Customer Reviews

Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention

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If you are a beginning meditator, this book will be very difficult to digest. It is a scholarly examination of Tsongkhapa's exploration of quiescence, an advanced approach to refining attentive powers. It is well written and very well sourced and represents a wealth of information for the advanced meditator, but you have to be willing to study this book. It took me almost 6 weeks to read, but it was worth the effort.

Yes, the reviewer calling this "a misleading title" is right. It was originally published under the title, The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation, by Open Court Publishing Company in 1998. But the rave review blurbs on the back cover are right; it is a first-rate treatise on the science of meditation. It includes a careful translation of the meditative quiescence section of one of the last works written by one of the greatest meditation masters of all time, Tsongkhapa. This has been used successfully in Tibet for nearly six centuries by countless skilled meditators who leave us Westerners behind in the dust. That is a major reason why it seems so difficult to us. We are, by comparison, rank beginners in meditation. No wonder we prefer simpler presentations. But this one sets out in detail what can be and has been achieved in meditation, showing us where we need to go, and how to get there. Can we realistically expect it to be easy?

Had this book been called something like "A Scholarly Analysis of Tsongkhapa's 'Small Exposition of the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment,' With Accompanying Discourse on Diverging Streams of Quiescence (Whether Complementary or Mutually Exclusive) in the Eastern and Western Traditions", it might merit 4 or 5 stars, for it is certainly a first-class academic (if pedantic) treatment of that topic. Of course, one can see the problems that the publisher of such a title would have selling more than 2 or 3 copies, unless it could be marketed as a college textbook. And so someone with questionable scruples (I doubt it was the author) decided to title the book to make it look like a practical guide to "Balancing the Mind" within the framework of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The blurbs on the back jacket describe the book as "[a] spectacular cross-cultural presentation of techniques for achieving meditative states", and "[t]he most important book on Buddhist meditation to appear in over a decade." These claims are ludicrous; the book has little if no pragmatic value for persons seeking to achieve balance and quiescence in their own lives. It may have some value as an historical account of Tsongkhapa's life and thought; it may serve some purpose in elucidating the Buddhist view of life as an ephemeral dream (although "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" got there first); but unless I'm gravely mistaken, it will help precious few readers to actualize its misleading, borderline fraudulent, title. For a better treatment of this subject, I'd recommend "Happiness" by Matthieu Ricard, "Ultimate Healing" by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, each of which presents a much fuller treatment of the spectrum of Tibetan Buddhist practices and beliefs, or even "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat-Zinn, which approaches the subjects of mental balance and quiescence from a contemporary Western perspective. Let me make it clear that I do not wish to disparage B. Alan Wallace or spread malice or ill-will about the man or his work by submitting this review; I do, however, want to protect would-be purchasers of this book from spending their money without knowing exactly what they're getting for it.