To purchase Reggie’s books and audio programs, please visit his author pages at Shambhala Publications and at Sounds True.
Published Works
Books
The Practice of Pure Awareness
Have you ever had a “gut feeling” about a certain person or situation? Or a sense of intuition about how to respond to a particular challenge in your life? Through a meditation practice called Somatic Descent, Reggie Ray shows us how to connect with our body’s intuitive intelligence. In Somatic Descent we see that the body is always showing us what sort of response, direction, or action may be called for at any given time, and can in fact be relied upon as a primary practical resource for decision-making in our everyday life. The book includes links to online audio recordings of the guided meditations to further aid the reader.
The Practice of Pure Awareness
Perhaps the most precious teaching Tibet has to offer the modern world is the practice of meditation. Reginald Ray presents the essence of this tradition through the somatic practice of Pure Awareness—a unique kind of meditation that is thoroughly grounded in the body and in ordinary experience. This fundamentally transformative practice offers the possibility of enlightenment in this present life and invites us into the immensely powerful journey that Tibetan tantric spirituality has to offer.
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Reggie Ray presents here six fundamental practices that enable us to use the body itself as a supremely powerful tool for connecting us to the joyful reality of who we really are. These practices allow us to bypass the mental fabrications that keep us from experiencing our world and lead us directly to the richness of living a fully present, embodied human life.
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.”
In Indestructible Truth, Tibetan Buddhism is introduced not as an exotic religion, but rather as an expression of human spirituality that is having a profound impact on the modern world. In addition, it presents the point of view of meditation and the practice of the spiritual life, paying special attention to contemplative practice and meditation as taught in the Kagyu and Nyingma schools. Reggie presents complex and sophisticated teachings and practices in nontechnical language, using engaging stories and personal anecdotes to illustrate his points.
Secret of the Vajra World
Secret of the Vajra World is the companion volume to Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. While that book focuses on the history, cosmology, philosophy, and practice of the more public, exoteric side of Tibetan Buddhism, this work treats its more hidden and esoteric aspects as they take shape in Vajrayana. Together, the two volumes provide a broad introduction to the major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. The "Vajra World" (vajradhatu in Sanskrit) is a realm of indestructibility, the level of reality beyond all thought and imagination, all impermanence and change, which a fully realized person knows and inhabits.
The Wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism
Alternately sage and humorous, eloquent and pithy, these inspirational selections illustrate a central affirmation of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition: through the cultivation of self-knowledge, humility, and compassion for others, we can bring about positive and necessary change in ourselves and even in the world around us. Featuring many great masters past and present, including Milarepa, the Dalai Lama, Sogyal Rinpoche, Patrul Rinpoche, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and others, this compact volume offers wisdom on a variety of topics—bringing a light to the darkness for those seeking guidance.
Thirty of the most creative, eloquent, and energetic Tibetan Buddhist teachers of Westerners in recent decades are featured in this collection of teachings that are certain to be highly treasured by all students of Buddhism. The contributors are masters who helped establish Buddhism in the West. 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.
A scholarly work, Buddhist Saints in India provides information and insight accessible to a broader audience. Reggie traces the role of the saints in Indian Buddhist history, examining the beginnings of Buddhism and the origin of Mahayana Buddhism. Drawing on an extensive variety of sources, the book examines the nature, dynamics, and history of Buddhist hagiography, surveys the ascetic codes, conventions and traditions of Buddhist saints, and the traditions both of living saints and of those who have "passed beyond."
The Pocket Tibetan Buddhism Reader
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. Note: This title was republished as The Wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism (see above).
Audio Programs
Mahamudra for the Modern World
In this series, Dr. Reginald Ray has created an unprecedented audio learning course to make this profoundly transformative path available to listeners everywhere. Spanning 33 CDs, it features meditations and insights previously unavailable to a general audience. Mahamudra is revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the most direct route to seeing the world in all its transcendent beauty, power, and perfection. With his gift for distilling esoteric teachings for today's student, Dr. Ray has created a powerful training program for anyone seeking to engage in this life-altering journey, allowing us to discover this unsurpassed tradition for meeting ultimate reality — and awakening to the boundless freedom that is our fundamental nature.
"Within my body are all the sacred places of the world," the Buddhist saint Saraha once said, "and the most profound pilgrimage that I can ever make is within my own body." For fifteen centuries, the realized masters of the tantric path used the crucible of their own lives to develop a powerful and accelerated means to enlightenment. Today, these teachings remain alive within the usually hidden inner courtyard of the Vajrayana vehicle of Tibetan Buddhism, a tradition that requires the courage to engage your body, your human desires, and your most challenging life obstacles as the basic fuel for insight.
There is no more powerful vehicle for knowing yourself and others than the human heart. For it is through the opening of the heart that we touch our own deepest experience, and come to connect with each other. In Awakening the Heart, Dr. Reggie Ray presents a 24-CD somatic training curriculum designed to help us dismantle the walls around our hearts and dwell in bodhicitta (literally “awakened heart mind”).
For those who’ve worked with basic breath and body-based meditations, this course will be a revelation: step-by-step guidance into some of the most transformative and powerful experiences charted by Buddhism's vast maps of consciousness. Drawing on decades of teaching and scholarship, Reggie Ray shares a 13-CD curriculum of practices and insights to access the deepest knowing enfolded in the Soma, the landscape of your physical body and the source of immediate and greatest fulfillment.
The Practice of Pure Awareness
Your body is already awake. The journey of enlightenment, teaches Reggie Ray, ultimately leads you beyond the limits of the “head space” and into the living wisdom of the very cells that make up your physical form. With The Practice of Pure Awareness, Reggie shares what he sees as the essence of the Tibetan tantric tradition: allowing the depth and fullness of body-based or somatic intelligence to reveal itself. The Practice of Pure Awareness invites us into embodied awakening—a fuller and richer experience than the more arid or “above-the-neck” states of consciousness we find in many conventional spiritual approaches. Through committed practice, the body itself becomes our guide, teacher, and protector, illuminating the perfection inside and around us.
Your breath is a gateway to the vastness of the universe — and the path to your highest fulfillment. This is the premise behind Your Breathing Body, a landmark two-volume breathwork curriculum that will show you how to “fathom your breath to its full depths” for physical healing, emotional balance, and, ultimately, the direct experience of who you are and where you fit in the cosmos.
Volume Two contains 10 CDs for the advanced practitioner. Blending somatic practices and breathing techniques from cultures and traditions around the world, Reggie gives you a practice-focused program that will show you how to “fathom your breath to its full depths” for physical healing, emotional balance, and, ultimately, the direct experience of who you are and where you fit in the cosmos.
In Tibetan spiritual life, the practice of body-based meditation has been revered throughout its history as a vital tool for cultivating spiritual awareness and physical well-being. Today, in a world overabundant with stimuli, these embodied practices are more relevant and useful than ever. This program includes six body-based meditations—including prana breathing, body awareness, abdominal breathing, earth-based meditation practice —drawn from Reggie's longer series, Buddhist Tantra.
Meditating with the Body - Spanish Edition
Un repaso de la historia de Tíbet nos enseña que la vida espiritual tibetana enfoca la meditación con el cuerpo. Básicamente, esta práctica nos ayuda a cultivar nuestro conocimiento espiritual y bienestar físico. Hoy día, en un mundo repleto de estimulantes, ésas prácticas corporales son aún más apropiadas y valiosas. Ahora, Reggie Ray, maestro superior del budismo tibetano y nosotras – Maria Vargas y Danielle Wahab, les invitamos a ejecutar la siguiente serie de seis meditaciones tibetanas: el respiro prana, el respiro consciente, el respiro abdominal, la conexión a la tierra y más.
Like a tightly closed bud that longs to open fully, we live on the verge of an unfathomable beauty that needs only our loving attention to unfold. Meditation gives us a springboard for taking the bold leap into the limitless space of our own being. Dr. Reggie Ray has been immersed in the practice and teaching of meditation for more than 40 years. Now, Meditation in Seven Steps brings you this internationally respected teacher’s most essential guidance for those new to the practice. “No matter our age, circumstances, or where we come from,” explains Reggie Ray, “the practice of meditation enables us to make the journey back to who we truly are.” With Meditation in Seven Steps, he invites you to experience freedom, joy, fulfillment, and the countless profound rewards of dedicated practice.