Meditation Differently

Despite the interest in meditation, few works have studied what meditation means within the original traditions. Meditation Differently presents a translation of an important Tibetan work which contrasts and compares two central traditions of Buddhist meditative practice - the Mahamudra and the rDzogs-chen, particularly the sNyingthig version. This traditions is supplemented by a detailed commentary based on original Tibetan sources by Dr. Guenther, an eminent scholar of Buddhism and modern thought. This critical commentary is a hermeneutical and phenomenological study of the key ideas in the understanding of being and experience, utilizing development in modern thinking to bring out the nuances of Buddhist thinking.

A translation and commentary on Pad-madkar-po's definitive work on the four tuning in phases introduces the Mahamudra approach to meditation. To understand the rDzogs-chen approach, a philosophical introduction to the rDzogs-chen understanding of Being is presented which shows how this understanding can be compared to the modern philosophy and the development of the scientific study of dynamic processes and cosmology. In this context a phenomenological account of the empowerments is made accessible as stepping stones towards the recovery of the richness and autonomy of being. This flashes out the background for an approach to some to the more difficult aspects of the sNying-thig tradition with its emphasis on the lighting up of Being. Dr. Guenther's study is a critical and revealing approach to the problem of meditation that is at once true to the subject-matter and relentless in bringing out in the contemporary context what is said in a comprehensible and clear manner

About the Author:

Dr. Herbert V. Guenther is Professor Emeritus of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. In over 25 books and numerous articles he has communicated in contemporary languages the living spirit of Buddhism as it bears on the perennial problems of human existence. Recently Dr. Guenther has been cited by the Ananta-Jyoti Vidyapitha for his outstanding contributions to Buddhist studies.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
	Notes

Chapter One: The Mahamudra Approach:
	The Four Tuning-in Phases
	Notes

Chapter Two: Padma dkar-po's Definitive
	Investigation of the Four Tuning-in Phases'
	Notes

Chapter Three: The rDzogs-chen Approach:
	Symmetry Transformations: the Realms of Potentia and Actuality
	Notes

Chapter Four: The Gestalt Experience of Being and the Closed System Potential
	Notes

Chapter Five: The Empowerments as Psychological
	Stepping-Stones
	Notes

Chapter Six: The Lighting' and the 'Lamps'
	Notes

Chapter Seven: rTse-le rGod-tshangs-pa Sna-tshogs
	Rang-grol's 'The Sun's Life-giving Force'
	Notes

Literature References
Index of Technical Terms Tibetan
Sanskrit Index
Index of Names and Subjects

Of Related Interest:

Complete Collection of Books on Meditation