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The Middle-Way Meditation Instructions of Mipham Rinpoche

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This book can clarify a lot of questions for anyone who has started meditating but doesn't really see the whole framework of the Buddhist middle-way path. It lays out the causal path so clearly that when you're done reading it you have a feeling that you know exactly what you are doing, and better still, exactly what all Mahayana practitioners have been doing for the last 1,000 years. You also can see how it relates to Vajrayana practice, which at first glance seems so different.

Thrangu Rinpoche starts out with some background history so that the practice can be seen in its context in the practice of Tibetan Buddhism, but this is only the first very short chapter. From there on out it gets extremely practical. He lays out the three causal conditions which are compassion, bodhicitta, and prajna and explains clearly why they are the foundation of practice. Each of his further instructions relates precisely to each of these conditions. He explains that compassion and bodhicitta are important because they are the motivation for practice and gives instructions on how to develop them. He clarifies the difference between aspiration bodhicitta (which turns into the deep wish to practice) and actual bodhicitta (which arises out of practice as a seed of the actual power to liberate beings from samsara). And finally, he gives instructions for sending and taking practice (tonglen)and explains how it works and what it does.

If compassion and bodhicitta provide the motivation to enter the path, The last chapters on prajna give detailed instructions on the means to enter the path, that is how to gain an understanding of the emptiness of self and phenomena, without which none of our actions can be taken with intelligence. So these are meditation instructions and they are the clearest I have run into anywhere, including an explanation of the "Nine Stages of Placing the Mind" which never made sense to me before I read this. He explains the difference between cutting a thought and non-interference with thoughts and when and how you do it. He itemizes the obstacles to practice and gives each remedy. He gives a chapter on insignt meditation in middle way practice, and clarifies how the middle way practice fits into the Vajrayana.

It's all here, the whole path -- clear, concise, and in only 106 pages. The editor has provided useful charts, a glossary and some notes. Some of the charts I thought were a bit misleading and I found myself trying to redo them, but otherwise this is a wonderful book and I would recommend it with no reservations for anyone seriously wanting to meditate and understand what they are doing.

Between spiritual practice and living in the world, between the buddhist view of existence and one's personal experience, between aspirations and one's desire to change basic conditions in one's life, there is a tension. Too tense and it is stress or distraction or ambition. Less tense and it is procrastination, discouragement, fantasy or unconsciousness.

Thranghu Rinpoche uses the works of the 19th century Tibetan scholar Mipham to map a psychic terrain where, between these states, one enters the Middle-Way. The Middle-Way is actually a vast rich plain, almost another world, where one finds a map and direction - the Instructions - to a realm that gradually unfolds its own meaning to the meditator who uses awareness as a compass.

Rinpoche begins the Instructions with the basic vajrayana views of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan buddhism in a deceptively straightforward manner that builds in the reader a disposition for meditation itself. This sense of application of the views in itself demonstrates the preparation stages that naturally lead one to want to meditate. The book does what the presence of a good teacher would do. And Rinpoche is that. He will probably be chosen by the Dalai Lama to be the teacher for the 17th Karmapa, the titular and spiritual head of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four major schools of Tibetan buddhism.

For this task of creating a Middle-Way in a person to begin their meditation, the book is suitably brief, 120 pages, including an introduction, overview and glossary. Beginning with the Chapter "Nine Stages of Placing the Mind" and reaching "The Right Tension" in the next 50 pages, readers may indeed feel that they have already had a pleasant and meaningful meditation. They will have had a distinct experience of their own and have met with the transparent guidance of a gifted and prominent spiritual teacher.

The book invites one back to its wellspring again and again.