Implications	50
Other Views on Own-Character	74
Wonch'uk: Refutation and Revival	107
Creating Consistency	118
Finishing the Question	133
Interpretation	149
Other-Powered Natures	170
Imputational Natures191	195
Entering the Maze	220
Review: Two Riddles	246
Posited by Names and Terminology	273
Probing Establishemtn by Way of Its Own Character	289
Enforcing Consistency	307
The First Ultimate-Non-Nature	327
Ramifications	350
Two Ultimate-Non-Natures	383
Comparing School on the Three Non-Natures	424
Strategies for Interpretation	433
Appendix: Wonch'uk's Influence in Tibet	463
Backnotes	493
Glossary	509
List of Abbreviations	537
Bibiliography	539
Index	559