Buton Rinchen Drub 11th Abbot of Shalu Monastery (1290-1364) was a fourteenth century Sakya master and Tibetan Buddhist leader. Buton was not merely a capable administrator but he is remembered to this very day as a prodigious scholar and writer and is Tibet's most celebrated historian. Buton catalogued all of the Buddhist scriptures at Shalu, some 4,569 religious and philosophical works and formatted them in a logical, coherent order. He wrote the famous book, the History of Buddhism in India and Tibet at Shalu which many Tibetan scholars utilize in their study today.
After his death he strongly influenced the development of esoteric studies and psychic training in Tibet for centuries. The purpose of his works were not to cultivate paranormal magical abilities but to attain philosophical enlightenment, a belief that all earthly phenonoma are a state of the mind. He remains to this day one of the most important Tibetan historians and Buddhist writers in the history of Buddhism and Tibet
Further reading
- Chandra, Lokesh ed. The Collected Works of Bu-ston 26v. (Śatapiṭaka Series 64) New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1971.
- Rinchen Namgyal, Dratshdpa (Author), Van Der Bogaert, Hans (Translator) A Handful of Flowers: A Brief Biography of Buton Rinchen Drub. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1996. ISBN 8186470042
- Ruegg, David Seyfort. The life of Bu ston Rin po che: With the Tibetan text of the Bu ston rNam thar, Serie orientale Roma XXXIV. Roma: Instituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1966.
- Schaeffer, Kurtis R. “A letter to the editors of the Buddhist canon in fourteenth-century Tibet: the yig mkhan rnams la gdams pa of Bu ston Rin chen grub.” in The Journal of the American Oriental Society 01-APR-2004
External links
- TBRC P155 Bu ston Rin chen grub
- TBRC Outline of the Collected Works of Bu ston Rin chen grub
- Buddhism Dictionary: Butön rin-chen-grup
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Last updated on Thursday September 25, 2008 at 23:21:49 PDT (GMT -0700)
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