What is Atisha?
Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana was a highly influential Buddhist master whose teachings shaped the course of Tibetan Buddhism. Born in 982 CE and living until 1054 CE, this Bengali monk became one of classical Buddhism’s most important figures, not for creating a new lineage, but for rescuing an endangered tradition. Atisha revitalized Tibetan Buddhism upon his arrival in 1042 A.D., reorganizing the entirety of Buddhist teachings into a graduated path accessible to practitioners of all capacities. His legacy is threefold: his most celebrated text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, sets forth the entire Buddhist path within the framework of three levels of motivation, thus becoming the source of the lamrim tradition, or graduated stages of the path to enlightenment; the Tibetan tradition attributes the origin of the Tibetan mind training (lojong) tradition to Atisha; and his chief disciple Dromtön went on to found the Kadampa tradition, which later evolved into the Gelug school.
Origins & Lineage
Atisha was born in 982 CE in the region now known as Bengal, India. Given the name Chandragarbha at birth, he was the middle child of three sons born to King Kalyana the Good and Queen Prabhavati the Radiant. Born into royalty in Vikramapura, the capital of Southeast Bengal, Atisha grew up during the Pala dynasty’s resurgence—a period when Buddhism flourished across India. Atisha was ordained into the Mahāsāṃghika lineage at the age of twenty-eight by the Abbot Śīlarakṣita in Bodh Gaya and studied almost all Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools of his time, including teachings from Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Tantric Hinduism and other practices.
He visited renowned Buddhist centers such as Vikramashila and Nalanda, where he deepened his understanding of Madhyamaka philosophy, Abhidharma, and the various Buddhist tantric practices. At the age of thirty-one, Atisha with 100 disciples set off on a perilous journey, travelling for thirteen months to Sumatra in order to study under the reputable Suvarnadvipi Dharmakirti, sometimes called Dharmaraksita and known in Tibetan as Serlingpa, a supposed master of bodhichitta. He remained in Sumatra for twelve years studying the cultivation of awakened heart-mind.
He was appointed to the position of steward, or abbot, at Vikramaśīla which was established by Emperor Dharmapala. King Yeshe O sent out a search party to bring a master to Tibet who would be of great benefit by clarifying how one is to practice in training the mind. After many challenges, a group of monks finally arrived at Vikramashila to make this request of Atisha. Upon consulting Tara, it was clear. Atisha would benefit the greatest number of beings by traveling to Tibet to complete the king’s request. Atiśa finally departed Vikramaśīla in 1040 CE. He lived until seventy-two years old, having devoted fifteen years to his work in Tibet, dying in 1052 C.E. After staying for thirteen years in Tibet, Atisha died in 1052 C.E., in a village called Lethan, near Lhasa.
How It’s Practiced
Atisha is not practiced—his teachings are. Three streams of instruction carry his influence: lamrim (graduated path), lojong (mind training), and the integration of compassion with wisdom. The lamrim approach organizes Buddhist teachings according to three types of practitioner: those seeking better rebirth, those seeking personal liberation, and those committed to universal enlightenment. Students progress systematically through ethical conduct, meditative concentration, and wisdom.
The Seven Points of Mind Training is the famous instruction on ‘mind training’ (lojong) brought to Tibet by Lord Atisha and written down by Geshe Chekawa. The source of this Mind Training practice was the great Bengali master, Atisha Dipankara. Later, Geshe Chekawa organized these teachings into this series of 59 slogans, which are divided into seven “points” or categories. Lojong practice focuses on transforming adverse circumstances into the spiritual path, cultivating bodhichitta (awakened heart), and employing pithy slogans like “Train in the preliminaries,” “Regard all dharmas as dreams,” and “Drive all blames into one”—instructions designed to dismantle self-cherishing and develop universal compassion.
Practitioners work with tonglen (sending and receiving), a meditation in which one breathes in the suffering of others and sends out relief and happiness—a radical reversal of ego-clinging. The emphasis throughout is practical: Atisha insisted that meditation and study must transform behavior, ethics, and one’s relationship to difficulty.
Atisha Today
Contemporary practitioners encounter Atisha primarily through three avenues. First, lamrim teachings form the backbone of Gelug curriculum worldwide; Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo (Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path) derives directly from Atisha’s framework. Second, lojong is taught across all Tibetan Buddhist schools, often in retreat settings or year-long programs where students work through the slogans sequentially. Teachers from Pema Chödrön to the Dalai Lama have published commentaries on the Seven Points; Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness remains a standard English text.
Third, Atisha appears in academic and pilgrimage contexts: scholars of Buddhist history study his role in the “second transmission” of Buddhism to Tibet; pilgrims visit his shrine at Nyetang, near Lhasa, where he spent his final years. Dharma centers offer lojong intensives; Shambhala communities incorporate the slogans into daily practice. Online platforms feature slogan-of-the-week reflections. Unlike deity practices requiring empowerment, lojong is considered accessible to anyone willing to work with their mind.
Common Misconceptions
Atisha did not invent bodhichitta or the graduated path—these existed in Indian Mahayana. His contribution was systematization and clarification. He did not found the Gelug school; that was Tsongkhapa, three centuries later. The Kadampa tradition founded by Dromtön is sometimes called “Old Kadampa” to distinguish it from later developments.
Atisha was not exclusively a scholar; he was an accomplished tantric practitioner, having studied Guhyasamaja and other Vajrayana cycles. Yet he emphasized monastic discipline and ethical conduct as indispensable foundations, countering a Tibetan tendency toward tantric practice divorced from renunciation. When he came into contact with what he perceived to be a misled or deteriorating form of Buddhism he would quickly and effectively implement reforms.
Lojong is not “positive thinking.” The slogans are confrontational: they ask practitioners to embrace what is unwanted, to see enemies as teachers, to use illness and failure as wake-up calls. This is psychological guerrilla warfare against ego, not affirmation. Finally, Atisha is not a deity to be propitiated but a historical teacher whose methods remain testable.
How to Begin
Start with Atisha’s root text, the Bodhipathapradipa (Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment), available in Thupten Jinpa’s Essential Mind Training or as part of the Library of Tibetan Classics. For lojong, read Chögyam Trungpa’s Training the Mind or Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are, which offers slogan-by-slogan commentary accessible to Western practitioners. Jamgön Kongtrul’s The Great Path of Awakening, translated by Ken McLeod, provides a traditional Tibetan approach.
Seek instruction from a qualified teacher in any Tibetan Buddhist lineage; most centers offer lamrim or lojong courses. A regular meditation practice is prerequisite—lojong assumes familiarity with sitting practice and basic Buddhist view. Judy Lief’s ongoing online slogan commentaries offer weekly reflections. Begin with Point One (the preliminaries: impermanence, karma, suffering, the rarity of human birth) before moving to the transformative practices of Points Two and Three. Expect the work to be humbling, incremental, and piercing.