The controversial master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen shook Buddhist Tibet when he taught that an eternal enlightened essence, or buddha nature, exists in full form in all living beings. The ideas discussed in Mountain Dharma are still as provocative as when Dolpopa first taught them, impacting Buddhism to this day. Dolpopa identified the ultimate with the buddha nature, or sugata essence, which he held to be eternal and not empty of self-nature. The buddha nature is perfect, with all its characteristics inherently present in all living beings. It is only the impermanent and temporary afflictions veiling the buddha nature that are empty of self-nature and must be removed through the practice of the path to allow it to manifest. Dolpopa establishes the validity of his theories with an ocean of quotations selected from Indian Buddhist scriptures and treatises of indisputable authority, showing us that the ultimate is a true, eternal, and established reality, empty merely of other relative phenomena.

Mountain Dharma: An Ocean of Definitive Meaning, Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, Wisdom Publications, Hardcover, 720 pages, $79.95

Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292 - 1361) was born in the Dolpo region of present-day Nepal. He took ordination as a novice monk in 1304 and spent the following years studying the tantras of the Nyingma tradition. In 1309 he traveled to Mustang to study the treatises on the vehicle of the perfections, epistemology, and abhidharma under the master Kyiton Jamyang Drakpa Gyeltsen. In 1321 Dolpopa ascended to the monastic seat of Sakya Monastery and in 1322 he left Sakya and went to Jonang Monastery, where he received from the master Khetsun Yonten Gyatso the complete transmission of the Kalacakra Tantra, the Bodhisattva Trilogy, and the Kalacakra completion-stage practices of the six-branch yoga.


Cyrus Stearns has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1973. His main teachers have been Dezhung Tulku Rinpoche, Chogye Trichen Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He received a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Washington and is the author and translator of various books, including The Buddha from Dolpo, King of the Empty Plain, and Hermit of Go Cliffs. He is an independent scholar and translator living in the woods on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, Washington.