Atiśa

Atiśa
In this twelfth-century Tibetan depiction, Atiśa holds a long, thin palm-leaf manuscript with his left hand and making the gesture of teaching with his right hand. Produced in a Kadam monastery in Tibet, currently held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [1]
Personal life
Bornc. 982 CE
Vikrampura, Bengal
Diedc. 1054 CE
Nyêtang, Tibet
Education
  • Vikramashila
  • Odantapuri
Religious life
ReligionBuddhism
TeachersJñanasrimitra
Senior posting
Students
  • Dromtön

Atish Dipankar Shrijnan (Sanskrit transliteration: Atīśa Dīpaṅkara Śrījñāna) (c. 982–1054 CE) was a Bengali Buddhist religious teacher and leader.[2] He is generally associated with his body of work authored at Vikramaśīla Monastery in modern day Bihar, India.[3] He was a major figure in the spread of 11th-century Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism in Asia and traveled to Sumatra and Tibet. Atiśa, along with this chief disciple Dromtön, is regarded as the founder of the Kadam school,[4] one of the New Translation schools of Tibetan Buddhism. In the 14th century, the Kadam school was supplanted by the Gelug tradition, which adopted its teachings and absorbed its monasteries.[5]

  1. ^ "Portrait of Atiśa [Tibet (a Kadampa monastery)] (1993.479)". Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. October 2006. Retrieved 11 January 2008.
  2. ^ "Reincarnation". Dalailama. The Dalai Lama. Archived from the original on 14 May 2015. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  3. ^ Jan Westerhoff (2018). The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. Oxford University Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0-19-873266-2.
  4. ^ POV. "Tibetan Buddhism from A to Z - My Reincarnation - POV". PBS. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  5. ^ "Kadam - The Treasury of Lives: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia and the Himalayan Region". The Treasury of Lives. Retrieved 11 December 2018.