The Small Golden Key: To the Treasure of the Various Essential Necessities of General and Extraordinar y Buddhist Dharma

Thinley Norbu, one of Dudjom Rinpoche's sons, has written several definitive texts on Vajrayana Buddhism's practices and teachings. This small volume hits many essential points of the outer, or ordinary, and inner, or secret teachings.Thinley Norbu died in New York at the age of 80 in December of 2011. His remains were cremated in Bhutan, the funeral was attended by practitioners from all over the world.His style is very practical, no wasted words or over-explanation. If you're looking for a no-nonsense approach, here it is."A Cascading Waterfall of Nectar," another thorough treatise, is his explanation of the Ngondro Practice, the Extraordinary, Essential Preliminary Practice.Dudjom Rinpoche wrote a version of the Ngondro especially for westerners, the Dudjom Tersar Ngondro.

This book helped me a lot! I was looking for information about lineages and transmissions. In several sources I could find some, sometimes longer or shorter than here, but I couldn't make any coherent picture of it all.. and than this book is truly like a small golden key.. with simple, clear language explains the essential things, which makes reading any other text much much easier bcs of overall coherent picture. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for the way in many scriptures or as a separate integral entity.

the book covers things not found in other books, it's written from the prospective of Vajrayana,I recommend it.Thinley Norbu Rinpoche has a thouruogh knowledg and understanding of the Buddha Dharma

I am sure there are some good ideas in here, but the language is very technical and the writing is poor.

I think it is unfortunate that the gentleman who gave this book a 1 rating seems to have judged the writing according to his own self-professed ignorance.Norbu's writing is poetic at times; visual and moving at others, and always challenging, not due to any opacity of the sriting style, but instead due to its profound depth. In this particular book, The Small Golden Key, he takes a more academic approach to his writing, giving some history of Buddhism in Tibet, and an excellent discussion of some of its sacred practices. Norbu's books are all gems! They are the real deal in that they are written by an individual who is actually accomplished in the esoteric and sacred tradition he represents.

I don't know what the other reviewer meant by "too garbled"; this book is exceedingly simple yet amazingly rich.

Contains essential information for practice so very happy to have a copy.

good