"This text offers a new translation of the ancient Buddhist text designed to facilitate the inner liberation of the dead or dying person at the moment of death"--Provided by publisher.

About Padmasambhava: Historical Narratives and Later Transformations of Guru Rinpoche, edited by Geoffrey Samuel and Jamyang Oliphant. Garuda Verlag, 2020. 299 pp. Pb CHF 39,80. ISBN-13: 9783906139364.

Mahamudra and Atiyoga are particular forms of Buddhist spirituality: Mahamudra, the `Great Seal', is considered by Tibetan teachers to be the essence of both the short path and the final instructions that conclude the gradual common and esoteric paths of Buddhist doctrines; Atiyoga or `Extreme Union' represents the Buddhist Dzogchen or `Great Completeness' doctrine. This volume comprises the translations, commentaries on and transliterations of some ancient Tibetan texts, authored by Buddhist mystics and Tantric teachers of Mahamudra and Atiyoga. The first (...) two texts are ascribed to Tilopa (928-1009). They are 'Advice on the Great Seal' (Phyag rgya chen po'i man ngag) and "The Treasury of Hymns" (Do ha mdzod). The third text is entitled 'The Introduction to Awareness - Natural Liberation through Seeing Nakedly' (Rig pa ngo sprod gcer mthong rang grol). Its author is Padmasambhava, the legendary Buddhist guru hailing from an ancient Indian kingdom known as Uddiyana. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul 2008; Ponlop 2006; Wangyal 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link (...) between both phenomena (Thompson 2014, 2015; Windt 2015a; Windt et al. 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul, 2008; Ponlop, 2006; Wangyal, 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link (...) between both phenomena (Thompson, 2014, 2015; Windt, 2015a; Windt et al., 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

Akhenaten -- Hermes Trismegistus -- Orpheus -- Zoroaster -- Buddha -- Confucius -- Lao-Tse -- Plato -- Jesus -- Mohammed -- Padmasambhava -- Quetzalcoatl.

Disc 1. Life's great questions: Asian perspectives ; The Vedas and Upanishads: the beginning -- Disc 2. Mahavira and Jainism: extreme nonviolence ; The Buddha: the middle way -- Disc 3. The Bhagavad Gita: the way of action ; Confucius: in praise of sage-kings -- Disc 4. Laozi and Daoism: the way of nature ; The Hundred Schools of preimperial China -- Disc 5. Mencius and Xunzi: Confucius's successors ; Sunzi and Han Feizi: strategy and legalism -- Disc 6. Zarathustra (...) and Mani: dualistic religion ; Kautilya and Ashoka: Buddhism and empire -- Disc 7. Ishvarakrishna and Patanjali: Yoga ; Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu: Buddhist theories -- Disc 8. Sima Qian and Ban Zhao: history and women ; Dong Zhongshu and Ge Hong: eclecticism -- Disc 9. Xuanzang and Chinese Buddhism ; Prince Shotoku, Lady Murasaki, Sei Shonagon -- Disc 10. Saicho to Nichiren: Japanese Buddhism ; Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva: Hindu Vedanta -- Disc 11. Al-Biruni: Islam in India ; Nanak and Sirhindi: Sikhism and Sufism -- Disc 12. Han Yu to Zhu Xi: Neo-Confucianism ; Wang Yangming: The study of heart-mind -- Disc 13. Dogen and Hakuin: Zen Buddhism ; Zeami and Sen no Rikyu: Japanese aesthetics -- Disc 14. Wonhyo to King Sejong: Korean philosophy ; Padmasambhava to Tsongkhapa: Tibetan ideas -- Disc 15. Science and technology in premodern Asia ; Muhammad Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore -- Disc 16. Mohandas Gandhi: Satyagraha, or soul-force ; Fukuzawa Yukichi and Han Yongun -- Disc 17. Kang Youwei and Hu Shi ; Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong -- Disc 18. Modern legacies ; East and West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the SelfBrian KarafinMeeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. By Anne Carolyn Klein. Boston: Beacon, 1995. 307 pp.“When the iron bird flies and carriages run on wheels, the dharma will come to the land of the red man”: this saying attributed to the semilegendary founder of Buddhism in Tibet, Padmasambhava, stands (...) as an oft-cited marker for the sense that the meeting between Tibetan Buddhism and North American culture was somehow a [End Page 227] fated one, a confluence emergent from some karmic relationship or mythical dependent-arising. Karmic connection or historical product of the near-simultaneous exile of Tibetans from their homeland in 1959 and the burgeoning of Western interest in Eastern religions and philosophies, the encounter of these two mutually and exotically other traditions is, nearing the second Christian millennium, proceeding apace. Especially since the 1989 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetans—and now international pop icon—the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the Western fascination for things Tibetan has exponentially increased, transforming what had been the preserve of scholars and eccentric spiritual seekers into a media sensation.The reception of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has proceeded in stages and phases that overlap and mutually affect each other, from pop phantasms of Tibet as a mythical Shangri-La (as in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon) and theosophical hopes in Tibet as the domain of the Wise Mahatmas overseeing the spiritual evolution of humanity to the relatively recent development of Tibetan studies as an academic discipline centered on the translation of texts, as well as the growing population of westerners practicing Tibetan Buddhist religion under the guidance of exiled lamas. With these latter two groups—scholars and practitioners who often overlap memberships—the phenomenon of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has reached a point where critical self-reflection is now possible. Donald Lopez’ recent Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West is the first full-length critical examination of the cultural confluence I’ve been noticing thus far. Lopez represents a movement in the field of Tibetan studies from philological scholarship of texts, in which the scholarly effort consists largely of translation along with commentary that closely follows the commentarial literature of the Tibetan tradition being translated, to cultural criticism of the underlying dynamics in the encounter itself.This critical self-consciousness in the field of Tibetan studies is likewise the motivating impetus behind Anne Klein’s recent work as represented by the book under review here. Klein, like Lopez, was a student of the dean of American Tibetan studies, Jeffrey Hopkins, at the University of Virginia. As such, her early work followed Hopkins in pursuing an essentially philological approach to Tibetan tradition with a focus on the philosophical scholasticism of the Gelukpa lineage. Klein’s three philological-philosophical books—Knowledge and Liberation; Knowing, Naming, and Negation; and Path to the Middle—are excellent examples of the genre of translation/commentary above mentioned, treating the Sautrantika and Madhyamika tenet systems in which the Gelukpa tradition systematized Indian Buddhist philosophy for the purposes of monastic study and debate. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen is something else entirely; in this work Klein blazes a trail out from recondite translation work toward cultural critique and psychosocial self-reflection in which the previously submerged subtext of the encounter between the Tibetan tradition and the Western psyche and society is allowed to surface and its issues probed and reflected upon.Klein frames her work in terms of a dialogue between Buddhism (by which she mainly means meditation practices and some associated philosophy) and feminism (by which she means both academic feminist theory and her own autobiographical [End Page 228] experience as a Western woman personally experiencing the confluence of Western and Tibetan exigencies). Klein is a salient example of a scholar-practitioner, someone who occupies positions both in the academic field of Tibetan studies and in the population of students of Tibetan lamas in exile. As such, she is exactly situated to embark on such a project of cultural and psychological reflection. She knows... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Holy Trinity in Ippolito Desideri's Ke ri se ste aṇ kyi chos lugs kyi snying poTrent PomplunOn April 10, 1716, Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit who had but recently arrived in Tibet, wrote a long letter to another Jesuit missionary, Ildebrando Grassi, who was stationed in Mysuru, India. Desideri recounted his adventures since the two men had last been together, three and a half years earlier, at the Jesuit (...) residence in Goa. He told of his travels to Surat, Delhi, Lahore, Leh, and Lhasa, and recalled his first impressions of Tibetan religion and culture. Tibetans, he told Grassi, were gentle and docile, but coarse and uncultivated. In Desideri's opinion, they had neither arts nor sciences, but they did reject the doctrine of transmigration and appeared to have some knowledge of the Christian faith.1 "Here is what I learned about the Tibetans' religion," he wrote,They call God könchok (dkon mchog), and they appear to have some notion of the adorable Trinity, for at times they call Him könchok chik (dkon mchog gcig), that is, the One God, and at other times they call Him könchok sum (dkon mchog gsum), that is, the Triune God. They also use a kind of chaplet, over which they repeat the words Oṁ ah hūṁ, and they say that the word Oṁ signifies knowledge or an arm, that is, power; ah is the word, and hūṁ is the heart, or love, and that these three words mean God. They also worship a being named Padmasaṃbhava, who was born some seven hundred years ago. When asked if he were God or man, some people replied that he was both God and man, having neither father nor mother, but having been born from a flower. Even so, they have statues representing a woman with a flower in her hand, whom they call Padmasaṃbhava's mother, and they venerate several others whom they treat as saints. In their churches, one finds an altar covered with cloth and ornaments, and a sort of tabernacle sits in the middle of the altar, where they say Padmasaṃbhava dwells, though they also assert that he is in heaven.2This letter, which survives only in a French translation, is noteworthy if only because Ippolito Desideri would later repudiate almost everything he affirmed in it. In a matter of months, the Jesuit missionary would change his mind about Tibetans' capacities for art, for science, and for culture. He would also change his mind considerably about their religion. [End Page 117]Perhaps the most significant change—and one that would later play a large role in his legal battle with the Capuchins for control of the Tibetan mission—concerned the knowledge that Tibetans had of the Holy Trinity, the central Christian mystery that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In what follows, I would like to explore Ippolito Desideri's explanation of the Holy Trinity, especially in the Ke ri se ste aṇ kyi chos lugs kyi snying po (The Essence of Christian Doctrine). I will briefly situate Desideri's account of Tibetans' knowledge of the Trinity in the general historical and theological context of the early modern missions, outline his various attempts to explain this central Christian mystery in Tibetan, and offer some tentative speculations on the Jesuit's motives for choosing certain Tibetan terms. I hope this discussion of Desideri's treatment of the Holy Trinity might contribute to Christian theologians and Buddhist philosophers who are engaged in interreligious dialogue and assist them in their reflections about how best to translate their respective faiths in such dialogue. Desideri's translations are not always perspicacious—as we shall see—but they are instructive, especially to the extent that they show us the issues that must be considered when anyone wishes to translate the basic terms of his own religion into an alien language. With this difficulty in mind, we might also consider the inadequacy of all language, human or angelic, when confronted with the mystery of God's infinite transcendence.Ippolito Desideri in ContextBefore addressing Desideri's translations, I would like to point out that the description of Tibetan religion... (shrink)

The Tibetan Plateau’s Permafrost is melting at an alarming rate. Six of the world’s major rivers are sourced in the Tibetan Himalayas that are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the earth. If the temperature of the region continues to increase, the rivers will dry up and the earth will warm at an even faster rate. Buddha Yeshe Tsogyal, long considered the Mother of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, was the consort of Padmasambhava. She reached “complete liberation” or (...) Nirvana in a single lifetime. Her stories are preserved in rman thar. Her life was an exemplary practice of compassion, responsible care, and non-violence toward all sentient beings and the world. Can we follow her proto-eco-feminist example? Can we build responsible care for our planet and humanity across disciplines and faith traditions? What does compassionate, non-violent Buddhist thought and Roman Catholic pastoral care bring to eco-feminism? Can an eco-feminist epistemology informed by Buddhist EcoDharma construct programs of sustainability into humanity’s excessive habits integrating science’s ability to quantify, with Buddha nature? Can Catholicism’s pastoral ability to show dependence on God, the peaceful, compassionate Creator of all allow us to see our dependence on God and our earth? Many women have already begun this work around the globe. In 2002, Rosemary Radford Ruether brought 16 women together from around the globe in Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion to tell us how they are doing it and succeeding. Each is highlighted here for their visions on how to heal the planet at the grassroots level. From their insights, this article explores their contributions as being still relevant today and adding new concerns about the dangers arising on the Tibetan Plateau. The article emphasizes their ideas, provides a warning and other ideas that collective activation might inspire to address climate change. (shrink)

Short inspirational selections from the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism, past and present--now part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. Here is a portable collection of inspiring readings from the revered masters of Tibetan Buddhism.The Wisdom of Tibetan Buddhismincludes quotations from major lineage figures from the past such as Padmasambhava, Atisha, Sakya Pandita, Marpa, Milarepa, and Tsongkhapa. Also featured are the writings of masters from contemporary times including the Dalai Lama, Dudjom Rinpoche, Khyentse Rinpoche, Sakya Tridzin, Chogyam Trungpa, and (...) others. Topics include cultivating compassion, letting go of ego, learning to become more alert and present in our lives, and developing a clear perception of our own true nature. This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts.The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman.The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compactformat that is collectible, reader-friendly, andapplicable to everyday life. (shrink)