Essential Tibetan Buddhism

This book took a long time to get through. Several times I had to stop and take a brief hiatus from reading it because the text was a bit dense and required some time to consider before moving on. One reason for this is the author's call to leave his explanations of the selected writings for the Notes section at the very end. While I understand wanting the selected writings to speak for themselves, for someone who is looking to understand Tibetan Buddhism (like the majority of readers who find this book, because it is clearly not for scholars who will immediately know what is going on) it made reading very tedious and a little confusing at times.

Had it been me, I would have organized the book in which the notes would appear either show more before or after each selected writing, giving a full explanation as to its purpose and origins as the reader was introduced to it. In this way, the reader would have a much richer understanding of each selected writing and the structure the author was going for.

Not sure if this is one I'd really recommend, as I'm sure there are other books that do a much better job of introducing the concepts of Tibetan Buddhism, but overall I did find it enjoyable if structurally lacking. show less