Mind of Mahamudra

Advice from the Kagyu Masters

Thupten Jinpa, Peter Alan Roberts

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781614291954
• eBook ISBN:
  9781614292128
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The Mind of Mahamudra is the third volume in the Tibetan Classics series, which aims to make available accessible paperback editions of key Tibetan Buddhist works drawn from Wisdom Publications' Library of Tibetan Classics.

Enjoy six key texts on the cornerstone meditation practice of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by some of its most celebrated forebearers.

The Mind of Mahamudra highlights mahamudra, the central meditation practice of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The six texts range in date from the twelfth to the seventeenth century and include such celebrated authors as Lama Shang and the Third Karmapa. Mahamudra is essentially a simple, direct method for looking beyond our thoughts to the very nature of conscious experience. Mahamudra literally means "the great seal" and masters of this tradition have explained it to mean that everything is sealed with buddhahood, and there is no liberation to be attained other than what is already present. Mahamudra, it is said, is not attained not because it is too difficult, but because it is too easy; not because it is too far, but because it is too close; and not because it is hidden but because it is too evident. Because of its universality and directness, mahamudra meditation is particularly suited to the modern West. Eminent scholar Peter Alan Roberts draws on his thirty-plus years of experience of translating for Tibetan lamas to illuminate these benchmark translations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Publisher’s Acknowledgment
• Contents
• General Editor’s Preface
• Translator’s Introduction
• 1. The Unrivaled Instructions of Shang Rinpoché: The Preliminaries and Main Practice of the Great Meditation of Mahāmudrā
• 2. The Ultimate Supreme Path of Mahāmudrā
• 3. A Record of Mahāmudrā Instructions
• 4. Instructions for the Mahāmudrā Innate Union
• 5. Prayer for the Definitive Meaning, the Mahāmudrā
• 6. The Bright Torch: The Perfect Illumination of the True Meaning of the Mahāmudrā, the Essence of All the Dharma
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Contributors
• About Wisdom Publications
• More from the Tibetan Classics series
• Also Available from Wisdom Publications
• Copyright