Nagarjuna, the South Indian Buddhist master who lived six hundred years after the Buddha, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher.

The great Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna wrote his celebrated poem Letter to a Friend as a gift of advice to a South Indian king, and it has since become a monument in the Indian shastra tradition. Despite its short length (only 123 verses), it covers the entire Mahayana path, combining a practical approach to daily conduct with a theoretical exposition of the different stages leading to enlightenment. It has thus been an ideal source for many of Tibet's greatest scholars seeking a scriptural authority to enhance their own descriptions of the Buddhist path.
In addition to a new English translation of the poem followed by the original Tibetan, this book includes commentary and a structural outline by the great twentieth-century scholar Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche.