Kindly Bent to Ease Us, Part One: Mind

The three volume set was highly recommended to me by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, an excellent Buddhist teacher and whose words are deeply rooted in the wisdom of Buddhist psychology. They are not fast reading material but enlightening and joyful. Thank you so much for finding vol. 1 for me. Pat Young.

Guenther has a very dense writing style, but at the same time his writing is very personal. Good for practice and for theory.

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

To say the least , a patient with schizophrenia makes more sense during a psychotic episode than this book. Intentionally obscure to hide lack of real insight.

The text itself is glorious, and the translation of it is just fine, very readable. I find Guenther's Introduction to the chapters heavy and ponderous, although typical of translations from thirty years ago. There are good points to learn from him, of course, although intellectual. However, if you have been practicing for a long time with good teachers, trust yourself to dive directly into the very blessed text. I don't know of any more contemporary translations, and the price of this book and the series is very reasonable. Don't hesitate to go for it if you desire to read this.

Wonderful condition and an excellent book. Trying to find v. 2 .

I find this the most broad ranging and comprehensive of the three volumes of Kindly Bent to Ease Us.It begins with a phenomenology of perception as the arising of that consciousness which is coincident with perception's essential constitution; that is the rising - or construction - of the determinate from the indeterminate; the reification of the apparent world into things and the way in which those things are informed at their core - in advance or simultaneously - by the very theories through which [or as which] they are seen. Longchen Rabjam, in providing this description, dismantles [with this knowledge as a tool] the placements of division which enshrine essential difference and substantial alterity - to turn apparent objects out again into the open-ness that is the undifferentiated and spacious ground of the experience of being before its obsessive delimitation; the undifferentiated cognitive potential coincident with space. The self of objects and the self of persons is released from artificial confinement. He deconstructs dualistic experience in the inescapability of constructed experience which is its mutual constitution and therefore must be known equally, examining the instantaneity of karma as the immediate feedback of prejudiced visions in projection; incarnating the elaborations we ourselves project. He then pegs out the tent as the ground. This volume is a phenomenology of consciousness as the totality of experience, knowing its undifferentiated self more thoroughly precisely because of [and as] this adumbration. The unsullied, cognitive expanse is the empty body of Samanthabadhra - which Longchenpa's poetry makes warmer than emptiness when characterised as utter non-existence.This is the handbook and manual, the complete understanding of which is coincident with attainment; as is any complete understanding in its terms.The handbook offers straightforward meditational advice, meditation as a maintained way of seeing which gradually reformulates the miss-attributions of substantiality that misguided perception makes into a new understanding and way of Being. Longchen offers structures toward the deconstruction of all difference - for those who require adumbrations of the structures which structureless-ness is nothing other than. The volume contains, and releases, poetic exaltations of [and exhortations to] vision through the sustained application of appreciative discrimination. How to do that, as a practice.Guenther's commentary musters Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, considering the question of the meaning of Being and embodied experience in the structure of perception.

This is my favorite book of the 3 volume trilogy by 14th century Dzogchen master Longchen Rabjam or Longchenpa. He's also called: Klong-chen-rab-'byams, Drime Wozer, and Kunkyab Ngoggi Wangpo. He is very possibly the greatest Dzogchen master of all time--excluding the ones who may be mythological. It includes the much repeated metaphor of the moon reflected in the mountain lake (though I forget which of the 3 books it was in). This trilogy is a great classic. Also read the recent translations of some of Longchenpa's "Seven Treasuries" though most have not yet been translated. For a book of excerpts from Longchenpa's many works, read "The Practice of Dzogchen" translated by Tulku Thondup. Well worth the effort. However, the present trilogy is far easier reading than the other works mentioned here. They are a good start for the student who has already read a couple of introductory texts on Dzogchen (and perhaps Kagyu Mahamudra).

I find this the most broad ranging and comprehensive of the three volumes of Kindly Bent to Ease Us.It begins with a phenomenology of perception as the arising of that consciousness which is coincident with perception's essential constitution; that is the rising - or construction - of the determinate from the indeterminate; the reification of the apparent world into things and the way in which those things are informed at their core - in advance or simultaneously - by the very theories through which [or as which] they are seen. Longchen Rabjam, in providing this description, dismantles [with this knowledge as a tool] the placements of division which enshrine essential difference and substantial alterity - to turn apparent objects out again into the open-ness that is the undifferentiated and spacious ground of the experience of being before its obsessive delimitation; the undifferentiated cognitive potential coincident with space. The self of objects and the self of persons is released from artificial confinement. He deconstructs dualistic experience in the inescapability of constructed experience which is its mutual constitution and therefore must be known equally, examining the instantaneity of karma as the immediate feedback of prejudiced visions in projection; incarnating the elaborations we ourselves project. He then pegs out the tent as the ground. This volume is a phenomenology of consciousness as the totality of experience, knowing its undifferentiated self more thoroughly precisely because of [and as] this adumbration. The unsullied, cognitive expanse is the empty body of Samanthabadhra - which Longchenpa's poetry makes warmer than emptiness when characterised as utter non-existence.This is the handbook and manual, the complete understanding of which is coincident with attainment; as is any complete understanding in its terms.The handbook offers straightforward meditational advice, meditation as a maintained way of seeing which gradually reformulates the miss-attributions of substantiality that misguided perception makes into a new understanding and way of Being. Longchen offers structures toward the deconstruction of all difference - for those who require adumbrations of the structures which structureless-ness is nothing other than. The volume contains, and releases, poetic exaltations of [and exhortations to] vision through the sustained application of appreciative discrimination. How to do that, as a practice.Guenther's commentary musters Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, considering the question of the meaning of Being and embodied experience in the structure of perception.

Sehr langatmig, aber wenn man konzentriert bleiben kann, vermittelt es Einsichten.