Practicing Wisdom: The Perfection of Shantideva's Bodhisattva Way Paperback – June 15, 2004

This is a precious book to advanced students and practitioners of Buddhism. This is THE BOOK.Although the book is about the ninth chapter of Shantideva's “The Way of Bohisattva”, His Holiness presents distinct aspects of the essence of Buddhism: emptiness and dependent origination.The reader needs to understand all paragraphs. So, a complete understanding of the book will take time. In my case, after a third reading, the book started to be clear.When you understand clearly the Two Truths, you will see the power of Buddhism; you will deeply comprehend that you need to change.Other Dalai Lama’s books will be useful for the comprehension of “Practicing Wisdom”. I suggest the reading of "For The Benefit of All Beings", "Healing Anger", “The middle Way”, “Stages of Meditation”, “How to Practice”, "Advice on Dying" and "Essence of the Heart Sutra". The most important Buddhist practice is The Great Perfection; you can read about this practice in "Dzogchen", "Mind in Confort and Ease" and "The Heart of Meditation”.In my opinion, if you understand these books, you will have a deep idea of Buddhism. It is important to say that the above mentioned books are not for beginners although they also contain basic concepts. Just having a deep comprehension of Buddhism is not enough. Realization of emptiness -- through meditation practices -- is the Buddhist target to be attained.If you really understand Buddhism, you will be convinced that the Dharma is technology. In fact, Physics is a third-person science and Buddhism can be viewed as a first-person science; both are based upon experiments, external and internal, respectively. So, the Dharma is technology if it is accepted as consequence of first-person science. From this perspective, the knowledge offered by Buddhism can be considered the most useful by Westerners since it is able to remove suffering, the deepest existential human difficulty.The Dalai Lama’s speeches in the West are adaptations of Buddhism to Westerners. The Dalai Lama’s books, above mentioned, intend to show to Westerners that Buddhism can be considered a first-person science; this is the reason, in my opinion, why the Dalai Lama is a Nobel prize laureate.

This book is truly remarkable, even among the excellent books written by His Holiness. It is a transcript of teachings he gave in the early 90s on the 9th chapter of Shantideva's classic "Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life" (Bodhisattvacaryavatara). The 9th chapter is a very difficult chapter to read, because it deals with the understanding of ultimate reality according to the Madhyamika (Middle Way) tradition. However, this is a most important topic, since liberation can only come from realization of emptiness. Therefore, commentaries are essential.His Holiness already published some of his talks on the 9th chapter as a small yellow book called "Transcendent Wisdom". This current book is perhaps much better for a general audience, though, because it is so clearly written and ably translated by Geshe Thubten Jinpa. It is so clear, that even difficult subjects appear comprehensible. Also, each chapter ends with a brief meditation on the preceding topic. That really helps one to ground one's knowledge and achieve insights.I have already recommended this book to several other people, and have heard very positive responses. If you are interested in this topic, or Shantideva's text, this book is a very good choice.By the way, the translation of choice for Shantideva's book is the one by the Padmakara translation group, published by Shambhala. That is the one used in this book. However, even if you haven't read Shantideva's work, or don't have it, the full text of chapter 9 is given here, and therefore this book can stand alone as well.

I've been working through "The Way of the Bodhisattva" (Padmakara Translation) for many months using Pema Chodron's "No Time To Lose" as a study guide. She said the 9th chapter on Wisdom deserves a full book so she didn't address it in her book. I bought "Practicing Wisdom" to continue this process. I'm barely getting going with His Holiness's book but it is exceptional. It has more depth than some I've read by him. Those are meant to be more easily accessible I presume. ("Transforming the Mind" is one exception which I know of.) In the first chapter of P.W. His Holiness addresses some Buddhist basics. This is material with which I have a fair amount of familiarity. Still I have highlighted and gone through this chapter at least 3 times getting deeper insight each time. As I progress I am continually challenged to receive the material both mentally and through skillful means. I will be working with this book for many months and I'm certain it will be excellent guidance for me. (perhaps more to come later)

Once again, His Holiness offer words of wisdom and insight. His teaching and explanation of this worthy practice is inspiring. It took time for me to read and digest this book,but it was worth the effort.

relentless is defilement of tribal idealism so it will take one courage to put such in timeout to entertain what wisdom is being revealed here