KARMA AND HAPPINESS: A Tibetan Odyssey in Ethics, Spirituality and Healing by Miriam Cameron
Western culture and healthcare often view ethics, spirituality, and healing as separate entities. But in Tibetan Buddhism, the three are inextricably linked: ethical behavior leads to spiritual growth, and our spiritual strength can heal us from the emotional and physical wounds we incur in life.
In this book, a nurse ethicist uses the story of her journey to Tibet as a framework for showing how we can apply this karmic principle in our daily lives. Her book provides a model for integrating diverse wisdom traditions into our personal spirituality---allowing us to find meaning in life, to live ethically, and to transform life's challenges into healing experiences.
12 STEPS ON BUDDHA'S PATH: Bill, Buddha, and We, A Spiritual Journey of Recovery by Sylvia Boorstein (Foreword), Laura S. (Author)
12 Steps on the Buddha's Path is the extraordinary spiritual journey of a woman once trapped in the downward spiral of alcoholism. Misdiagnosed, Laura Keene was put in a mental hospital and given more than 40 electroshock treatments. Left incapable by the treatments of even speaking a coherent sentence, Keene was released against medical advice and ended up in the back row of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where she embraced the 12 Step program and gradually recovered. Yet the black hole inside her remained, until, on a trek in the Himalayas, Keene discovered Buddhism and began a new path on the road to recovery. With humor and grace, this brilliant author shows that the experience, strength, and hope of Alcoholics Anonymous meld seamlessly with Buddha’s teachings of wisdom and compassion.
MIDDLE BEYOND EXTREMES: Maitreya's Madhyantavibhanga with Commentaries by Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham
Middle Beyond Extremes contains a translation of the Buddhist masterpiece Distinguishing the Middle from Extremes. This famed text, often referred to by its Sanskrit title, Madhyantavibhaga, is part of a collection known as the Five Maitreya Teachings. Maitreya, the Buddha's regent, is held to have entrusted these profound and vast instructions to the master Asanga in the heavenly realm of Tushita.
Unraveling the subtle processes that condition our thinking and experience, Maitreya's teaching reveals a powerful path of compassionate vision and spiritual transformation. This classic of Indian Buddhism is here presented alongside commentaries by two outstanding masters of Tibet's non-sectarian Rimé movement, Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham.
Nagarjuna is renowned for his penetrating analysis of reality. In the Precious Garland, he offers intimate counsel on how to conduct one's life and how to construct social policies that reflect Buddhist ideals. The advice for personal happiness is concerned first with improving one's condition over the course of lifetimes and then with release from all kinds of suffering, culminating in Buddhahood. Nagarjuna describes the cause and effect sequences for the development of happiness within ordinary life as well as the practices of wisdom realizing emptiness and compassion that lead to enlightenment. He describes a Buddha's qualities and offers encouraging advice on the effectiveness of practices that reveal the vast attributes of Buddhahood.
In his advice on social and governmental policy, Nagarjuna emphasizes education, compassionate care for all living beings, not using the death penalty but reforming criminals, and charity for the homeless. Calling for the appointment of government figures who are not seeking profit or fame, he advises that a selfish motivation will lead to misfortune.
The book includes a detailed analysis of attachment to sensual objects as a preparation for realization of the profound truth that, when realized, makes attachment impossible.
"War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals", declares Pema Chodron at the opening of her inspiring and accessible new book. In Practicing Peace in Times of War she draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that, remarkably, the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can mean the difference between perpetuating a culture of violence or creating a new culture of compassion.
With war and violence flaring all over the world, from Iraq to Darfur to London, most of us are left feeling utterly helpless. In this book Pema Chodron insists that our world will begin to change when each of us, one by one, begins to work for peace at the level of our own behavior, our own habits of thought and action. It's never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living.
Practicing Peace in Times of War is a short, pithy, and profound book that includes practical strategies for cultivating the seeds of peace and compassion amid life's upsets and challenges.
PRACTICING PEACE IN TIMES OF WAR (Audio CD) by Pema Chodron
"War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals", declares Pema Chodron at the opening of her inspiring and accessible new book. In Practicing Peace in Times of War she draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that, remarkably, the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can mean the difference between perpetuating a culture of violence or creating a new culture of compassion.
With war and violence flaring all over the world, from Iraq to Darfur to London, most of us are left feeling utterly helpless. In this book Pema Chodron insists that our world will begin to change when each of us, one by one, begins to work for peace at the level of our own behavior, our own habits of thought and action. It's never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living.
Practicing Peace in Times of War is a short, pithy, and profound book that includes practical strategies for cultivating the seeds of peace and compassion amid life's upsets and challenges.
ESSENCE OF OTHER EMPTINESS by Taranatha, trans. & annotated by Jeffrey Hopkins
Jeffrey Hopkins continues his groundbreaking exploration of the Jonangpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism with this revelatory translation of one of the seminal texts from that tradition. Whereas Dolpopa's massive Mountain Doctrine authenticates the doctrine of other-emptiness through extensive scriptural citations and elaborate philosophical arguments, Taranatha's more concise work translated here situates the doctrine of other-emptiness within the context of schools of tenets, primarily the famed four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, through comparing the various schools' opinion on the status of the noumenon and phenomena. Also included is a supplementary text by Taranatha which presents the opinions of a prominent fifteenth-century Sakya scholar, Shakya Chokden, and contrasts them with those of the leading Jonangpa scholar, Dolpopa.
THE TREASURY OF KNOWLEDGE, Book Six (Part Three): Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, trans. by Elizabeth Callahan
One of the only non-Gelug presentations of the tenet systems, Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy is Kongtrul's masterful survey of broad themes and subtle philosophical points found in more than fifteen hundred years of Buddhist philosophical writings. In a clear and systematic manner, he sets out the traditional framework of Buddhism's three schools and four philosophical systems and provides an overview of the key points of each philosophical system. His approach is also syncretic in that it emphasizes the strengths of each philosophical system and incorporates them into a broad picture of philosophical endeavor. Both of these approaches are valuable for practitioners as an introduction and for scholars as a reference work.
Jamgön Kongtrul's Treasury of Knowledge in ten volumes is a unique encyclopedic masterpiece embodying the entire range of Buddhist teachings as they were presented in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhist teachers expected their students to study Buddhist philosophical texts as well as practicing reflection and meditation; present-day students have also realized that awakening has its source in study as well as in reflection and practice.
CONTEMPLATING REALITY: A Practitioner's Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism by Andy Karr, foreword by Dzogchen Ponlop
This book is for intermediate and advanced Buddhist practitioners who wish to deepen their understanding by joining practice with study of traditional ideas. It introduces the reader to contemplations that investigate a series of views of reality as they evolved in the Buddhist tradition. These views are explained in plain English, with contemporary metaphors and examples to bring out their meaning for modern Buddhists. Quotations from both historical and living meditation masters and scholars are presented as examples of key principles. Topics include
Egolessness
Appearances and reality
Methods of investigation
Enlightenment
Tenets of different schools through the centuries
The root of compassion
The origin of thoughts
Guided exercises encourage the reader to trust in experiential understanding through deep contemplation of complex concepts. The book is structured as a guide for the reader's journey.
A DIRECT PATH TO THE BUDDHA WITHIN: Go Lotsawa's Mahamudra Interpretation of the Ratnagotravibhaga by Klaus-Dieter Mathes
A thoughtful exploration of a renowned Buddhist master's teachings on the key concept of Buddha-nature. The major Indian treatise on Buddha nature is the Ratnagotravibhaga, also known as the Uttaratantra, and it is this core text that Klaus-Dieter Mathes focuses on in this book.
Mathes demonstrates how its author, Go Lotsawa, ties the teachings on Buddha nature in with mainstream Mahayana thought while avoiding the pitfalls of the zhentong approach favored by the Jonang tradition. He also evaluates Go Lotsawa's position on Buddha nature against the background of interpretations by masters of the Kagyu Mahamudra, Nyingma Dzogchen, and Jonang schools.
Top of page 
Go Back One Page