Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism

Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism PDF Author: Angela Sumegi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791478262
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism explores the fertile interaction of Buddhism, shamanism, and Tibetan culture with the subject of dreaming. In Tibetan Buddhist literature, there are numerous examples of statements that express the value of dreams as a vehicle of authentic spiritual knowledge and, at the same time, dismiss dreams as the ultra-illusions of an illusory world. Examining the "third place" from the perspective of shamanism and Buddhism, Angela Sumegi provides a fresh look at the contradictory attitudes toward dreams in Tibetan culture. Sumegi questions the longstanding interpretation that views this dichotomy as a difference between popular and elite religion, and theorizes that a better explanation of the ambiguous position of dreams can be gained through attention to the spiritual dynamics at play between Buddhism and an indigenous shamanic presence. By exploring the themes of conflict and resolution that coalesce in the Tibetan experience, and examining dreams as a site of dialogue between shamanism and Buddhism, this book provides an alternate model for understanding dreams in Tibetan Buddhism.

Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism

Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism PDF Author: Angela Sumegi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791478262
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism explores the fertile interaction of Buddhism, shamanism, and Tibetan culture with the subject of dreaming. In Tibetan Buddhist literature, there are numerous examples of statements that express the value of dreams as a vehicle of authentic spiritual knowledge and, at the same time, dismiss dreams as the ultra-illusions of an illusory world. Examining the "third place" from the perspective of shamanism and Buddhism, Angela Sumegi provides a fresh look at the contradictory attitudes toward dreams in Tibetan culture. Sumegi questions the longstanding interpretation that views this dichotomy as a difference between popular and elite religion, and theorizes that a better explanation of the ambiguous position of dreams can be gained through attention to the spiritual dynamics at play between Buddhism and an indigenous shamanic presence. By exploring the themes of conflict and resolution that coalesce in the Tibetan experience, and examining dreams as a site of dialogue between shamanism and Buddhism, this book provides an alternate model for understanding dreams in Tibetan Buddhism.

Living Treasure

Living Treasure PDF Author: Andrew Quintman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614298009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 547

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Book Description
Senior scholars and former students celebrate the life and work of Janet Gyatso, professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School. Inspired by her contributions to life writing, Tibetan medicine, gender studies, and more, these offerings make a rich feast for readers interested in Tibetan and Buddhist studies. Janet Gyatso has made substantial, influential, and incredibly valuable contributions to the fields of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. Her paradigm-shifting approach is to take a topic, an idea, a text, a term—often one that had long been taken for granted or overlooked—and turn it inside out, to radically reimagine the kinds of questions that might be asked and what the answers might reveal. The twenty-nine essays in this volume, authored by colleagues and former students—many of whom are now also colleagues—represent the breadth of her interests and influence and the care that she has taken in training the current generation of scholars of Tibet and Buddhism. They are organized into five sections: Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Biography and Autobiography; the Nyingma Imaginaire; Literature, Art, and Poetry; and Early Modernity: Human and Nonhuman Worlds. Contributions include José Cabezón on the incorporation of a Buddhist rock carving in Central Asian culture; Matthew Kapstein on the memoirs of an ambivalent reincarnated lama; Willa Baker on Jikmé Lingpa’s theory of absence; Andrew Quintman on a found poem expressing worldly sadness on the forced closure of a monastery; and Padma ’tsho on Tibetan women’s advocacy for full female ordination. These and the many other chapters, each fascinating reads in their own right, together offer a glowing tribute to a scholar who indelibly changed the way we think about Buddhism, its history, and its literature.

Luminous Mind

Luminous Mind PDF Author: Kalu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861717015
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Luminous Mind is a remarkable compilation of the oral and written teachings of the late Kalu Rinpoche - who was called "a beacon of inspiration" by the Dalai Lama. A master of meditation and leader of the Shangpu Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, Kalu Rinpoche taught with an inviting, playful and lucid style that was just one natural manifestation of his own profound realization. The teachings presented in Luminous Mind are immediate and timeless. As the Dalai Lama notes in his foreword, Luminous Mind covers "the full range of Buddhist practice from the basic analysis of the nature of the mind up to its ultimate refinement in the teachings of Mahamudra." This anthology of Kalu Rinpoche's writings and oral teachings resonates with his wisdom and compassion. Comparing Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche with Milarepa, the greatest mediation master Tibet has ever known, His Holiness the Dalai Lama extols the author of Luminous Mind as a "beacon of inspiration" for spiritual practitioners of all traditions. Noting that "there have been few like him before or since," His Holiness urges us to delve into this remarkable anthology of the late Kalu Rinpoche's essential instructions so that we may encounter "the full range of Buddhist practice from the basic analysis of the nature of the mind up to its ultimate refinement in the teachings of Mahamudra." Drawn from both his lucid writings and his eloquent oral presentations, this unprecedented book lays bare the full grandeur of Kalu Rinpoche's legacy. At the same time, the gentle words and playful stories of this master of meditation are filled with a depth of clarity and warmth that could only arise from a profound realization of both wisdom and compassion.

Field of Blessings

Field of Blessings PDF Author: Ji Hyang Padma
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1785356453
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Ji Hyang Padma believes that we are hungry for a direct experience of the sacred in this culture. We try to fill the void with technology, and its 'quick fix' of images and information. This leaves us hungry for true connectivity. We don’t need more information. We need more appreciation. Gratitude opens the heart, and gives our life meaning; it becomes a form of spiritual experience that gives us strength. Field of Blessings explores how meaning-making can be approached by deep examination of the stories of our lives, which bridge the gap between the inner world and the outer world, giving shape to our experience. How can these narratives be spoken, written, or embodied? Ritual is the story brought-to-life, and a powerful vehicle for spiritual transformation, for reconnecting people with an embodied wholeness. Ji Hyang Padma shows that Chod, Medicine Buddha practices, and other Tibetan rituals are used by healers to evoke sacred energies, radical empathy, and to contact deep archetypal realms of the psyche.

Milarepa

Milarepa PDF Author: Chögyam Trungpa
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611802091
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A renowned meditation master retells the stories and realization songs of Tibet's best-known and most-beloved religious figure—and reveals how they relate to our everyday lives He went from being the worst kind of malevolent sorcerer to a devoted and ascetic Buddhist practitioner to a completely enlightened being all in a single lifetime . . . The story of Milarepa (1040–1123) is a tale of such extreme and powerful transformation that it might be thought not to have much direct application to our own less dramatic lives—but Chögyam Trungpa shows otherwise. This collection of his teachings on the life and songs of the great Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint reveals how Milarepa’s difficulties can be a source of guidance and inspiration for anyone. His struggles, his awakening, and the teachings from his remarkable songs provide precious wisdom for all us practitioners and show what devoted and diligent practice can achieve.

Buddhist Symbols in Tibetan Culture

Buddhist Symbols in Tibetan Culture PDF Author: Loden Sherap Dagyab
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861718100
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
In this fascinating study, Dagyab Rinpoche not only explains the nine best-known groups of Tibetan Buddhist symbols but also shows how they serve as bridges between our inner and outer worlds. As such, they can be used to point the way to ultimate reality and to transmit a reservoir of deep knowledge formed over thousands of years.

Love Letters from Golok

Love Letters from Golok PDF Author: Holly Gayley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542755
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Love Letters from Golok chronicles the courtship between two Buddhist tantric masters, Tāre Lhamo (1938–2002) and Namtrul Rinpoche (1944–2011), and their passion for reinvigorating Buddhism in eastern Tibet during the post-Mao era. In fifty-six letters exchanged from 1978 to 1980, Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche envisioned a shared destiny to "heal the damage" done to Buddhism during the years leading up to and including the Cultural Revolution. Holly Gayley retrieves the personal and prophetic dimensions of their courtship and its consummation in a twenty-year religious career that informs issues of gender and agency in Buddhism, cultural preservation among Tibetan communities, and alternative histories for minorities in China. The correspondence between Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche is the first collection of "love letters" to come to light in Tibetan literature. Blending tantric imagery with poetic and folk song styles, their letters have a fresh vernacular tone comparable to the love songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama, but with an eastern Tibetan flavor. Gayley reads these letters against hagiographic writings about the couple, supplemented by field research, to illuminate representational strategies that serve to narrate cultural trauma in a redemptive key, quite unlike Chinese scar literature or the testimonials of exile Tibetans. With special attention to Tare Lhamo's role as a tantric heroine and her hagiographic fusion with Namtrul Rinpoche, Gayley vividly shows how Buddhist masters have adapted Tibetan literary genres to share private intimacies and address contemporary social concerns.

Apparitions of the Self

Apparitions of the Self PDF Author: Janet Gyatso
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691221421
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Apparitions of the Self is a groundbreaking investigation into what is known in Tibet as "secret autobiography," an exceptional, rarely studied literary genre that presents a personal exploration of intimate religious experiences. In this volume, Janet Gyatso translates and studies the outstanding pair of secret autobiographies by the famed Tibetan Buddhist visionary, Jigme Lingpa (1730-1798), whose poetic and self-conscious writings are as much about the nature of his own identity, memory, and the undecidabilities of autobiographical truth as they are narrations of the actual content of his experiences. Their translation in this book marks the first time that works of this sort have been translated in a Western language. Gyatso is among the first to consider Tibetan literature from a comparative perspective, examining the surprising fit--as well as the misfit--of Western literary theory with Tibetan autobiography. She examines the intriguing questions of why Tibetan Buddhists produced so many autobiographies (far more than other Asian Buddhists) and how autobiographical self-assertion is possible even while Buddhists believe that the self is ultimately an illusion. Also explored are Jigme Lingpa's historical milieu, his revelatory visions of the ancient Tibetan dynasty, and his meditative practices of personal cultivation. The book concludes with a study of the subversive female figure of the "Dakini" in Jigme Lingpa's writings, and the implications of her gender, her sexuality, and her unsettling discourse for the autobiographical subject in Tibet.

Pastures of Change

Pastures of Change PDF Author: Gillian G. Tan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319765531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book offers a novel examination of socio-environmental change in a nomadic pastoralist area of the eastern Tibetan plateau. Drawing on long-term fieldwork that underscores an ethnography of local nomadic pastoralists, international development organisations, and Chinese government policies, the book argues that careful analysis and comparison of the different epistemologies and norms about "change" are vital to any critical appraisal of developments - often contested - on the grasslands of Eastern Tibet. Tibetan nomads have developed a way of life that is dependent in multiple ways on their animals and shaped by the phenomenological experience of mobility. These pastoralists have adapted to many changes in their social, political and environmental contexts over time. From the earliest historically recorded systems of segmentary lineage to the incorporation first into local fiefdoms and then into the Chinese state (of both Nationalist and Communist governments), Tibetan pastoralists have maintained their way of life, complemented by interactions with "the outside world". Rapid changes brought about by an intensification of interactions with the outside world call into question the sustained viability of a nomadic way of life, particularly as pastoralists themselves sell their herds and settle into towns. This book probes how we can more clearly understand these changes by looking specifically at one particular area of high-altitude grasslands in the Tibetan Plateau.

A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism

A Beginner's Guide to Tibetan Buddhism PDF Author: Bruce Newman
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1559395036
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Uncover the nature of the mind with this ground-level, practice-oriented presentation of Tibetan Buddhism. A personal and accessible guide to establishing progress on the path. The book begins with the awakening of students' interest in spirituality and the initial encounter with Tibetan Buddhism, then leads us through all the steps necessary for successful practice in the West. Included is succinct counsel on finding an appropriate teacher, receiving empowerments, becoming active in a center, and launching and sustaining a Vajrayana practice. Special emphasis is placed on the potential pitfalls, and the marvelous benefits, of the guru-disciple relationship.