Kindly Bent to Ease Us: Wonderment (Part 3)

Thank you for these precious teachings on the profound Dharma. I pray to listen to them for the benefit of all beings.

Good content by the author, but half of the book is commentary by the translator. You could combine the 3 books in this series, and leave off all the commentary.

Perfect condition and an excellent book!

Many say Geunther is a genius. I might agree. He has some extraordinary, unique perspectives, apparently born from many years of study, in both Tibetan as well as European philosophies. But a translator? It seems he fancies himself more a sort of "decoder," if you will, and his (sometimes lengthy) reasonings behind his peculiar, intense word choices often appear sound. Yet as the years go on, and students of this genre grow in there understanding of key terms, key-term translation is becoming more-and-more standardized, leaving his "translations" less-and-less accessible.If you work at it, you can squeeze out many of the original Tibetan terms from his indexes, footnotes, etc., and thereby triangulate with the more commonly-used terms. -Somewhat tiresome if what you really want is a more direct translation, for use in a student-teacher situation for example. Furthermore, this book and the other two in the trilogy are much more commentary than translation. This is a shame, since Longchenpa himself wrote an auto-commentary to them.That said, Guenther IS a great thinker, and if you would like to read Guenther, as opposed (in this case) to Longchenpa, then I'll say, this and all of the books I've read by him (some dozen) are truly fascinating. Very original and thought-provoking.Maybe look for a translation elsewhere. -no offense, Herb.

Strangely, both Guenther and Longchen Rabjam seem to have got it together here. Gone are Guenther's technical diagrams and verbal abstruseness and occasional tortuosity, replaced by more immediate and easy statements and descriptions which read as a pleasure beside the text. Longchenpa deploys eight reiterations of the experience of wisdom. Which, like Longchenpa at his culmination always, are an embodied, instantative and affective transmission. His words here are both expressions of experience and physical tools, the immediacy of which is like a spanner reaching across the centuries to recalibrate misguided perceptions into the instantiation of, and instantaneous access to, a pure transparence of spacious experience. There's nothing mystical here, because the words themselves are the vectors of this material causality.

Guenther manages to bring to life and to this reader's understanding the full complexity and open simplicity of Longhchenpa Trime Oser (1308-1363)thought.If one is willing to do some work, to follow the intricacies of interpretation, the "Kindly Bent to Ease Us" trilogy is, imho, one of the best books on Dzogchen thought available, and one of the most profound books of philosophy ever published.

Strangely, both Guenther and Longchen Rabjam seem to have got it together here. Gone are Guenther's technical diagrams and verbal abstruseness and occasional tortuosity, replaced by more immediate and easy statements and descriptions which read as a pleasure beside the text. Longchenpa deploys eight reiterations of the experience of wisdom. Which, like Longchenpa at his culmination always, are an embodied, instantative and affective transmission. His words here are both expressions of experience and physical tools, the immediacy of which is like a spanner reaching across the centuries to recalibrate misguided perceptions into the instantiation of, and instantaneous access to, a pure transparence of spacious experience. There's nothing mystical here, because the words themselves are the vectors of this material causality.

Although there are difficult concepts to overcome in the unique way in which he writes there is still a considerable amount to be learnt from his style and worth the effort. His Matrix of Mystery is equally worth the read.