Awakening the Buddha within - Softcover

Surya Das

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857501917 ISBN 13: 9780857501912

Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group), 2013

Synopsis

Lama Surya Das, the most highly trained American lama in the Tibetan tradition, presents the first comprehensive book of Western Buddhism for the modern-day spiritual seeker.

Buddhism offers a profound yet practical path to enlightenment.  In this loving and generous book, the American-born and Tibetan-trained Lama Surya Das offers at once a definitive and nonsectarian guide to the wisdom found in ancient Tibetan teachings and a tried and true path of spiritual transformation.

The radical and compelling message of Buddhism tells us that each of us has the wisdom, awareness, love, and power of the Buddha within; yet most of us are too often like sleeping Buddhas.  Surya Das shows how we can awaken to who we really are and thus walk the liberating, peaceful path of mindful and compassionate living.  With lively language, meditations, and spiritual practices, this unique book provides a bridge between East and West, past, present, and future.

Awakening the Buddha Within  offers a complete yet accessible understanding of the unique Buddhist teachings embodied in the traditional Noble Eight-Fold Path and its Three Enlightenment Trainings, common to all schools of Buddhism:

Wisdom Training: Developing clear vision, insight, and inner understanding--seeing reality and ourselves as we really are.

  Ethics Training: Cultivating virtue, self-discipline, integrity, and compassion in what we say and do.

  Meditation Training: Practicing mindfulness, concentration, and awareness of the present moment.

This fresh and original work illuminates such key principles as karma (what we do does matter), rebirth (every moment is an opportunity to start afresh), letting go (simplifying our lives by clarifying our hearts and minds), as well as conscious living and dying, and Dzogchen, the ultimate, mystical teaching of Tibet.

In this wonderful marriage of the timeless and the timely, Surya Das has written an invaluable, authoritative text for the novice and the experienced student of Buddhism alike.  Awakening the Buddha Within reveals how sacred wisdom, contemplative practice, and altruism can be integrated into our outer and inner lives--in our relationships, in the workplace, and at home.

Here is a guidebook to enlightenment--a sourcebook of the sacred for anyone who wants to lead a more serene and beautiful life.

About this title

Review:

If you dropped the Buddha into a modern metropolis, would he come off sounding like a 16th-century morality play or more like a drive-time disc jockey? Lama Surya Das doesn't spin platters for a living, but he does have a hip delivery that belies his years of sheltered training in Buddhist monasteries. In Awakening the Buddha Within, he borrows a time-tested bestseller format for a 2,500-year-old tradition that comes off as anything but ancient. With the "Five T's of Concentration," the question of "need or greed," and the story of the monk who bears his backside to prove a point, Surya Das invokes a path of wisdom that is as accessible and down-to-earth as a worn pair of loafers. It's not an easy path--it demands thought, effort, and discipline. But Surya Das is there for you, lighting the way to wisdom training, coaxing you into ethics training, and laying out step by step the path of meditation training. And if that's not enough to get you to live in the now, consider these words of the enlightened lama: "You must be present to win." --Brian Bruya

From the Publisher:

In lively language and filled with stories, examples, and spiritual practices, New York born Lama Surya Das shares and interprets the comprehensive wisdom of ancient Tibetan teachings. By showing that the power of the Buddha is resting within us all, he instructs how we can awaken our Buddha self and walk the liberating path of mindful and compassionate living.

Copyright © 1997 by Lama Surya Das.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group)
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0857501917
• ISBN 13: 9780857501912
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496