Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention

Description

For centuries Tibetan Buddhist contemplatives have directly explored consciousness through carefully honed techniques of meditation. B. Alan Wallace, widely recognized as one of the clearest facilitators of the dialogue between science and Buddhism, explains the methods and experiences of those Tibetan practitioners and compares these with investigations of consciousness by Western scientists and philosophers. Balancing the Mind includes a translation of a classic discussion by the fifteenth-century Tibetan contemplative Tsongkhapa of methods for developing exceptionally high degrees of attentional stability and clarity.

B. Alan Wallace has authored, translated, edited, and contributed to more than forty books on Tibetan Buddhism, science, and culture. With fourteen years as a Buddhist monk, he earned a BA in physics and the philosophy of science and then a PhD in religious studies. After teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he founded the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies to explore the integration of scientific approaches and contemplative methods.

"A spectacular cross-cultural presentation of techniques for achieving meditative states."-Jeffrey Hopkins, author of Maps of the Profound "The most important book on Buddhist meditation to appear in over a decade."-Roger Jackson, Director of Asian Studies, Carleton College "Alan Wallace is one of the great Western Buddhist thinkers of our day."-Howard Cutler, coauthor with H.H. the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness "For experienced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism who also enjoy intellectual analysis of their practice and tradition, Balancing the Mind will have great appeal."-The Middle Way Buddhist quarterly