Understanding the Tibetan Buddhist Temple

ISBN 978-1-896559-07-0
126 pages, paperback, 11" x 8.5"
154 photographs, full colour throughout
Vajrayana, Iconography, Art

UNDERSTANDING THE TIBETAN BUDDHIST TEMPLE: A photographic study of Vajrayana shrine offerings

John Harvey Negru

Vajrayana Buddhism can seem mysterious and confusing to Westerners, with its vibrant embrace of the five senses. This book parts the curtain, to explore the rich symbolism of Tibetan Buddhist icons with explanatory text that will bring their meaning to life.

Understanding the Tibetan Buddhist Temple: A photographic study of Vajrayana shrine offerings is an extensively annotated portfolio of 154 colour photographs of statues, shrine offerings, thangka paintings, and other ritual objects from Karma Tekchen Zabsal Ling, a Thrangu lineage Karma Kargyu centre in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.

The book is in three parts: A Garland of Precious Objects to Enrich the Mind (the shrine room); The Golden Rosary of Karma Kargyu Lineage Holders (thangkas); and The Consecration of Dzambhala (how icons are sanctified).

John Harvey Negru [Karma Yonten Gyatso] is founder of The Sumeru Press, Canada’s largest independent Buddhist book publisher, and hosts canadianbuddhism.info, an online directory comprising more than 600 centres. Understanding the Tibetan Buddhist Temple is his second book about Buddhist iconography. His earlier book on the subject, Understanding the Chinese Buddhist Temple, was published in 2010. As an independent practitioner-scholar, he has been involved in many Buddhist community development projects in Canada over the years. In 2011-13, he developed and conducted the first national sociological study of Canadian Buddhist organizations, in association with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Toronto. The key findings of that study were published in the Journal of Global Buddhism in 2013.