A clear and straightforward introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, this book presents the basic teachings of Buddha in a way that people can readily comprehend and put into practice in their daily lives. Topics such as reincarnation, actions and their effects, emptiness, liberation and enlightenment are discussed. Designed primarily for those coming to the subject for the first time, the book also offers new insights for the more advanced student of Tibetan Buddhism. Originally published in 1989.

This book describes and analyses the structure and performance of Tibetan Buddhist death rituals, and situates that performance within the wider context of Buddhist death practices generally. Drawing on a detailed and systematic comparative survey of existing records of Tibetan funerary practices, including historical travel accounts, anthropological and ethnographic literature, Tibetan texts and academic studies, it demonstrates that there is no standard form of funeral in Tibetan Buddhism, although certain elements are common.

The structure of the book follows the twin trajectories of benefiting the deceased and protecting survivors; in the process, it reveals a rich and complex panoply of activities, some handled by religious professionals and others by lay persons. This information is examined to identify similarities and differences in practices, and the degree to which Tibetan Buddhist funeral practices are consistent with the mortuary rituals of other forms of Buddhism. A number of elements in these death rites which at first appear to be unique to Tibetan Buddhism may only be 'Tibetan' in their surface characteristics, while having roots in practices which pre-date the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet.

Filling a gap in the existing literature on Tibetan Buddhism, this book poses research challenges that will engage future scholars in the field of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Anthropology.

This book traces the lifestory of Rechungpa (1084-1161) - the student of the famous teacher Milarepa - using rare and little-known manuscripts, and discovers how the image of both Milarepa and Rechungpa underwent fundamental transformations over a period of over three centuries. Peter Alan Roberts compares significant episodes in the life of Rechungpa as portrayed in a succession of texts, and thus demonstrates the evolution of Rechungpa's biography. This is the first survey of the surviving literature which includes a detailed analysis of their dates, authorship and interrelationships. It shows how Rechungpa was increasingly portrayed as a rebellious, volatile and difficult pupil, as a lineage from a fellow-pupil prospered to become dominant in Tibet. Written in a style that makes it accessible to broad readership, Roberts' book will be of great value to anyone with an interest in the fields of Tibetan literature, history or religion.

This is a major anthropological study of contemporary Tibetan Buddhist monasticism and tantric ritual in the Ladakh region of North-West India and of the role of tantric ritual in the formation and maintenance of traditional forms of state structure and political consciousness in Tibet. Containing detailed descriptions and analyses of monastic ritual, the work builds up a picture of Tibetan tantric traditions as they interact with more localised understandings of bodily identity and territorial cosmology, to produce a substantial re-interpretation of the place of monks as ritual performers and peripheral householders in Ladakh. The work also examines the central and indispensable role of incarnate lamas, such as the Dalai Lama, in the religious life of Tibetan Buddhists.

According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In "How to See Yourself As You Really Are," the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic -- and loving -- perspective. Through illuminating explanations and step-by-step exercises, His Holiness helps readers to see the world as it actually exists, and explains how, through the interconnection of meditative concentration and love, true altruistic enlightenment is attained.

Enlivened by personal anecdotes and intimate accounts of the Dalai Lama's own life experiences, "How to See Yourself As You Really Are" is an inspirational and empowering guide that can be read and enjoyed by anyone seeking spiritual fulfillment.

The Labrang Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Amdo and its extended support community are one of the largest and most famous in Tibetan history. This crucially important and little-studied community is on the northeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau in modern Gansu Province, in close proximity to Chinese, Mongol, and Muslim communities. It is Tibetan but located in China; it was founded by Mongols, and associated with Muslims. Its wide-ranging Tibetan religious institutions are well established and serve as the foundations for the community's social and political infrastructures. The Labrang community's borderlands location, the prominence of its religious institutions, and the resilience and identity of its nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures were factors in the growth and survival of the monastery and its enormous estate. This book tells the story of the status and function of the Tibetan Buddhist religion in its fully developed monastic and public dimensions. It is an interdisciplinary project that examines the history of social and political conflict and compromise between the different local ethnic groups. The book presents new perspectives on Qing Dynasty and Republican-era Chinese politics, with far-reaching implications for contemporary China. It brings a new understanding of Sino-Tibetan-Mongol-Muslim histories and societies. This volume will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate student majors in Tibetan and Buddhist studies, in Chinese and Mongol studies, and to scholars of Asian social and political studies.

This classic volume focuses on the life of the Buddha and the early history of his order, and includes the first translation of many works. The first part of the book consists of the translation and analysis of contained in the Tibetan Dulva or Vinaya-pitaka, and the second part includes chapters on the early history of Tibet and Khosan and an index of Tibetan words with their Sanskrit equivalents. The author, William Woodville Rockhill, (1854-1914) was a scholar-diplomat, linguist, ethnologist and Tibetan expert who was the first American to speak, read and write Tibetan and the first to explore the Tibetan highlands. While serving as the American Minister to China, he became an authority on Buddhism and a friend of the thirteenth Dalai Lama. His collection of Tibetan manuscripts, including those consulted for this volume, became the core of the Library of Congress's Tibetan holdings.

This book traces the lifestory of Rechungpa (1084-1161) - the student of the famous teacher Milarepa - using rare and little-known manuscripts, and discovers how the image of both Milarepa and Rechungpa underwent fundamental transformations over a period of over three centuries.

Peter Alan Roberts compares significant episodes in the life of Rechungpa as portrayed in a succession of texts, and thus demonstrates the evolution of Rechungpaa (TM)s biography. This is the first survey of the surviving literature which includes a detailed analysis of their dates, authorship and interrelationships. It shows how Rechungpa was increasingly portrayed as a rebellious, volatile and difficult pupil, as a lineage from a fellow-pupil prospered to become dominant in Tibet.

Written in a style that makes it accessible to broad readership, Roberts' book will be of great value to anyone with an interest in the fields of Tibetan literature, history or religion.

The work explores the historical and intellectual context of Tsongkhapa's philosophy and addresses the critical issues related to questions of development and originality in Tsongkhapa's thought. It also deals extensively with one of Tsongkhapa's primary concerns, namely his attempts to demonstrate that the Middle Way philosophy's deconstructive analysis does not negate the reality of the everyday world. The study's central focus, however, is the question of the existence and the nature of self. This is explored both in terms of Tsongkhapa's deconstruction of the self and his reconstruction of person. Finally, the work explores the concept of reality that emerges in Tsongkhapa's philosophy, and deals with his understanding of the relationship between critical reasoning, no-self, and religious experience.

Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism examines how the third Karmapa hierarch, Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) transformed reincarnation from a belief into a lasting Tibetan institution. Born the son of an itinerant, low-caste potter, Rangjung Dorje went on to become a foundational figure in Tibetan Buddhism and a teacher of the last Mongolian emperor. He became renowned for his contributions to Buddhist philosophy, literature, astrology, medicine, architecture, sacred geography and manuscript production. But, as Ruth Gamble demonstrates, his most important legacy was the transformation of the Karmapa reincarnation lineage to ensure that, after his death, subsequent Karmapas were able to assume power in the religious institutions he had led. The inheritance model of reincarnation instituted by Rangjung Dorje changed the Tibetan Plateau's power relations, which until that time had been based on family associations, and created a precedent for later reincarnate institutions, including that of the Dalai Lamas. Drawing on Rangjung Dorje's hitherto un-translated autobiographies and autobiographical songs, this book shows that his reinvention of reincarnation was a self-conscious and multi-faceted project, made possible by Rangjung Dorje's cultural, social, and political standing and specific historical and geographical circumstances. Exploring this combination of agency and historical coincidence, this is the first full-length study of the development of the reincarnation institution.

This exceptional work of scholarship is the work of the scholar who brought the world "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" and an equally important work entitled "Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa," This book, perhaps the most valuable in the trilogy, exposes the deeds of some of the principal yogas and meditations which many of the most illustrious Tibetan and Indian philosophers, including Tulopa, Naropa, Marpa, and Milerepa, employed in attaining Right Knowledge.

How do contemporary Westerners and Tibetans understand not only what it means to be 'Buddhist', but what it means to be hailed as one from 'the West' or from 'Tibet'? This anthropological study examines the encounter between Western travellers and Tibetan exiles in Bodhanath, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal and analyses the importance of Buddhism in discussions of political, cultural and religious identity. Moran examines how Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism are 'created' in the encounters taking place in Bodhanath and how Western Buddhists come to terms with their imagined, then reified culture and religion. Tibetan Buddhism has become Bodhanath's cultural product par excellence, it is not only a spectacle for foreign tourists to see, but a reminder of national-culture for displaced Tibetans. Special focus is given here to the ways in which Tibetan Buddhism has been presented as an object to be observed, reflected upon, and internalized by Western travellers, often at the feet of Tibetan lamas. perception of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the practices and narratives through which Tibetan and Western Buddhist subjects are produced. Based on extensive field research in Nepal, Buddhism Observed questions traditional assumptions about Buddhism and examines the rarely considered phenomenon of Western conversions to a non-Western religion. Scholars of anthropology, religion and cultural studies will find here a refreshing insight into how to approach 'other' societies, religions and cultures.

Happiness lies within you

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has captured the attention and admiration of the world through his wisdom. This jewel of a book offers some of his most helpful insights on daily living, compassion and inner peace.

A timeless collection of advice and teachings from the world’s most revered spiritual leader, it will guide you through good and troubled times.

Whoever you are, whatever your beliefs, the Dalai Lama’s words have the power to calm and inspire.

The Way of the Bodhisattva, composed by the monk and scholar Santideva in eighth-century India, is a Buddhist treatise in verse that beautifully and succinctly lays out the theory and practice of the Mahayana path of a bodhisattva. Over one thousand years after Santideva's composition, Kunzang Soenam (1823-1905) produced the most extensive commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva ever written. This book is the first English translation of Kunzang Soenam's overview of Santideva's notoriously difficult ninth chapter on wisdom. The ninth chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva is philosophically very rich but forbiddingly technical, and can only be read well with a good commentary. Kunzang Soenam's commentary offers a unique and complete introduction to the view of Prasangika-Madhyamaka, the summit of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, as articulated by Tsongkhapa. It brings Santideva's text, and Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasangika-Madhyamaka, into conversation with a vast Buddhist literature from India and Tibet. By articulating the integral relationship between emptiness and interdependence, this text formulates a sustained and powerful argument for emptiness as a metaphysical basis of bodhisattva ethics. This volume makes the ninth chapter accessible to English-speaking teachers and students of the Way of the Bodhisattva.

Places the controversy initiated by the Tibetan Tsong kha pa - who elaborated on one of the eight difficult points in understanding Madhyamaka philosophy - in its Indian and Tibetan context.

Based on newly discovered texts, this book explores the barely known but tremendously influential thought of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Mabja Jangchub Tsoendru (d. 1185).This Tibetan Buddhist master exercised significant influence on the interpretation of Madhyamaka thinking in Tibet during the formative phase of Tibetan Buddhism and plays a key role in the religious thought of his day and beyond. The book studies the framework of Mabja's philosophical project, holding it up against the works of both his own Madhyamaka teachers as well as those of central authors of the later "classical period". The emerging account of the evolution of Madhyamaka in Tibet reveals a striking pattern of transformative appropriations. This, in turn, affords us insights into the nature and function of tradition in Tibetan religious culture and Mahayana Buddhism at large. Innovation is demanded for both the advancement and consolidation of tradition. This ground-breaking book is an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan philosophy. It is of great interest to Buddhist practitioners, specialists in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism.

This book analyses the transplantation, development and adaptation of the two largest Tibetan and Zen Buddhist organizations currently active on the British religious landscape: the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) and the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives (OBC). The key contributions of recent scholarship are evaluated and organised thematically to provide a framework for analysis, and the history and current landscape of contemporary Tibetan and Zen Buddhist practice in Britain are also mapped out. A number of patterns and processes identified elsewhere are exemplified, although certain assumptions made about the nature of 'British Buddhism' are subjected to critical scrutiny and challenged.

Based on newly discovered texts, this book explores the barely known but tremendously influential thought of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Mabja Jangchub Tsoendru (d. 1185).This Tibetan Buddhist master exercised significant influence on the interpretation of Madhyamaka thinking in Tibet during the formative phase of Tibetan Buddhism and plays a key role in the religious thought of his day and beyond. The book studies the framework of Mabja's philosophical project, holding it up against the works of both his own Madhyamaka teachers as well as those of central authors of the later "classical period". The emerging account of the evolution of Madhyamaka in Tibet reveals a striking pattern of transformative appropriations. This, in turn, affords us insights into the nature and function of tradition in Tibetan religious culture and Mahayana Buddhism at large. Innovation is demanded for both the advancement and consolidation of tradition. This ground-breaking book is an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan philosophy. It is of great interest to Buddhist practitioners, specialists in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism.

The Social Life of Tibetan Biography explores the creation of Tibetan religious authority in Tibetan cultural areas throughout East, Inner, and South Asia through engaging with the relationship between textual biography and social community in the case of the Eastern Tibetan yogi Tokden Shakya Shri (1853 1919). It explores the different mechanisms used by Shakya Shri s community in the creation of his biographical portrait to develop his lineage, including the use of biographical tropes, details of interpersonal connections, educational and patronage networks, and representations of sacred site creation and maintenance. In doing so, this study decenters Tibetan and Himalayan religious history through recognizing that peripheries could act as alternative centers of authority for diverse Tibetan Buddhist communities."

The Qing empire and the Dalai Lama-led Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism came into contact in the eighteenth century. Their interconnections would shape regional politics and the geopolitical history of Inner Asia for centuries to come. In Common Ground, Lan Wu analyzes how Tibetan Buddhists and the Qing imperial rulers interacted and negotiated as both sought strategies to expand their influence in eighteenth-century Inner Asia. In so doing, she recasts the Qing empire, seeing it not as a monolithic project of imperial administration but as a series of encounters among different communities. Wu examines a series of interconnected sites in the Qing empire where the influence of Tibetan Buddhism played a key role, tracing the movement of objects, flows of peoples, and circulation of ideas in the space between China and Tibet. She identifies a transregional Tibetan Buddhist knowledge network, which provided institutional, pragmatic, and intellectual common ground for both polities. Wu draws out the voices of lesser-known Tibetan Buddhists, whose writings and experiences evince an alternative Buddhist space beyond the state. She highlights interactions between Mongols and Tibetans within the Qing empire, exploring the creation of a Buddhist Inner Asia. Wu argues that Tibetan Buddhism occupied a central-but little understood-role in the Qing vision of empire. Revealing the interdependency of two expanding powers, Common Ground sheds new light on the entangled histories of political, social, and cultural ties between Tibet and China.

A huge international success, the Dalai Lama's books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, for the first time, this inspirational new book brings together the Dalai Lama's writings on all sides of life from work to meditation, in his highly appealing and unique voice that applies the principles of ancient Buddhist thought to contemporary issues. For all fans of the Dalai Lama's writings, and for anyone yet to be introduced to his thinking, this is the perfect collection.

In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier, Benno Weiner provides the first in-depth study of an ethnic minority region during the first decade of the People's Republic of China: the Amdo region in the Sino-Tibetan borderland. Employing previously inaccessible local archives as well as other rare primary sources, he demonstrates that the Communist Party's goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state-building, but also nation-building. Such an objective required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community. As Weiner shows, however, early efforts to gradually and organically transform a vast multiethnic empire into a singular nation-state lost out to a revolutionary impatience, demanding more immediate paths to national integration and socialist transformation. This led in 1958 to communization, then to large-scale rebellion and its brutal pacification. Rather than joining voluntarily, Amdo was integrated through the widespread, often indiscriminate use of violence, a violence that lingers in the living memory of Amdo Tibetans and others.

A catalogue of 108 portrait bronzes of great masters of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. It presents a history of these teaching lineages. The sculptures span the most productive period in the history of Tibetan Buddhist art, illustrating Tibetan portraiture's long and varied history. This is a catalogue of 108 portrait bronzes of great masters of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, it presents a history of these teaching lineages based on and illustrated by the collection. Ranging in date from the 12th to 18th century, the sculptures span the most productive period in the