What does it mean to “meditate with the body”? Until you answer this question, explains Reggie Ray, meditation may be no more than “a mental gymnastic”— something you can practice for years without fruitful results. In Touching Enlightenment, the esteemed author of five books on Buddhist history and practice guides you back to the original practice of the Buddha: a systematic process that results in a profound awareness “in your body rather than in your head.”

Combining the scholarship that has earned him international renown with original insights from nearly four decades practicing and teaching meditation, Reggie Ray invites you to explore:

    * How to enter fully into communion with your embodied nature

    * The insights of Tibetan yoga, from guidance on breathing and working with discomfort to its challenge to modern practitioners on the path to realization

    * Why “rejected” experience becomes imprinted in the body—and how to receive it anew to “reconstitute your human way of being”

    * Karma of cause and karma of result—taking full responsibility for your life

    * Your three bodies—the physical, the interpersonal, and the cosmic

Reginald A. Ray is a professor of Buddhist studies at Naropa University in Boulder,Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in the history of religions from the University of Chicago,specializing in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. An acharya in the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa,he serves as teacher-in-residence at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes,Colorado. He is the author of Buddhist Saints in India,Indestructible Truth, and Secret of the Vajra World.

	Contents: TOUCHING ENLIGHTENMENT
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Preface	xv
	INTRODUCTION
1.	Touching Enlightenment with the Body	3
2.	What Has Become of the Buddha's Dharma?	6
3.	The Call of the Forest	10
4.	The Ultimate Challenge of Buddhism	13
	l. OUR SOMATIC DISEMBODIMENT
5.	Modern Buddhism and Global Crisis	21
6.	Our Physical Divestment	28
7.	Our Emotional Disconnection	31
8.	Some Historical Roots of Our Modern Disembodiment	35
9.	Meditating without the Body	44
10.	The Somatic Challenge of Tibetan Yoga	50
	ll. ENGAGING THE PROCESS: MEDITATING WITH THE BODY
11.	The Call to Return	57
12.	How Do We Proceed?	61
13.	Entering the Gate	66
14.	Discomfort in the Somatic Practice	73
15.	The Background and Process of Discomfort	79
16.	The Process of Letting Go	84
17.	The Unfolding Journey	88
18:	The Body's Own Agenda	91
	lll. UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS OF MEDITATING WITH THE BODY
19.	The Importance of Non-conceptual Understanding in the Body Work and Where Concepts Are Needed	99
20.	What the Body Knows	105
21.	What Happens to What Is Rejected?	109
22.	An Example	116
23.	Karma of Cause, Karma of Result	121
24.	Our Unlived Life	126
25.	The Body and Its Dimensions: The Full Extent of the Karma of Result	129
26.	The Moment of Greatest Alienation	133
27.	Beyond the Reactivity of Ego	140
28.	Empowerment	145
29.	Impersonal and Individual	151
30.	The "Good News" of Chaos	157
31.	The Body of the Buddha	166
	lV. DYNAMICS OF THE PATH, PRINCIPLES, PRACTICES, AND EXPERIENCES
32.	Developing Peace: Somatic Shamatha	177
33.	Are We Willing to See? Somatic Vipashyana	182
34.	Falling Apart	186
35.	Tracking Our Emotions	191
36.	Trusting Our Emotions	195
37.	Imagination in the Body Work	200
38.	A Tibetan Yoga Approach to Physical Pain	209
39.	Some Fundamental Shifts	215
	V. THE BODY AND BECOMING A PERSON
40.	The Body Is the Buddha Nature	223
41.	The Journey Is Our Unfolding Relation with the Buddha Nature	227
42.	Ego, the Body, and the Journey	233
43.	The First Stages of the Journey	239
44.	Aspects of the Unfolding Process	247
45.	A Tibetan View of the Major Stages of Unfolding	254
46.	The Body as Guide on the Journey	261
47.	Encountering the Shadow	264
48.	The Personal Body	270
49.	The Next Layer: The Interpersonal Body	278
50.	Layers of the Interpersonal Body	285
51.	How Other People Help Us Meet Our Shadow	289
52.	Integrating Further Depths of the Shadow	297
53.	The Cosmic Body l: Transcending the Scientific Worldview	301
54.	The Cosmic Body ll: The Earth as Our Body	306
55.	The Cosmic Body lll: The Initiatory Process	310
56.	The Cosmic Body lV: Until the Very End of Being	317
57.	Who Am I?	324
	CONCLUSION
58.	Becoming Who We Are	333
	Appendix: A Glimpse of the Body Work	341
	Index	383
	About the Author	395