Chogyam Trungpa was one of the most visibly active of the Tibetan Buddhist refugees to come to the West and to lay the foundation in Europe and North America for the study of the Tibetan traditions. Born the son of a farmer and considered the eleventh incarnation of Trungpa Tulku, he was given a traditional training in religious philosophy but in his teens had to be hidden from the invading Chinese. Fleeing in 1959 when the Communists invaded Tibet, he ultimately moved to Great Britain, where he studied comparative religion at Oxford University and established a Tibetan meditation center in Scotland. He moved to the United States in 1970 and established the Buddhist university, Naropa, in Colorado. Naropa became the center for seminars, many of which he cotaught with prominent American artists, scholars, and scientists. His philosophical goal was to present traditional Tibetan Buddhist teachings in a new manner that would help them take root in Western soil. In that way, he would both preserve the insights of his culture and bring Buddhist philosophy to the benefit of humanity at large.
摘要
A Western and a Tibetan specialist explain the origins, history，principles, practices, and applications of the Buddhist tantric tradition of Tibet. Westerners wanting to know about the Buddhist tantra of Tibet have often had to work with speculation and fancy. In The Dawn of Tantra the reader meets a Tibetan meditation master and a Western scholar whose grasp of Buddhist tantra is real and unquestionable.
In their collaboration，Herbert Guenther and Chogyam Trungpa offer a balanced view of their subject that avoids the extremes of arid scholarship and facile psychology. In the words of Trungpa Rinpoche，"Professor Guenther and I decided that the best way for us to approach the subject of tantra together is for him to deal with the prajna, or knowledge aspect of it，and for me to deal with the upaya, the skillful means or actual application aspect of it."
The resulting discussion is both true to the intent of the ancient Tibetan teachings and relevant to the everyday world of contemporary Westerners. Herbert V. Guenther，Ph.D.，is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the translator and author of many books and articles on Buddhist thought.
