Books
Magic of Vajrayana
The Magic of Vajrayana opens new doors and immerses you in one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most vibrant traditions of mystical practice.
Written in simple clear English, the book bridges the gap between classical instruction and idealized descriptions of spiritual insights and understandings. It shows you how to bring a traditional practice text to life for each of Vajrayana’s three pillars.
This intimate portrait of Vajrayana practice is in effect an empowerment. It plants seeds in the reader which, if nurtured, grow into spiritual insight, non-referential compassion, and a changed relationship with life.
A Trackless Path
The 18th century Tibetan mystic Jigmé Lingpa wrote many poems about the practice of Dzogchen, one of the great wisdom traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. One such poem is Revelations of Ever-present Good from Lingpa’s Great Vastness Heart Drop Cycle.
In A Trackless Path Ken McLeod presents a fluid contemporary translation of this poem, accompanied by a deeply moving and insightful commentary. The combination makes Lingpa’s mystical poem relevant and accessible to today’s seeker.
Reflections on Silver River
In this masterful translation and commentary on Tokmé Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, Ken McLeod shines the light of wisdom on the challenges of contemporary life and illuminates a path the modern reader can take to freedom, peace and understanding.
The book is divided into three parts. The first is an introduction to the text and to Tokmé Zongpo. The second is McLeod’s translation of Tokmé Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. The third section is the main part of the book, a traditional verse-by-verse commentary. At 184 pages, Reflections on Silver River is a highly accessible introduction to Tibetan Buddhist practice as well as a valuable resource for the experienced practitioner, regardless of his or her tradition of training.
An Arrow to the Heart
The Heart Sutra is the most widely known and widely recited scripture in Mahayana Buddhism. This exciting, trail-blazing, non-traditional commentary takes the reader right into the emptiness of all experience through a delightfully irreverent combination of wit, irony, prose and poetry. In the words of Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs, “Written in a voice that is neither pious nor academic, hectoring nor detached, An Arrow to the Heart is a fine example of the new wave in contemporary Buddhist writing. In its quietly relentless way, this pithy and unorthodox commentary to the Heart Sutra leaves you with nowhere to stand but right here.”
Wake Up To Your Life
The key to becoming fully alive and joyful is to develop our natural capacity for attention and to be fully present here and now. In this informative guidebook to practical Buddhism you discover:
- How to live life with equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy
- How to cut through obsessions with the external world, relationships, harmful emotions, pleasure and power, and self
- Tried-and-true methods for cultivating active attention with your body and mind.
The Great Path of Awakening
Here is a practical Buddhist guidebook that offers techniques for developing a truly compassionate heart in the midst of everyday life. For centuries, Tibetans have used fifty-nine pithy slogans—such as “A joyous state of mind is a constant support” and “Don’t talk about others’ shortcomings”—as a means to awaken kindness, gentleness, and compassion. While Tibetan Buddhists have long valued these instructions, recently they have become popular in the West due to such books as Start Where You Are by Pema Chödrön and Training the Mind by Chögyam Trungpa. This edition of The Great Path of Awakening contains an accessible, newly revised translation of the slogans from the famous text The Seven Points of Mind Training. It also includes illuminating commentary from Jamgön Kongtrül that provides further instruction on how to meet every situation with intelligence and an open heart.
