Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment

Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment
Wallace, founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, explores key Buddhist meditation-related concepts that aid the "conquest of our inner obscurations" and "present a path to inner fulfillment and human flourishing." He first examines several particular methods—such as "mindfulness of breathing"—for cultivating shamatha, a state of "meditative quiescence" in which people's capacity for attention is refined and stabilized. They can then use these techniques to make a direct, delusion-free investigation of their own bodies, feelings and thoughts. These insights, in turn, help them nurture hearts of compassion and equanimity and, ultimately, realize more advanced teachings such as cultivating bodhichitta (a "spirit of awakening"), dream yoga and a highly developed meditation technique known as dzogchen. Wallace's discussions are usually clear and helpful (on why meditation works: "sustained, continuous effort can actually reconfigure your brain"), and his questions invite readers to see for themselves if his assertions resonate. Moreover, each chapter contains guided meditations to help readers encounter the teachings more directly. Nevertheless, the text can become dense and self-referential, and if readers miss a particular point early on, the effectiveness of later sections may be lessened. The result is a solid—if advanced—examination of some key Buddhist meditation techniques that will appeal to the serious student more than the casual seeker.

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The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life

The Wisdom of Imperfection: The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life
If you have been practicing Buddhism for a while, why do you still have problems? And how do you balance the (apparently) sometimes different needs of spiritual and psychological perspectives? This wonderful book fills a hitherto unmet need among Buddhists.
Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Rob Preece draws on his eighteen years as a psychotherapist and many years as a meditation teacher to explore and map the psychological influences on our struggle to awaken. Acceptance of imperfection, for both psychological and spiritual health, is key.

Love and compassion grow out of an understanding of our fallibility, not from ideals of perfection, and wisdom does not always come as a flash of inspiration, but from the slow—often painful—working of experience. The Wisdom of Imperfection explores the journey of individuation in Buddhist life, looking at the psychological process beneath the traditional path of the Bodhisattva.

Rob Preece has been a practicing Buddhist since 1973, principally within the Tibetan tradition. He has spent many years in intensive retreat in the Himalayas under the guidance of eminent Tibetan lamas. He has been working as a psychotherapist since 1987 and gives workshops on comparative Jungian and Buddhist psychology. He is an experienced meditation teacher and Thangka painter.

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Tantric Techniques

Tantric Techniques
Tantric deity yoga is the contemplative practice of visualizing oneself as a buddha, replete with compassion and wisdom, acting altruistically to benefit all sentient beings. This book offers a complete system of Tibetan Buddhist tantric meditation that details the process of transforming oneself through the step-by-step use of the imagination. Hopkins offers a contemporary Western perspective on the practice of deity yoga, based on his study and practice of these techniques.

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How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator

How to Free Your Mind: Tara the Liberator
The beloved deity Tara is the feminine embodiment of enlightenment. For centuries, practitioners have turned to her for protection from both external and internal dangers, from fire to arrogance. This well-written book, presented in conversational style, is an authoritative guide to the practice of Tara. Includes very helpful chapters on the whys and hows of various Tara practices as well as a commentary on the "Homage to the 21 Taras."

"Venerable Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron was a student of my guru, Lama Thubten Yeshe, and has been a fully ordained nun for many years. For thirty years her mind and life have been fully immersed in the Dharma, like a diamond, indestructible; essenceless worldly things cannot affect her mind. She is a dynamic teacher who has taught extensively all over the world, inspiring many people, awakening them like the shining sun and leading them to the path, bringing them the happiness of not only many future lives but also the everlasting ultimate happinesses of liberation and full enlightenment.

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Mind Training

Mind Training
This small, accessible book contains the essence of the Seven-Point Mind Training, expressed in the intimate, colloquial style that distinguishes Ringu Tulku's teachings. The Seven-Point Mind Training, a lojong practice, assumes no prior special training or preparation. It does not require practitioners to enter seclusion or change the way they live their lives. It asks that they examine their relationships with all those around them, and to make a strong determination to become enlightened for others' sake rather than for their own. It gives instructions for tonglen, breathing practice that ties the concepts of lojong to the physical act of breathing. Mind Training focuses simply on giving up self-cherishing and transforming self-centered thinking into compassion, egoistic feelings into altruism, desire into acceptance, and resentment into joy.

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A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting with Others

A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting with Others
The Dalai Lama often says, "Kindness is society." By learning to live from a more compassionate viewpoint, Jeffrey Hopkins writes, we can create a better life not only for ourselves but for everyone. In A Truthful Heart, Hopkins uses Buddhist meditations (including the Dalai Lama's favorite), visualizations, and entertaining recollections from his own life to guide us in developing an awareness of the capacity for love inside us and learning to project that love into the world around us.

Delivering a potent message with the power to change our relationships and improve the quality of our lives, A Truthful Heart is the ideal book for an age in which our dealings with each other seem increasingly impersonal--and even violent and aggressive.

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Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the Seventeenth Karamapa

Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the Seventeenth Karamapa
s the second millennium drew to a close, the Seventeenth Karmapa leapt from the roof at his monastery in Tibet. Evading his Chinese guards, the 14-year-old spiritual leader began a grueling, dangerous journey to India. The Karmapa's picture has appeared all over the world since then, yet his own words are hard to find. Now, for the first time in print, Music in the Sky offers a series of the Karmapa's profound teachings, an extensive selection of his poetry, and a detailed and gripping account of his life and flight from his homeland. Readers will be captivated by this wonderfully accessible and profound book.

Music in the Sky concludes with brief biographies of all 16 previous Karmapas, specially composed for this collection by the highly respected Seventh Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Here, the reader will discover the compelling histories of the first Tibetan masters to be recognized as reincarnate lamas. Music in the Sky presents a definitive portrait of the Seventeenth Karmapa, strengthened and illuminated by an authoritative depiction of his place in one of the world's most revered lines of spiritual teachers.

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Opening to Our Primordial Nature

Opening to Our Primordial Nature
This book provides clear and deep explanations of how to uncover our inherent wisdom and compassion. The authors explain how our minds function and what our primordial nature is; they show us how to go about cultivating insight, bodhichitta, and devotion so that our true nature can manifest. They give detailed instructions on how to meditate using the tantric techniques of visualization, mantra, and formless meditation. At the same time, the book is simple and accessible, pointing out how we can see our fundamentally enlightened nature. This is a great introduction to Tibetan Buddhism by highly respected teachers from the Nyingmapa Vajrayana tradition.


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The Dalai Lamas on Tantra

The Dalai Lamas on Tantra
This is a unique collection of authentic teachings by the Dalai Lamas on Tantric Buddhism and tantric practice. The clarity and power of their tantric writings is unparalleled. Glenn H. Mullin is an internationally renowned Tibetologist, author, and expert on Buddhist meditation. Glenn lived in Dharamsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama, for many years, where he studied Tibetan language, literature, yoga, and meditation under twenty-five of the greatest masters of Tibet. He is the author of over fifteen books on Buddhist topics and has led many pilgrimages to Nepal and Tibet in the last five years. He now divides his time between writing, lecturing, giving workshops, and leading pilgrimages to the power places of Central Asia.

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The Moon of Wisdom

The Moon of Wisdom: Chapter Six of Chandeakirti's Entering the Middle Way with Commentary from the Eight Karmapa Mikyo Dorje's Kagyu Siddhas
Nagarjuna, in his seminal text The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, summarized the vast teachings of the Buddha and used logical reasoning to prove the validity of his words. Entering the Middle Way is Chandrakirti's explanation of Nagarjuna's work. Its sixth chapter, which comprises the majority of the text, has four main sections: an explanation of how, in genuine reality, phenomena do not truly arise; a refutation of the Mind-Only School's assertion that mind truly exists; a refutation of the true existence of the personal self; and an explanation of the sixteen emptinesses taught by the Buddha in the Transcendent Wisdom Sutras.

The Moon of Wisdom is thus a book that explains the Buddha's ultimate teachings, how to gain confidence in them, and how to put them into practice in one's own life, to the great benefit of oneself and others.

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