A Concise Introduction To Tibetan Buddhism
Powers, another graduate of the University of Virginia Buddhist studies program that has produced a cadre of scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, condenses a longer introductory work. Tibetan Buddhism is both esoteric and difficult, so any text that elucidates it performs intellectual service. This one admirably unpacks the topic of tantra, that distinctive aspect of Tibetan Buddhist teaching. Tantra includes texts, practices and ideas, and Powers sketches with mastery one very complex system. The book logically selects material essential to a survey: history, key concepts, doctrines and distinctions among various schools of thought. Particularly helpful is a survey of Tibetan Buddhist ideas about death and dying, which are distinctive to this form of Buddhism. Certain varieties of meditation are also distinctively Tibetan, and the author provides useful discriminations and context. The history of Tibet focuses on its tangled relationship over centuries with neighboring China. The work has editing flaws, as the reshaping done to shrink a larger work into concise form is ragged in places. Some references remain unexplained, and the book lacks a conclusion, as if an ending were abruptly excised. On the whole, however, this concise book does yeoman work of explanation.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.