Gods and The Demons Are Not Two

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Gods and The Demons Are Not Two
A Tantra of the Great Perfection
Tibetan Text Included By: Christopher Wilkinson (Translator)

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Translator: Christopher Wilkinson
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781519615701
Publication Date: 2015

Product Code: 9781519615701

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About the author

Contents

To those familiar with the esoteric traditions of Buddhism, the Great Perfection is well known as a pathway of instant enlightenment, a vehicle for a sudden breakthrough of enlightened awareness here in the present. We may wonder, though, what the Great Perfection has to say about the obvious reality that there are all kinds of different beings who live under all kinds of conditions, and the reality that we ourselves go through all kinds of emotional turbulence even as we study the Great Perfection. What does the Great Perfection have to say about the demonic side of things? What does it say about our understandings of what divine beings are? How does it integrate a vision of the divine and the demonic into the fabric of instantaneous enlightenment? How do practitioners of the Great Perfection understand their own demons and preferred deities, and come to terms with them? In a world view wherein everyone is already enlightened, what is the function of compassion? These concerns are addressed in The Gods and the Demons Are Not Two. This Tantra offers a lengthy discussion of the demonic and the divine, with information on the recognition of demons and their different classes, how we can know whether our lives are controlled by demons, a discussion of exorcism, and a thorough presentation on the Great Perfection�s concern for all classes of living beings. We are introduced into a mythological world populated by a wide variety of demonic and heavenly beings and are encouraged to �share the taste� (ro snyoms) of what life is like for them, a kind of sympathetic comprehension of other beings. We are guided through the realms of samsara, and encouraged to share in the taste of what it would be like if we were some other being. How would it feel to be an element, a demon, an illness, a denizen of hell, an animal, or a god? Empathy is used to point us toward an understanding of a kind of perfection that there is in each and every living thing, a great perfection.

Great Perfection Series from Christopher Wilkenson

The Gods and Demons Are Not Two, Christopher Wilkinson, Paperback, 217 Pages, 2015, $34.99

Christopher Wilkinson began his career in Buddhist literature in 1972 at the age of fifteen, taking refuge vows from his guru Dezhung Rinpoche. In that same year he began formal study of Tibetan language at the University of Washington under Geshe Ngawang Nornang and Turrell Wylie. He then received many instructions from Kalu Rinpoche, completing the traditional practice of five hundred thousand Mahamudra preliminaries. He became a Buddhist monk at the age of eighteen, living in the home of Dezhung Rinpoche while he continued his studies at the University of Washington. He graduated in 1980 with a B.A. degree in Asian Languages and Literature and another B.A. degree in Comparative Religion (College Honors, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). After a two year tour of Buddhist pilgrimage sites throughout Asia he worked for five years in refugee resettlement in Seattle, Washington, then proceeded to the University of Calgary for an M.A. in Buddhist Studies where he wrote a groundbreaking thesis on the Yangti transmission of the Great Perfection tradition titled "Clear Meaning: Studies on a Thirteenth Century rDzog chen Tantra." He proceeded to work on a critical edition of the Sanskrit text of the 20,000 line Perfection of Wisdom in Berkeley, California, followed by an intensive study of Burmese language in Hawaii. In 1990 he began three years' service as a visiting professor in English Literature in Sulawesi, Indonesia, exploring the remnants of the ancient Sri Vijaya Empire there. He worked as a research fellow for the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation for several years, playing a part in the early development of the famous Rubin Museum of Art. In the years that followed he became a Research Fellow at the Centre de Recherches sur les Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale, Collge de France, and taught at the University of Calgary as an Adjunct Professor for five years. He is currently completing his doctoral dissertation, a study of the Yoginitantra first translated into Tibetan during the Eighth century of our era, at the University of Leiden's Institute for Area Studies.

contents

CONTENTS: The Gods and the Demons are not Two
Acknowledgments	i
Introduction	iii
1. The all good one is beyond the dharma	1
2. A discourse in which vajra dharma man blesses the five nirmanakayas	9
3, An explanation of the blessings of the three kayas of the children of the victorious ones	17
4. Self-liberation through recognition of the view	25
5. Recognising the meditator and cutting through the roots of Mara's life	31
6. The recognition of Maras in our practice	37
7. A presentation on results	43
8. A description of the dharmakaya's blessings upon the sambhogakaya	55
9. A description of the blessings of the dharmakaya and the recognition of the dharmakaya in the six classes of living things	67
10. Recognition of the sambhogakaya	71
11. The nirmanakaya appearsin the circle of the light of awareness	79
12. The revelation that vemacitra is nirmanakaya	83
13. Sharing the taste of being an external fury	89
14. Sharing the taste of diseases from intermittent attachment and hatred	95
15. Sharing a taste for ideas	101
16.Sharing the taste of being a secret and unsurpassed deity	109
17. The time of the destruction of the world	113
18. Living in a peaceful abiding	117
19. Teachings on the roots of our attachments to the world	121
20. Attachment to the land of the gods and teaching the dharma there	125
21. Attachment to the self-originating compassion while in the land of humans	129
22. The ways in which the asuras are attached, and turning the wheel of the dharma for them	135
23. The ways we are attached to the world of the animals and the descent of compassion even on them	137
24. Teachings to destroy that hungry ghosts' attachment to the external world and turning the wheel that brings compassion down from above	141
25. Turning the wheel of the dharma of compassion the the abodes of hell.	145
26. Turning the wheel of self-evident compassion for the cold hells and for the temporary hells that are near them.	147
27. Teaching the way we become attached to the vajra hell and turning the wheel of the dharma of compassion there	149
28. A teaching that turns the wheel of the dharma of compassion on attachment, destruction and emptiness along with the three kinds of beings who experience them and that their magnificent pilgrimage sites will not endure	153
29. Teaching that compassion falls upon the philosophical theories in the scriptures about the vehcles and their conclusive result	157
30. The spike of reason is planted through the external and internal and plants the spike of analogies for teaching, plants the the spike of words of vision, and plants the spike of meanings into words	161
31. Revealing the heart that conceals the external, internal and secret	163
32. Bequest of the tantra	165
Tibetan Text	167
About the translator	215
notes to the introduction	217

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contents

CONTENTS: Fathoming the Mind: Inquiry and Insight in Dudjom Lingpa's Vajra Essence
Foreword by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche	ix
Foreword by Tsokny Rinpoche	xiii
Preface	xv
Introduction	1
A serviceable mind	2
The current dark age of materialism	11
1. The nature of mind	29
The phenomenological nature of consciousness	30
The essential nature of the mind	38
The ultimate nature of the mind	44
The transcendent nature of consciousness	48
2. Revealing your own face as the sharp vajra of vipasyana	55
3. Revealing the ground dharmakaya	71
Determining the identitylessness of persons as subjects	71
Determining the identitylessness of phenomena as objects	85
Coarse and subtle considerations for determing emptiness	116
How all phenomena arise and appear	124
The point of realising the emptiness of phenomena	180
Epilogue	191
Afterword: New frontiers in the collaboration ob buddhism and science	197
Glossary	209
Notes	231
Bibliography	245
Index	257
About the translator	269