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In 1503 a monk of 27, working at a hermitage on a commission from two lay lords, finished a commentary on the Concert of the Names of Mañjuśrī. He would afterward be counted as the Second Dalai Lama. His commentary, the Great Sun Illuminating the Thatness of Vajra Yoga, has never been fully translated. This book presents the complete text, set out interlinearly with the Tibetan of the 1989 Dharamsala print above and the English beneath, in 163 folios, 13 chapters, and 748 notes.
Gendün Gyatso reads the Concert of the Names as a Kālacakra text. On his account its 162 verses describe the 6-limbed yoga of the Completion Stage, the phases of the drop, and the supremely unchanging happiness in which a Buddha's knowing arises. The lines that teach the 6 limbs, he argues, were deliberately given out of order so that the text could not be read without a teacher, and he puts them back in order. He shows that the 5 knowing chapters were laid out in advance in the root mantra of chapter 5. He corrects his Indian authorities from their own colophons. And in a book of this kind he does something unexpected: he derives the letters EVAṀ as sound, applying 4 rules of Pāṇini in order, and then takes the letters apart again as anatomy.
The Introduction sets out the argument of the Great Sun, the reordering of the 6 limbs, the two books called the Stainless Light, the author's life and the Tibet of his lifetime, and the standing of the text in the institution that later took its name from his house. Glossaries of terms, deities, texts, and persons, and bibliographies of the works the author cites, complete the volume.
The translation follows the terminology established in the translator's Kālacakra Tantra series, The Initiation Chapter (KT-VP III) and The World Realm Chapter (KT-VP I), so that the three books may be read together.
Great Sun: Illuminating the Thatness of Vajra Yoga, an Extensive Explanation of the Concert of the Names of Mañjuśrī; Jensine Andresen, Independently published, Paperback, 815 pages, $45.00
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