Jan-Ulrich Sobisch is on the faculty of the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He studied Tibetology, Indology, and philosophy at Hamburg University from 1985 to 1992 with David Seyfort Ruegg, Lambert Schmithausen, and David Jackson, under whom he completed his dissertation on the three-vows literature. From 1994 to 1999, he was working under Albrecht Wezler for the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project when he discovered and cataloged the complete thirty volumes of the writings of Amé Shab (1597–1659). From 2003 to 2016, he was a professor at the University of Copenhagen, during which time he published on the Hevajra Tantra and its associated Tibetan teachings in the Sakya school. For the past ten years, he has been focused on the unique Dgongs gcig tradition of the Drigung Kagyü school. In 2016 he received the prestigious Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his scholarly achievements. In 2022 he started with several colleagues in Bochum a Collaborative Research Center “Metaphors of Religion” that is projected for up to twelve years. His sub-project’s main focus will be on metaphors used in mahamudra instructions. Click here to learn more.
The definitive presentation of one of the most unique and compelling works of classical Tibetan literature that weaves the thread of mahāmudrā through the entire fabric of Buddhism.
“The teaching of the Single Intention, or Dgongs gcig, of the renowned founder of the Drigung Kagyü order, Jikten Sumgön, was among the most original and, to some, controversial Tibetan innovations in the history of Buddhist thought. A clear and authoritative presentation of it has long been needed. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, in The Buddha's Single Intention, now admirably presents the key texts in lucid translation with copious annotation and commentary. An essential contribution to Tibetan Buddhist studies and to the history of the Kagyü and Mahāmudrā traditions in particular.”—Matthew T. Kapstein, professor emeritus, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris
THE BUDDHA’S SINGLE INTENTION
Drigung Kyobpa Jikten Sumgön’s Vajra Statements of the Early Kagyü Tradition
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This book presents an influential and extraordinary teaching of the Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism known as the Single Intention by the master Drigung Kyobpa Jikten Sumgön (1143–1217), along with its chief commentaries, principally the Light of the Sun by Rikzin Chökyi Drakpa (1595–1659).
Early in the history of the Kagyü school, the teachings of Jikten Sumgön were condensed into 150 core formulations called vajra statements. These pithy, revelatory statements comprise the Single Intention (Dgongs gcig), which presents the thought of the Buddha and the nature of the ineffable (brjod du med pa) in concise and direct expression. The Single Intention weaves the thread of ineffable mahāmudrā through the entire fabric of Buddhism. It presents mahāmudrā as pervading disciplined conduct, meditative concentration, and discriminative knowledge; ground, path, and result; view, practice, and conduct; and the “three vows” of prātimokṣa, of the bodhisattvas, and of mantra. Jikten Sumgön teaches how the fundamental values and insights revealed by the Buddha are woven into reality and therefore accessible to all.
Jan-Ulrich Sobisch manages to convey the unity of the Buddha’s message both in its particulars and in its scope. His deep and authoritative skill makes this the definitive presentation of one of the most unique and compelling works of classical Tibetan literature.
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The Vajrabhairava Tantra
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A groundbreaking work on the little-studied Indian origins of an influential tantric Buddhist practice along with a fresh English translation.
The deity Vajrabhairava, or Yamantaka, is well known as the central figure of tantric practice in multiple lineages of Tibetan Buddhism and is also found in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Less is known about its foundational Indian context. The Vajrabhairava Tantra, dedicated to the buffalo-headed deity Vajrabhairava, arose around the eighth century and had a considerable impact on the formation of religious praxis in the medieval Indian Buddhist world. This book contains a translation of the Vajrabhairava Tantra from the recently discovered Sanskrit text and a comprehensive study of its elements, of its origins and Indian commentators, and of the history of its transmission to Tibet. The annotation to the translation excerpts all six Indian commentaries on the tantra found in the Tibetan canon.
One highly innovative contribution this work makes to the fields of tantric Buddhist studies and, more generally, to South Asian religions is the way it breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries between tantra and magic. It shows that the genesis of tantric traditions cannot be reduced to a one-way influence of Hindu Shaivism on Buddhism or vice versa, but indicates a widespread “culture of magic,” a common “ritual syntax,” that crossed sectarian, linguistic, and socio-cultural boundaries, one that came to be significantly diminished in later Shaiva and Buddhist tantras.
The study comprises the first half of the book, and the second half is the translation, which explains the construction of the mandala, the magical applications of the practice, the extraction of the mantra, the visualization, and the preparation of the pata painting and the homa fire ritual. A dozen color plates illustrate Vajrabhairava in his Solitary Hero and other forms along with mandalas of five different lineages, keys for which are provided in the appendix.
The only previous study of the Vajrabhairava Tantra relied solely on Tibetan and Mongolian sources. By relying on the newly discovered Sanskrit manuscript, this new translation is able to correct numerous inaccuracies. Moreover, the earlier study included only three of six canonical commentaries on the root text incorporated here, passing over the key commentaries by Akṣobhya and Kṛṣṇācārya.
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Severance
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An ancient Buddhist guide to confronting difficult circumstances and letting go of clinging to the ego.
Severance, or Cho, is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of facing one’s fears. In three remarkable texts lucidly translated and introduced by Sarah Harding, the thirteenth-century Severance master Jamyang Gönpo shares advice that goes straight to the heart of both understanding and experiencing the practice. For hundreds of years, Severance has remained essentially an instruction on coping with stressful situations that provoke fear and, beyond that, a way to actively seek out such circumstances in order to test one’s realization of perfect wisdom.
The single overall directive of the first two texts in this volume—the Heart Essence of Profound Meaning root verses and their commentary, The Big General Guide to Severance—is to seek out and directly confront difficult circumstances. Here, these difficulties are often anxieties related to spirits in the dark of night in haunted places. This practice acts as a means to recognize emptiness—the lack of intrinsic existence of all phenomena—as well as a testing ground of one’s former realizations and studies of that emptiness from the Perfection of Wisdom. The texts are notable for their lack of instruction on ritualized Severance involving body sacrifice, which later works emphasize; in these texts, the heart of Severance is letting go of clinging to the self and reification of existence. And as Jamyang Gonpo was just a generation removed from Machik Labdron, the main progenitor of Severance, his methods seem to be closest to her actual teachings.
The third translation in this volume, The Seven-Day Severance Retreat Experiential Guide, is a very concise and precise instruction on putting the main intentions of the teachings into practice in the setting of a one-week retreat. The instructions are striking in that they contain no rituals, visualizations, deities, instruments, or liturgies. Jamyang Gönpo shows us how to turn our attention to the very mind of this person who is experiencing fear and the object of that fear—whether fear about demons or sickness or suffering—to see them for what they are. In doing so, we find that joys and sorrows, highs and lows, powers of gods and demons, and demonic obstacles are all mind made.
Minding the Buddha’s Business
Colleagues and former students of Gregory Schopen honor his path-breaking contributions to Buddhist studies with these articles on the early Mahayana, the monastic codes, and Buddhism’s art-historical and epigraphical remains.
This volume honors the profoundly transformative influence of Gregory Schopen’s many contributions to Buddhist studies. Eighteen articles by former students and colleagues focus on the areas of Schopen’s most noteworthy influence: the study of the Mahayana, particularly of its early sutra literature; the study of Vinaya, especially the narratives accompanying the rules for monks and nuns; and the study of Buddhist epigraphy and art history. Contributors demonstrate the ongoing significance of Schopen’s scholarship, including his very first article, on the cult of the book in the early Mahayana, published fifty years ago.
Schopen has repeatedly shown how the study of Buddhism has too often focused on scriptures and normative doctrines and not enough on the practical ideas and contexts that significantly impacted the lives of actual Buddhists. He sought to reveal these lived concerns in the massive trove of Buddhist inscriptions, which often expose the habits and ideas of the tradition’s most prominent donors (many of whom were monastics), as well as the everyday concerns of monks and nuns, whose views did not always dovetail with canonical sources. Even in his treatment of canonical sources, Schopen has shown that the standard portrait of a Buddhist monk or nun fails to match a careful reading of their law codes—his work on the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya has required scholars to substantially reimagine the legal and ritual obligations, as well as the economic concerns, that preoccupied the minds of Buddhist jurists.
Schopen has, in essence, brought the Buddha down to earth, revealing that this is precisely where most Indian Buddhists encountered him. The contributions in this celebratory volume reflect this legacy and Schopen’s considerable impact on our understanding of Buddhists in India.
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Sakya Paṇḍita
A set of classic biographies of Sakya Paṇḍita—one of Tibet’s greatest scholars and religious masters.
Sakya Paṇḍita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182–1251) was a renowned Tibetan polymath, scholar, statesman, and religious master, and one of the most famous and consequential figures in the history of Tibet. The three classic biographies included here contain fascinating firsthand accounts of key events in Sakya Paṇḍita’s life, covering his family ancestry, early education, interactions and debates with other sects, travels to Mongolia and his diplomacy at the Mongol court, and a detailed account of the miraculous events that occurred in the last weeks of his life.
Sacred Places, Sacred Teachings
A guide to following the footsteps of the Buddha—for the pilgrim in India and at home.
The holy sites of India—Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Shravasti, and others— became holy because the Buddha blessed them by performing his enlightened activities there. When we become holy through our practice of the Buddha’s instructions, then the places we go will be made holy, too. Through meditation practice, we can realize and capture what the Buddha described as the profundity of the mind, which is completely peaceful, free from elaboration, luminous, and uncompounded.
In this wise, heartfelt, and indispensable guide, Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen takes us on a journey through the major holy sites for Buddhist pilgrimage by offering profound teachings related to each of the sacred places. In Bodh Gaya, the site of the Bodhi tree and the Buddha’s enlightenment, we learn of how the Buddha became enlightened and what it means to take refuge in him; we uncover the profundity of emptiness at the site where the Buddha expounded the Heart Sutra; at the place of the Buddha’s passing, we learn that the legacy of his vast teachings came about through his perfection of bodhicitta—a core quality we can master, too. In chapters based on these and other sacred places, we find that the wisdom the Buddha uncovered is available to us all.
The Buddha discovered total satisfaction, the ultimate achievement, and left instructions on how we, too, can achieve the same. We already have this great path; we just have to follow it. In that way, we experience the joy of following the footsteps of the Buddha.
You can read the introduction to Sacred Places, Sacred Teachings here.
Vajrayāna and the Culmination of the Path
The final volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion by His Holiness the Dalai Lama takes us to the uncommon practices and realizations of Vajrayāna and the culmination of the path to the full awakening of a buddha.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama skillfully illuminates the unique qualities and complexities of Vajrayāna, as practiced in Tibet, and clarifies the method to eradicate the subtlest obscurations preventing the full awakening of a buddha. Speaking to newcomers and advanced students alike, he explains the similarities and differences of the Sūtra and Tantra paths. Having gathered many of the doubts and difficult points concerning the tantric path, he clarifies the purpose of receiving proper empowerment by qualified gurus and the ethical restraints and commitments required to enter the path of secret mantra. The paths and stages of the four tantric classes are explained, as are the generation-stage and completion-stage practices of Highest Yoga Tantra. You are introduced to the practices of clear appearance and divine identity common to all tantric sādhanas, as well as the unique practices of illusory body and actual clear light that overcome the subtlest defilements on the mind and eliminate all obscurations quickly.
The understanding of emptiness in Sūtra and Tantra is the same, but the consciousness perceiving emptiness differs. In Highest Yoga Tantra that consciousness is great bliss, which arises from knowing the methods to manipulate the channels, winds, and drops of the subtle body. In short, in Vajrayāna and the Culmination of the Path the Dalai Lama sets out the path that leads to blissful awakening and enables us to be of great benefit to all sentient beings.
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Perfect Awakening
The Long Discourses, or Dīrghāgama, is a collection of the Buddha’s most well-known sermons that has circulated widely in the Buddhist world. Parallel collections in Pali and Chinese have long been known to scholars and practitioners, but it was not until the 1990s that a Mūlasarvāstivāda manuscript transmitted in Sanskrit was discovered, a major find with the potential to reshape our understanding of Buddhism in India and Central Asia. The present volume is the first in a three-volume series to present this rare manuscript, with a study, translation, and critical edition of two of the sūtras in the collection.
Around thirty years ago, a rare bookseller in London parceled out birchbark leaves of a manuscript bundle representing an ancient scripture that had likely been unearthed in the Gilgit region of Pakistan. Even as the fragile folios entered collections in Japan, Norway, and the United States, they were identified by a scholar as belonging to the previously lost Sanskrit Dīrghāgama, the Collection of Long Discourses of the Buddha, of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. Although the forty-seven separate sūtras in this āgama have parallel transmissions extant in the Pali Digha-nikāya and the Chinese Chang ahan jing, this Sanskrit witness, copied in the eighth century, was previously known only from partial quotations and from translations in Tibetan and Chinese. The discovery was thus one of major significance in the study of Buddhist literature.
This book, one of the first presentations of this manuscript in English, provides a translation, critical reconstruction, and study of two of the sūtras in the Dīrghāgama: the Prāsādika-sūtra and the Prasādanīya-sūtra. Both sūtras offer what appears to have been late teachings of the Buddha on the nature of faith and the preeminence of the Buddha over all other teachers. The Buddhist community was evidently concerned about the coming passing of the Buddha and, in these scriptures, laid the foundation for the tradition to continue with the Buddha at the center. The Prasādanīya-sūtra, in particular, is the locus classicus for the doctrine that only one Buddha and his teachings can exist in a world system at a time, ensuring that the Buddhist community would not be tempted to follow any other teacher who had not realized perfect awakening but would hold true to the Dharma of the Buddha.
These sūtras from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition are made available to the public for the first time in over a thousand years with philological reconstructions and translations. They are accompanied by synoptic parallels from the corresponding Pali Long Discourses of the Theravāda tradition and the Chinese Long Discourses of the Dharmaguptaka tradition along with citations and related passages from elsewhere in Buddhist literature. In addition, the work contains a full transliteration of the birchbark folios, an introduction to the two sūtras with a study providing paleographic and textual analysis of the manuscript, and notes providing insight and explanation throughout.
Buddhism and The Senses
Across Buddhist traditions, the five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—are perceived both positively and negatively. Share eminent scholars’ fascination and deep insight into what makes a sensuous experience good or bad.
Following the exhibition Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia at the National Museum of Asian art, ten eminent scholars present their insights into Buddhism’s fascinating relation with the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch), which careens between delight and disgust, rarely finding a middle way. While much of Buddhist literature is devoted to overcoming the attachment that dooms us to rebirth in samsara, primarily by deprecating sense experience and showing that whatever brings us sensual pleasure leads only to all manner of physical and mental pain, in texts such as the Lotus Sutra, sensory powers do not offer sensory pleasure but rather knowledge, clear observation, and ability to preach the Dharma. Considering such religiously and historically contingent ambiguity, this volume presents each of the five senses in two instantiations, the good and the bad, opening up the discourse on the senses across Buddhist traditions.
Just as the museum departed from tradition to incorporate sensory experiences into the exhibition, this volume is a new direction in scholarship to humanize Buddhist studies by foregrounding sensory experience and practice, inviting the reader to think about the senses in a focused manner and shifting our understanding of Buddhism from the conceptual to the material or practical, from the idealized to the human, from the abstract to the grounded, from the mind to the body.
Includes essays by Bryan J. Cuevas, Debra Diamond, D. Max Moerman, Reiko Ohnuma, James Robson, Melody Rod-ari, Kurtis R. Schaeffer, John Strong, and Lina Verchery.
A Monk’s Guide to Finding Joy
A profound and practical guide to uncovering your own wise mind and kind heart.
We all want to find happiness. But how do we go about it? In this easygoing and clear-sighted guide, celebrated Buddhist meditation and philosophy master His Eminence Khangser Rinpoche provides us with down-to-earth advice on how to train our minds and find our own innate wisdom and kindness along the way. He helps us see the profound insight that is open to us all, and how it can awaken us to the truth of the way things are. This insight into the truth, and the practices that help you cultivate this awareness, transform suffering into wisdom and compassion—and ultimately joy.
A Monk’s Guide to Finding Joy brings the ancient Tibetan mind-training tradition into our twenty-first-century lives. Through stories, real-life examples, reflections, and meditation practices—all told with warmth and humor—H.E. Khangser Rinpoche shows us how we can transform the suffering of our life into happiness. When we train the mind from within the context of our difficult emotions, we can find true joy, just as the oyster transforms sand into a pearl.
Ocean of Attainments
This commentary on Guhyasamāja tantra is the seminal guide to deity yoga and tantric visualization for the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Guhyasamāja Tantra, called the king of all tantras, is revered in Tibet, especially by the Geluk school. Ocean of Attainments, a commentary on Guhyasamāja practice, was composed by Khedrup Jé Gelek Palsang (1385–1438), a key disciple of the Geluk school founder, Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa. It explores the creation stage, a quintessential Buddhist tantric meditation that together with the completion stage comprises the path of unexcelled tantra.
In the creation stage, meditators visualize themselves as buddhas at the center of the celestial maṇḍala, surrounded in all directions by male and female buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other enlightened beings. Yet creation-stage practice is not merely visualization but deity yoga—indivisibly uniting the meditation on emptiness with the visualization of the maṇḍala. The creation stage uses the conceptualization in visualization to overcome conceptualization, thereby creating a nonconceptual and nonerroneous direct perception. Such a mind, profound and vast, can bring about a transformation that stops saṃsāric suffering. How can visions generated as mental constructs not be erroneous? To the awakened eye, the buddhas and other beings who dwell in the maṇḍala are “reality,” and in a sense they are more than real.
While the previously published Essence of the Ocean of Attainments is a concise exposition on the practice of the Guhyasamaja sadhana, Ocean of Attainments is far more detailed, providing extensive scriptural citations, clear explanation of the body maṇḍala, arguments on points of contention, reference to other tantric systems, and critiques of misinterpretations. With its extensive and clear introduction, this volume is a vital contribution to the growing body of scholarship on Guhyasamāja and on Buddhist tantra in general.
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Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs
“Completely abandon thought and no-thought, and abide in the natural way of a small child.” —Saraha
To find liberation and realize the true nature of reality, the Indian Buddhist master Saraha says we must leave behind any conceptual assessment of reality, since no model of it has ever been known to withstand critical analysis. Saraha’s spontaneous songs, or dohās, represent the Buddhist art of expressing the inexpressible. The most important collection of Saraha’s songs is the Dohākoṣa, the Treasury of Spontaneous Songs, better known in Tibet as the Songs for the People, and the Tibetan mahāmudrā tradition, especially within the Kagyü school, has done the most to preserve the lineage of Saraha’s instructions to the present day.
But Saraha was also widely cited in Indian sources starting around the eleventh century, and one Indic commentary, by the Newar scholar Advayavajra, still exists in Sanskrit. In addition, we have independent root texts of Saraha’s songs in the vernacular Apabhraṃśa in which they were recorded. These Indian texts, together with their Tibetan translations, are here presented in masterful new critical editions, along with the Tibetan translation of the commentary no longer extant in Sanskrit by Mokṣākaragupta. Finally, both commentaries are rendered in elegant English, and the authors offer a brisk but comprehensive introduction.
Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs provides the reader with everything needed for a serious study of one of the most important works in the Indian Buddhist canon.
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The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stages of the Path, Volume 2
Central to Buddhism is knowing our own minds. Until we do, we are driven by unconscious, often destructive desire and aversion. We couldn’t have a better guide for inner transformation than the Dalai Lama.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stages of the Path, Volume 2: An Annotated Commentary on the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Words of Mañjuśrī is the second volume of the Dalai Lama’s outline of Buddhist theory and practice. Having introduced Buddhist ideas in the context of modern society in volume 1, the Dalai Lama turns here to a traditional presentation of the complete path to enlightenment, from developing faith in the Dharma to attaining the highest wisdom. This book, compiled by the revered Tibetan lama Dagyab Rinpoché, comments on the Fifth Dalai Lama’s stages of the path titled Oral Transmission of Mañjuśrī. The volume will appeal to all readers interested in the Dalai Lama’s works, both those new to Buddhism and those looking to deepen their understanding of the Tibetan presentation of the Buddhist path.
Click here to read about His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s achievements.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stages of the Path: Volume 1: Guidance for Modern Practitioners is available here.
Reality and Wisdom
Written in a warm and accessible style by one of today’s most respected Tibetan Buddhist masters, Reality and Wisdom leads the reader on a journey of discovery beginning with the very first teachings of the Buddha and into the profound experience of emptiness.
The first section of the book explores the bedrock Buddhist teachings of the four noble truths—insights into freedom from suffering from craving—which underpin all schools of Buddhism. Lama Migmar presents and explores these foundational Buddhist truths with humor and insight, explaining how, from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, these truths serve as crucial supports for cultivating the transformative wisdom of emptiness.
In the book’s second half, Lama Migmar illuminates the terse and enigmatic lines of the Heart Sutra, perhaps the most studied and revered of all Mahayana Buddhist scriptures. The Heart Sutra presents the reader with a vision of reality as it is perceived by a buddha, a vision underpinned by and infused with the radical flexibility and possibility of emptiness and the engagement and responsiveness of profound compassion.
The clarity, warmth, and vibrancy of Lama Migmar’s writing combined with the comprehensiveness and detail of his presentations of key Buddhist teachings make this book a valuable resource for a range of readers, from beginners to more advanced practitioners seeking to deepen their practice.
Appearing and Empty
In Appearing and Empty the Dalai Lama skillfully reveals the Prāsaṅgikas’ view of the ultimate nature of reality so that we will gain the correct view of emptiness, the selflessness of both persons and phenomena, and have the means to eliminate our own and others’ duḥkha.
In this last of three volumes on emptiness, the Dalai Lama takes us through the Sautrāntika, Yogācāra, and Svātantrika views on the ultimate nature of reality and the Prāsaṅgikas’ thorough responses to these, so that we gain the correct view of emptiness—the selflessness of both persons and phenomena. This view entails negating inherent existence while also being able to establish conventional existence: emptiness does not mean nothingness. We then learn how to meditate on the correct view by cultivating pristine wisdom that is the union of serenity and insight as taught in the Pāli, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions. Such meditation, when combined with the altruistic intention of bodhicitta, leads to the complete eradication of all defilements that obscure our minds. This volume also introduces us to the tathāgatagarbha—the buddha essence—and how it is understood in both Tibet and China. Is it permanent? Does everyone have it? In addition, the discussion of sudden and gradual awakening in Zen (Chan) Buddhism and in Tibetan Buddhism is fascinating.
Learn more about the Library of Wisdom and Compassion series.
Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Vol. 4
This fourth and final Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics volume provides, through extensive passages, a window into the works of the great thinkers from the flowering of philosophy in classical India.
This is the second philosophy volume in the Science and Philosophy series. Whereas the first philosophy volume presented the views of the non-Buddhist and Buddhist schools in sequence, the present works selects specific topics for consideration, including the nature of the two truths, the analysis of self, the Yogacara explanation of reality, emptiness in the Madhyamaka tradition, a survey of logic and epistemology, and the Buddhist explanation of language and meaning. Like earlier volumes, it provides, through extensive extracts, a window into the works of the masters of the Nalanda tradition. The final section on language is particularly unique and largely crafted by Thupten Jinpa.
Explore the entire series here.
The Power of Mantra
Energize your practice with the potent energy of mantra.
In this book, beloved teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche guides us through the most popular mantras in Tibetan Buddhism: Shakyamuni Buddha, Chenrezig, Manjushri, Tara, Medicine Buddha, Vajrasattva, and more.
A mantra—literally “that which protects the mind”—is a series of Sanskrit syllables that evoke the energy of a particular buddha or bodhisattva. It works as a sacred sound that brings blessings to ourself and others, and as a tool to transform our mind into one that is more compassionate and wise.
In clear and succinct teachings, Lama Zopa shows us why we need different mantras and how each mantra works. He also explains their importance and power, giving specific instructions for practicing them. The exquisite, full-color illustrations of the deities that accompany the text make this book a beautiful guide, one suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners.
The Wisdom Culture Series, published under the guidance of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, provides English-language readers with key works for the study and cultivation of the Mahayana Buddhist path, especially works of masters within the lineage of Lama Tsongkhapa and the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.
Bodhichitta
An accessible, inspiring book on one of the most important topics in Tibetan Buddhism, written by one of its renowned masters who has an international following of thousands.
Bodhichitta is a Sanskrit word meaning “the mind of enlightenment” or “the awakening mind”—the mind that wishes to achieve enlightenment in order to lead all other beings into that same state. It is the attitude of the bodhisattva, of the person who makes the compassionate vow to save others from suffering. In this book, the renowned teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows us how to achieve it.
First, Lama Zopa gives a clear and comprehensive explanation of bodhichitta, its benefits, and its importance to the path. Then, he walks us through the two main methods for achieving bodhichitta: the seven points of cause and effect, and equalizing and exchanging self and others. Finally, the book closes with meditation instructions to guide and strengthen our practice.
Readers will find Bodhichitta to be a comprehensive guide to this core Buddhist principle, one rich in both accessible philosophical explanation and concrete advice for practitioners.
How to Face Death without Fear
“Helping our loved ones at the time of death is the best service we can offer them, our greatest gift. Why? Because death is the most important time of life: it’s at death that the next rebirth is determined.”—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
For years Lama Zopa Rinpoche envisioned a practical book to inform students of how to help loved ones have a beneficial death. How to Face Death without Fear has been compiled from years of Rinpoche’s teachings and has been lovingly edited by Venerable Robina Courtin.
Rinpoche provides detailed advice on how to help your loved ones prepare for the end of their life with courage, acceptance, and a mind free of fear. With great care, he explains what to do in the months, weeks, and days before death, how to handle the moment itself, what to do after the breath has stopped, and finally, what to do after the mind has left the body. Rinpoche provides the mantras, prayers, and meditations appropriate for each stage. This new edition of Rinpoche’s modern classic How to Enjoy Death makes it easy for the reader to find the right practice at the right time.
This handbook is an essential reference for Tibetan Buddhist caregivers, hospice workers, and chaplains. But, as Rinpoche points out, it is not only for people who work with the dying; it is education we all need.
You’ll find solace in this wealth of advice, and you’ll also gain the confidence to ensure that your loved one’s death—and your own—will be joyful and meaningful.