Emptiness Yoga

Book excerpt: Emptiness Yoga is an absorbing and highly readable presentation of the highest development in Buddhist insight. Professor Jeffery Hopkins--considered by many to be the foremost contemporary Western authority on Tibetan Buddhism--presents an in-depth, lively exposition of the methods of realization of the Middle Way Consequence School (Prasangika Madhyamika). His personal and accessible presentation is based on a famous work by Jang-gya Rol-bay-dorjay (lcang skya rol pa `i rdo rje, 1717-86) which was used as a primary text in Tibet`s largest monasteries. A translation of this text is included as well as the Tibetan text itself. The many reasonings used to analyze persons and phenomena and to establish their true mode of existence are presented in the context of meditative practice. This exposition includes a masterful treatment of the compatibility in thought and experience of emptiness and dependent-arising. Emptiness Yoga will be greatly appreciated by both beginners and advanced students for its immediacy, profundity, and precision.