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Thomas Cleary holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. He is the translator of over fifty volumes of Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Islamic texts from Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Pali, and Arabic.
Prolific translator Cleary (The Essential Confucius, not reviewed, etc.) has gathered together excerpts from the Prajnaparamita sutras, which come to us from Mahayana Buddhism. These selections are not for the fainthearted. Drawn from The Scripture on Perfect Insight Awakening to Essence, The Essentials of the Great Scripture on Perfect Insight, Key Teachings on the Great Scripture of Perfect Insight, The Questions of Suvikrantavikramin, and other works, they address the question of perfect insight. The often arcane selections are made intelligible to the uninitiated by Cleary's useful introduction and commentaries, but, refreshingly, Clearly does not water down the writings or package the teachings so that any dilettante can painlessly digest them. On the contrary, he writes that those stuck in a stage of spiritual development where they still need dogma and rules will find the gnostic insight of Buddhism... imperceptible and effectively unavailable. The original sources concur: Perfect insight, we learn, is like a bonfire,/Ungraspable from the four directions. So just what is this perfect insight? Another passage puts it succinctly: It is the practice of rising above all worlds. Proceed with caution: Like the rabbis who cautioned anyone under 40 not to study Kabbalah, some Buddhist teachers have warned that people may be harmed by hearing about perfect insight before they're ready. (Kirkus Reviews)
