Monograph of BMBF- funded project Dzogchen published open access

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Dylan Esler, who until last September was based at CERES and presently works for 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, has just published a new book with Brill.

The monograph is entitled Effortless Spontaneity: The Dzogchen Commentaries by Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, and represents the main research output of the project “An Enquiry into the Development of the Dzogchen Tradition in the Commentaries of the Tibetan Scholar Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (10th Century),” sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) and based at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-University Bochum, from 2019 to 2022.

Book description:

The notion of effortlessness is central to the self-understanding of the Tibetan contemplative tradition known as Dzogchen. This book explores this key notion from a variety of perspectives, highlighting the distinctive role it plays in the Dzogchen approach’s doctrinal architecture and meditative programme.

The book’s focus is on the early development of the Dzogchen tradition, especially as codified in a set of hitherto unstudied commentaries by the 10th-century scholar and meditation master Nubchen Sangye Yeshe. A full annotated translation of the commentaries is provided, along with an edition of the Tibetan texts on facing pages.

The book is available in both hardback and open access formats: https://brill.com/display/title/63340.