Ornament of precious liberation

Ornament of Precious Liberation is the main textbook for the study of Buddhism in the Kagyu tradition by its renowned founder, Gampopa.

Compact and precise, with extensive citations from scripture, it is an overview of the Buddha's teachings for meditators and, for scholars, an excellent master plan into which all other teachings can be slotted.

Gampopa Sönam Rinchen (1079-1153) is famous for establishing the monastic life and systematizing the bodhisattva teachings in the Kagyu tradition in the early twelfth century.

He trained as a physician, but when his wife died while he was still young, he turned to the life of a monk of the Kadam order.

Later, he became the principal disciple of the great yogi Milarepa.

While not quite as famous as his teacher Milarepa now, in his life he drew more than fifty thousand disciples to him, and he set up the first Kagyu monastery in Dakpo.

Through him flowed the transmission of mahamudra meditation, the six tantric practices of Naropa, and the Buddhist fundamentals and deep scholarship he was steeped in during his training in the Kadam school.

It is not for nothing that the broadest Kagyu tradition from which all the smaller Kagyu lineages flow is called the Dakpo Kagyu after him. Ornament of Precious Liberation lays out the practice of the Mahayana path in twenty-one chapters.

Beginning with the basis of buddha nature, it shows how a practitioner ascends step by step through the preliminary contemplations, through the six perfections of a bodhisattva, to the paths and levels leading to buddhahood, describing a buddha's exalted form and activities.

Richly ornamented with the words of the Buddha and the great Indian commentators, it is a master sourcebook that meditators can turn to over and over again as they progress along the path to enlightenment.