Awakening Dignity

A Guide to Living a Life of Deep Fulfillment

By: Phakchok Rinpoche, Sophie Wu

Narrated by: Juri Henley-Cohn

A Buddhist master’s guide to cultivating dignity through meditation to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.

The notion of dignity is crucial to the question of how best to live a meaningful and fulfilling life, particularly for today’s environment in which so many of us experience self-doubt, low self-esteem, and feelings of being trapped by anxiety, dissatisfaction, or even success. How, in such a circumstance, can we gain authentic and unshakeable dignity? In Awakening Dignity, Phakchok Rinpoche draws from the Tibetan Buddhist wisdom tradition to offer a unique and fresh approach to answer this question.

From the Buddhist perspective, dignity is an inherent quality of fundamental wholeness and completeness that we all naturally possess: our true nature is pure and our heart is noble. In this guide, Phakchok Rinpoche shows how knowing that we are whole and complete already—and gaining trust and certainty in that understanding—can counteract the common feeling that we are not enough, that something is missing.

Gaining unwavering trust in ourselves protects us from life’s ups and downs. With genuine dignity, we are not riddled with uncertainty, anxiety, or self-doubt. Rather, we are able to face any circumstance with confidence, clarity, and compassion. Through reflections, examples, and simple meditations—such as embracing adversity and practicing compassion—Awakening Dignity provides all the tools necessary to fully embody our fundamental dignity.

©2022 Shu-chin Wu and Phakchok Rinpoche (P)2022 Shambhala Publications

This book is a needed tool

To understand our role in this world, we need to have a external guide for mind. This book help us to understand the most important things to go deeper inside our nature and find transformation to be a better human.

Masterful

Amazing from start to finish. A vast array of knowledge and wisdom, to be used in real life. There were a few parts where I had to playback due to the philosophical nature, but once grasped, my goodness. To put it simply mind-blowing. Solid 10/10 from author to narrator I give my gratitude and thanks to all who made this possible.

Exceeded My Expectations. Just lovely!

I had the truly wonderful experience of attending a lecture with Rinpoche in 2022 before his book come out. Rinpoche delivered a pround and clear teaching on dignity and the importance of reflection. I was excited to order and read this book to hear the message again, to have it at my fingertips to read, reflect, and read again. My expectation's have been exceeded! Just a lovely book.

Rinpoche and this book have inspired my most cherished mantras which I share here with compassion for all.

"The core of my being is pure, calm, full of compassion and wisdom as the source of my dignity and equanimity.

My dignity and equanimity will grow and flourish through meditation, study, reflection, and practice.

Meditation, study, reflection, and practice will grow and stabilize my awareness to meet all projected emotions, thoughts, and sensation's with great equanimity and dignity.
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It was particularly nice to hear/read the information regarding judgement ( the arm ) and its influence on igniting the 5 poisons/ emotions ( the fingers), and how we change judgement to noticing through a reduction in ego-clinging (the shoulder), I would have personally added that we reduce ego-clinging from the head with "right views" and the wisdom of emptiness.

As a relatively new practioner, the core concepts of Buddhism start to become familiar and one sees them repeated in books in this space. The same is true of this book; however, the framing of these concepts in terms of dignity was new and insightful. I personally found the material quite rich that I typically only read a page or two per day to stop to reflect, meditate, and relate the text to other concepts, to build a deeper understanding.

Thank you, Rinpoche and Sophie!!!