Mipam Gyatso (1846–1912) was one of the greatest and most erudite scholars of his day, and his seminal work stands as a pivot point in the Nyingma school and the larger philosophical environment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Tibet. He crafted a new Nyingma synthesis that responded to the dominant Geluk school, thereby permitting his school to become an active participant in the ongoing conversation of the “nonsectarian movement” (ris med) that had enlivened most of the previous few generations. Happily, this noted figure has begun to receive the attention he deserves with a series of recent studies exploring his thought and, to a lesser extent, his life. Douglas S. Duckworth's present volume, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, addresses what he argues is a central organizing principle of Mipam's systematic philosophy, the concept of Buddha-nature. His analytical text is complemented by competent, fluid, and highly readable translations of a key text on Buddha-nature written by Mipam in 1891 and a short commentary on the essential points by his commentator, Bötrül Tenpé Nyima.

Duckworth connects this central theme to Mipam's views of the three wheels of doctrine, the hermeneutical distinction between definitive and interpretable meanings, the doxographical categorization of the schools of Buddhism (as understood in Tibet), the various understandings of emptiness, the nature and limits of reasoning, and the significance of these themes within the esoteric tradition. Drawing from a wide array of Mipam's writings, Duckworth effectively synthesizes these diverse strands, convincingly arguing for a coherent understanding of Mipam's philosophical and religious vision. Duckworth shows that Mipam places Buddha-nature at the center of his presentation as a positive, present, and affirming complement to the negative, absent, and negating emptiness. For him, Buddha-nature provides the ontological grounding of appearance and emptiness. At the same time, it is the fundamental stratum within sentient beings that makes it possible for them to become Buddhas. It is through this route that Buddha-nature also serves as the link between Sūtra and Mantra teachings of Buddhism. Within the Great Perfection, Mipam asserts that emptiness and appearance are fused within Buddha-nature, as are primordial purity and spontaneous presence.

This strong book would have been even more illuminating with two particular types of changes. First of all, this analysis of Mipam's synthesis would be more useful if it had been brought into dialogue with the Geluk school, which had long been and would remain the most dominant philosophical view in Tibet. The distinction between self-emptiness and other-emptiness, for example, ought to have been connected to Tsongkhapa's critique of Dölpopa. Mipam must have been primarily concerned with the Geluk commentarial tradition when he formulated his contrasting positions on rationality, the two truths, and other topics. Instead, readers who are more familiar with Geluk doctrine are mainly left to make their own connections to Mipam's thought.

Second, like many similar works on philosophical Buddhism, this book is abstracted from history. Aside from a brief repetition of the standard biographical highlights and a general survey of Mipam's intellectual predecessors, Duckworth does not position his subject in the cross-currents of his own era. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933), a younger contemporary and certainly the defining figure of the period, is never mentioned. Also overlooked are the shifting regional allegiances that formed the background to Mipam's emergence as a prominent rival of Geluk intellectual hegemony. This shortcoming is all the more regrettable because Mipam is such a recent figure, and given his extensive contacts with Nyingma teachers, Duckworth ought to have been able to tap into the vital living oral tradition about Mipam. In that way, Duckworth could have animated Mipam as a real person embedded in his own time.

Duckworth significantly advances our understanding of this important figure and this long-neglected period of Tibetan intellectual life. His book will be particularly useful to those who are interested in contemporary Nyingma religious philosophy. Still, Duckworth's book will mostly serve as a valuable and important supplement to the more ambitious and the more fully realized volume of overlapping content called Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither by Karma Phuntsho (New York: Routledge, 2005).