A collection of Chogyam Trungpa's early teachings in North America--on buddha nature, emptiness, the feminine principle, and the three bodies of enlightenment.

At the beginning of a North American teaching career that would span seventeen years, the meditation master Chogyam Trungpa conducted five pivotal seminars covering various dharmic topics. The transcripts from these seminars are collected here so that readers can experience them right at home. Comprising twenty-six talks in total, each one followed by a Q&A, "Glimpses of the Profound" is sure to provoke glimpses of all kinds: glimpses that inspire you to look further, glimpses that give you confidence, glimpses that upset the apple cart, glimpses that open your heart, glimpses that undermine falsity, glimpses that awaken you to your boundless potential.

This book was originally published as four separate volumes by Vajradhatu Publications. Judith L. Lief has written a new introduction."

All of us experience obstacles as part of our journey, in life and on the spiritual path. In many cases, we think of them as purely something unpleasant to overcome, or as a mistake that needs correcting. Here, Chogyam Trungpa takes a radically different approach to such obstacles, teaching that unexpected chaos, confusion, and emotional upheavals can actually be used as fuel for the journey--an energy that can transform confusion into sanity and wisdom. He illustrates this transformative principle through telling the lively history of the Trungpa tulkus (a lineage within the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism), of which he was the eleventh incarnation. Trungpa referred to his lineage as the "Mishap Lineage"""because of the ups and downs and colorful lives that were typical of his predecessors, and true of his own life as well. The stories of the Trungpas are seen as a guide for the practitioner's journey and help us to understand how important lineage and community remain for us today.

This volume marks the beginning of a series of Sanskrit Texts From the Tibetan Autonomous Region (STTAR) jointly published by the publishing houses of the China Tibetology Research Center, Beijing, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, on the basis of a General Agreement on Cooperative Studies of Copies of Sanskrit Texts and their Joint Publication" signed January 9, 2004. It is also the first result of a cooperation between the Chinese Tibetology Research Center and the Institute for Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with the aim of making these unique jewels of philosophical and religious texts from the Buddhist past which are preserved in their original Sanskrit language in the TAR available in scholarly editions for the first time. This volume consists of two parts. The critically edited Sanskrit text of Jinendrabuddhi's Pramanasamuccayatika, chapter 1 (on perception) is accompanied by a diplomatic edition of the text. The editions are based on photocopies of a palm-leaf manuscript kept in Lhasa which, to our present knowledge, is the only one extent. Jinendrabuddhi's commentary of the second half of the eighth century CE is, moreover, the only commentary known to have been written on that work which marks the very beginning of the Buddhist tradition of epistemology and logic in the first half of the sixth century: Dignaga's Pramanasamuccayatika. The linguistic and interpretational value of Jinendrabuddhi's text is particularly great in view of the fact that Dignaga's seminal work has not yet been discovered in the original Sanskrit, and that his various polemical treatises on other epistemological authors and schools of his time are unlikely to have been transmitted very long. Moreover, Jinendrabuddhi provides us with numerous quotations from works before Dignaga which belong to all the traditions of brahmanical classical Indian philosophy, but have been irretrievably lost. The great import of Jinendrabuddhi's work has long been well-known through its Tibetan translation. Thus, the publication of its Sanskrit original will have far-reaching consequences for the knowledge and interpretation of the Indian philosophical traditions in their classical Gupta period expressions. (Austrian Academy of Sciences 2005)

The exact circumstances of the emergence of what are now known as the rNying ma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism remain among the least clearly defined areas of Tibetan history for modern scholarship. What has made the early history of rNying ma tantrism so opaque is the dearth of reliable historical sources. In response to such uncertainty, Cantwell and Mayer have turned to the Dunhuang cache in search of further evidence. Their specific focus has been the Dunhuang texts on Phur pa, many of which have never been read before. This focus was chosen because from comparatively early times, the Phur pa tradition developed enormously within Tibet itself, and always remained a particularly rNying ma practice. Phur pa's early and enduring popularity might therefore to some extent coincide with or reflect the emergence of rNying ma as a distinct tradition. This volume addresses an important question that has not so far been approached: how exactly do the Dunhuang tantric texts compare with those of the received rNying ma tradition? The authors review, transliterate, translate, and analyse all Dunhuang texts on Phur pa so far identified, discovering an unexpectedly close relationship to the received tradition. There is also an essay exploring reasons for Phur pa's popularity in post-Imperial Tibet. Thanks to the generosity of the British Library, a CD is included with digital images of over 100 pages of the original manuscripts.

The colorful tale of the successful flowering of an obscure, ancient Eastern sect in the modern world.

In a single generation, Tibetan Buddhism developed from the faith of a remote mountain people, associated with bizarre, almost medieval, superstitions, to perhaps the most rapidly growing and celebrity-studded religion in the West.

Disaffected with other religious traditions yet searching for meaning, huge numbers of Americans have found their way to the wisdom of Tibetan lamas in exile. Earthy, humorous, commonsensical, and eccentric, these flamboyant teachers—larger-than-life characters like Lama Yeshe and Chogyma Trungpa—proved to be charismatic and gifted ambassadors for their ancient religion. So did two Western women, born in Brooklyn and London's East End, whose homegrown religious intuitions turned out to be identical with the most sophisticated Tibetan teachings, revealing them to be reincarnated lamas.

With great flair for both the sublime and the human, Jeffrey Paine narrates in page-turning, richly informative fashion how Tibetan Buddhism—rarified and sensual, mystical and commonsensical—became the ideal religion for a "post-religious" age. 15 photographs.