Product Description

World-renowned Buddhist scholar Herbert V. Guenther here offers the first comprehensive study of the rDzogs-chen or Ati tradition of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Matrix of Mystery explores man's ability to preserve as well as transmit essential insights into the structure of reality.

Utilizing a key root Buddhist scripture, the Guhyagarbha ("Matrix of Mystery"), along with dozens of commentarial Tibetan textual sources, Guenther presents the most profound teachings of the Buddhist tradition, which represent the culmination of religious thought and practice in Tibet. In relating these teachings in modern scientific and humanistic perspectives, he demonstrates how, in many cases, the traditional religious and modern secular perspectives on the nature of reality interface.

Professor Guenther discusses the mandala and the deities that reside therein; the organizing principles of body, speech, mind, quality, and action, the three bodies of the buddha (trikaya); the inseparability of prajna and skillful means; and the complex field of Buddhist iconography. Throughout, quotations from numerous Tibetan sources are used to illustrate various teachings. His book will appeal to any serious student of Tibetan Buddhism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #708353 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Released on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

About the Author
Herbert V. Guenther is Professor Emeritus of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Among his many published works are his translation of The Life and Teaching of Naropa and The Dawn of Tantra.

Customer Reviews

the best accounting of the human condition available now
This is more than a book. It is a study. I have been studying it for almost 15 years. Well worth the time and effort.

Get out your dictionary. Msrs G and Longchenpa are very exact. They say more in a paragraph than most "experts" on the human mind and livingness say in a lifetime.

Mr G and L deserve highest praise.

Michael Mourer

The Risks and Rewards of Syncretic Utterance...
Walter Benjamin imagined himself writing a book wholly of quotations from other writers. (_The Arcades Project_ represents one way he moved in that direction as a writer.) Herbert Guenther has developed not a pastiche literary work but a pastiche language in which he translates and interprets the Dzogchen message, lifting terms from phenomenology (esp. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty), quantum mechanics (esp. David Bohm), and 1970's cognitive science and computer jive. I don't know if this appraoch successfully transmits Dzogchen praxis (I'm no guru, friends), but it's clear to me that this book is precious on its own terms.

Really, it's an interesting performance. This is not your conventional "Dharma book." It's not meant to make you comfortable or to reassure you about anything. Guenther's specific dialect of syncretese is not easy on the first reading, but the specialized vocabulary (meaning-saturated gestalt vs. scenario gestalt vs. display gestalt) leads to a very precise presentation, if one is willing to really try to follow what Guenther is trying to do with the ideas he's constructed. You just have to dig in and work at it if you're going to enjoy your time with this book.

I think this book is cool, to be straight with you. It's cool in the same way that Montreal's ambitious and excessive Olympic Stadium is cool, or Arcosanti, or Deleuze and Guattari's _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_. Like all these, _Matrix of Mystery_ arose in that bold zeitgeist of world-excavation, world-creation, and earnest experimentation. That the surfaces and contours are unfamiliar and largely uninviting to those used to Wal-Mart/McDo's architecture is not indicative of any flaws in those shapes and smoothnesses, and is basically tough bananas. There's always NASCAR.

_Matrix of Mystery_ is beautiful.

And like Olympic Stadium or Deleuze and Guattari (or postmodern anything), not everyone is ready to give it an earnest and openminded look. There are many paths for many people. Even those ridiculous Disney Channel movies are a part of the knowledge business, if your attitude is right.

Intrigued? Give it a shot. In any event, may you find your path.

Don't torture yourself
Most Buddhist authors write from a pure intention. No doubt they realise it's quite likely they will return to this planet in their next life - and they'd like to do something to improve it.

Dr Güenther was clearly an exception, if his books are anything to go by.

Matrix of Mystery ("mystery" being the operative word) is yet another demonstration that he was a (clearly compassionless) tree-wasting show-off windbag, more interested in demonstrating his great erudition than sharing any insight he MAY have had.

I challenge anyone on this planet to explain to us what he was going on about - and I include in that challenge all the high lamas of this earth. The reason his writings are incoherent is not necessarily because they are profound (who would know?!) but because he didn't put in the effort to make them CLEAR to readers. If he had any realisation at all, he didn't share it.

He wasted his life.

(Moreover, it seems like he had close access to some important teachers. So he also wasted what they gave him. This is not good, because that time, space, and energy could have been used by someone else who might have actually done something USEFUL with it.)

If karma is any guide, who knows what realm of confusion he now inhabits?

***

PS To other reviewers who give good reviews to wasted paper like this, I can only say: just because everyone else is dancing to the trendy new song, doesn't mean you have to rush out on the dance floor. Just because you might look like a fool if you don't understand something, doesn't mean the person saying it does either.

With all the confusion and misinformation that clearly reigns in the world right now, what we need is CLARITY. And it is the least we can expect from those who 'know better' - who have ANY realisation. It's their duty to share it, not use it to aggrandise themselves.

Yes, the intellect itself is also one of the six senses, something for us to enjoy. But when the house is burning down around your family and you have access to water, you don't use it to write a thesis about microscopic phenomena to impress all your academic friends. You pick up a large bucket of it and you throw it on the fire! :-)