The Third Turning of the Wheel: Wisdom of the Samdhinirmocana Sutra

In The Third Tuming of the Wheel, Zen master Reb Anderson draws on his forty years of meditation practice and his profound study of Buddhist psychology to illuminate the second-century Samdhinirmocana Sutra, a long-neglected but seminal work that attempts to reconcile Shakyamuni Buddha's early teaching with later Mahayana thought.

The setting of the sutra is a vast assembly of bodhisattvas and other realized beings who have gathered together to seek guidance from the buddha. One by one, the bodhisattvas engage in dialogue with the buddha on the great metaphysical questions that confront them-the nature of ultimate reality, the structure of human consciousness, the characteristics of phenomena, the stages of meditation, and the essential qualities of a buddha. Anderson Roshi offers his reflections on this challenging sutra with the clarity of a scholar and the insight of a practitioner.