A Stairway Taken by the Lucid: Tsong Kha Pa’s Study of Noble Beings

The volume presents an annotated translation in English of the Tibetan critical edition of Tsong kha pa’s commentary, blo-gsal bgrod-pa’i them-skas, on the different types of noble beings that progress towards awakening. The commentary by Tsong kha pa (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries), recognised as one of the masters of Tibetan Buddhism, offers an exegesis of the characteristics and attainments that noble beings (those of the Buddhist samgha who become constituted by moral virtue, mental quiescence and cognitive insight through embodying the teachings of the Buddha) attain when they advance towards nirvana through multiple lifetimes and in various cosmological realms. He discusses the location and number of lives remaining until nirvana for noble beings based on his meticulous study of works including Vasubandha’s Abhidharmaksha and Asanga’s Abhidharmasamucchaya. Here, he outlines the features of the noble beings—the stream-enterer, the non-returner and the arhat, for instance.