Perfecting Wisdom

How Things Appear and How They Truly Are

Based on a lecture given by the Dalai Lama on the wisdom chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, this book comments on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy in a clear and direct way.

Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life is one of the most important texts in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhist practice. Its ninth chapter, the section on transcendent wisdom, is known among Buddhist scholars as a challenging exposition of Madhyamika philosophy and difficult to understand without a commentary. This extraordinarily clear discussion of the wisdom chapter is based on an oral teaching given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama before an audience of thousands of Tibetans and Westerners. This invaluable volume with its precise explanation of core issues of Tibetan Buddhism stands as a key work in Buddhist literature.

This book was previously published under the title Transcendent Wisdom.