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Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen

Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen

1292 CE–1361 CE · Dölpo

1292–1361 CE

Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361 CE) was the most influential master of the Jonang school and the chief expositor of the controversial 'emptiness of other' (zhentong) view, which holds that ultimate reality—buddha-nature—is empty of all that is extraneous to it while not empty of its own awakened qualities. Born in the Himalayan region of Dölpo in present-day Nepal, he trained across the traditions of his day and led the Jonang seat, where his teaching sparked centuries of debate with proponents of the more standard 'self-emptiness' (rangtong) reading of Madhyamaka. He is a securely historical and well-documented figure; his view remains contested within Tibetan Buddhism.

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Dölpo

What they did here

DOCUMENTED ORIGIN: born in the high Himalayan region of Dölpo, in the far west of present-day Nepal, from which he takes his name.

About Dölpo

Dölpo is a high, remote region of the Tibetan cultural world in what is now northwestern Nepal. It was the birthplace, in 1292, of Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen, the master who systematised the 'empty-of-other' (shentong) view and became the great exponent of the Jonang tradition — and from whose homeland he took his name.

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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