Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life (Paperback)

~ Sakyong Mipham (Author)
Key Phrases: knowing selflessness, ruling our world, blessing energy, Great Eastern Sun, The Shambhala, Dawa Sangpo (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a wonderful book with teachings to read, reread, practice, and embody.” —Sharon Salzberg, bestselling author of Lovingkindness and Faith

“Sakyong Mipham offers inspirational vision—as well as practical guidelines—for enormously enriching our individual lives in a way that benefits others as well. Highly recommended for the honest and straightforward purity of the teaching and its immediate application in—and beyond—our everyday lives.”

—Ken Wilber, author of The Simple Feeling of Being --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review

“This is a wonderful book with teachings to read, reread, practice, and embody.” —Sharon Salzberg, bestselling author of Lovingkindness and Faith

“Sakyong Mipham offers inspirational vision—as well as practical guidelines—for enormously enriching our individual lives in a way that benefits others as well. Highly recommended for the honest and straightforward purity of the teaching and its immediate application in—and beyond—our everyday lives.”

—Ken Wilber, author of The Simple Feeling of Being

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767920805
• ISBN-13: 978-0767920803
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #45,368 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Selfless self-help, February 13, 2006

By	The Review Revolution (janariess.typepad.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life (Hardcover)

Mipham, the worldwide leader of Shambhala and the son of the late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa (who wouldn't love to be a fly on the wall in that house?) argues that people need to examine the me-centered spirituality of their lives:

We think, "Will this food make me happy?" "Will this movie make me happy?" "Will this person make me happy?" . . . . Occasionally when I meet with meditation students, their questions show that they are approaching even spiritual practice as a way of making themselves happy. Is my yoga, my tai chi, my meditation making "me" feel better? They are simply using a new guise to perpetuate the old habit of putting themselves first." (pp 11-12)

He offers practical suggestions on how to change this habit, beginning with the realization that change will occur slowly and that we should begin by simply aiming for a ten percent transformation: to be ten percent more compassionate, ten percent less selfish, ten percent more aware of the karmic consequences of our anger. Subsequent chapters discuss four ways to instill compassion for a lifetime: we must strive to for the discernment of the tiger, the delight of the lion, the equanimity or the garuda, and the playful wisdom of the dragon. (And in case you're wondering, a garuda is a mythical bird that hatches fully developed. Who knew?)

I found this book genuinely helpful, and that's saying something. I'm not very forgiving of pop spirituality and the self-help genre. But Mipham is wise and unafraid to call a spade a spade. He's not out to flatter his readers or tell them how to live longer or feel invincible or win friends or influence people. He's a realist, and he only wants to prepare them for the inevitable: death is coming.

Cheerful, eh? But ultimately, I only want to read books that tell it to me straight. So I leave you with this paragraph from the book, striking for its utter lack of romanticism:

Contemplating worldly gain and loss reveals that we spend part of our life trying to get it together, and the other part watching it fall apart. As soon as we have time-"I have a whole hour free"-we are losing it. As soon as we make a friend, we're losing him. As soon as we have fame, it becomes tinged with notoriety. As soon as we have wealth, we're losing it. Looking for something new to gain helps us forget to look but a few seconds back at the last thing that we lost. Fabricating this chain of desire is how we keep ourselves in samsara [the cycle of desire and suffering]. We are using instability to try to make stability. We're investing in hope and fear, banking on denial of a simple truth: all the pleasure the world can offer eventually turns to pain. Everything we gain is subject to loss. Why do we put all that effort into gain when, in the end, we are going to lose it? (p 124)

A damn good question. Because of such realism and candor, this book will probably sell about a tenth of the copies that it should. --Jana Riess

A longer version of this review was posted on December 14, 2005 to The Review Revolution (janariess.typepad.com).

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Depth and Precision, December 25, 2005

By	J.F. "Jonathan" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life (Hardcover)

If his father's books are like a Molotov Cocktail, capable of blowing your mind with extraordinary skillful language and profound insight into the specific character of the Western mind, then Mipham's books provide the in-depth and serious settling into the teachings and practices that were introduced a generation before.

Although his father's approach was effective in causing many to suddenly wake up and change course, Mipham provides the patient, applied, and deep transmission that we need to stay the course and follow the path with skill and precision. Mipham's spiritual tradition also place emphasis on applying these principals in our homes and communities, that the living wisdom be applied to society. Here his discussion of the dignities is far more powerful than a new-age "Have power over your life, Now!" story. It is the basis around which ensure that out lives enrich and support those around us.

This text is perhaps the more profound and detailed discussion of the dignities of the warriorship in the modern world that is available to a general audience. It is beautifully written, extremely personal and direct, patient and disciplined.

One of the finest texts available by a living teacher. Until recently people reviewing his work or attending a public program would refer to him as a "Young Lama" as if people this young couldn't be this wise. Some of the "Young Lama" image may fade now that he has married and turned 40, but the wisdom and percision keep getting deeper.

44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mipham is the Man, October 25, 2005

By	Sol "Sol" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life (Hardcover)

I'm not really sure what it is because when you look at this man he doesn't have a lot in common with me. In his first book, his analogies for meditation are about horseback riding and golfing, and I don't really know many people who actually do those things. In this book, he talks about living our lives like a king/queen and I don't believe in monarchy. On the surface, this book looks like it's written for a self-help crowd, and I hate books that look like that. So on the surface, this wouldn't be the book for me.

Except that his words connect with my mind. They interface and form new pathways of thinking about things. They leave me to contemplate new depths of meaning for years after the fact. And they help me be a better person. So you could say I'm a fan. It's not so much that this is a really good book to read once, although it is. It's about the way these teachings begin to sink in when you make them your own. Sakyong Mipham has done that and it's clear and inspiring to witness. If you can ever do a meditation program with him, you'd be a lucky one.