The most profound and fundamental teaching of the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is that of the "Path Including Its Result." This unique teaching of Virupa, one of India's extraordinary Mahasiddhas, covers the entire Buddhist path from the time of entering the spiritual discipline up to the attainment of full and perfect enlightenment. It serves as a manual for contemplating and meditating upon the various stages leading to the final result of ultimate happiness and liberation. "The Three Visions" examines the state of those experiencing suffering, those engaged in the methods leading towards freedom from unhappiness and misery, and those fully enlightened ones who have attained the highest goal of omniscient awakening. In a very direct and simple manner, the text leads the reader step-by-step over the vast path culminating in ultimate peace.

"The Essence of Jung's Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism" cuts to the heart of two very different yet remarkably similar traditions. The author touches on many of their major ideas: the collective unconscious and karma, archetypes and deities, the analyst and the spiritual friend, and mandalas. Within Tibetan Buddhism she focuses on tantra and relates its emphasis on spiritual transformation, also a major concern of Jung. This expanded edition includes new material on the integration of the two traditions, and the importance of these paths of the heart in today's unsteady world.

Imbued with a friendly tone and pithy wisdom, this handsome handbook to approaching life "in a better way" includes six of His Holiness The Dalai Lama's most accessible and inspirational public lectures. Following each talk are the original question-and-answer sessions in which His Holiness opens himself up to his listeners and-now-to readers everywhere. His characteristically candid guidance on living fully and responsibly, especially at the start of a new millennium, focuses on specific themes that range from religious tolerance to compassion and nonviolence. The book also includes a practical and highly readable introduction to Buddhism and The Dalai Lama's own spiritual heritage, written by the renowned Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.

This book opens the way to a deeper knowledge of mahamudra, a Buddhist system of meditation on the nature of the mind. In providing a detailed commentary on the Vajra Song of the first Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-1899), the author elucidates the stages of ground, path, and fruition for those who wish to meditate according to this system.

This is the story of a determined woman who overcame great obstacles in order to achieve religious freedom. Born in eastern Tibet, Jamyang Sakya married into the powerful Sakya family, spiritual advisers of Kublai Khan and for years rulers of much of Central Asia. Her engaging personal story evokes a rich vision of Tibet's traditional culture, customs, and religious practices.

Jamyang Sakya tells of being the only girl in a monastic private school, of dreams and divinations interpreted by high lamas, of long pilgrimages to sacred Buddhist sites, and of her life as a high lady of Sakya. Her narrative reveals a multifaceted picture, from the intricacies of managing a palace household to the political takeover by the Chinese Communists, who destroyed much of Tibet's religious heritage. It climaxes with the Sakya family's harrowing walk through the Himalayas to freedom, during which they were hotly pursued by the Chinese. After a year in India, they emigrated to the United States, one of the first Tibetan families to do so.

Today Jamyang Sakya lives in Seattle, Washington.

King Gesar, renowned throughout Tibet and Central Asia, represents the ideal warrior--the principle of all-victorious confidence. As the central force of sanity, he conquers all his enemies, the evil forces of the four directions, who turn people's minds away from the true teachings of Buddhism. These enemies graphically represent the different manifestations of cowardly mind. As Chogyam Trungpa explains in the Foreword: "When we talk here about conquering our enemy, it is important to understand that we are not talking about aggression. The genuine warrior does not become resentful or arrogant . . . It is absolutely necessary for the warrior to subjugate his own ambition to conquer at the same time that he is subjugating his other more obvious enemies. Thus the idea of warriorship altogether is that by facing all our enemies fearlessly, with gentleness and intelligence, we can develop ourselves thereby attaining self-realization." The legends of Gesar usually take weeks for a bard to recount. Filled with magic, adventure, and the triumphs of this great warrior-king, the stories will delight all--young and old alike.

Writing in the language of the new sciences, Herbert Guenther traces the evolution of Buddhist views on cognition and points to their relevance in the contemporary world. The history of Buddhist thought is a unique example of the interplay between reductionism and creativity, between conservatism and innovation, and it is the author's purpose to examine the interaction between these complementary movements. Of decisive importance in this context is the idea of "mind," which Buddhism recognized early on as a process rather than a thing. This recognition marked the transition from structure-oriented thinking to a vigorous process-oriented thinking, which climaxed in the holistic movement known as rDzogs-chen. Based on original texts in the Pali, Tibetan, and Sanskrit languages, the book develops the Buddhist ideas out of the context in which they originated.

With the intimate freshness of a personal teaching, this book presents the main practices of the Mahayana Buddhist path. It details the attitudes cultivated in meditation--ranging from turning away from cyclic existence to developing love and compassion for all beings, to understanding the profound view of emptiness.

Presents in lucid detail the sixty-four arts of love divided into eight varieties of sexual play--embracing, kissing, pinching and scratching, biting, moving to and fro and pressing, erotic noises, role reversal, and positions of love-making. It is a translation of the "Treatise on Passion" by Gedun Chopel, the highly contoversial former monk. He gives titillating advice to shun inhibitions and explains how to increase female sexual pleasure. An over-arching focus is sexual ecstasy as a door to spiritual experience--the sky experience of the mind of clear light pervades the scintillating descriptions of erotic acts.

This book is the first book length study of its subject, and also includes a reprint of a previous paper by Williams on the reflexive nature of awareness, as well as the relevant Tibetan texts from Mi pham. The book will be of interest to all students of India and Tibetan Madhyamaka, as well as associated areas of Buddhist thought such as Yogacara and the philosophy of Dharmakirti.

Chogyam Trungpa--meditation master, scholar, and artist--was identified at the age of only thirteen months as a major "tulku," or reincarnation of an enlightened teacher. As the eleventh in the teaching lineage known as the Trungpa tulkus, he underwent a period of intensive training in mediation, philosophy, and fine arts, receiving full ordination as a monk in 1958 at the age of eighteen. The following year, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, and the young Trungpa spent many harrowing months trekking over the Himalayas, narrowly escaping capture. Trungpa's account of his experiences as a young monk, his duties as the abbot and spiritual head of a great monastery, and his moving relationships with his teachers offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of a Tibetan lama. The memoir concludes with his daring escape from Tibet to India. In an epilogue, he describes his emigration to the West, where he encountered many people eager to learn about the ancient wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Dzogchen, or the Great Perfection, is considered by both the Bonpos and the followers of the Nyigma school in Tibet to be the culmination of all spiritual teachings. The philosophical view of the Great Perfection introduces the individual to the knowledge of reality, which is one with the enlightened state of all beings. In this book the Dzogchen view is presented in two Bonpo texts belonging to the revered "terma "(treasure) and oral traditions, here for the first time translated and critically edited in their entirety.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead was traditionally used as a mortuary text, read or recited in the presence of a dying or dead person. As a contribution to the science of death and of rebirth, it is unique among the sacred books of the world. The texts have been discovered and rediscovered in the West during the course of almost the entire 20th century, starting with Oxford's edition by W Y Evans-Wentz in 1927. The new edition includes a new foreword, afterword and suggested further reading list by Donald S Lopez Jr to update and contextualize this pioneering work. Lopez examines the historical background of OUP's publication, the translation against current scholarship, and its profound importance in engendering both scholarly and popular interest in Tibetan religion and culture.

Nature is a topic in many Indian and Tibetan philosophical texts, although its meaning varies considerably in both Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The discussion of nature pursued in this book begins with Nagarjuna (first century), founder of the Middle Way School, who refuted a fabricated nature in his "Treatise on the Middle." In that seminal text, he puts forth the three basic criteria for nature: it must be something that is non-fabricated, independent, and immutable.
This book presents Dzong-ka-ba's discussion of the overly narrow object in his "Great Exposition" and relates that discussion to Nagarjuna's verses in "Treatise on the Middle." When combined with an understanding of an overly broad object to be negated, this topic brings the Middle Way practitioner to a precise identification of the nonexistent object-of-negation nature as being a thing's establishment by way of its own entity.
This book also presents Dzong-ka-ba's more mainstream commentary on the subject in the Ocean of Reasoning sections, which are translated in Part Two. It also describes Dzong-ka-ba's strong reaction to the positive and independent nature asserted by Tibet's greatest synthesist, Dol-bo Shay-rap-gyel-tsen (fourteenth century).

Discusses what credentials and qualities students should look for in a wisdom teacher, why a wisdom teacher is necessary, and how the relationship between this teacher and the disciple best develops once it is established. The text is a translation of a Tibetan work written in the latter half of the

A journey through the land of the Dalai Lamas, revealed through its landscapes, art and symbols from sword-wielding deities to mystical mandalas.

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, devotion to one's guru or spiritual master is considered to be of the utmost importance in spiritual practice. The instructions of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, based upon the teachings of the great eighteenth-century saint and visionary Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa, focus on the devotional practices of Guru Yoga, "Merging with the Mind of the Guru."

These are the memoirs of a Dob-dob', or fighting monk, trained to keep the peace in a monastic community of several thousand monks, during and after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, in 1959. The true story of a young man born in a traditional Tibetan village, ordained a monk in one of the country's great monasteries, and eventually assigned the post of dob-dob, a 'fighting monk' charged with maintaining monastic order. Fleeing Tibet with the Dalai Lama after the Chinese invasion of 1959, never to see his native land again, and suffering the loss of a leg during the'

According to Tibetan traditions, the Indian Buddhist Prasangika-Madhyamika school is the one that represents the final true thought of the Buddha. "Unique Tenets of the Middle Way Consequence School "presents and analyzes the issues that separate that school from the other principals schools of Buddhism--issues such as the existence (or non-existence) of an external world the way in which karma and reincarnation operate the nature of consciousness the nature of time and the status of Arhats (enlightened but not omniscient beings). Parts Two and Three of the book are annotated translations of Tibetan texts that are used as source books in monastic education.

Even the most casual contact with the culture, politics, or religion of Tibet and the surrounding region brings outsiders face to face with the institution of reincarnate spiritual masters. Past masters are identified as small children installed in their predecessor's monastery in a ceremony called "enthronement" and educated to continue the work of their former incarnation. This custom has provided a principal source of spiritual renewal for Himalayan Buddhists for the past thousand years. The introduction places the subject of reincarnate meditation masters within two major contexts: the activity of bodhisattvas, and in modern Tibetan society, where the reappearance of past masters is both natural and profoundly moving.
Tai Situpa Rinpoche, a contemporary reincarnate master and a leader of the Kagyu lineage, describes the process of finding other reincarnate masters. Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, an outstanding writer and meditation master, offers a traditional view of the enthronement of reincarnate masters.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Monastery Rules discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan Buddhist societies and how that position was informed by the far-reaching relationship of monastic Buddhism with Tibetan society, economy, law, and culture. Jansen focuses her study on monastic guidelines, or bca' yig. The first study of its kind to examine the genre in detail, the book contains an exploration of its parallels in other Buddhist cultures, its connection to the Vinaya, and its value as socio-historical source-material. The guidelines are witness to certain socio-economic changes, while also containing rules that aim to change the monastery in order to preserve it. Jansen argues that the monastic institutions' influence on society was maintained not merely due to prevailing power-relations, but also because of certain deep-rooted Buddhist beliefs.

The vow to perfect oneself in order to perfect others is called the thought of enlightenment or bodhichitta. This implies that every single action word or thought even the most trivial is dedicated to the good of all beings. To accomplish the good of others, we must first perfect ourselves by purifying and transforming our minds. This is the aim of what we call the preliminary practices, which establish the foundations of all spiritual progress. In this book, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche explains a key practice text composed by Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820-1892) on the Vajrayana preliminaries: taking refuge, generating the thought of achieving enlightenment for the sake of all beings, performing the meditation, and recitation of Vajrasattva to remove hindrances on the path to enlightenment, offering the mandala to accumulate merit and wisdom, and developing proper reliance on a spiritual teacher. Clear, direct, and personal, these instructions illuminate the heart of Vajrayana practice. Included here are the Tibetan text as well as the mantras and prayers commonly recited in conjunction with this practice.

Survey of biographies, poetry, novels, histories and other writings covering 1300 years.

An absorbing exposition of the methods of realization of the Middle Way Consequence School (Prasangika Madhyamika) by Jeffrey Hopkins--considered by many the foremost Western authority on Tibetan Buddhism. His presentation is based on Jang-gya's famous work--the original and translation are included. The reasonings used to analyze persons and phenomena to establish their true mode of existence are discussed in the context of meditative practice. This exposition includes a masterful treatment of the compatibility of emptiness and dependent-arising.

The restless mind is frightened of silence, easily bored, and busy, busy, busy. The restful mind is creative and alert, relaxed and confident. The step from one to the other is all in the way we think. His Eminence Gyalwa Dokhampa has a real understanding of the pressures of modern life and how our crowded minds have left us too little space to stretch and grow. He shows us new ways to calm body and mind, become more aware, better able to deal with problems and appreciate the moment. It is with our mind that we create our world. Here's how to open it up and let the world in.