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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 15, 2008
Review of Awakening Through Love:
Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness
Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness. By John Makransky. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007, xii + 261 pages, ISBN: 0-86171-537-3, US $16.95 (paperback).
This volume is the fruit of Professor Makransky’s comprehensive efforts to teach Dzogchen (“natural great perfection”) meditation to various audiences—Buddhist practitioners, non-Buddhists interested in Buddhism, university students—in ways that illumine the deep spiritual resources of Dzogchen meditation and the social ethic such meditation necessarily generates. While this book is clearly written and comprehensible, its subject matter is critically introspective, provocative, and makes serious demands upon the reader. The careful reader will find herself accepting Makransky’s invitation to review the mind, to reassess its habitual ego clinging, projections, and reactions in order to be more attuned to the mind’s natural—if cloaked—sky-like wisdom and compassion (rigpa). Makransky brings to bear considerable scholarly prowess and a celebrated facility for guiding practitioners through meditations in meditation halls and retreats throughout North America. These two streams of practice figure prominently in the book, accounting for its deft combination of scholarly nuance and pastoral application of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. In addition to having a strong foundation in classic figures like Buddhaghosa and Śantideva, Makransky draws from many prominent contemporary Tibetan sources, including Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
