Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism

Lucid and economical, this introductory text delivers a brisk, fast-moving survey of Tibetan Buddhism. For many years Powers's nearly 600-page Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism has served as the field's most authoritative and comprehensive overview of Tibet's distinctive Buddhist tradition. A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism explains the core Buddhist doctrines and the practices of meditation and tantra and provides a survey of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Lucid and economical, the Concise Introduction delivers a brisk, fast-moving survey. For many years, Powers' nearly six hundred-page Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism has served as the field's most authoritative and comprehensive introductory text on Tibet's distinctive Buddhist tradition. Now Powers has responded to requests to provide an introductory text in compact form. This slimmed-down reference explains the core Buddhist doctrines and the practices of meditation and tantra in an engaging manner. A survey of the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism and a succinct history of the Tibetan cultural region complete this work.

Publishers Weekly

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.)

John Powers is professor of Asian Studies at Australian National University. He is the author of 16 books and more than 50 academic articles.