Tsigdön Dzö

'Tsigdön Dzö' (Tibetan: ཚིགས་དོན་མཛོད, Wylie: tshigs don mdzod ) is a textual work written in Classical Tibetan and one of the Seven Treasuries of Longchenpa. Longchenpa wrote 'The Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle' (Wylie: theg mchog mdzod) as an autocommentary to this work.

Nomenclature, orthography and etymology

The full name for the work is 'The Treasury of Precious Words and Meanings' (Tibetan: ཚིགས་དོན་རིན་པོ་ཆེའི་མཛོད, Wylie: tshigs don rin po che'i mdzod ).

Outline of text

Rigpa Shedra (August 2009)^[1] provide a useful outline of the text which in its original composition consists of eleven chapters from which the following summary is founded:

1. the 'ground and basis of reality' (Wylie: gzhi) and how that 'ground' dynamically manifests itself (Wylie: gzhir snang);
2. how sentient beings stray from the 'ground';
3. how all sentient beings have the essence of enlightened energy;
4. how 'primordial wisdom' (Wylie: ye shes) abides within us;
5. the pathways;
6. the gateways;
7. domain for 'primordial wisdom';
8. how primordial wisdom is experientially accessed;
9. signs of realization;
10. signs in the dying and bardo transition; and
11. ultimate fruition as the manifest realization of the kayas.

Western scholarship

Thondup (1989) broached an opening of the discourse of this text into English when he included an abridged translation of Chapter Eleven in one of his works.^[2] Germano (1992) opened the discourse into Western scholarship in English proper with his doctoral thesis supervised by the Geshe and the then Professor Emeritus, Lhundub Sopa.^[3]

Notes

1. Rigpa Shedra (August 2009). 'Treasury of Word and Meaning'. Source: (accessed: Friday December 18, 2009)
2. Tulku Thondup (1989). The Practice of Dzogchen. Ithaca: Snow Lion, 1989, pp. 205-213, pp. 400-401 and pp. 413-420.
3. Germano, David Francis (1992). "Poetic thought, the intelligent Universe, and the mystery of self: The Tantric synthesis of rDzogs Chen in fourteenth century Tibet." The University of Wisconsin, Madison. Doctoral thesis. Source: (accessed: Friday December 18, 2009)

External references

• Rigpa Shedra (August 2009). 'Treasury of Word and Meaning'. Source: (accessed: Friday December 18, 2009)
• Yoniversum page on The Seven Treasuries