March 10, 1959. Artillery shells smash into the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, home of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. Fleeing Tibet for their lives, the family of His Holiness took what they could carry, including a set of 15 scroll paintings called the Tsongkapa Eighty. As an art form, the scrolls are magnificent. As the retelling of the life's work of Je Tsongkapa, the scroll paintings are irreplaceable. After reaching safety, the paintings were donated to a Kalmyk Buddhist Temple in New Jersey. Based on these paintings, the authors have researched and written an amazing work; it is the story told through the scrolls, and the history of how the paintings developed over the centuries. The book includes: - All 200 scenes from the original 15 paintings with captions, creating an account of Je Tsongkapa's life, in text and paintings, nearly 1,000 color images! - A history of the Kalmyk Temple and how the paintings arrived there - A photographic journey that retraces Je Tsongkapa's steps across Tibet - A definitive list of Je Tsongkapa's writings, and the biographies of his life - Maps, produced with the help of the map maker for the Lord of the Rings books, which trace Je Tsongkapa's constant travels to teach and to learn. - Contemporary painter Ori Carin's, modern interpretations of several scenes. - A detailed review of Je Tsongkapa's many roles: monk, philosopher, writer, meditator, yoga practitioner, poet, spiritual partner and diplomat, all depicted in the paintings.

An American. A baby. The Chinese Government. And the Race to Save Tibet. The eldest son of a wealthy San Francisco family, Samuel Falk Simms, Jr. has just graduated from college with a life of privilege and power ahead of him. On a whim, he books a flight to Kathmandu that will leave him changed forever. Barely off the airplane, he is fighting for his life while following an obscure map slipped to him by a Buddhist monk. Samuel must find his way in foreign lands and escape from the Chinese Colonel intent on stopping him, as he struggles to forge an authentic path for himself in order to help Tibetans reclaim theirs. "You know 'Dharma'? Dharma means 'The Way.' Each man will have his own way. Each man is ruler of his own way. Each man is his own Dharma King."

A translation of a popular Buddhist work on worldly ethics by Tibet's most famous philosopher. Leadership. Power. Responsibility. From Sun Tzu to Plato to Machiavelli, sages east and west have advised kings and rulers on how to lead. Their motivations and techniques have varied, but one thing they all have had in common is that their advice has been as relevant to the millions who have read their works as it has been to the few kings and princes they were, on the surface, addressed to. The nineteenth-century Buddhist monk and luminary Jamgön Mipham’s letter to the king of Dergé, whose small kingdom straddled China and Tibet during a particularly turbulent period, is similar in the universality of its message. This work, however, is unique in that it stresses compassion, impartiality, self-control, and virtue as essential for long-lasting success—whether as a leader or an individual trying to live a meaningful life. Mipham’s historic contribution to ethics and governance, until now little studied outside of Buddhist circles, teaches us the importance of protecting life, fair taxation, environmental sustainability, aiding the poor, and freedom of religion. Both present day leaders and those they lead will find this classic work, finally available in English, profoundly illuminating on political, societal, and personal levels.

The Record of Buddhist Kingdoms is a classic travelogue that records the Chinese monk Faxian’s journey in the early fifth century CE to Buddhist sites in Central and South Asia in search of sacred texts. In the nineteenth century, it traveled west to France, becoming in translation the first scholarly book about “Buddhist Asia,” a recent invention of Europe. This text fascinated European academic Orientalists and was avidly studied by Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The book went on to make a return journey east: it was reintroduced to Inner Asia in an 1850s translation into Mongolian, after which it was rendered into Tibetan in 1917. Amid decades of upheaval, the text was read and reinterpreted by Siberian, Mongolian, and Tibetan scholars and Buddhist monks. Matthew W. King offers a groundbreaking account of the transnational literary, social, and political history of the circulation, translation, and interpretation of Faxian’s Record. He reads its many journeys at multiple levels, contrasting the textual and interpretative traditions of the European academy and the Inner Asian monastery. King shows how the text provided Inner Asian readers with new historical resources to make sense of their histories as well as their own times, in the process developing an Asian historiography independently of Western influence. Reconstructing this circulatory history and featuring annotated translations, In the Forest of the Blind models decolonizing methods and approaches for Buddhist studies and Asian humanities.

The ancient Indian Sanskrit tradition produced no text more intriguing, or more persistently misunderstood or underappreciated, than the Mahabharata. Its intricacies have waylaid generations of scholars and ignited dozens of unresolved debates. In Rethinking the Mahabharata, Alf Hiltebeitel offers a unique model for understanding the great epic. Employing a wide range of literary and narrative theory, Hiltebeitel draws on historical and comparative research in an attempt to discern the spirit and techniques behind the epic's composition. He focuses on the education of Yudhisthira, also known as the Dharma King, and shows how the relationship of this figure to others-especially his author-grandfather Vyasa and his wife Draupadi-provides a thread through the bewildering array of frames and stories embedded within stories. Hiltebeitel also offers a revisionist theory regarding the dating and production of the original text and its relation to the Veda. No ordinary reader's guide, this volume will illuminate many mysteries of this enigmatic masterpiece. This work is the fourth volume in Hiltebeitel's study of the Draupadi cult. Other volumes include Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra (Volume One), On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Volume Two), and Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics (Volume Three).

Mahamudra is the basic meditation practice for many Tibetan Buddhists, particularly of the Kagyu tradition. It is particularly adaptable for modern people, since it involves no rituals and can be incorporated into all daily activities. Saraha's "Song for the King" is a short verse text from classical India that is a basis for the tradition and is widely known in Tibetan Buddhist circles. It is often the basis for teachings given in the West, but there is only one outdated translation of it in print, first published in 1969. Michele Martin has produced a stellar new translation, which is accompanied by a commentary from the well-known teacher Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, who is uniquely skilled and concerned with making this method of meditation available to Westerners. While pithy and accessible, the book easily stands up to academic scrutiny, and includes the original Tibetan as well - making it ideal for the popular, scholarly, and Tibetan audiences all at once.

Chögyam Trungpa was born in Tibet and strictly trained in the manner traditional for re-incarnations of great teachers. At the age of 19, he led 300 people over the Himalayas to India in a dramatic escape recounted in his autobiography Born in Tibet. Over the following 30 years, Trungpa became one of the foremost pioneers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. He was also a highly controversial figure, considered by many to be one of the greatest Buddhist teachers ever to come to the west and viewed with suspicion by others. He taught in a style that went altogether beyond conventional ideas of what a "holy man" should be like, dressing in ordinary western clothes, drinking and taking sexual consorts. He taught in English with a direct and penetrating voice that drew to him many intelligent young students. These memoirs tell the story of the author, Jeremy Hayward, a close student and friend of Trungpa Rinpoche who became a senior teacher and administrator in the organizations Rinpoche established. This intimate chronological account opens with Hayward's first meeting with Trungpa Rinpoche in 1970 and progresses year by year until Rinpoche's death and beyond. Each chapter/year includes some discussion of the teachings that Rinpoche was presenting at that time as well as the context and atmosphere in which these teachings occurred and the evolution of the society and organizations which he inspired. The book should be of interest to all students of Buddhism as well as others interested in the evolution of Buddhism in the west, and possibly other seekers on the spiritual path.

Renowned as a peerless teacher, practitioner, and scholar, Longchenpa thoroughly studied and mastered every one of the many Buddhist vehicles and lineages of teachings existing in Tibet at his time. Through his radiant intellect and meditative accomplishment, in both his teachings and written works, he was able to reconcile the seeming discrepancies and contradictions between the various presentations of the view and the path within the many lineages of transmission. His written works are also famous for being able to transfer true blessings just by reading or hearing his enlightened words. Compiled from numerous Tibetan and Bhutanese sources, including Longchenpa’s autobiography, and stories of his previous lives and subsequent rebirths, The Life of Longchenpa weaves an inspiring tale of wonder and magic, of extraordinary visions and spiritual insight, set in the kingdoms of fourteenth-century Tibet and Bhutan. It also reveals for the first time fascinating details of his ten years of self-exile in Bhutan, stories that were unknown to his Tibetan biographers.

Norma Levine has travelled to Tibet, India, Europe and North America to record the stories of this memorable man and the impact he had on the people who met him. This book gives us a rare and intimate insight into the personality of the man who was the 16th Karmapa.