Lectures on Tibetan Religious Culture

by Geshe Lhundup Sopa

Authored by one of the foremost living Tibetan teachers of modern scholarship. Beautifully combines language learning with assimilation into the rich, wide world of Tibetan religious culture. Presented in a format of text book manual, the reader is gently guided in the progressive familiarization with the culture and civilisation of a great country.

An interesting book if you are already able to read basic texts. Each chapter starts with an interview with a Rinpoche, which is then followed by vocabulary, notes, translation, and exercises. A key for the exercises is given. This is a very good book for anyone wanting to read Dharma texts.

Designed as an intermediate Tibetan language textbook, much traditional material is presented in colloquial form, enabling students to learn to talk about Buddhist culture in Tibetan.

Volume one deals with such topics as Buddhist training in Tibet, entering a monastery, studying for a gesbe degree and continuing training at a Tantric college. There are also discussions of Buddhist doctrine and its spread in Tibet.

Volume two presents Lam-rim Teachings in a colloquial form, discussing the meditations associated with the three types of persons, such as impermanence, causality, and lower rebirth; the miseries of existence, the mind of enlightenment and practice of the six perfections.

Each lesson consists of a Tibetan lecture accompanied by notes, explanation of new vocabulary, exercises and an English translation.