<p>About This Book This book distills thousands of years of profound wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, conveyed in simple words that are easy for anyone to comprehend. My main goal is to present teachings that not only heal our pain and confusion about death and dying but also help us realize the enlightened goal of ultimate peace and joy, not only for this life, but also for death and beyond. The Buddha taught various ways for us to prepare ourselves for the unknown situations of death and make the best of them. Numerous enlightened masters of truth have written treatises on this very subject. Tibentan Buddhism has produced some of the most elaborately detailed teachings in the field of death and afterdeath - the famous 'Bardo Thodrol' (popularly know in English as 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead') being only one of them. In fact, all Buddhist teachings are about reognizing and improving the situation of life, death, and the next life. My sources for this book thus include a great variety of texts,* as well as the direct teachings I received form my spiritual masters and my firsthadn experiences in dealing with the deaths of great spiritual masters, close friends, and strangers. *The texts on which I drew are cited in abbreviated form in the notes at the back of the book; the "References" section provides the key ot these abbreviations and the full facts of publications about thses sources.</p>
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<p>Creator's Description: The Commentary on Enlightened Attitude (Bodhicittavivaraṇa), which is attributed to the tantric Nāgārjuna (fl. 200 CE), takes the ultimate enlightened attitude (bodhicitta) as a direct realization of emptiness, and follows a positive approach to the ultimate, like the sūtras of and commentaries on the third wheel of the doctrine (dharmacakra). Taking this as Nāgārjuna’s final position, the Commentary on Enlightened Attitude gains an important status for those who see in the third wheel of the doctrine teachings of definitive meaning. The present paper shows that ’Gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal (1392-1481) and his disciple the Fourth Zhwa dmar pa Chos grags ye shes (1453-1524) follow this approach, but take positive descriptions of the ultimate in the third wheel of the doctrine as the result of a direct experience of emptiness beyond the duality of perceiving subject and perceived object. Standing in the Great Seal (Mahāmudrā) tradition of the Dwags po bka’ brgyud, an ultimate existence of mind, such that self-awareness or the perfect nature exists as an entity, is not accepted by them.</p>
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- Practices Specific to Tibetan Buddhism,
- Tibetan Buddhism,
- Buddhist Contemplation by Tradition,
- Contemplation by Tradition,
- Six Yogas (jordruk) of Kalachakra,
- Six Dharmas of Naropa,
- Practices of Buddhist Contemplation,
- Generation phase (utpattikrama, kyerim),
- Cutting (chö),
- Great Seal (Mahamudra, Chakchen),
- Great Perfection (Dzokchen),
- Perfection phase (nispannakrama, dzokrim),
- Deity yoga (devata-yoga, lhé nenjor),
- Buddhist Contemplation
<p>This book first presents the final exposition of special insight by Tsong-kha-pa, the founder of the Ge-luk-pa order of Tibetan Buddhism, in his 'Medium-Length Exposition of the Stages of the Path', as well as the sections on the object of negation and ont he two truths in his 'Illumination of the Thought: Extensive Explanation of (Chandrakirti's) "Supplement to (Nagarjuna's) 'Treatise on the Middle.'"' It then details the views of his predecessor Dol-på-pa Shay-rap Gyel-tsen, the seminal author of philosophical treatises of the Jo-nang-pa order, as found in his 'Mountain Doctrine', followed by an analysis of Tsong-kha-pa's reactions. By contrasting the two systems - Dol-på-pa's doctrine of other-emptiness and Tsong-kha-pa's doctrine of self-emptiness - both views emerge more clearly, contributing to a fuller picture of reality as viewed in Tibetan Buddhism.</p>
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<p>Creator's Description: Tibetan Buddhist lists and collections of Indian Great Seal (Phyag rgya chen po, Mahāmudrā) texts consist almost exclusively of works found in the Translation of Treatises (Bstan ’gyur). There are, however, two Translation of the Word (Bka’ ’gyur) texts that appear in a collection of Ten Dharmas of Mahāmudrā (Phyag rgya chen po’i chos bcu) transmitted by the eleventh-century Indian teacher Vajrapāṇi: the Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra Called “The Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away” (’Phags pa ’da’ ka ye shes shes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, Ārya-ātajñāna-nāma-mahāyāna-sūtra) and the Royal Tantra on the Glorious Unpolluted (Rgyud kyi rgyal po dpal rnyog pa med pa zhes bya ba, Śrī-anāvila-tantra-rāja). In exploring these two texts, rarely discussed by either Tibetan or Western scholarship, this article provides a translation and discussion of the Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away (Ātajñāna, ’Da’ ka ye shes) and a synopsis and discussion of the Unpolluted (Anāvila, Rnyog pa med pa). It concludes that although neither text is an obvious choice for a Great Seal canon, each contains terminology and themes that are consonant with the Great Seal discourse of later Indian, as well as Tibetan, Buddhism, each appears to have been sufficiently prominent to come to the attention of Vajrapāṇi, and each can serve to provide the necessary authority of the word of the Buddha (Buddhavacana; Sangs rgyas kyi bka’) to lists of Indian Great Seal texts utilized by Tibetans.</p>
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Aziz explores, mainly through fieldwork, Pha dam pa Sangs rgyas’ lasting effect on the area, including on gcod practice. (BJN)
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<p>Bernbaum argues that gcod ritual is unique in the way it uses demons and evil spirits as a means in the pursuit of liberation. (BJN)</p>
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<p>Yantra Yoga, the Buddhist parallel to the Hathayoga of the Hindu tradition, is a system of practice entailing bodily movements, breathing exercises and visualizations. Originally transmitted by the mahasiddhas of India and Oddiyana, its practice is nowadays found in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism in relation to the Anuttaratantras, more generally known under the Tibentan term 'trulkhor', whose Sanskrit equivalent is 'yantra'. The Union of the Sun and Moon Yantra ('Phrul 'khor nyi zla kha sbyor), orally transmitted in Tibet in the eighth century by the great master Padmasambhava to the Tibetan translator and Dzogchen master Vairochana, can be considered the most ancient of all the systems of Yantra and its peculiarity is that it contains also numerous positions which are also found in the classic Yoga tradition. Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, one of the great living masters of Dzogchen and Tantra, started transmitting this profound Yoga in the seventies, and at that time wrote this commentary which is based on the oral explanations of some Tibetan yogins and siddhas of the twentieth century. All Western practitioners will benefits from the extraordinary instructions contained in this volume.</p>
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