Customer Reviews

The Words of My Perfect Teacher/Kunzang Lama'I Shelung (Sacred Literature)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent introduction - for someone with a basic knowledge of Buddhism - to the preliminary meditative (and other) practices of one of the four major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Some of the translation terminology is not "standard" English-to-Tibetan translation (as if there were a standard), and the translation of the title is unfortunate, but the book is very readable and captures the vernacular flavor of Patrul Rinpoche's original Tibetan text. I am currently using it in an undergraduate class on Tibetan Buddhism to convey the complex nature of the Tibetan Buddhist worldview - a worldview at the same time pragmatic and visionary. The translation (by a team, the Padmakara Translation Group) captures that mixture of faith, logic, and shamanic vision better than many others on the same subject.

The reader may also wish to look at Tantric Practice in Nyingma, by Khetsun Sangpo (Snow Lion Publications, 1982, ISBN 0-937938-14-9) which is a translation of a Tibetan scholar/yogi's distillation of same Tibetan meditation text. In fact Khetsun Sangpo's book could serve as an introduction, in some ways, to the longer work under review here.

Readers who enjoy the down to earth nature and the traditional style of this introduction to Tibetan Buddhist practice may wish to pursue the subject from a different viewpoint - but with the same mixture of philosophy, stories, and homilies - in a translation of another work (the Lam rim rnam grol lag bcangs), Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, writen by Pabongka Rinpoche and translated into English by Michael Richards (Wisdom Publications, 1991, ISBN 0 86171 031 2).

The Reviewer
Joe Wilson is Associate Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is the author of Translating Buddhism from Tibetan, and has spent over twenty-five years studying and teaching Tibetan Buddhism and translating Buddhist texts. Currently treasurer of the International Association of Buddhist Studies and maintainer of the WWW Virtual Library's "Major Web Sites in Buddhist Studies," he welcomes information about web sites (or meta-pages) dealing with Buddhist Studies.

This was the first comprehensive book on Buddhism that I read and it had a profound impact on my life. I thoroughly recommend it to anybody starting out on the Mahayana Buddhist path or evaluating it. This book covers all the essentials. While most of the thoughts are from a Nyingma point of view, I really don' think it really matters even if you are more of a Gelug, Sakya or Kagyu...

The book is written in a very down to earth manner and considering that the subject it tackles is mostly esoteric it does a brilliant job. There are numerous day-to-day examples and illustrations from the lives of Buddhist saints which are used to drive home the points. If you're going to buy only one book on Buddhism, make this the one...

This is the best book I have ever read on Tibetan Buddhism. Very basic, yet written thourghly, this is the masterpiece of classic buddhism. Anyone who is interested in Tibetan Buddhism should read this. A master who wrote this book is the classic example of how true meditator should live. There is tremendous benefit people can get from just reading this book. It will change your thought about life, you will learn to appreciate what you have,and above all, put you in direct practise, which is the highest in the Tibetan Buddhism.