Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Sounds True
What does it mean to “meditate with the body”? Until you answer this question, explains Reggie Ray, meditation may be no more than “a mental gymnastic”— something you can practice for years without fruitful results. In Touching Enlightenment, the esteemed author of five books on Buddhist history and practice guides you back to the original practice of the Buddha: a systematic process that results in a profound awareness “in your body rather than in your head.”
Combining the scholarship that has earned him international renown with original insights from nearly four decades practicing and teaching meditation, Reggie Ray invites you to explore:
- How to enter fully into communion with your embodied nature
- The insights of Tibetan yoga, from guidance on breathing and working with discomfort to its challenge to modern practitioners on the path to realization
- Why “rejected” experience becomes imprinted in the body—and how to receive it anew to “reconstitute your human way of being”
- Karma of cause and karma of result—taking full responsibility for your life
- Your three bodies—the physical, the interpersonal, and the cosmic
Read a review of Touching Enlightenment from LA Yoga magazine.
"When I teach, I often tell my students to practice with the body that they have now, not the body they think they have. So when I began reading Dr. Reginald Ray’s newest book, Touching Enlightenment, it was as though a spark of recognition, of excitement, was ignited in me and I began tearing through the pages. Dr. Ray makes the argument for the necessity of fully inhabiting our bodies and exploring our spiritual practice through our bodies, with the body as we experience it, not as we imagine it. This practice transcends from the personal to the political. “We are not above the world at all, in a position of domination and control, but are embedded within it, interdependent with other people, animals and the natural world itself,” he says in the book. It is a message we would do well to heed, particularly now. According to Dr. Ray, the fact that Tibetan Buddhism is becoming more available and accessible in this time of global -- and personal – crisis provides an opportunity to access the embodied teachings inherent within the tradition.
"In his exploration of viewing the body as a partner on the spiritual path, Dr. Ray draws upon his decades of study and teaching in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ray's long stint on the faculty of Naropa University and his immersion in somatic disciplines including Feldenkreis, qigong, Tibetan Yoga, Rolfing, hatha yoga and the work of Gerda Alexander.
" 'My experience suggests that our problem is very simple: we are attempting to practice meditation and follow a spiritual path in a disembodied state, and this is inevitably doomed to failure.'
"Dr. Ray doesn’t just tell us what is wrong, he holds out an invitation to dance with the partner of the body. He even suggests that the modern equivalent of the forest or cave where the ascetics used to quest for enlightenment is the terrain of the body itself. This does not give us free reign for self-indulgence. Far from it, it is challenging to traverse the geography of the body. Yet to do so is revolutionary.
"Beyond revolutionary, it carries the capacity for powerful transformation through accessing prana. In the book, Dr. Ray describes ideas also discussed in the hatha yoga tradition, in texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika: where our attention goes, our prana follows. Prana is our life force, what in Tibetan yoga is spoken about as our inner breath. “Wherever our attention goes, the prana goes and the prana carries awareness right to that point. By directing the prana, we are able to bring awareness to any location within our body.” This dynamic process can awaken in us a profound sense of well-being, according to this work.
"While Dr. Ray emphasizes the importance of working with a teacher, he does provide practices in the book to facilitate meditating with the body, encountering the shadow and even seeing the Earth as our body. Through these somatic experiences of meditation, he says, “We’re simply making a relationship with it [our body] as it is.” This is far different from complacency. Instead, he says, it can be the vehicle for resolving karma.This may seem at first like an intimidating tome, but the short, easy-to-digest chapters (even though there are 58 of them) provide essential wisdom to wake us up to the necessity of being embodied – in our own skin and on this Earth – before it is far too late."
–– Reviewed by Felicia Marie Tomasko, RN
LAYOGA Magazine, November 2008
Buddhist Saints in India:
A Study in Buddhist Values & Orientations
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Amazon
A scholarly work, Buddhist Saints in India provides information and insight accessible to a broader audience. The book surveys the conventions and traditions of Buddhist saints and the role of saints in Indian Buddhist history, focusing on the earliest days of Buddhism and the formation of the Mahayana. A more extensive discussion of the book's approach and scholarly importance can be found at the publisher's page for Buddhist Saints in India.
Table of Contents
Sample section, "A Condemned Saint: Devadatta"
Indestructible Truth:
The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Amazon
Indestructible Truth is an introduction to exoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism - including aspects of cosmology and culture, doctrine, and ritual - as an expression of human spirituality. Throughout, emphasis is on spiritual life in the Tibetan Buddhist context, with particular attention to the "Practice Lineage" of the Kagyü and Nyingma schools.
Table of Contents
Sample chapter, "Living in the Sacred Cosmos"
Secret of the Vajra World:
The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Amazon
Secret of the Vajra World is a companion volume to Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism, described above. This work focuses on the esoteric and tantric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism in the context of the Vajrayana. Topics (more comprehensively presented in the Table of Contents, linked below) include history, philosophy, meditation, ritual and social institutions such as the Tülku tradition.
Table of Contents
Sample chapter, "The View of Vajrayana"
In the Presence of Masters :
Wisdom from 30 Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Teachers
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Amazon
Thirty of the most creative, eloquent, and energetic Tibetan Buddhist teachers of Westerners in recent decades are featured in this collection of teachings. The book highlights the teachings of the practice lineages, the branch of Tibetan Buddhism that emphasizes meditation practice, personal experience, and spiritual realization. Selections are thematically organized, including topics such as the major approaches to the spiritual path, meditation and other practices, Buddhist ethics, tantric practice, and the role of the teacher.
The Pocket Tibetan Buddhism Reader
By Reginald A. Ray
Available from Amazon
This pocket-sized reader will be cherished by students of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the many readers of such popular books as The Art of Happiness, When Things Fall Apart, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and Awakening the Buddha Within. This unique collection features short inspirational selections and pithy quotations from the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism, past and present, including Milarepa, the Dalai Lama, Sogyal Rinpoche, Patrul Rinpoche, Chögyam Trungpa, and others. Topics include cultivating compassion, letting go of ego, and developing a clear perception of our own true nature.
