Toh 1959Untitled

Commentary on Toh 1959 from the Tengyur (Tibetan Treatise Collection)

Context

This scripture appears in the Tengyur, the treasury of treatises of the Tibetan Buddhist Dharma tradition, specifically in the Treatise Collection (Śāstra Piṭaka), where profound commentaries and explanations of the Buddha’s discourses are recorded. Toh 1959 is a Mahayana philosophical work addressing core issues of the bodhisattva path of practice, in accord with the spirit of the Mahāyāna, the tradition that always directs the mind toward universal awakening for all beings.

In the context of the Tibetan Buddha Dharma, the Tengyur was compiled during the period of the Tibetan Dharma kings (ninth to thirteenth centuries), when scholars translated and gathered thousands of works from Sanskrit and Pāli. The treatises in this collection often explain the Four Noble Truths, the nature of mind, and especially the bodhisattva path with the six pāramitās, the noble qualities to be cultivated.

Main Content

Although the title has not yet been fully identified, given its place in the Tengyur, the work Toh 1959 in the Tibetan tradition usually focuses on explanations of Sunyatā (emptiness) and Bodhicitta, the two foundational pillars of the Mahayana.

The first part of such treatises often analyzes the impermanent (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and selfless (anattā) nature of phenomena, but from the Mahayana perspective: all dharmas lack fixed self-nature (svabhāva-śūnya). It is not that things do not exist at all, but that they lack an independent, non-dependent essence.

The second part, classically, is always the teaching on bodhicitta, the powerful aspiration to liberate all beings from suffering, not merely oneself. In the Tibetan system, this is connected with the six pāramitās: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom.