Gavin Kilty

Gavin Kilty has been a full-time translator for the Institute of Tibetan Classics since 2001. Before that he lived in Dharamsala, India, for fourteen years, where he spent eight years training in the traditional Geluk monastic curriculum through the medium of class and debate at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics. He has also taught Tibetan language courses in India, Nepal, and elsewhere, and is a translation reviewer for the organization 84000, Translating the Words of the Buddha. He received the 2017 Shantarakshita Award from Tsadra Foundation for his translation of A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages. Other published translations are The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stages of the Path, Volume 1 (2022), The Life of My Teacher (2017), Mirror of Beryl (2010), Ornament of Stainless Light (2004), and The Splendor of an Autumn Moon (2001). Gavin began translating for Tsadra Foundation in 2021.

Current Projects as a Tsadra Foundation Fellow

  • Volume 15 of The Treasury of Precious Instructions, Kalachakra Collections, Jamgön Kongtrul

  • Compilation of Advice and Spiritual Songs, Vol. 26, Library of Tibetan Classics
Previously Published Translations

Translators

Institutions

Tsongkhapa’s A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages (1419) is a comprehensive presentation of the highest yoga class of Buddhist tantra, especially the key practices—the so-called five stages (pancakrama)—of the advanced phase of Guhyasamāja tantra. Beginning with a thorough examination of the Indian sources, Tsongkhapa draws particularly from the writings of Nāgārjuna, Aryadeva, Candrakīrti, and Nāropā to develop a definitive understanding of the Vajrayana completion stage. Whereas in the generation stage, meditators visualize the Buddha in the form of the deity residing in a mandala palace, in the completion stage discussed in the present volume, meditators transcend ordinary consciousness and actualize the state of a buddha themselves. Among other things, Tsongkhapa’s work covers the subtle human physiology of channels and winds along with the process of dying, the bardo, and rebirth. This definitive statement on Guhyasamāja tantra profoundly affected the course of Buddhist practice in Tibet.

— (Source: Wisdom Experience)