Monday, October 19, 2015

Reviews by me for two new books:

Culadasa (John Yates) and Matthew Immergut, The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Mediation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science, Dharma Treasure Press, 2015:

“This book does an outstanding job of both constructing a cognitive theory of how the mind works and presenting a detailed handbook for learning and mastering meditation. The result is a beautiful integration of theory and practice, whose parallel strands lead to experientially, and account for conceptually, the radical shift in consciousness we call awakening.”

Ken McLeod, A Trackless Path: A translation and commentary of the great completion (dzogchen) teaching of Jigme Linpa's The Vision Experience of Ever=Present Good, from Longchenpa's Heart Drop Circle (in press):
"Here we have the perfect combination – a poem by the 18th century Tibetan mystic Jigme Lingpa’s which reveals both the potential for awakening and the expression of full awakening , translated brilliantly but authentically by McLeod for contemporary Westerners. The Vision Experience of the Ever-present Good cuts through to the essence of awakening in barely ten pages of poetry, leaving a beautiful, almost scientific theory shimmering within. McLeod’s commentary then draws out the subtle implications of each verse with consummate clarity, giving us piercing glimpses of what awakening is like and making unavoidable Jigme Lingpa’s lessons for how we should practice and how we should live our lives, in order to learn about awakening for ourselves directly." 

Still working on the theoretical model of ordinary and awakened awareness (or mind, or consciousness). It is coming along great, but keeps developing more implications that need to be dealt with.