The original Sublime Continuum Treatise Commentary was written by Aryasa?ga, as inspired by the bodhisattva, Maitreyanatha, around 400 CE, in North India. It was subsequently elucidated frequently in India and Tibet. Here, it is introduced and presented in an original translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan, with the translation of a detailed Tibetan Super-Commentary by Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen (1364-1432 CE), whose work is considered to be authentically inspired by his teacher, the widely acclaimed Tibetan philosophical genius, Tsong Khapa (1357-1419 CE).The Buddhist Centrist teaching of emptiness, or selflessness, is foundational in all forms of Buddhist thought and education. In contemporary scholarship, its critical, negational impact is widely misunderstood as a form of nihilism, or at least as a radical skepticism. This is unsurprising, as indeed it is a negation of any intrinsic reality in any persons or things. However, Buddhist philosophers from Nagarjuna on have argued that this negation of intrinsic reality powerfully affirms the supreme importance and value of relative realities, as elusive and sometimes even illusory as they may be.
Such affirmation of relative reality-filled as it is with sensitive beings, usually caught in suffering due to their ignorance of their natural freedom and their frustrating struggles with the overwhelming "otherness" of the universe of beings and things-is the bottom line of the theory of emptiness. In the Super-Commentary, Gyaltsap Darma Rinchen elucidates in great detail this supremely positive theory of the "buddha-nature," showing how it provides the meaning and value of the liberated life, so powerfully enabled by the wisdom of emptiness. Herein, Marty Bo Jiang, in his clear presentation and original translation, completes the historic project of presenting these works in both English and Chinese translations, in parallel publications.