Customer Reviews

Guru Rinpoche: His Life and Times (Tsadra Foundation Series)

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This is a wonderful collection of quite diverse biographies of the the great teacher Padmasambhava. The traditional "namthar" of such figures are often overwhelmed with dubious"larger than life" episodes and epithets. That type of biography is represented in this collection, but it also includes several that are more "down to earth" that provide a cultural and historical context for his amazing story. A description of Tibet as an early "rogue state" is eye opening as is a good objective recounting of Buddhism's early rising and falling fortunes in that land of snows.

"Guru Rinpoche: His Life and Times" is an academic style book about the legacy of Padmasambhava, A.K.A. Guru Rinpoche. I love this book and find it quite helpful. The author, Zangpo, says there hasn't been much written in English about Guru Rinpoche, and as far as I can tell that is true. Padmasambhava was a tantric master who brought Buddhism from India to Tibet during the 8th century. He is considered by many in Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan to be a fully enlightened buddha.

The first three chapters are devoted to history and concepts of history. Zangpo makes a distinction between scholarly, academic history, and history as it has been conceived of for centuries in Buddhist tradition and in Tibetan tradition. This distinction prepares the reader for the differences between the written accounts of Guru Rinpoche's life and the oddities of his legend. Some historical information about Tibet before Buddhism is given, and I was surprised by what I read. For example Zangpo says that a Tibetan army captured and briefly held the capitol city of China during the 8th century. The next two chapters concern Guru Rinpoche in modern Buddhism.

Then four different biographies of the Guru are given, including an Indian biography and a Bon biography. I was pleased to find this diversity of information about the legend of the Guru. These are followed by chapters detailing tantric-style rituals, called supplications, supposedly designed by Guru Rinpoche. These supplications do not require any equipment or elaborate ritual, they are prayers with accompanying visualizations.

Appendix 2 discusses Buddhist poetry and the difficulties in translating poetry. The name Padmasambhava means "lotus-born" and he is often referred to as "lotus-born master." Appendix 3 tells the story of a female lotus-born master before Padmasambhava. I know of two other lotus-born masters from Indian tradition. The stories of these four lotus-born masters all share common elements but are far from identical, so they constitute an ancient tradition.

All the stories about Guru Rinpoche read more like mythology than what most modern people think of as history. If this appeals to you then you will probably like this book. Most certainly Guru Rinpoche is important to the history of religion in Tibet and is important in modern Tibetan religion, so even a hard-nosed student of history might find something useful in this book. Also if you are interested in tantric Buddhism you will probably like this book.


Brandon Stocks