Four Lamas of Dolpo: Autobiographies of Four Tibetan Lamas by David Snellgrove

By David Snellgrove

An English translation of the autobiography of 4 medieval Tibetan Buddhism clergymen, a piece laying off a lot mild on conventional Tibetan tradition and faith.

Show description

Read Online or Download Four Lamas of Dolpo: Autobiographies of Four Tibetan Lamas PDF

Best leaders & notable people books

A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield

“A comic strip of the lifestyles and Labors of George Whitefield,” via J. C. Ryle, offers a comic strip of Whitefield’s instances, lifestyles, faith, preaching, and paintings. Whitefield was once an English Anglican priest who helped unfold the nice Awakening in Britain, and particularly within the British North American colonies. He grew to become probably the best-known preacher in Britain and the US within the 18th century, and, simply because he traveled via the entire American colonies and drew nice crowds and media insurance, he was once probably the most well known public figures in colonial the US.

Roosevelt

He used to be one among America's maximum presidents and definitely our so much colourful. Theodore Roosevelt, identified to all yet his neighbors as Teddy, used to be born a sickly baby yet reworked himself into an outdoorsman, a cowboy, and a warrior who led his tough Riders up the San Juan Heights of Cuba in a cost that also ranks one of the world's army legends.

Battle ready : memoir of a SEAL warrior medic

A memoir from a SEAL and medic within which he explores his 25-year occupation in risky strive against missions and the post-traumatic rigidity sickness that constructed at domestic. summary: From the pains of BUD/S education to the horrors of the battlefield, this name immerses the reader within the lifetime of the elite warrior-medic who advances into strive against with life-saving apparatus in a single hand and life-taking guns within the different.

Additional info for Four Lamas of Dolpo: Autobiographies of Four Tibetan Lamas

Sample text

The gods dwell on the higher reaches of the central mountain, whose very summit represents the supreme enlightenment of perfect knowledge. ,ala), which will be described below. The phenomen~ world is also described as the 'wheel of existence' (sr£d-pa'£ 'klwr-lo). This consists of six segments, representing the six possible realms of rebirth, the realms of the gods, of the titans, of men, of animals, of tormented spirits, and of the hells. 1 As a kind of poetic cliche existence is sometimes described as the outer vessel and the inner elixir (phyi snod nang bcud), the lifeless parts that form a kind of basis being the 'vessel', and all sentient beings, gods, men and the rest, being the 'elixir'.

By power of his meditation a yogin places himself as it were at the very centre of the mystic circle, which represents the whole of existence in its idealized state. He has power to invoke any set of divinities of which he now has control thanks to his concentrated meditative practice. The ordered calling forth of the divinities (which is conceived of as corresponding on an idealized plane with the emanation of the whole universe) is known as the 'Process of Emanation'. The recognition of the essential non-reality of the divinities (the elixir) and the mystic circle that serves as their support (the vessel) is known as the 'Process of Realization'.

The charms and amulets they distribute are supposed to protect the wearers against harms of various kinds that would otherwise have befallen them. At the same time lamas who possess all these special powers (like these four lamas of Dolpo) are regarded as perfected buddhas, possessing all the traditional attributes of buddhahood. They represent in effect not only the supreme ideal of Buddhist sages and philosophers, but also the popular conception of a sage-magician. Popular Conceptions of a Buddha and a Would-be Buddha One may well ask whether the reactions of simple Buddhist followers in India from the earliest Buddhist times onward, were really very different from the reactions of the people of Dolpo.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.85 of 5 – based on 40 votes