Geshe Gedün Lodrö

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fckw
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Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by fckw »

I've stumbled upon the book "Calm Abiding and Special Insight" by Geshe Gedün Lodrö and was blown away by the incredible detail and precision of the book. I have rarely ever heard any meditation master talk with such intimate insight about meditation at all. After some research I learned that apparently same Geshe had written also a book called "Walking through walls" which seems to be a series of lectures given at the university of Virginia in the 1970s. However, I could not find the book in any local library, and someone on the net wrote that this is more or less the same content as the other book published later as "Calm Abiding and Special Insight". Can anyone confirm? Or is it worth owning both books because the latter is sufficiently different from the former?

Also, does anyone know more about this particular Geshe? From the little I've seen he must have come with the same group of refugees as Dalai Lama to India, and later on in his life used to live in Hamburg/Germany. Apparently his memory was encyclopedic, he had memorized literally thousands of pages of texts throughout his life from which he could draw at any time. Does anyone know more about him?
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Ayu
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by Ayu »

Seemingly, he was a venerable gelug scholar.

I found some information on the website of the university of Hamburg. https://www.hpk.uni-hamburg.de/resolve/ ... n_00002064
He was a professor for Indian history and Tibetan culture from 1976 to 1979. Unfortunately he died at the age of 55 in October 1979 in a village near Hamburg.

And on the website "Buddhism in Hamburg" https://brghamburg.de/buddhismus-in-hamburg/
there is a paragraph about him:
Interesse am tibetischen Buddhismus weckte unter anderem Geshe Gendün Lodrö (1924-1979). Er wurde 1967 als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an die Universität Hamburg entsandt und dort 1976 auf den ersten Hamburger Lehrstuhl für tibetische Kultur und Sprache berufen. Die Empfehlung kam von S.H. dem 14. Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, der 1977 die Schirmherrschaft des Tibetischen Zentrums e.V. in Hamburg übernahm. ...
(My translation:)
"Amongst others, Geshe Gendün Lodrö arose interest in Tibetan Buddhism in Hamburg. He was sent to the university of Hamburg as research assistant in 1967. In 1976 he obtained the office of a professor for Tibetan culture and language. He was being recommended by H.H. Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, who accepted the patronage of the Tibetan Center in 1977."

The Tibetan Center (Tibetisches Zentrum e.V.) is the address for gelug studies, meditation classes and various buddhist lectures for private lay people outside of the university of Hamburg.
fckw
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by fckw »

Thanks! I take it you also don't know about the similarities/differences between both books, though?
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Ayu
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by Ayu »

fckw wrote: Sun Dec 27, 2020 6:58 pm Thanks! I take it you also don't know about the similarities/differences between both books, though?
No, I'm sorry. I just started that research, because I was curious about this master.
Bristollad
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by Bristollad »

I just took a look in our library - the two books are definitely sourced from the same material. In Walking through Walls, there is no middle section between the sections on calm abiding and special insight. Instead that material appears in appendices. Other than that it largely appears identical, even down to the footnotes on the pages.
The antidote—to be free from the suffering of samsara—you need to be free from delusion and karma; you need to be free from ignorance, the root of samsara. So you need to meditate on emptiness. That is what you need. Lama Zopa Rinpoche
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Ayu
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by Ayu »

I found an article from 1993 about 'Walking through Walls'.
I have no time to translate all this, but German speaking members might be interested.The exerpt tells about the content of the book and it's special qualities for people who know meditation already. The book was very special at that time, because there were no German translations that concerned deep meditation matters.
Zu Beginn des ersten Teils werden sechs Vorbedingungen für eine erfolgrei- che Übung beschrieben, so z.B. einwand- freie Ethik, geringe Bedürfnisse und weitgehende Begierdelosigkeit. Dann folgt die Erläuterung der Meditations- haltung, der körperlichen wie geistigen Grundlage und der verschiedenen Medi- tationsobjekte, die je nach Veranlagung und Erfordernis gewählt werden kön- nen. Weitere Themen sind die Ver- bindung von Geistiger Ruhe mit Beson- derer Einsicht (Vipaœyanå), die Neun Stu- fen der Konzentration und die Eigen-
schaften und Anzeichen, die mit dem Resultat, dem Erlangen der Geistigen Ruhe, einhergehen.
Im zweiten Teil des Buches werden die Besondere Einsicht in die endgültige Bestehensweise der Phänomene und an- dere wichtige damit einhergehende Aspekte beschrieben. Besondere Einsicht ist notwendig, um aus einem weltlichen, d.h. einen weiter an den Daseinskreislauf bindenden Pfad der meditativen Versen- kung, einen Pfad zur Befreiung und zur höchsten Erleuchtung zu machen.
Es ist es ein besonderer Vorzug des Buches, daß Geshe Gendün aufgrund seines enzyklopädischen Wissens und sei- ner großen Erfahrung die einzelnen The- men nicht nur äußerst genau und ausführlich darstellt, sondern auch viele spezielle Gesichtspunkte sowie außerge- wöhnliche Zuordnungen und Debatten einflechtet, die sich derart wohl kaum in einem tibetischen oder anderssprachigen Buch finden lassen.
Wichtige Impulse und Klärung brin- gen zudem die beiden kurzen Ausfüh- rungen im Anhang (über das Kleine und das Große Fahrzeug und über den Pfad des Sehens) und die Erläuterungen, die Geshe Gendün Lodrö auf Fragen der Studenten meist am Ende der einzelnen Kapitel gibt.
Walking Through Walls sollte gewiß von all jenen studiert werden, die ein gutes Verständnis der Kunst der meditativen Versenkung anstreben. Und jemand, der eine längere Klausur zum Erlangen von Geistiger Ruhe durchführen möchte, würde einen großen Verlust erleiden, wenn er oder sie das Buch nicht vorher eingesehen hätte. Anfängern, die noch kein grundlegendes Verständnis der me- ditativen Schulung besitzen, wäre aller- dings empfohlen, zunächst einführende Erläuterungen zu lesen, wie zum Beispiel das gerade neuaufgelegte Buch von Ges- he Thubten Ngawang, Shamatha — Die Entfaltung Geistiger Ruhe.
Jürgen Manshardt (Gelong Dschampa Dönsang)
https://www.tibet.de/fileadmin/pdf/tibu ... uecher.pdf
fckw
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by fckw »

Bristollad wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 10:09 am I just took a look in our library - the two books are definitely sourced from the same material. In Walking through Walls, there is no middle section between the sections on calm abiding and special insight. Instead that material appears in appendices. Other than that it largely appears identical, even down to the footnotes on the pages.
Gracias, señor, for clarification! Walking through walls is hard to get, unfortunately it's the vulture sellers on amazon trying to ask for fantasy prices in the remote hope someone will eventually pay hundreds of $$$ to them for a single book. The other one, calm abiding and special insight, is a little easier to get still, I've ordered a copy online. Good to know that the material is more or less the same.
fckw
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Re: Geshe Gedün Lodrö

Post by fckw »

The special thing about this book is that it's not simply a translation of some ancient material (e.g. Asangas Ground of Hearers) that some master needs to explain you first so you get the points. Instead, the book is written in modern, nowadays language (obviously it's a translation from Tibetan to English by Anne Klein), and it covers the nine stages and insight practices in an extremely detailed way. Geshe is really very scientific in his approach insofar that he even distinguishes between different authoritative scriptures (mainly Asanga and Je Tsongkhapa), points out contradictions in the scriptures, and also every now and then provides his own personal opinion as well some assumptions that he derives from his knowledge, while clearly marking them as just his own personal additions.
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