བྱང་ཆབ་ལམ་གྱ་སྒྲན་མ p4

p4

He received the bodhisattva vows from the master Bodhibhadra at the great Indian monastic university of Nālandā. At twenty-nine, the same age that Siddhartha left the palace, Atiśa had a dream in which he was urged by the Buddha himself to ordain, prompting him to take full monastic vows at a monastery in Bodh Gaya. Upon ordination, he was given the name Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna, “He Whose Deep Awareness Acts as a Lamp.” With his relatively late ordination and scholarly pursuits, Atiśa’s biography is an inverse of Indian mahāsiddhas such as Nāropa, who only disrobed to practice tantra after many years living as a pure monk and scholar. Atiśa’s full monastic ordination after nearly two decades spent as a wandering yogi demonstrates the tremendous esteem with which he held the Vinaya and monastic discipline, values reflected in the Lamp for the Path and his broader missionary activities in Tibet.