MAHAMUDRA

Relish these direct, experiential meditation instructions from the author of the bestselling Introduction to Tantra.

Like many Buddhist teachings, mahamudra teachings present the emptiness of all things. But the unique characteristic of mahamudra, Lama Yeshe tells us, is its emphasis on meditation. “With mahamudra meditation there is no doctrine, no theology, no philosophy, no God, no Buddha. Mahamudra is only experience. The moment I say words, you interpret them in this way or that, and then it becomes a problem. You have to go beyond words.”

In this book, Lama Yeshe relies on the First Panchen Lama's well-known Gelug-Kagyu Mahamudra, which in a few short pages provides the pith instructions for overcoming distraction and resting in meditative stillness on the reality of mind. As always, Lama Yeshe's words are direct, funny, deceptively simple, and incredibly encouraging—he makes enlightenment seem possible. He counteracts the mystification of spiritual ideas and brings the teachings down to earth. He makes it sound so simple because he is speaking from his own direct experience. And in his inimitable way, he gets us to go beyond ego's addiction to a limited sense of self and to taste the lightness and expansiveness of our own true nature.

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–84) was born in Tibet and educated at the great Sera Monastic University. He fled the Chinese occupation of his country in 1959. In the late 1960s, with his chief disciple Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, he began teaching Buddhism to Westerners at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal. In 1975 they founded the international Buddhist organization the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), which now has more than 160 centers, projects, and services worldwide.