Buddhist practitioners in the great Tibetan monasteries of Lhasa, seeking to purify their minds and develop the correct understanding necessary for final enlightenment, began their formal inquiry into mind and consciousness by studying ''The Presentation of Awareness and Knowledge". This important text identifies the different types of minds and consciousnesses their divisions and definitions. It presents the vocabulary connected with the mind and is a means of training the student in the process of reasoning-an endeavor integrally linked with all steps of the Ge-luk-ba ge-shay training. Lati Rinbochay provides rich and extensive commentary from the oral tradition. His lucid presentation vividly reveals the penetrating instructional methods that Tibetans use in their quest for higher knowledge.

In her introduction, Elizabeth Napper explains the context of this work within the Indian and Tibetan traditions and outlines the principal divisions of consciousness and mind.

Mind In Tibetan Buddhism, Lati Rinbochay, Snow Lion Publications, 1981, 172 pages, $29.95

Born in the Kham region of Eastern Tibet in 1922, Lati Rinpoche was identified as the reincarnation of a great practitioner by Gongkar Rinpoche and entered monastic life at the age of ten. At the age of fifteen, he enrolled in Ganden Shartse Norling College and in 1959, he attained the rank of Geshe Lharampa. In 1960, Lati Rinpoche joined the tantric college in Lhasa and started intensive study in tantra. In 1964, Lati Rinpoche left Tibet to join the His Holiness the Dalai Lama in exile. On arrival in Dharamsala, he was appointed as a spiritual advisor to His Holiness. From 1976, Lati Rinpoche taught at Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, and in the same year, he was appointed abbot of the Ganden Shartse Norling College in exile. The author of several books published in English, he taught frequently to international audiences worldwide. He passed away in 2010.