Description

B. Alan Wallace – Buddhism with an Attitude – The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind TrainingAll of us have attitudes. Some of them accord with reality and serve us well throughout the course of our lives. Others are out of alignment with reality, and cause us problems. Tibetan Buddhist practice isn’t just sitting in silent meditation, it’s developing fresh attitudes that align our minds with reality. Attitudes need adjusting, just like a spinal column that has been knocked out of alignment.  In this book, B. Alan Wallace explains a fundamental type of Buddhist mental training which is designed to shift our attitudes so that our minds become pure wellsprings of joy instead of murky pools of problems, anxieties, fleeting pleasures, hopes and frustrations. Wallace shows us the way to develop attitudes that unveil our full capacity for spiritual awakening.”Readers who put the advice this book contains into practice may indeed transform their minds and achieve a sense of inner peace, the key to greater peace and happiness within and in the world at large.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama”Alan Wallace, one of the great Western Buddhist thinkers of our day, has written an extraordinary book! Buddhism with an Attitude is written not only with great intelligence, but also in an accessible and readable style that helps us apply the principles in daily life.”—Howard C. Cutler, M.D., co-author with H.H. the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness”This book places you into a new domain where the world actually becomes the meditation hall…a book to guide both beginners and seasoned meditatiors, a book to be read, reread, and studied.”—Buddhist Peace Fellowship”Dr. Wallace’s versatility in the cognitive sciences offers a unique amplification for our understanding of such topics as primordial wisdom, consciousness, meditative stabilization, and bringing adversity onto the path of liberation. Through Seven-Point Mind Training, Wallace shows us the way to develop attitudes that unveil our capacity for spiritual awaking…”—Branches of Light of Banyan Books”His approach is the best because the individual slogans are much too abbreviated to stand alone as statements.”—Quest MagazineThe author draws on his thirty-year training in Buddhism, physics, the cognitive sciences, and comparative religion to challenge readers to reappraise many of their assumptions about the nature of the mind and physical world. By explicitly addressing many practical and theoretical issues that uniquely face us in the modern world, Wallace brings this centuries-old practice into the twenty-first century.B. Alan Wallace trained for many years as a monk in Buddhist monasteries in India and Switzerland. He has taught Buddhist theory and practice in Europe and America since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including H.H. the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Stanford University. He has edited, translated, authored and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhist medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion. He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of ConsciousnessAmazon.com Review:Yes, the title can be misleading. This isn’t a book about hip Buddhism with some kind of bad-ass attitude. This is a training manual for learning Buddhist attitudes that will help readers find greater peace of mind and happiness in daily life. The premise here is mind control the Tibetan Buddhist way. Wallace (Boundless Heart) draws upon the traditional “root text” of the Seven-Point Mind Training and expertly translates the ancient teachings into a Western-flavored lesson. In fact, another possible title for this highly esteemed book might be, Buddhism Taught with a Western Attitude. Rather than rely solely on the traditional teaching methods of using stories and parables to ground Buddhist theory into daily living, Wallace sprinkles in large doses of intellectual and scientific analogies—definite crowd-pleasers in the West. For instance, when he delves into two Buddhist approaches for training the mind’s attention—control and release—he uses the ancient metaphor of taming an elephant in the room to heel. But in the next breath he moves into a modern analogy of purifying a polluted river. This slip-sliding ease between the language and sensibilities of ancient and modern worlds is a marvel and delight for any Western student of Buddhism.A few caveats: Wallace is not as cozy of a writer as other popular Buddhist teachers of the West, such as Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, or Sharon Salzburg. His is more of the Ken Wilbur and Robert Thurman variety—fascinated by the keen intelligence behind this ancient religion as well as its big heart and timeless relevance. Think of this as a mind-blowing, attitude-expanding book, rather than a comfy bedside companion. Gail HudsonSummary: great book, thank youRating: 5I am very grateful to B. Allan Wallace for writing this book in this style. Such profound and practical insights digested through his own experience are generously shared using language, imagery and reasoning readily understandable by a parochial Australian such as me. His explication of more traditional Tibetan metaphors and images is also very helpful. I love the kindness and humility and humanity of the book. It has already helped me in my quest to be more patient and compassionate.Summary: Packed full of deep wisdom…Rating: 5I must confess I have not read the entire book, the first section called “the preliminaries” is so deep and full of wisdom that I have not gotten past them…it alone is worth the price of the book. I am not a buddhist, but this is deep stuff about how to live and approach conciousness, with the ultimate goal being full awareness. Clearly written, logical, very deep. My highest rec. if you want a spiritual but not dogmatic book, grounded in practical excercises. Contemplative, dynamic, deep.Summary: no babytalkRating: 5