On my walk this morning, I entered one of the few bookstores with foreign books in central Zagreb. I was not looking for anything in particular, but I still hoped to come across a book to my liking. The title of the first book I took from the shelf was quite to my liking, and I took it to the cashiers without any further thought. It was Volume Three of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment or Byang chub lam rim che ba in Tibetan, which was completed in 1402 by Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419).[1] As it turned out, Volumes One and Two were not available in the bookstore. When I opened the book outside the bookshop, I learned that Tsong-kha-pa was the founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, and one of Tibet’s greatest philosophers. The first sentence of the book struck me as charming enough: “The most venerable teachers have great compassion; I bow with respect at their feet.”[2] Flipping through it, I saw that much of the argument went through oft-repeated stages: proposition, question, reply, objection, reply, qualm, reply, and so forth. At this point I stuffed the book into my knapsack and resumed my walk. Unexpectedly, a wry smile appeared on my face. As far as stages of the path to enlightenment go, reading books about them must fall among the earliest ones.

Footnotes

1. Translated by Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, Joshua W.C. Cutler, Editor-in-Chief, Guy Newland, Editor, Boston and London: Snow Lion, 2014.

2. Op. cit., p. 13.