Meditation Differently: Phenomenological-Psychological Aspects of Tibetan Buddhist (Mahamudra and sNying-thig) Practices from Original Tibetan Sources

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 sNying-thing version.  This translation 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 developments in modern thinking to bring out the nuances of Buddhist thinking.  A translation and commentary on Pad-ma dkar-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 stone towards the recovery of the richness and autonomy of being.  This flashes out the background for an approach to some of the more difficult aspects of the sNying-thing 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.