Peacock in the Poison Grove: Two Buddhist Texts on Training the Mind

by Lhundub Sopa, Michael J Sweet (Contribution by), Leonard Zwilling

Overview

Geshe Sopa offers insightful commentary on two of the earliest Tibetan texts that focus on mental training. Peacock in the Poison Grove presents powerful yogic methods of dispelling the selfish delusions of the ego and maintaining purity in our motives. Geshe Sopa's lucid explanations teach how we can fight the egocentric enemy within by realizing the truth of emptiness and by developing a compassionate, loving attitude toward others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780861711857
Publisher:	Wisdom Publications MA
Publication date:	09/09/1996
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Born in the Tsang region of Tibet in 1923, Geshe Lhundub Sopa was both a spiritual master and a respected academic. He rose from a humble background to complete his geshe studies at Sera Je Monastic University in Lhasa with highest honors and was privileged to serve as a debate opponent for the Dalai Lama’s own geshe examination in 1959. He moved to New Jersey in the United States in 1963 and in 1967 began teaching in the Buddhist Studies program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1975 he founded the Deer Park Buddhist Center in Oregon, Wisconsin, site of the Dalai Lama’s first Kalachakra initiation granted in the West. He was the author of several books in English, including the five-volume comprehensive teaching Steps on the Path to Enlightenment. Geshe Lhundub Sopa passed away on August 28, 2014, at the age of 91. His Holiness the Dalai Lama composed a prayer of request for the swift return of Geshe Sopa.

Michael Sweet received a PhD in Buddhist Studies in 1977 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the direction of Geshe Lhundub Sopa. From 1977-78 he taught and did research at the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. After later graduate studies, he was a psychotherapist in public and private practice (1980-2004) and a sometime lecturer at UW Madison, where he has been an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry. He has written extensively on the history of sexuality in South Asia and on Buddhist Studies. Since 2001 his research has focused on Ippolito Desideri and the Catholic missions in Tibet. Current research focuses on the first mission to Tibet, led by the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade.

Editorial Reviews

"Geshe Lhundub Sopa's character and learning have inspired me from the start of my practice of Buddhism. As is evidenced by his being the first among the top rung of geshes graduating his year, he is a vertiable well-spring of knowledge. His name means 'Spontaneity and Patience.' His training was so sustained and deep that his kindness is spontaneous. His patience over these many decades has been brought to perfection as only wisdom can do. Read this book and feel the presence of one of the world's great hearts and minds. These qualities drew to him two great collaborators, Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling."

Jeffrey Hopkins

"Peacock in the Poison Grove is one of the finest books ever published on the Kadam tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, whose basic program of 'mind training' (lojong) was adopted or adapted by every other Tibetan order. The two long poems translated here, attributed to Atisa's guru, Dharmaraksita, are among the oldest and most dramatic of the mind-training texts, woven as they are of startling imagery and a quintessentially Tibetan admixture of sutra and tantra practices, as well as conventional and ultimate perspectives on the world. Peacock in the Poison Grove provides lucid translations of the texts, and a humane and learned commentary revealing why Geshe Sopa has long been regarded as one of the greatest living scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. Sweet and Zwilling's historical and thematic introduction is a model of textual detective-work and lucid contextualization, which helps us understand the world in which these poems arose and why they continue to speak to us today. Peacock in the Poison Grove belongs on the shelf—and a readily accessible one at that!—of every scholar and every practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism."

Professor Roger Jackson

"An outstanding scholar-monk, Geshe Sopa has made tremendous contributions to the understanding of Tibetan Buddhism. It is wonderful his students are making available his teachings."

Gelek Rinpoche

"Being learned, pure in morality, and compassionate, Geshe Sopa is an incomparable example of a Dharma teacher."

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

"Geshe Sopa is one of the great living Lamas we have today."

Lama Surya Das

"Buddhist practitioners and scholars will welcome this important contribution to the growing body of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom in English. 'Mind training' (blo sbyong) is the principal method Tibetans use to develop Mahayana Buddhist attitudes; Geshe Sopa's explanation makes these ancient ideals come alive. Also, the historical introduction by Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling sheds new light on the formation of the Kadam tradition, and the edited Tibetan texts provide a solid foundation for further study."

Prof. John Newman

"Tibetan mind-training literature is rich and varied, as the two poems translated here prove. [They are] full of potent imagery. Geshe Sopa is one of the rare Buddhist studies scholars with a traditional Tibetan education. This top-ranking geshe gives these rare texts the first-rate commentary they deserve."

Shambhala Sun magazine

"Read this book and feel the presence of one of the world's great hearts and minds."

Professor Jeffrey Hopkins

"This is a wonderful, even inspiring, book meant both for the head and for the heart. The translation of these two classic texts is elegant, Geshe Sopa's commentary [is] insightful, and the introduction provides us with a model for what all historical and thematic contextualizations of Tibetan texts should look like. A magnificent resource for the practitioner and scholar alike."

Professor Jose Cabezon