Reddit reviews Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
We found 3 Reddit comments about Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
It's not entirely about this, but in Blazing Splendor, which is more or less a memoir written by a Tibetan "Rinpoche", he does discuss an interesting account of a local 'demon' or deity that has some power. In brief, this deity comes to visit a certain lama and one of the attendants does not recognize him for what he is and touches his staff. He gets very, very ill and seems very close to dying but the lama intervenes, more or less.
It's an otherwise interesting book regardless, if you're interested in getting a sense of Tibetan Buddhism and culture, but it's probably mostly a tangential recommendation from your actual question.
Blazing Splendor!
Well, traditionally you're supposed to examine a teacher for 9 years before taking them on -- so you can be sure they're the real deal.
When it comes to my own teacher, he's on many occasions reinforced that you're not supposed to have blind faith or force devotion. It needs to come naturally from experiencing the benefits of the practice.
It's tough for many people (myself included) especially coming from a Christian "blind faith" background to be able to separate that from what we grow up with.
But anyways, you can still read and study about Tibetan Buddhism without having to take a teacher. It's just that once you want to start doing practices requiring empowerments/transmission/etc you're going to need to find one. But even then it's not like once you do that you can't keep seeing other teachers to see if any resonate with you.
I'm trying to think of books on Tibetan Buddhism that aren't so heavy into the Guru stuff... maybe some autobiographies might be interesting:
Another recommendation would be: