Tāranātha's Commentary on the Heart Sūtra

The present work is a translation and study of a commentary on the Heart Sutra by Tāranātha (1575-1664), who is widely considered to be one of the most remarkable Buddhist scholars, translators and practitioners from Tibet.In his commentary, Tāranātha succinctly distils his vast studies of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist thought on prajñāpāramitā and Buddha-Nature with the philosophical view of ‘Empty-of-Other’. The leitmotif of the text is Tāranātha's five-fold assertion that the Sutra ‘clearly teaches the empty-of-Other Great Madhyamaka’. For Tāranātha , this confirms that ‘the intention of all three Turnings in the Empty-of-Other Great Madhyamaka’.Tāranātha ’s explanation is a valuable addition to the corpus of (Indian and Tibetan) translated commentaries on the Heart Sutra. As a concise distillation of the Jonang view of Empty-of-Other and its connection to prajnaparamita, it provides the reader with a reasoned analysis as to why prajnaparamita involves not only ‘seeing that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic existence, but also realizing, via primordial awareness, that the ultimate nature is ‘and’ permanent’, going beyond ’Impermanent’ conditioning, duality and mental elaborations.About The AuthorAdele Tomlin is an independent scholar and translator from England, with postgraduate degrees in Philosophy from King’s College, London and Tibetan Buddhism from the University of Hamburg. She has also spent years studying Buddhist Philosophy and the Tibetan language in Nepal and India. She is the founder of the first female-founded and authored Dharma research and translations website: Dakini Translations and Publications (https://dakinitranslations.com) Read more