According to the mandala principle, a prominent feature of tantric Buddhism, all phenomena are part of one reality. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, clear or obscure, everything is interrelated and reflects a single totality. As Chogyam Trungpa explains in this book , from the perspective of the mandala principle, existence is orderly chaos. There is chaos and confusion because everything happens by itself, without any external ordening principle. At the same time, whatever happens expresses order and intelligence, wakeful energy and precision. Through meditative practices associated with the mandala principle, the opposites of experience-confusion and enlightenment, chaos and order, pain and pleasure- are revealed as inseparable parts of a total vision of reality.

Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Shambhala Publications, 194 pages, $21.95.

Trungpa was born in Eastern Tibet and recognized as an incarnation of the Trungpa line at an early date. He studied with, among others, one of the reincarnations of the Jamgyon Kongtrul who wrote the most famous commentary on the Seven Points. In 1959 he fled to India in the wake of the Communist takeover in Tibet, courageously leading many of his people to safety (this period is described in his book Born in Tibet.) He came to England in the mid-sixties to study at Oxford, learned English, started to teach, and started one of the first Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. He later dropped his monastic vows, married, and moved to America where he continued his teaching. He founded the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a large and highly respected Buddhist university, as well as the Shambhala organization. The influence of both his teaching and his books on American Buddhism was and still is enormous.