Tulku Thondup was born in East Tibet and trained at the Dodrupchern Monastery; he moved to India in 1958. He came to the United States as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 1980. He still lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, engaging in translation, research, and writing under the auspices of the Buddhayana Foundation, and he teaches programs throughout the world.
In his last book, The Healing Power of Loving-Kindness (2009), he focused on the traditional process of this practice moving from focusing on a loved one to embracing others. This time around the emphasis is upon discovering new ways of applying loving-kindness meditation and more effective ways of perfecting unconditional love.
The foundation for this love is devotion and trust in the Buddha, which then radiates out to others from our open hearts. Loving-kindness, according to Tulku Thondup, is the wish for all to be happy and enlightened. After sharing four meditations on the Buddha, he explains things that can be done to enhance their positive effects such as recognizing progress, remembering the experience to keep it alive, and protecting the mind from negative experiences. Further ways to magnify the power of meditations are through dedications and aspirations.
