Tibetan Tale of Love and Magic


Book Description

Tibetan Tale of Love and Magic is essentially the life story of a Tibetan highwayman around the beginning of this century, which he told to Alexandra David-Neel, prompted by the peculiar circumstances of their meeting. Although written in novel form, as the author explains in her preface, this is 'a true story, which has been lived'. Her straightforward reportage is both factual and fantastic and synonymous with the mysteries of Tibetan magic.




Love and Liberation


Book Description

Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro DewŽ DorjŽ (1892Ð1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera KhandroÕs conversations with deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members and investigates the concerns and sentiments relevant to the author and to those for whom she wrote. Sarah H. JacobyÕs analysis focuses on the status of the female body in Sera KhandroÕs texts, the virtue of celibacy versus the expediency of sexuality for religious purposes, and the difference between profane lust and sacred love between male and female Tantric partners. Her findings add new dimensions to our understanding of Tibetan Buddhist consort practice, complicating standard scriptural presentations of a male subject and a female aide. Sera Khandro depicts herself and her guru and consort, DrimŽ zer, as inseparable embodiments of insight and method that together form the Vajrayana Buddhist vision of complete buddhahood. By advancing this complementary sacred partnership, Sera Khandro carved a place for herself as a female virtuoso in the male-dominated sphere of early twentieth-century Tibetan religion.




For Tibet, With Love


Book Description

'Sometimes you just have to do something, don't you? Sometimes an injustice comes along and you think 'No, this cannot be', and rather than just turn off the TV, you know it's time to act' So begins Isabel Losada's extraordinary FOR TIBET WITH LOVE in which she explores whether it's possible for an ordinary person to change the world, just a little, and if something so serious can be achieved with joy in one's heart. From visits to Nepal and Tibet, to meetings with the Chinese ambassador and Tibetan awareness-raising groups, Isabel single-handedly hatches a stunning PR coup involving Nelson's Column, a 15 metre banner and a base-jumping parachutist that captured headlines worldwide. And then she meets the Dalai Lama... Warm and funny, moving and thought-provoking, the astonishing FOR TIBET WITH LOVE celebrates the fact that we can make a difference.




Sky Burial


Book Description

In 2002 Xinran’s Good Women of China became an international bestseller, revealing startling new truths about Chinese life to the West. Now she returns with an epic story of love, friendship, courage and sacrifice set in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Based on a true story, Xinran’s extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, Shu Wen learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died while serving in Tibet. Determined to find out what happened to him, she courageously sets off to join his regiment. But to her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people happily welcoming their Chinese “liberators” as she expected, she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan guerrillas. It seems that her husband may have died as a result of this clash of cultures, this disastrous misunderstanding. But before she can know his fate, she is taken hostage and embarks on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside — a journey that will last twenty years and lead her to a deep appreciation of Tibet in all its beauty and brutality. Sadly, when she finally discovers the truth about her husband, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond recognition. . .




Love Letters from Golok


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.




The Passion Book


Book Description

“[A] joyful—and explicit—guide to sex. . . . [V]iews sexual pleasure as a human right and stresses the importance of female consent and equality.” —Ian Kerner, CNN The Passion Book is the most famous work of erotica in the vast literature of Tibetan Buddhism, written by the legendary scholar and poet Gendun Chopel (1903–1951). Soon after arriving in India in 1934, he discovered the Kama Sutra. Realizing that this genre of the erotic was unknown in Tibet, he set out to correct the situation. His sources were two: classical Sanskrit works and his own experiences with his lovers. Completed in 1939, his “treatise on passion” circulated in manuscript form in Tibet, scandalizing and arousing its readers. Gendun Chopel here condemns the hypocrisy of both society and church, portraying sexual pleasure as a force of nature and a human right for all. On page after page, we find the exuberance of someone discovering the joys of sex, made all the more intense because Chopel had taken the monastic vow of celibacy in his youth and had only recently renounced it. He describes in ecstatic and graphic detail the wonders he discovered. In these poems, written in beautiful Tibetan verse, we hear a voice with tints of irony, self-deprecating wit, and a love of women not merely as sources of male pleasure but as full partners in the play of passion. “Explicit, unabashed, detailed, and encyclopedic . . . [A] joyful book.” —Tricycle “An enchanting new translation . . . . Chopel’s writing couldn’t be more timely. . . . He confronted the patriarchy, challenging those who dehumanized women or thought the poor deserved less.” —Los Angeles Review of Books




The Battersea Park Road to Paradise


Book Description

She's the coffee-addicted, exercise-allergic and self-confessed sceptical author of The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment - now join Isabel Losada for further travels in the realms of the soul, the senses and the sheer absurdity of life, from a feng shui reading gone hilariously wrong to an ayahuasca ceremony that goes all too right.




Karma of Love


Book Description

In this book, Geshe Michael has written out 100 of the most common questions he is asked by couples around the world who want to apply the deep knowledge of ancient times to their relationship. He then presents amazing, unexpected, and very effective answers to each question, drawing directly from ancient sources. Whether your goal is to find the soulmate wife or husband of your life; to keep the one that you have already found; or to be truly happy with them for the rest of your life, this book has been praised as a godsend by hundreds of people around the world




The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying


Book Description

25th Anniversary Edition Over 3 Million Copies Sold 'I couldn't give this book a higher recommendation' BILLY CONNOLLY Written by the Buddhist meditation master and popular international speaker Sogyal Rinpoche, this highly acclaimed book clarifies the majestic vision of life and death that underlies the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It includes not only a lucid, inspiring and complete introduction to the practice of meditation, but also advice on how to care for the dying with love and compassion, and how to bring them help of a spiritual kind. But there is much more besides in this classic work, which was written to inspire all who read it to begin the journey to enlightenment and so become 'servants of peace'.




Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics


Book Description

Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics: Toward a Union of Love and Knowledge addresses the complex issues of dialogue and collaboration between Buddhism and science, revealing connections and differences between the two. While assuming no technical background in Buddhism or physics, this book strongly responds to the Dalai Lama’s “heartfelt plea” for genuine collaboration between science and Buddhism. The Dalai Lama has written a foreword to the book and the Office of His Holiness will translate it into both Chinese and Tibetan. In a clear and engaging way, this book shows how the principle of emptiness, the philosophic heart of Tibetan Buddhism, connects intimately to quantum nonlocality and other foundational features of quantum mechanics. Detailed connections between emptiness, modern relativity, and the nature of time are also explored. For Tibetan Buddhists, the profound interconnectedness implied by emptiness demands the practice of universal compassion. Because of the powerful connections between emptiness and modern physics, the book argues that the interconnected worldview of modern physics also encourages universal compassion. Along with these harmonies, the book explores a significant conflict between quantum mechanics and Tibetan Buddhism concerning the role of causality. The book concludes with a response to the question: "How does this expedition through the heart of modern physics and Tibetan Buddhism—from quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, to emptiness, compassion, and disintegratedness—apply to today's painfully polarized world?" Despite differences and questions raised, the book's central message is that there is a solid basis for uniting these worldviews. From this basis, the message of universal compassion can accompany the spread of the scientific worldview, stimulating compassionate action in the light of deep understanding—a true union of love and knowledge. Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics will appeal to a broad audience that includes general readers and undergraduate and graduate students in science and religion courses.