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SNOW LION THE BUDDHIST MAGAZINE & CATALOG

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An Explorer's Guide to Tenets Manuals, Learning Classical Tibetan, How to Read Classical Tibetan Book Excerpt

A really great way to learn both Classical Tibetan and the backbone of Buddhist philosophy, Craig Preston's How to Read Classical Tibetan is one of the clearest teaching tools we've seen. Below is a sample page from his Volume Two.

From the Introduction
by Craig Preston

I have written How to Read Classical Tibetan for intermediate Classical Tibetan language students who are interested in Buddhist philosophy and who want to improve their reading of Classical Tibetan through self-study. My goal is to teach students to recognize and decode the recurrent patterns of Classical Tibetan syntax. I also want to introduce students to the vocabulary of the tenets genre.

Focusing on the task of teaching students to read Tibetan leaves open the question of how to address the philosophical content of the text. Does exposition of the underlying philosophical issues support the primary focus of helping language students, or does it detract from teaching students to read Tibetan, perhaps merely by providing too much information?

On the one hand, my own experience has shown that merely learning to read Tibetan is a substantial task. I picked Jay-dzün Chö-gyi-gyel-tsen's Presentation of Tenets to annotate for language students because this book will make the task of learning to read Tibetan easier. It is a standard work, using the core vocabulary of the topic of tenets. It is written in a simple, straightforward style. It is also a short book. The entire text is included in an appendix at the end of this book in a little over fifteen pages. It is written in a repetitive style. Each chapter is organized around the same seven-point outline. The amount of vocabulary to learn is manageable. The glossary of words, particles, and numerous compounds and phrases for the entire book has about 1,150 entries. The factors of simplicity, brevity, and repetition make this text ideally suited for Tibetan language students, who will find that it is easier to learn vocabulary and recognize recurring patterns of syntax when a limited number of terms and patterns recur frequently.

Jay-dzün Chö-gyi-gyel-tsen was writing for a specific audience—young monks at Ge-luk debating institutions. These monasteries were not colleges as we use the term, but ritual communities of monks. Tenets manuals were studied during the preliminary phase of scholastic education. Jay-dzün-ba intentionally summarized only the major points, much like an outline, to be memorized by monks.

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More about the book . . .

The great translators of our era spent years in Asia learning how to read Tibetan. Craig Preston reaches out to those of us who are pursuing the dream of learning how to read Tibetan at home. How to Read Classical Tibetan, Volume Two: Buddhist Tenets continues Preston's ground-breaking series of self-study materials designed for students learning to read Classical Tibetan on their own. This book serves a dual purpose: the student learns both grammar and philosophy at the same time.

With easy-to-understand diagrams, he shows you how to find your way through Tibetan sentences. It is like having a personal tutor at your fingertips, allowing you to proceed at your own pace through a wealth of material. As you work your way through an actual Tibetan book, Preston holds your hand at every turn. He explains the meaning of new words as they arise. He also offers a complete glossary of all the words at the end of the book. As you encounter new grammatical constructions, he walks you through how to understand their meaning. He shows you how to break down Tibetan sentences into small pieces, and then how to put those pieces back together to form clearly understandable English sentences.

The book also helps students of the Tibetan language gain entry into the genre of Tenets, which is the comparative study of the original schools of Buddhist thought in India. He introduces you to the rich vocabulary of Buddhist philosophy without assuming any prior knowledge. Unlike scholarly treatments of this subject that presuppose academic knowledge of tenets, Preston offers simple, easy-to-understand explanations of complicated ideas.

This is how Preston gives you a complete language course. He teaches you how to read an actual Tibetan text and teaches you what it means. How to Read Classical Tibetan will take the self-study student to the next level at their own speed.

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More about the Author . . .

Craig Preston is an internationally known teacher of Classical Tibetan and author of three books. Educated at the University of Virginia under the renowned scholar Jeffery Hopkins, Preston has taught Classical Tibetan for fifteen years. He is adjunct faculty member at the Dalai Lama's Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca New York, where he frequently teaches a wide range of Buddhist topics. He currently teaches Classical Tibetan and Buddhist philosophy in the Asian Studies Department at the University at Buffalo.

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