Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School: Dynamic Responses to Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, Volume 2 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The first volume is in four parts:
A historical and doctrinal introduction
A translation of the General Explanation and the Section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence with frequent annotations in the brackets, footnotes, and backnotes
A detailed synopsis of the translation
A critical edition in Tibetan script of these sections in The Essence of Eloquence
The second volume, Reflections on Reality, will:
Place reactions to Tsongkhapa's text in historical and social context by examining the tension between allegiance and rational inquirer in monastic colleges
Expand on the religious significance of the three natures of phenomena
Present Jonangpa views on the thoroughly established nature and Gelukpa criticisms
Explain the reasonings establishing mind-only as means to overcome basic dread of reality, and
Consider how Tsongkhapa and his commentators present the provocative issue of the relationship between the two types of emptiness in the Mind-Only School and compare how the topic of two emptinesses is debated today in America, Europe, and Japan, thereby demonstrating how the two forms of scholarship refine and enhance each other.
The third volume, Absorption in No External World, will examine a plethora of fascinating points on the three natures raised in six centuries of commentary through:
Identifying the teachings in the first wheel of doctrine,
Probing the meaning of "own-character" and "established by way of its own character,"
Untangling the implications of Tsongkhapa's criticisms of Wongchuk, and treating many engaging points on the three natures and the three non-natures, including 1) how to apply these two grids to uncompounded space; 2) whether the selflessness of persons is a thoroughly established nature; 3) how to consider the emptiness of emptiness; and 4) the ways the Great Vehicle schools delineate the three natures and the three non-natures.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School: Dynamic Responses to Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, Volume 2

This is the second volume in Jeffrey Hopkins's valuable series on the Mind-Only School of Buddhism. Dzong-ka-ba (1357-1419) is generally regarded as one of the greatest Tibetan philosophers, and his "Mind-Only" discourse on emptiness is considered a landmark in Buddhist philosophy. In Volume 2, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, Hopkins provided a translation of the introduction and section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence. The present volume places this enigmatic and influential exposition in its historical and philosophical contexts. Reflections on Reality conveys the intellectual vibrancy of the different cultural interpretations of this text and expands the key philosophical issues it addresses.

Get 20% OFF

Buy cheap Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School: Dynamic Responses to Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, Volume 2 now.

Study and Practice of Meditation: Tibetan Interpretations of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book is a real tome, and one has to admire the depth of scholarship displayed. The author makes it clear that this is basically a record from within the Gelugpa tradition of scholarship about types of meditation not generally practiced by those writing about it. That scholars-only flavor comes through loud and clear in the dense, heavily-annotated text, and I wish I had known that this was purely an academic treatise before plunking down money for it. The other reviews here do the potential reader a disservice by failing to mention this important fact. This is most definitely NOT a book from which to actually learn these practices, and if I were reviewing it on those grounds it would rate one star. Out of great respect for the scholarship, I give it 4.
Books to actually learn these techniques and put them into practice: The Attention Revolution, by B. Alan Wallace (superb), and the related text Calming the Mind: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Cultivating Meditative Quiescence, by Gelugpa meditation master Gen Lamrimpa. For most readers these will be far better choices.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Study and Practice of Meditation: Tibetan Interpretations of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions

This book gives a vivid abd dewtailed accont of the meditative practices necessary to develop a calm, alert mind that is capable pf penetrating the depths of reality. The reader is exposed to Tibetan Buddhist views on the mental states attained through meditation by the author's relying on oral commentaries by three contemporary Tibetan lamas.

Get 24% OFF

Buy cheap Study and Practice of Meditation: Tibetan Interpretations of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions now.

A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic Dezhung Rinpoche Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)A Saint in Seattle is a fascinating book that I did not want to lay aside. The early chapters are devoted to Dhezhung Rinpoche's childhood and early adulthood, and are a wonderful depiction of what intensive spiritual training was like for a gifted lama in early twentieth century Tibet. The brief biographies of his primary teachers are also great to read--both informative and inspiring.
The later chapters focus upon Dhezung Rinpoche's life and teaching activities outside Tibet, primarily in the United States. As one of the very first Tibetan lamas to reside in the United States in the early 1960s, he experienced first hand and helped nurture the gradual spiritual maturing of western students until his death nearly four decades later. This part of the book is filled with anecdotes about dharma in the west--some amusing and some inspiring--that include descriptions of several other famous Tibetan lamas and many Western students. As one of his earlier students, I enjoyed reading about many westerners I have known but had never read about in a publication before who helped to shape Buddhism in the west.
The author, Dr. David Jackson, demonstrates a scholar's attention to detail and accuracy throughout the book that I appreciated. He portrays Dhezhung Rinpoche's many-faceted personality through numerous anecdotes, capturing his great kindness and wisdom, sense of humor, unflagging patience and persistence, seemingly boundless energy, intense focus on meditation throughout all aspects of daily life, amazing breadth of knowledge, and profound humility.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in integrating spiritual practice into everyday life, particularly but not exclusively through the Tibetan Buddhist path. A Saint in Seattle provides spiritual inspiration and a tremendous wealth of information about Tibetan Buddhism as practiced traditionally in Tibet and as transmitted to and practiced by westerners. It is also a wonderfully captivating story of a great spiritual teacher and of the dramatically changing history of Tibetan Buddhism as it migrated west in the 20th century.

Click Here to see more reviews about: A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic Dezhung Rinpoche

In 1960, the Tibetan lama Dezhung Rinpoche (1906-87) arrived in Seattle after being forced into exile from his native land by the Communist Chinese. Already a revered master of the teachings of all Tibetan Buddhist schools, he would eventually become a teacher of some of Western Buddhism's most notable scholars. This inspiring and unlikely biography of a modern Buddha is fully annotated, and includes photographs.

Get 28% OFF

Buy cheap A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic Dezhung Rinpoche now.

Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither (Routledgecurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a useful and sometimes-challenging overview of Mipham's views on Madhyamaka with some big revelations for me, particularly pertaining to his basic posture with regards to the shentong or "emptiness-of-other" doctrine.
This book tries to have it both ways in that it treats a highly specialized topic but also shoots for a broad audience, giving a lot of introductory information on Madhyamaka and its history in India and Tibet. My hunch is that the people who are drawn to this book (like me) aren't going to need the review and are going to get impatient digging through that part of it (like I did).
We need more on Mipham in English. More, more, more. He may be the greatest Tibetan exegete of the last 200 years, an inspiring scholar of staggering genius.
Hey, you! Scholar! I see you working on yet another damned translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika -- put it down! Translate some Mipham instead!

Click Here to see more reviews about: Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither (Routledgecurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism)

This is an introduction to the Buddhist philosophy of Emptinesswhichexplores a number of themes in connection with the concept of Emptiness, a highly technical but very central notion in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. It examines the critique by the leading Nyingma school philosopher Mipham (1846-1912) formulated in his diverse writings. The book focuses on related issues such as what is negated by the doctrine of emptiness, the nature of ultimate reality, and the difference between 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic' emptiness. Karma Phuntsho's book aptly undertakes a thematic and selective discussion of these debates and Mipham's qualms about the Gelukpa understanding of Emptiness in a mixture of narrative and analytic style.

Buy cheap Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither (Routledgecurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism) now.

The Excellent Path to Enlightenment: Oral Teachings on the Root Text of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It is an interesting book and being interested in philosophy/Buddhist philosophy it is a good read. I would suggest this as a book to other interested in similar genres of text, but I do find literature from the Dali Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh more reader friendly.
I guess this may be a read for the more knowledgeable - so if you have been reading such literature for some time it may be a book for you. If you get this for a good deal pick it up. If you are very keen to discover pick it up.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Excellent Path to Enlightenment: Oral Teachings on the Root Text of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo

Get 22% OFF

Buy cheap The Excellent Path to Enlightenment: Oral Teachings on the Root Text of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo now.

Maps of the Profound: Jamyang Shayba's Great Exposition of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Views on the Nature of Reality Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Maps of the Profound is a career-capping work for Professor Jeffrey Hopkins, who has worked with this text for decades. This book contains a short translation of the terse root verses of the late Ge-luk-ba doxographical work Great Exposition of Tenets by the quintessential Tibetan Buddhist scholastic author Jam-yang-shay-ba, followed by an enormous commentary unpacking the significance of each word.
The root text is one of the best known and most highly regarded specimens of the Tibetan genre of writing concerning the tenets of philosophical schools belonging to India. The endeavor of the work is to identify and refute both philosophical and innate misconceptions that cloud our perception of the true nature of all phenomena. This is done against a semi-historical background of analyzing the tenets propounded by various Buddhist and Non-Buddhist philosophical schools.
Jam-yang-shay-ba spends precious little time summarizing and discarding the tenets of non-Buddhist schools such as Samkhya and Vedanta before moving on to the so-called four schools of Indian Buddhism. Jam-yang-shay-ba presents these schools as presenting fundamental Buddhist truths on an ascending scale of precision, starting with the imprecise and misleading presentations of the "lower" Vaibashika school and winding up through the most subtle and refined understanding, found in the Prasangika-Madhyamaka school.
As I mentioned previously this work is only partially historical at best, because it does not endeavor to accurately state the positions of the schools of Indian thought (indeed, some tenet systems, such as the Svatantrika-Madhyamaka school, are wholely of Tibetan invention). The idea is instead to reconstruct different possible positions and use logical analysis with history as a sort of touchstone to identify and refute one's own misconceptions.
For this reason, this book says much more about Ge-luk-ba than the schools under analysis. We learn how the Ge-luk-bas interpret and utilize Dharmakirti, for example, in the chapter on the Sautantikas Following Reason, but many of the Ge-luk-ba interpretive positions regarding Dharmakirti are highly contraversial, such as their assertion that Dharmakirti accepted conventionally existent spatially extended objects.
This is not to say that we learn nothing about Indian Buddhism however, for the Ge-luk-ba scholarship is wide ranging, and this work in particular is encyclopedic to a degree rarely rivaled in the Buddhist canon.
The root text itself is relatively short - about thirty pages. Most of the book is a lengthy commentary pieced together by Professor Hopkins from a variety of sources, including Jam-yang-shay-ba's autocommentary, Nga-wang-bel-den's Annotations, and Dzong-ka-ba's Essence of Eloquence. Interestingly, Professor Hopkins also makes extensive use of the Sakya scholar Dak-tsang's Freedom from Extremes through Knowing All Tenets, which is highly critical of Dzong-ka-ba and frequently comes under attack in Jam-yang-shay-ba's work.
Anyone already familiar with the work of Professor Hopkins and his students will find a lot of familiar material in this translation. Nevertheless, this may be because this is the work Professor Hopkins has been working towards for many years. It is extremely valuable resource. Few will be the brave souls who read this work cover to cover, but it will serve the student of Ge-luk-ba as an vast and learned treasure-trove of interpretation and insight. It is a testimony to the astonishing breadth of persistence of Professor Hopkins' study, and his many decades of careful and meticulous study, that he was able to marshal the necessary resources to compile, edit, and ably translate this monumental work, and students of Buddhist philosophy are in his debt.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Maps of the Profound: Jamyang Shayba's Great Exposition of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Views on the Nature of Reality

In the Tibetan cultural region, schools of non-buddhist and buddhist Indian philosophy were systematized and compared in texts called presentation of tenets in order to get a handle on the plethora of philosophical systems inhereited from India.

Get 40% OFF

Buy cheap Maps of the Profound: Jamyang Shayba's Great Exposition of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Views on the Nature of Reality now.

Buddhist Philosophy: Losang Gonchok's Short Commentary to Jamyang Shayba's Root Text on Tenets Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The collaborative translation and editorial effort of Daniel Cozort (Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Dickinson College) and Craig Preston (a private teacher of Classical Tibetan and Buddhist Philosophy in Ithaca, New York), Losang Gonchok's Short Commentary To Jamyang Shayba's Root Text On Tenets is an involved study by Tibetan writer Jamyang Shayba on the key differences between the major schools of Buddhist philosophy. Seeking to set the stage for an informed and reasonable dialogue between different manners of thought, individual chapters pay especial attention to "The Clear Crystal Mirror" and Losang Gonchok's attending views of a wide variety of schools. An in-depth study and technical study, Buddhist Philosophy is highly recommended for advanced students and academic scholars of Buddhism.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Buddhist Philosophy: Losang Gonchok's Short Commentary to Jamyang Shayba's Root Text on Tenets

Skims the cream of Jamyang Shayba's intellect, providing a rare opportunity to sharpen our intellect and expand our view of Buddhist thought.

Buy cheap Buddhist Philosophy: Losang Gonchok's Short Commentary to Jamyang Shayba's Root Text on Tenets now.