A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradipa)

A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradipa) is a concise treatise that maps the graduated stages of the Buddhist path, the lamrim. Its central claim is that awakening proceeds through ordered levels of inner development, each building on the last, with the cultivation of the awakening-mind at the center.

The text organizes practice into a teachable sequence and stands behind the systematization of lojong, or mind training, the slogan-based discipline of transforming adversity and habit into compassion and insight. It thus forges the deliberate reframing of one's mental responses into a step-by-step method.

Written by the Indian master invited to restore the dharma in Tibet after a period of persecution, the work re-centered the tradition on bodhicitta. Through his disciple Dromtonpa and the Kadam school, its graduated path and mind-training teaching flowed into all later Tibetan lineages and, much later, into modern compassion practice in the West.