100th Monkey Books

Buddhistic-Tibetan:
the Way of the Diamond Scepter



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Death and Dying: The Tibetan Tradition
Glenn Mullin (1986) 251pages

The present volume, Death and Dying: The Tibetan Tradition is an attempt to look into the range of Tibetan materials on death, by taking a number of works illustrative of their genre of literature and informative of the typical Tibetan attitudes and practices. The aim is not to set forth an array of theories and philosophical interpretations, but to show how the tradition death and dying works as a living system of practice. For my analysis, I have chosen nine texts to illustrate the seven principal categories of literature on death and dying. These seven are as follows: (1) Instructive manuals for the purpose of guiding trainees in death meditation during this lifetime. (2) Poetry and prose to inspire us in practice. (3) Inspirational accounts of the deaths of great yogis, meditators and saints. (4) Occult materials on the methods of divining prophetic signs of untimely death. (5) Methods for achieving longevity by yogically turning away the advent of untimely death. (6) Methods of training the mind in po-wa, consciousness transference at the time of death. (7) Ritualistic texts to be read in aid of a deceased person. (Penguin Arkana)



The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
Translated and annotated by Garma C. C. Chang (1962) 730pages

Tibetans accord The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa a classic status comparable to that of the Mahabharata and the Bible, and revere its author as probably the best single exemplar of the religious life. Milarepa was an eleventh-century Buddhist poet and saint, a cotton clad yogi who avoided the scholarly institutions of his time and wandered from village to village, teaching enlightenment and the path to Buddhahood through his spontaneously composed songs. Wherever he went, crowds of people gathered to hear his sweet-sounding voice "singing the Dharma." The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, says the book's translator, "has been read as the biography of a saint, a guide book for devotions, a manual of Buddhist yoga, a volume of songs and poems, and even a collection of Tibetan folklore and fairy tales." (Shambhala)



Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness
Robert Thurman (1998) 322pages

There is a story that 2,500 years ago, while he was giving a teaching, the Buddha placed his big toe pointedly on the earth and with that dramatic gesture revealed to an audience that the universe we live in is pure paradise. Not that what we see normally is the best of all possible worlds, as Voltaire Candide tried to convince himself, but that if we understood the true nature of reality, we would see the planet we live on as the perfect theater for positive evolution that it truly is. A pure land is the environment created by a fully enlightened being so that as many as possible have the potential also for developing into fully enlightened beings. This enlightened individual is called a buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha was not simply an historical figure who lived and taught 2,500 years ago - he is an example of the full flowering of human potential reached by undergoing inner revolutions, coups of the spirit in which the power of negative impulses and emotions is toppled and we are freed to be as happy, good, and compassionate as we can evolve to be. The Buddha developed an inner science for achieving this revolution, one that was preserved in Tibet after invaders nearly wiped it out of India 1,000 years ago. Since Tibet was built on the foundations that a society's top priority is to provide all the means for each individual to achieve this inner revolution, Tibet is our toehold for seeing where inner revolution might lead, giving us a glimpse of the architectural plans for building that pure land revealed by the Buddha's toe pointing. (Riverhead)



Sacred Tibet
Philip Rawson (1991) 96pages

Tibetan religion and the art which illuminates it are a summation, an interweaving of many strands - shamanic spiritualism, magic, myth, insights into time and death, combined in a unique form of Buddhism. The magnificent and mysterious arts of Tibet are much more than an adjunct to spiritual life; they are dwellings for the divine and images of inner states. Here text and illustrations together enter into the meanings of Tibetan imagery and practice, and reveal both the sources and living manifestations of Tibetan Buddhist belief and philosophy. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 136 illustrations, 18 in colour. (Thames & Hudson)



The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between
Translated by Robert A.F.Thurman (1994) 278pages

The Tibetan Book of the Dead was written by the great master Padma Sambhava in the eight or ninth century for Indian and Tibetan Buddhists. It was hidden by him for a later era, and was discovered by the renowned treasure-finder Karma Lingpa in the fourteenth century. It organizes the experiences of the between-(Tibetan bar-do) usually referring to the state between death and rebirth- according to the expectations of initiates in a particular esoteric mandala (a sacred universe), the mandala of the hundred mild and fierce Buddhist deities...No Tibetan expression is translatable as "Book of the Dead." In the actual Tibetan title, ) Bardo thos grol, bardo ) simply means the "between-state." ) Thos pa ) refers to one of three types of wisdom or understanding, those developed by learning, reflecting, and meditating. The words (thos grol) mean that this book's teaching "liberates" just by being "learned" or "understood," giving the person facing the between an understanding so naturally clear and deep that it does not require prolonged reflection or contemplation. So the common Tibetan title of the work is The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between (Bardo thos grol chen mo . It is itself a subsection of a larger work called The Profound Teaching of the Natural Liberation Through Contemplating the Mild and Fierce Buddhist Deities) . - from the translator's Introduction (Bantam)



Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Sogyal Rinpoche (1993) edited by Patirck Gaffney & Andrew Harvey 425pages

(HarperSanFrancisco)


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