Person · Bengali Buddhist abbot · India
Atiśa Dīpaṃkara
Also known as Atisha, Dipankara Srijnana, Jowo Je Atisha
Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna (982-1054) was a Bengali Buddhist scholar-monk, abbot of Vikramaśīla mahāvihāra on the Ganga, invited to Tibet in 1042 by king Yeshe-Ö of Guge to reform a flagging monastic tradition. He spent his last 13 years in Tibet, writing the Bodhipathapradīpa ('Lamp for the Path to Awakening') that organised the whole Buddhist path into the three capacities of practitioner — the foundational text of the Kadam school he founded with his disciple Dromtön. The Kadam lineage was absorbed into the New Kadam (Gelug) tradition by Je Tsongkhapa in the 14th century, so every Dalai Lama since the first in 1391 descends in doctrinal lineage from Atiśa. Atiśa died at Nyethang near Lhasa in 1054; his ashes were brought back to India in 1978 and interred at Dharmarajika in Dhaka.
- Date
- 982–1054
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Patron dynasty
- Pala
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Connections (3)
- Monastic foundationVikramashilā
Atiśa Dīpaṃkara was the senior abbot of Vikramaśīla mahāvihāra on the Ganga before king Yeshe-Ö of Guge invited him to Tibet in 1042. Vikramaśīla, founded by the Pala king Dharmapala in the late 8th century, was the greatest tantric Buddhist university of its age and the primary training ground of the generation of Indian masters who transmitted late Mahayana to Tibet.
- Life routeLhasa
Atiśa Dīpaṃkara spent his last 13 years in Tibet (1042-1054), travelling from Guge through Purang to central Tibet and settling at Nyethang near Lhasa. He wrote the Bodhipathapradīpa ('Lamp for the Path to Awakening') there, founded the Kadam school with his disciple Dromtön, and died at Nyethang in 1054. His ashes were brought back to India in 1978 and interred at Dharmarajika in Dhaka.
- Studied atVikramashilā
Atiśa was abbot of Vikramaśīla before his invitation to Tibet in 1042.
On these journeys
Sources
Standard biography.
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