Agvaannyam

This chapter translates a selection from a 1965 Tibetan-language work by the Buryat luminary Agvaannyam (Tib. Ngag dbang nyi ma, 1907–1990). As a youth, Agvaannyam was selected to study in the great Géluk monastic colleges of Central Tibet, leaving Buryatia for first Khalkha Mongolia and the Lhasa region just before successive waves of revolutionary upheaval. In time, Agvaannyam became a prominent figure in the Tibetan and Mongolian diaspora and refugee community based in India and Europe. His six-volume work contains an untranslated autobiography and the 285-folio Lamp of Scripture and Reasoning, written in c. 1965, from which the current selection is drawn. In this translated section we see the author’s vision of a continuity of Buddhist transmission that could offset the bloody ruptures to tradition in Buryatia, Mongolia, and Tibet during its author’s lifetime.