Guru Rinpoche

Description

To Tibetan Buddhists, Guru Rinpoche is a Buddha. This book recounts Guru Rinpoche’s historic visit to Tibet and explains his continuing significance to Buddhists. In doing so, it illustrates how a country whose powerful armies overran the capital of China and installed a puppet emperor came to abandon its aggressive military campaigns: this transformation was due to Guru Rinpoche, who tamed and converted Tibet to Buddhism and thereby changed the course of Asian history.

Four very different Tibetan accounts of his story are presented: one by Jamgon Kongtrul; one according to the pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion Bön, by Jamyang Kyentse Wongpo; one based on Indian and early Tibetan historical documents, by Taranata; and one by Dorje Tso. In addition, there are supplications by Guru Rinpoche and visualizations to accompany them by Jamgon Kongtrul.

Guru Rinpoche is part of The Tsadra Foundation series published by Snow Lion Publications. The Tsadra Foundation takes its inspiration from the nineteenth-century nonsectarian Tibetan scholar and meditation master Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, and is named after his hermitage in eastern Tibet, Tsadra Rinchen Drak. The Foundation’s programs reflect his values of excellence in both scholarship and contemplative practice, and a recognition of their mutual complementarity.”The presence of Guru Rinpoche, a figure so important to Tibetan Buddhists he is called simply ‘The Precious Master,’ can be felt still in each of these liberating stories translated here. Read side-by-side, they reveal an even wider picture, deftly highlighted by Ngawang Zangpo’s introduction of how history and culture interact with the inner spirituality that is beyond time and place.”—Sarah Harding, author of Creation and Completion

“With a thought-provoking introduction and stimulating cultural, religious, and literary insights, . . . this new work will certainly be enjoyed by everyone interested in the vast spiritual legacy of the ‘Second Buddha’ in Tibet.”—Cyrus StearnsNgawang Zangpo (Hugh Leslie Thompson) completed two three-year retreats under the direction of the late Kalu Rinpoche. He is presently working on a number of translation projects under the direction of Chadral Rinpoche and Lama Tharchin Rinpoche. He has also contributed to Kalu Rinpoche’s translation group’s books Myriad Worlds and Buddhist Ethics.US

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