Establishing Appearances as Divine. Heidi I. Köppl

Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo´s concise treatise, Establishing Appearances as Divine, sets out to prove the provocative point that everything that appears is actually the deity manifest. Transformation of both one´s identity and the environment is an important principle of Tantric Buddhist philosophy. In Tantric scriptures, one is instructed to visualize oneself as a deity, a divine identity who resides in a perfect sphere. By repeatedly training in this visualization, one perfects the transformation and ultimately becomes the deity itself. Do the Tantric teachings hold sentient beings to be intrinsically pure and divine, or do they consider them initially flawed to be later purified through the visualization of divinity? Is the practice of deity yoga merely a means, or is it more fundamentally connected to the nature of things? These questions were among the main concerns of Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo, the illustrious philosopher of the Nyingma School of the Early Translations. Establishing Appea