In this modern spiritual classic, the Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa highlights the commonest pitfall to which every aspirant on the spiritual path falls prey: what he calls spiritual materialism. The universal human tendency, he shows, is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement - the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. "The problem is that ego can convert anything to it's own use", he said, "even spirituality." His incisive, compassionate teachings serve to wake us up from this trick we all play on ourselves, and to offer us a far brighter reality: the true and joyous liberation that inevitably involves letting go of the self rather than working to improve it. It is a message that has resonated with students for nearly thirty years, and remains fresh as ever today.
This new edition includes a foreword by Chogyam Trungpa's son and lineage holder, Sakyong Mipham.


Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala Publications, 251 pages, $15.95

Trungpa was born in Eastern Tibet and recognized as an incarnation of the Trungpa line at an early date. He studied with, among others, one of the reincarnations of the Jamgyon Kongtrul who wrote the most famous commentary on the Seven Points. In 1959 he fled to India in the wake of the Communist takeover in Tibet, courageously leading many of his people to safety (this period is described in his book Born in Tibet.) He came to England in the mid-sixties to study at Oxford, learned English, started to teach, and started one of the first Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. He later dropped his monastic vows, married, and moved to America where he continued his teaching. He founded the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a large and highly respected Buddhist university, as well as the Shambhala organization. The influence of both his teaching and his books on American Buddhism was and still is enormous.

Foreword xi
Introduction 3

Spiritual Materialism 13
Surrendering 23
The Guru 31
Initiation 53
Self-Deception 63
The Hard Way 77
The Open Way 91
Sense of Humor 111
The Development of Ego 121
The Six Realms 138
The Four Noble Truths 151
The Bodhisattva Path 167
Shunyata 187
Prajna and Compassion 207
Tantra 217

Index 244