Buton Rinchen Drub
Buton Rinchen Drup (T. bu ston rin chen grub བུ་སྟོན་རིན་ཆེན་གྲུབ་) (1290–1364). A Tibetan scholar and translator, known for systematizing the Tibetan Buddhist canon into its present form.[1]
Buton was born in 1290, "to a family associated with a monastery named Sheme Gomne (shad smad sgom gnas) in the Tropu (khro phu) area of Tsang ... [his] father was a prominent Nyingma Lama named Drakton Gyeltsen Pelzang (brag ston rgyal btshan dpal bzang, d.u.). His mother, also a Nyingma master, was called Sonam Bum (bsod nams 'bum, d.u.)."[2]
At the age of 31, Buton was installed as the 11th Abbot of Shalu Monastery.[2] At Shalu, Buton was at the center of efforts to expanding existing catalogs of the Tibetan canon, establishing the two collections of the Tibetan canon, the Kangyur and Tengyur, into their present form.[2]
He also wrote a famous text, Buton's History of Dharma (T. bu ston chos 'byung), on the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet.
He remains to this day one of the most important Tibetan historians and Buddhist writers in the history of Buddhism and Tibet.
The Princeton Dictionary states:
- It is customary in modern works to include Bu ston in the Sakya sect and indeed his explanations of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra and the Abhidharma-samuccaya, among others, are considered authoritative by that sect. But his influence is not limited to that sect... Bu ston is one of several key figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism to be referred to as kun mkhyen, or “all knowing.”[1]
Further reading
Web publications:
Buton Rinchen Drub, Treasury of Lives
Butön Rinchen Drup, Tsadra Commons- Butön Rinchen Drup, Buddha Nature: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative
Butön Rinchen Drup, Rigpa Shedra Wiki
Buton Rinchen Drub, Wikipedia- TBRC Outline of the Collected Works of Bu ston Rin chen grub
Print publications:
- Bu sTon, History of Buddhism in India and Tibet, translated by E. Obermiller, Sri Satguru, 1932
- Buton Rinchen Drup , Buton's History of Buddhism in India and Its Spread to Tibet: A Treasury of Priceless Scripture, translated by Lisa Stein and Ngawang Zangpo, Snow Lion 2013, ISBN 978-1559394130
- Chandra, Lokesh ed. The Collected Works of Bu-ston 26v. (Śatapiṭaka Series 64) New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1971.
- Dratshadpa Rinchen Namgyal (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.
- Schaeffar, 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 Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2004), pp. 265-281
- Seyfort Ruegg, David. 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.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. bu ston rin chen grub.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Buton Rinchen Drub, Treasury of Lives
Sources
Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University
