Tibetan Buddhism Quotes

We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home. Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.

Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness. Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease.

Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite." But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while? That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.

Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.

No sane person fears nothingness.

Daily life provides countless occasions for adapting to change and impermanence. Yet we squander these precious opportunities, assuming that we have all the time in the world.

There is no miserable place waiting for you, no hell realm, sitting and waiting like Alaska—waiting to turn you into ice cream. But whatever you call it—hell or the suffering realms—it is something that you enter by creating a world of neurotic fantasy and believing it to be real. It sounds simple, but that's exactly what happens.

We just have to remind ourselves that the source of any happiness is mind itself.

As a man is taught, so he believes. Thoughts being things, they may be planted like seeds in the mind of the child and completely dominate his mental content. Given the favourable soil of the will to believe, whether the seed-thoughts be sound or unsound, whether they be of pure superstition or of realizable truth, they take root and flourish, and make the man what he is mentally.

They asked a wise man: Why don’t we ever hear you backbiting and slandering? He said: I’m still not happy with myself to start with others.

Achala, worrying and scheming about your next life, before you have even completed this one, is not a good practice." Rinpoche

The entire path is a shift in perception.

But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so—it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the luxury of distraction. The awareness is one-pointedly concentrated.

The light of the sun is the manifestation of the clarity of the sky; and the sky is the basic condition necessary for the manifestation of the sun's light. So, too, in the sky two, three, four, or any number of suns could arise; but the sky always remains indivisibly one sky. Similarly, every individual's state of presence is unique and distinct, but the void nature of the individual is universal, and common to all beings.

If there is destruction of hope, there is freedom from gods [lha]; if there is destruction of fear, there is freedom from spirits ['dre, demons].

People who know how to keep their mouths shut are rare.

William Butler Yeats’s “Second Coming” seems perfectly to render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split between anaemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no longer able to fully engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism. However, are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really believe they have their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalists. It is here that Yeats’s diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction-their violent outbursts are proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be, if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but rather that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only make them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that secretly they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. (This clearly goes for the Dalai Lama, who justifies Tibetan Buddhism in Western terms of the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain.) Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true “racist” conviction of one’s own superiority.

The Heart-mantra of Dependent Origination (rten-'brel snying-po [རྟེན་འབྲེལ་སྙིང་པོ]), which liberates the enduring continuum of phenomena and induces the appearance of multiplying relics ('phel-gdung [འཕེལ་གདུང་] and rainbow lights, is: [OṂ] YE DHARMĀ HETUPRABHAVĀ HETUN TEṢĀṂ TATHĀGATO HY AVADAT TEṢĀṂ CA YO NIRODHO EVAṂ VĀDI MAHĀŚRAMAṆAḤ [YE SVĀHĀ] ('Whatever events arise from a cause, the Tathagāta [Buddha, "Thus-gone"] has told the cause thereof, and the great virtuous ascetic has taught their cessation as well [so be it]').

Just calling one's practice "approach and accomplishment" and staying in retreat for years will produce nothing but hardship. Completing hundreds of millions of mantras will not even bring the warmth of the ordinary qualities that mark one's progress on the path! In other words, if the essential points of the path are not taken into account, perseverance will amount to nothing more than chasing a mirage.

Peaceful death is really an essential human right, more essential perhaps even than the right to vote or the right to justice; it is a right on which, all religious traditions tell us, a great deal depends for the well-being and spiritual future of the dying person. There

Truth makes little sense and has no real impact if it is merely a collection of abstract ideas. Truth that is living experience, on the other hand, is challenging, threatening, and transforming. The first kind of truth consists of information collected and added, from a safe distance, to our mental inventory. The second kind involves risking our familiar and coherent interpretation of the world -it is an act of surrender, of complete and embodied cognition that is seeing, feeling, intuiting, and comprehending all at once. Living truth leads us ever more deeply into the unknown territory of what our life is.

Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, 'You idiot! What's wrong with you? Are you blind?' But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: 'Are you hurt? Can I help you up?' Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.

Zeena Schreck is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist, author, musician/composer, tantric teacher, mystic, animal rights activist, and counter-culture icon known by her mononymous artist name, ZEENA. Her work stems from her experience within the esoteric, shamanistic and magical traditions of which she's practiced, taught and been initiated. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist yogini, teaches at the Buddhistische Gesellschaft Berlin and is the spiritual leader of the Sethian Liberation Movement (SLM).

Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering. When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.

All deities and demons, all heavens and hells are internal.

Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.

Without hope, Chöd practitioners are freed from the limits of hope and fear; having cut the ropes of grasping, definitely enlightened, where does one go?

Magic is not something supernatural, but part of the field dynamics of nature.

Do not encumber your mind with useless thoughts. What good is it to brood over the past and fret about the future? Dwell in the simplicity of the present moment. Live in harmony with the dharma. Make it the heart of your life and experience. Be the master of your own destiny.

All the philosophical theories that exist have been created by the mistaken dualistic minds of human beings. In the realm of philosophy, that which today is considered true, may tomorrow be proved to be false. No one can guarantee a philosophy's validity. Because of this, any intellectual way of seeing whatever is always partial and relative. The fact is that there is no truth to seek or to confirm logically; rather what one needs to do is to discover just how much the mind continually limits itself in a condition of dualism. Dualism is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political or social conviction may condition us. We have to abandon such concepts as 'enlightenment', 'the nature of the mind', and so on, until we are no longer satisfied by a merely intellectual knowledge, and until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence.

Oh, noble child, everything is severing the mind. As for the mind, it is severing pride. There is nothing whatsoever that is not included in pride. If one simply understands that it is merely the production of pride, then, for example, one is like a thief in an empty house: by simply recognizing [the situation], grasping is impossible. Having correctly understood, there is no practice with an intentional objective. Because it crushes any hesitations (mi phod), it is explained as Chöd.

It is always beneficial to be near a spiritual teacher. These masters are like gardens or medicinal plants, sanctuaries of wisdom. In the presence of a realized master, you will rapidly attain enlightenment. In the presence of an erudite scholar, you will acquire great knowledge. In the presence of a great meditator, spiritual experience will dawn in your mind. In the presence of a bodhisattva, your compassion will expand, just as an ordinary log placed next to a log of sandalwood becomes saturated, little by little, with its fragrance.

There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.

The still revolutionary insight of Buddhism is that life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else. Mind is revealed as the universal basis of experience—the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of what we call life and what we call death.

Prostration: placing the body in reverence, to submit, to surrender. In many faiths it is used to relinquish the ego. In Tibetan tantric Buddhism they do one hundred thousand prostrations to overcome pride. In Islam, prostration has been known to overcome many diseases.

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form…In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the Bardo are contained in the Tibetan book of the dead- a guide for the living since it teaches that a man’s last thoughts will determine the quality of his reincarnation.

. . . install a tracking system--free of judgment or guilt--that you use just to record how you're doing, on a constant basis. In Tibetan this tracking system is known as tundruk, or "six times a day;" we call it a six-time book. If you follow this system, you'll get results.

To say 'I want to have sex with this person' is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that 'I want to eradicate poverty in the world' is an intellectually directed desire. Furthernore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar said: 'When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching.

The text presented here, the Vajra Essence by Düdjom Lingpa, a nineteenth-century master of the Nyingma order of Tibetan Buddhism, is known as the Nelug Rangjung in Tibetan, meaning “the natural emergence of the nature of existence.”1 This is an ideal teaching in which to unravel some of the common misunderstandings of Tibetan Buddhism, since it is a sweeping practice that can take one from the basics all the way to enlightenment in a single lifetime. The present volume explains the initial section on shamatha, or meditative quiescence, about nine percent of the entire Vajra Essence root text.

Meditation does offer a sane way to work with our mind. But we do not meditate to get rid of thoughts. This is the number one misunderstanding. Thinking, like breathing, is a natural activity. Trying to impose an artificial blankness is the exact opposite of how we work with the natural clarity of mind.

...[A]ccording to Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition, a being that achieves Buddhahood, although freed from Samsara,the 'wheel of suffering', as the phenomenon of existence is known, will continue to return to work for the benefit of all other sentient beings until such time as each one is similarly liberated.

Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas, it is a negative force. If there is apprehension, even apprehension about hells, it is a negative force.

Actually, everything is in-between.

The preservation of Buddhism is preserving your own internal heart. If Tibetans became terrorists they might win back Tibet, but Buddhism would be destroyed by that attitude.

using an object as support allows awareness to realize itself.

You are already the awakeness that you seek!

Buddhism is filled with many wonderful ideas, but it is the recognition of awareness that takes us from samara to nirvana.

life is inherently sacred and must be lived with sacred intensity and purpose

Of all footprints That of the elephant is supreme; Of all mindfulness meditations That on death is supreme.7

You see, we are all dying. It’s only a matter of time.

You yourself can be god. You really are that, in fact. You, yourself, are reality. You, yourself, are buddha. (p. 18)

In the beginning I took the teacher as the teacher, In the middle I took the scriptures as the teacher, In the end I took my own mind as the teacher.

Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence.

It is best not to silence the mind with a crushing blow of our will.

The great master Padmasambhava said, Even if my view is higher than the sky, The attention I pay to my actions and their effects is finer than flour.

Don’t think about Buddhist terminology; don’t think about what the books say or anything like that. Just ask yourself simply, “How, at this moment, do I interpret myself?” That’s all.

Primordial wisdom [Skt. jñāna; Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་, yeshé; Wyl. ye shes] has many names, but in truth it refers simply to the inseparability of the ground and fruit, the one and only essence-drop [thig le nyag gcig] of the dharmakaya. If it is assessed from the standpoint of its utterly pure nature, it is the actual dharmakaya, primordial Buddhahood. For, from its own side, it is free from every obscuration. We must understand that we are Buddha from the very beginning. Without this understanding, we will fail to recognize the spontaneously present mandala of the ground, and we will be obliged to assert, in accordance with the vehicle of the paramitas, that Buddhahood has a cause. We will fail to recognize the authentic view of the Secret Mantra.

The Gnostics believed that we can experience resurrection before death. In other words, Gnostics are granted such special knowledge that they can regenerate their bodies and resurrect themselves before dying. Moreover, they have special abilities to control their DNA. The Sufi Dervishes know and teach these practices. Additionally, in Dzogchen (a teaching from the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism) they speak of the "Rainbow Body". The exceptional practitioners of Dzogchen, when they are about to die, concentrate on their Body of Pure Light. His physical body releases itself into a body of non-material light (a Sambhogakaya) with the capacity to exist and to remain where and when indicated by one's compassion. In Gnosticism, this is called the radiant body, resurrection body, or immortal body (the soma athanaton). This body has also been called 'The Philosopher's Stone.

But beyond the mind, beyond our thoughts, there is something we call the 'nature of the mind', the mind's true condition, which is beyond all limits. If it is beyond the mind, though, how can we approach an understanding of it? Let's take the example of a mirror. When we look into a mirror we see in it the reflected images of any objects that are in front of it; we don't see the nature of the mirror. But what do we mean by this 'nature of the mirror'? We mean its capacity to reflect, definable as its clarity, its purity, and its limpidity, which are indispensable conditions for the manifestation of reflections. This 'nature of the mirror' is not something visible, and the only way we can conceive of it is through the images reflected in the mirror. In the same way, we only know and have concrete experience of that which is relative to our condition of body, voice, and mind. But this itself is the way to understand their true nature.

discover and develop, naturally and spontaneously, a compassionate desire to serve all beings, as well as a direct knowledge of how best you can do so, with whatever skill or ability you have, in whatever circumstances you find yourself.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, when asked how to strike a better balance between family, work and self-realisation says: "You need the intention, good scheduling, and you have to be creative. If you don't find time to practice, one of the three is missing.

The naked body of the female consort illustrates freedom from the obscuration of conceptual symbols. As an illustration of unchanging great bliss endowed with the sixteen joys, she appears in the form of a youthful, sixteen-year-old girl. Her hair hangs loose, showing the unlimited way that wisdom expands impartially out of basic space. She is adorned with five bone ornaments. Of these, the ring at the top of her head symbolizes the wisdom of the basic space of phenomena [dharmadhātu], while her bone necklace represents the wisdom of equality. Her earrings stand for discerning wisdom, her bracelets for mirrorlike wisdom, and her belt for all-accomplishing wisdom. Illustrating the unity of calm abiding and insight, her secret space is joined in union.

But karma is not in fact a material accumulation, and does not depend on externals; rather its power to condition us depends on the obstacles that impede our knowledge. If we compare our karma and the ignorance that creates it to a dark room, knowledge of the primordial state would be like a lamp, which, when lit in the room, at once causes the darkness to disappear, enlightening everything. In the same way, if one has the presence of the primordial state, one can overcome all hindrances in an instant.

The Bodhisattva is in no rush. For once we have tasted a single drop of the bliss of bringing others into that freedom, with the Spirit of Enlightenment of love and compassion, once we have loosened the grip of the solid, separated, alienated self that is the core of self-centeredness, then we are already happy in a certain way. The Bodhisattva is always joyful, even when suffering. Bodhisattvas are always happy and cheerful under pressure, because they have felt the essence of reality as freedom (p. 223)

You do not need to fabricate at all. Once you utterly let be, involvement in thoughts of past, present and future subside. By letting be, you are no longer involved in the thoughts of the three times. When utterly letting be, wakefulness is vividly present.

I’m saying that if you want to be happy, eradicate your attachment; cut your concrete concepts. The way to cut them is not troublesome—just change your attitude; switch your attitude, that’s all. It’s not really a big deal! It’s really skillful, reasonable. The way Buddhism explains this is reasonable. It’s not something in which you have to super-believe. I’m not saying you have to try to be a superwoman or superman. It’s reasonable and logical. Simply changing your attitude eliminates your concrete concepts.

They are all people like us, you know.” There you have a sense of belonging that is refined, and above all free and active in any situation. Some spiritual traditions have recognized the importance of this openness. Christianity, for example, talks about seeing in every individual our brother or sister. Tibetan Buddhism invites us to carry out a curious mental exercise: to look at whomever we meet as someone who, in a previous life, of the infinite series of incarnations through which we have passed, has been our mother.

What makes it possible to imagine ourselves as other beings? What does our capacity to exchange ourselves with others tell us about ourselves? If the beliefs we have about the world and ourselves are nothing more than ideas, then who and what are we? These are the very questions that hint at the absolute truth of emptiness, the ultimate reality that allows us to liberate ourselves from fixed and fabricated identities. Many opportunities to discuss this lie ahead, but for now just hold these questions in a creative and playful way.

Beginners will first meditate upon equanimity. Once that is established, they will then meditate upon the remaining three [immeasurable qualities of love, compassion, and joy].... First, toward all those who are relatives, attachment is to be abandoned as though they were neutral. Then abandon aversion for enemies as though they were neutral and remain without partiality. In order to be free from delusion even toward the neutral, have the intention to dispel the passions of beings all at once. Meditate like this without clinging. —Resting the Mind in Repose (sems nyid ngal gso)

In Dzokchen, compassion is much more than the virtue of loving kindness. Nor does the word compassion in the Dzokchen context denote its English etymological meaning, “suffering together” or “empathy,” although both these meanings may be inferred. Essentially, compassion indicates an open and receptive mind responding spontaneously to the exigencies of an ever-changing field of vibration to sustain the optimal awareness that serves self-and-others’ ultimate desire for liberation and well-being. The conventional meaning of compassion denotes the latter, active part of this definition, and, due to the accretions of Christian connotation, response is limited to specifically virtuous activity. “Responsiveness” defines the origin and cause of selfless activity that can encompass all manner of response. On this nondual Dzokchen path virtue is the effect, not the cause; the ultimate compassionate response is whatever action maximizes Knowledge—loving kindness is the automatic function of Awareness.

If we lack the proper antidotes of emptiness and bodhichitta, we will not be able to control our minds when frightening appearances manifest. It is considered a sign of progress in this practice if we go unconscious, and then, when we wake up, have forgotten our names and whose bodies we have! This is the ceasing of clinging to the body.

The root of all happiness is the mind; the root of all suffering is the mind. The root of all afflictions and the root of all faith, devotion, love and compassion come down to the mind. If we know the nature of our mind, we can make use of the great treasure and eventually gain perfect happiness and the ultimate result of liberation and omniscience.

Atiśa, following Nāgārjuna’s commentator Candrakīrti, held that although our everyday language adequately describes apparent reality, philosophical discourse nevertheless has a necessary role: not system-building but the criticism of our presuppositions, dismantling them until we arrive at the profound realization of emptiness and the opening that this entails.

Many people, even in this country, have material problems because they are concerned for only themselves. Even though society offers many good situations, they are still in the preta realm. I think so, isn’t it? You are living in America but you’re still living in the preta realm—of the three lower realms, the hungry ghost realm; you are still living in the hungry ghost realm.

Dripping charnel  grounds of light - I examine hope &  fear - blue-black body  monster of enlightenment - call me Youthful Lightning Bolt -  tired I slump - desire's already  here - I don't care - my wrathful rosary coiled      snake   on my cushion -  I close my tired   eyes -  sleep has been  troubled but   my mother's  cancer hasn't  spread -      still I  am the Cemetary King

Try not to be so analytical that you lose your creative vision, your soul‘s third eye of innate intuition. Open your heart. Be willing to be foolish, even if it means straying from the mainstream agenda and risking ridicule. I think we all sense that the world is ready for us to think outside the box, because that box of limited, conventional, rational thinking is destroying us. (p. 75)

Just as worn-out clothes can never again be made as new, It's no use seeing a doctor once you're terminally ill; You'll have to go. We humans living on this earth Are like streams and rivers flowing toward the ocean - All living beings are heading for that single destination. Now, like a small bird flying off from a treetop, I, too, will not be here much longer; soon I must move on. – Padampa Sangye

We have the assurance of the enlightened beings that reality is goodness, that reality is freedom from suffering, that reality is bliss. So we should never fear to open ourselves to reality, to cast aside our preconceptions and biases, and to open more and more to whatever turns out to be real. You can have faith in enlightenment, faith in evolutionary potential, faith in infinity, faith in your infinite self. (p. 222)

The forms of the central and surrounding deities... should not be protruding like a clay statue or cast image, yet neither should they be flat like a painting. In contrast, they should be apparent, yet not truly existent, like a rainbow in the sky or the reflection of the moon in a lake. They should appear as though conjured up by a magician. Clear appearance involves fixing the mind one-pointedly on these forms with a sense of vividness, nakedness, lucidity, and clarity.

Buddhism is not a religion in the Western sense but rather a practical set of ideas and approaches toward understanding the workings of life. To be more precise, it’s a system of practices and philosophical tenets designed to help people overcome their sufferings. It is to the soul what weightlifting is for muscles—it strengthens the self to the extent that a person’s spirit, through devoted practice, becomes impervious to external influences. And it’s open and available to everyone.

In what is now known as Bodh Gaya…a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or “enlightenment tree,” and I watched the rising of the morning star and came away no wiser than before. But later I wondered if the Tibetan monks were aware that the Bodhi tree was murmuring with gusts of birds, while another large pipal, so close by that it touched the holy tree with many branches, was without life. I make no claim for the event: I simply declare what I saw at Bodh Gaya.

The Three Jewels are the foundation of all forms of Buddhism, and the first jewel is the Buddha. The word buddha means „the Awakened One“. And it doesn‘t mean only Shakyamuni Buddha, formerly the prince Siddhartha, who became a perfect Buddha in the sixth century before the Common Era in India, whom we sometimes call the „historical Buddha“. Buddha means all those who have awakened from the sleep of ignorance and blossomed into their full potential. Awakened and blossomed, they are teachers of others. (pp. 30-31).

Any change in your mind, positive or negative, affects all others. The wish-granting gem tree is a morphic resonance field. The energy of one contains within it the energy of all. Every action affects all other actions. Whenever you turn your mind towards the wish-granting gems, everyone else‘s mind is turned in that way, too. The planet‘s mind turns with your mind. If you let your mind go in some negative, paranoid, self-indulgent, distracted way, the planet‘s mind turns in that way. You‘re totally interconnected with everything.

The initial function of spirituality emerged from questioning the human condition and also from deep experiences of wonder. The word religion itself, initially meaning to “reconnect,” seems to have come from direct experiences of something larger than just a set of fixed ideas. It marked a return to something essential that we just failed to recognize in the myopia of our everyday lives. How curious that we turn experiences of awe into dogmas and stagnant ideas. That we have come to associate faith with fundamentalism, blindness, and even terrorism gives us something important to look at.

What lies at the root of our unenlightened existence is our fundamental misconception of the ultimate nature of reality. Therefore, by cultivating correct insight into true nature of reality, we begin the process of undoing unenlightened existence and set in motion the process of liberation. Samsara and nirvana are distinguished on the basis of whether we’re in a state of ignorance or wisdom. As the Tibetan masters say, when we’re ignorant, we’re in samsara; when we develop wisdom, we’re liberated. The ultimate antidote for eliminating fundamental ignorance is the wisdom realizing emptiness. It is this emptiness of mind that is the final nirvana.

Students often ask if they should only invoke the guru in the context of a formal daily practice, or if it can be done anywhere. The answer is that it depends on the student. Dharma bums who roam the streets of Kathmandu smoking hashish and sitting in cafés nursing a half-empty cup of cappuccino for most of the day should probably sit formally and recite ten million or one hundred million mantras. Whereas those who have demanding jobs in London, New York or Paris might benefit more from reciting the mantra on their way to work, or as they wait for a bus. The method each student is given will depend entirely on their personal situation and how disciplined they are.

The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form. And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion. That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.

Some people decided they couldn‘t wait for society to achieve freedom over a long period of time, felt they couldn‘t wait for enlightenment through many, many lifetimes of their own. These people decided they would achieve this perfect freedom and perfect ability to help others achieve freedom in a single lifetime. This was the beginning of the Tantric tradition, which was very esoteric at first. In the Tibetan view, Tantra emerged at the same time as the Mahayana, around one hundred years before the Common Era, but it remained completely esoteric for seven hundred years, without a single book on it being published. In its esoteric tradition, people lived on the fringes, on the margins; they were the magical people, the magicians, the siddas, the adepts. (p. 20)

Institutionalized Buddhism throughout Asia not only has a doctrinal commitment to rebirth but also has an economic and political one. In contrast to most Tibetan lamas, for whom the belief in the doctrine of rebirth is essential to the continuing authority of their institutions in exile, other Asian Buddhists in the West have felt freer to adapt their teachings to suit the needs of a secular and skeptical audience whose interest in the dharma is as a way of finding meaning here and now rather than after death. One will search in vain for any discussion of rebirth in the numerous writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, for example. Although he comes from a country (Vietnam) in which the belief is deeply rooted, he now seems to be moving toward a view that equates karma with some form of genetic inheritance and transmissioṇ

The great difference is that this version relies on the work of W. W. Rockhill. Rockhill was an American diplomat who lived in China in the nineteenth century, a linguistic genius—he must have been the first American to know Tibetan; he also produced a Chinese-English dictionary. And in 1884 he published a life of the Buddha according to the Tibetan canoṇ It draws from material of equivalent antiquity to that of the Pali Canon, from a source called the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. He went through it in the 1870s and pulled out of it a story that is almost identical to the story that I reconstructed from the Pali materials. Somewhat embarrassingly, I hadn’t actually read Rockhill until quite recently. I didn’t think the Tibetan material would be relevant. But I was wrong. The Tibetan Vinaya, from the Mūlasarvāstivāda school, gives us the same story, with the same characters, and the same relationships. The two versions don’t agree in every detail, but they’re remarkably similar.

I had a powerful personal experience of this truth. A few weeks before the end of my Peace Corps time in Thailand, I was sitting quietly in a friend’s garden listening to him read from a Tibetan text called, in that early translation, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. My mind had become quite concentrated and at one point, when the text was speaking of the “unborn nature of the mind,” there was a sudden and spontaneous experience of the mind opening … to zero. This momentary opening to the “unmanifest,” a reality beyond the ordinary mind and body, had the force of a lightning bolt shattering the solidified illusion of self. Immediately following this, a phrase kept repeating in my mind, “There’s no me, there’s no me.” This experience radically changed my understanding of things. Of course, since then, feelings or thoughts of “me,” of a sense of self, have arisen many times, but, still, the deep knowing remains that even the sense of self is selfless—that it’s just another thought.

The basic foundation of the practice of morality is to refrain from ten unwholesome actions: three pertaining to the body, four pertaining to speech, and three pertaining to thought. The three physical non-virtues are: (1) killing: intentionally taking the life of a living being, whether a human being, an animal, or even an insect; (2) stealing: taking possession of another’s property without his or her consent, regardless of its value; and (3) sexual misconduct: committing adultery. The four verbal non-virtues are: (4) lying: deceiving others through spoken word or gesture; (5) divisiveness: creating dissension by causing those in agreement to disagree or those in disagreement to disagree further; (6) harsh speech: verbally abusing others; and (7) senseless speech: talking about foolish things motivated by desire and so forth. The three mental non-virtues are: (8) covetousness: desiring to possess something that belongs to someone else; (9) harmful intent: wishing to injure others, whether in a great or small way; and (10) wrong view: holding that such things as rebirth, the law of cause and effect, or the Three Jewels8 do not exist.

Initially, we should practice Chöd alone in our rooms at night, quietly, with less fear. It is by gradually developing bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness—not by just becoming braver—that we can confidently realize that whatever appears or happens can be transformed into the path. At that point, we should become more determined in our place of practice, Do not, under any circumstances, endanger your life in the choice of a place. Unless we have great experience, we should never do this practice in any place that is threatened by falling rocks or trees, possible floods, or the threat of a collapsing house. Eventually, when we achieve full confidence in Chöd, there is no need to go to violent places at all. This is because terrifying visions will appear wherever we are. That is important because we need terrifying visions of spirits if we are to practice Chöd sincerely. People have different mental capacities for fear. Some are too brave, some are too afraid. Both of these types of people will find Chöd difficult. We must have some fear for this practice to be successful. A desperate search for the "I" causes fear to develop. The best method for overcoming this fear is bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness. It is because of the need for fear that practice should be done alone. Any group retreat on Chöd lessens the fear involved. Engaging in the practice at night also increases the necessary fear.

Those who practice the Dharma of the Mahayana in accordance with the Buddha's intention are known as bodhisattvas. If you practice the teachings of the Mahayana, you can reach the level of the great bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, in the best case, or become like the Buddha's two main disciples Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were gifted with insight and miraculous powers. Even if you are unable to practice to the full in this life, you will at least be reborn among the principal disciples of the future Buddha, Maitreya. The buddhas being those who have totally conquered the enemies of ignorance and the other emotions, they are often referred to by the synonym 'Victorious Ones,' while bodhisattvas, in many texts including the Tibetan original of the root verses of these teachings, are called 'children of the Victorious Ones'. Who, then, are the children of the buddhas? In the case of Buddha Shakyamuni, the child of his body was his physical son, Prince Rahula. The children of his speech were all those who heard him teach and attained the level of arhart - the great beings such as Shariputra, Maudgalayana, the sixteen arhats and others, who became the holders of his teachings. Above all, the children of the buddha's mind are the great bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, who carry out their noble intention to bring all beings to enlightenment. For, just as a great monarch with a thousand children would choose the one with the most perfect qualities to be his heir, so, too, a buddha regards as his authentic heirs the bodhisattvas who have perfected the union of wisdom and compassion.

As in other Buddhist Tantric techniques, recommended preliminaries for these practices include developing skill at both calm-abiding (zhi gnas; śamatha) and insight meditation (lhag mthong; vipaśyanā). As in earlier Buddhist teachings, many Chöd dehadāna practices emphasize renunciation, purification, and self-transformation through the accumulation of merit and the exhaustion of demerit. Rather than suggesting that one must wait to accumulate adequate merit before offering the gift of the body, however, Chöd provides the opportunity for immediately efficacious offering of the body through techniques of visualization. Using a technique which echoes the traditional Buddhist teaching of the of the mind-made body (manomayākāya), the practitioner engages in visualizations which allow her to experience the non-duality of agent and object as she offers her body. The process of giving the body as a means of attainment is commonly articulated in Chöd practice texts (sgrub pa; sādhana). These practice texts exhibit the framework of mature Tantra sādhana, including the stages of generating bodhicitta, going for refuge, meditating on the four immeasurables, and making the eight-limbed offering. Generally speaking, the main section of a developed Chöd sādhana has three components. The first two—a transference of consciousness (nam mkha’ sgo ‘byed) practice, and a body maṇḍala (lus dkyil) practice—have distinctly purifying purposes. The Chöd transference of consciousness practice has parallels with other Buddhist practices called "’pho ba." In this part of the visualization practice, the practitioner’s consciousness is "ejected" from one's body through the Brahma aperture at the crown of one's head. At this time, one's consciousness can be visualized as becoming identical with an enlightened consciousness, which is embodied in a figure such as Machik, Vajrayoginī (Rdo rje rnal byor ma) or Vajravārāhī (Rdo rje phag mo). [....] In th[e] first stage of this transformation, the practitioner identifies with an enlightened being, thus overcoming attachment to her own body-mind aggregates and purifying them through this non-attachment. In the second stage, the practitioner can extend this identification: the practitioner identifies the microcosm of her body with macrocosms of the mundane and supramundane worlds. The body maṇḍala (lus dkyil) stage also allows the practitioner to reconceptualize her body as expanding through space and time and becoming indistinguishable from the realm of the supramundane, or the Dharmadhātu (chos kyi dbyings). Through the process of reconstructing her identity, the practitioner is able to see herself as the ultimate source of offerings for all sentient beings.

One of the positive side-effects of maintaining a very high degree of awareness of death is that it will prepare the individual to such an extent that, when the individual actually faces death, he or she will be in a better position to maintain his or her presence of mind. Especially in Tantric Buddhism, it is considered that the state of mind which one experiences at the point of death is extremely subtle and, because of the subtlety of the level of that consciousness, it also has a great power and impact upon one’s mental continuum. In Tantric practices we find a lot of emphasis placed on reflections upon the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path. From the Tantric perspective, the entire process of existence is explained in terms of the three stages known as ‘death’, the ‘intermediate state’ and ‘rebirth’. All of these three stages of existence are seen as states or manifestations of the consciousness and the energies that accompany or propel the consciousness, so that the intermediate state and rebirth are nothing other than various levels of the subtle consciousness and energy. An example of such fluctuating states can be found in our daily existence, when during the 24-hour day we go through a cycle of deep sleep, the waking period and the dream state. Our daily existence is in fact characterized by these three stages. As death becomes something familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its external and internal indications, you are prepared for it. According to my own experience, I still have no confidence that at the moment of death I will really implement all these practices for which I have prepared. I have no guarantee! Sometimes when I think about death I get some kind of excitement. Instead of fear, I have a feeling of curiosity and this makes it much easier for me to accept death. Of course, my only burden if I die today is, ‘Oh, what will happen to Tibet? What about Tibetan culture? What about the six million Tibetan people’s rights?’ This is my main concern. Otherwise, I feel almost no fear of death. In my daily practice of prayer I visualize eight different deity yogas and eight different deaths. Perhaps when death comes all my preparation may fail. I hope not! I think these practices are mentally very helpful in dealing with death. Even if there is no next life, there is some benefit if they relieve fear. And because there is less fear, one can be more fully prepared. If you are fully prepared then, at the moment of death, you can retain your peace of mind. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether it is Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death, the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred and so on. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier. Also, for those who believe in heaven or some other concept, it is also best to pass away peacefully with the thought of one’s own God or belief in higher forces. For Buddhists and also other ancient Indian traditions, which accept the rebirth or karma theory, naturally at the time of death a virtuous state of mind is beneficial.

I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost … I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. 2) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. 3) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I see it is there. I still fall in … it’s a habit My eyes are open I know where I am It is my fault. I get out immediately. 4) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I walk around it. 5) I walk down another street. The purpose of reflecting on death is to make a real change in the depths of your heart, and to come to learn how to avoid the “hole in the sidewalk,” and how to “walk down another street.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a meditation teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, has said, “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

I ask myself often: “Why is it that everything changes?” And only one answer comes back to me: That is how life is. Nothing, nothing at all, has any lasting character. The Buddha said: This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

Seeing the monks humiliated, statues smashed, and paintings burned shook Tibetans to the core. Buddhism provided the rituals through which the seasons were measured, births celebrated, and deaths grieved. The monasteries were Tibetans’ museums, libraries, and schools. Whether or not you were a true believer in the faith, there was no denying that Tibetan Buddhism had inspired an artistry that some compared to the splendors of medieval Christendom. The attacks on religion alienated Tibetans who might otherwise have supported the Communist Party’s efforts to stamp out feudalism and create social equality.

The “inner science” of Buddhism is based, as one American scholar puts it, “on a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of reality, on an already assessed, depth understanding of self and environment; that is to say, on the complete enlightenment of the Buddha.

To approach the finality of our bodies while paying no attention to the mini-deaths of daily life is like confusing diamonds with pebbles and throwing them away.

According to Lama Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the essence of the entire path to awakening can be distilled into three main realizations: renunciation, the mind that relinquishes distortions, afflictive emotions, and compulsions, as well as their unfavorable results; Bodhicitta, the mind set on awakening for the benefit of others; and wisdom, the mind that directly perceives the ultimate reality of emptiness and interdependence.

So if we wish to die well, we must learn how to live well: Hoping for a peaceful death, we must cultivate peace in our mind, and in our way of life.

If you have adopted Buddhism you should not consider yourself a 'great Buddhist' and immediately start to do everything differently. A Tibetan proverb states, 'Change your mind but leave your appearance as usual.

It's interesting that the word for "Budddhist" in Tibetan is nangpa. It means "inside-er": someone who seeks the truth not outside, but within the nature of mind. All the teachings and training in Buddhism are aimed at that one single point: to look into the nature of the mind, and so free us from the fear of death and help us realize the truth of life.

dukkha, which is usually translated as “suffering,” can have other meanings. In Tibetan Buddhism, the word is sometimes slanted differently, she says. Instead of saying that life is suffering, they might say that life is tolerable. As in just barely.

if someone told me they were interested in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Tibetan Buddhism, I would first tell them about the Bardo Thödol, and then I would direct them to read the larger body of work that it’s based on, which is Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation Through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, and then I would tell them to read George Saunders.

Rather we take advantage of our human existence to cultivate a mind that uses every opportunity to orient itself more and more toward happiness and liberation for ourselves and for others.

Buddhists do not deny that there are possibilities for joy—nor do they dismiss the potential benefits of interpersonal relationships, family, a good job, or the pursuit of positive goals—but they hold that all such worldly entanglements are ultimately unsatisfactory

There is a prophecy that the "teachings of the Buddha will spread further and further north". Nepal is to the north of India, and after that, isn't Tibet to the north of Nepal? "Later on, they will return to the central land and then go west." I'm not sure where these words are from; they may be from a terma of Padmasambhava or maybe they were spoken by the Buddha himself. But most certainly the prophecy exists; I heard it from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. "From now on the Buddhadharma will spread further west," he said. (p. 20)

As soon as your object of concern changes from yourself to someone else, your heart is released from the bondage of the self-cherishing thought. As soon as you change the object of your cherishing, there is peace in your heart.

Tibetan Buddhism defines enemies as hidden influences that cause people to behave inappropriately, sometimes to the point of complete destruction. Hidden influences might be imprints from early life or even lifetimes before this one. They manifest as energetic disturbances that arise inside and take over the personality.

All appearances are vast openness, Blissful and utterly free. With a free, happy mind I sing this song of joy. When one looks toward one's own mind - The root of all phenomena - There is nothing but vivid emptiness, Nothing concrete there to be taken as real. It is present and transparent, utter openness, Without outside, without inside - An all pervasiveness Without boundary and without direction. The wide-open expanse of the view, The true condition of the mind, Is like the sky, like space: Without center, without edge, without goal. By leaving whatever i experience Relaxed in ease, just as it is, I have arrived at the vast plain That is the absolute expanse. Dissolving into the expanse of emptiness That has no limits and no boundary, Everything i see, everything i hear, My own mind, and the sky all merge. Not once has the notion arisen Of these being seperate and distinct. In the absolute expanse of awareness All things are blended into that single taste - But, relatively, each and every phenomenom is distinctly, clearly seen. Wondrous!

The archetype of the hero in Tibetan Buddhism is a Bodhisattva, an evolved being motivated by profound compassion for the suffering of others who vows to reach complete awakening. Bodhisattvas who pursue the Gradual Path follow a succession of training steps through stages of psychological development and reach specific milestones, or realizations, along the way to enlightenment. Both physicists discovering the ultimate nature of reality and poet-activists, Bodhisattvas generate love and compassion as practical and constructive forces to skillfully redesign the matrix of interdependence we all share.

True refuge demands a complete and utter trust fall into the arms of reality. (p. 56)

Just as a snake sheds its skin, so too do we relinquish actions, words, and views that compose our current life of misery and longing so we can be reborn as a Bodhisattva Hero, a child of the Buddhas. Are you ready to let go? (p. 97)

Frequenting evil friends is bound to make your own behavior evil; People of Tingri, abandon any friendships that are negative. – Padampa Sangye

I often refer to the great mythologist and American author Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) in this book. He used the designation of „hero“ to describe individuals who embark on the monumental psychological task of expanding and evolving consciousness and famously charted this journey. This hero‘s journey begins in our inherent state of blindness, separation, and suffering and progresses on a circular (as opposed to linear) route made up of stages shared by myths and legends spanning all cultures and epochs. From Buddha to Christ, Arjuna to Alice in Wonderland, the hero‘s journey is one of passing through a set of trials and phases: seeking adventure, encountering mentors, slaying demons, finding treasure, and returning home to heal others. Tibetan Buddhism‘s and Campbell‘s descriptions of the hero both offer a travel-tested road map of a meaningful life, a path of becoming fully human – we don‘t have to wander blindly, like college kids misguidedly hazed by a fraternity, or spiritual seekers abused in the thrall of a cult leader. The hero archetype is relevant to each of us, irrespective of our background, gender, temperament, or challenges, because we each have a hero gene within us capable of following the path, facing trials, and awakening for the benefit of others. Becoming a hero is what the Lam Rim describes as taking full advantage of our precious human embodiment. It‘s what Campbell saw as answering the call to adventure and following our bliss – not the hedonic bliss of chasing a high or acquiring more stuff, but the bliss of the individual soul, which, like a mountain stream, reaches and merges with the ocean of universal reality. (p. 15)

As Campbell pointed out, in all spiritual traditions the hero must undergo initiation and testing. These rites of passage awaken and develop latent human capacities as they mark and safely ritualize the process of maturity, empowerment, and agency among members of a group. Initiation is a way adolescent naivete and dependency ends as we develop a sense of mastery, meaning, and purpose and are reborn as adults and active, contributing members of the tribe. Vision quests, shamanic journeys, sun dances, ordinations, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and confirmations offer access to a time-tested method steeped in a collective body of wisdom and community that mitigates risk and gives reproducible outcome. (p. 18) Regardless of time, place, or culture, the motifs and stages of every initiation are the same. Whether symbolic or actual they include leaving home or separating from the community, facing a symbolic or literal hardship that serves as a psychological catalyst for an altered state of consciousness, and awakening as the nascent hero. The process continues with integrating and embodying wisdom, sometimes with the help of elders, priests, or shamans, and returning to the community as a mature member, active contributor, or leader. Initiation hastens development so the latent hero nature can be realized. (p. 18)

What you‘re experiencing now is conditioned and determined by your past; what you‘re doing now conditions and determines what you‘ll see in your future. When you can take responsibility for that causal process, you are on the first stage of the hero path. You change your piece of the world by changing your body and mind from that of an ordinary, deluded, sleepwalking, and afflicted human to that of a hero and eventually a Buddha – one who is utterly awake. Then you inspire others, until everyone‘s piece of the world is utterly, collectively transformed. (pp. 88 - 89)

We can sacrifice ourselves in order to save lives, to spread messages of freedom, hope, and dignity. That is our Buddha Nature, our Christ Nature – people who have embodied the principles of love and compassion and have taken extraordinary measures to change the world for the better. We call them heroes and heroines - for example, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai, along with the nameless aid workers, neonatal surgeons, and ordinary parents who make extraordinary choices in life-threatening circumstances. And we admire them. Those are the people who we want to occupy our Jewel Tree, letting their nectar rain down upon us in a shower of blessing and inspiration. They are the people who have discovered interdependence, wisdom, and compassion, have seen through the illusion of separation and come out the other side with the hero‘s elixir for the welfare of others. If we don‘t believe we can do it, if we don‘t have the confidence, that‘s the last hurdle. We believe there is something special about the hero and something deficient about us, but the only difference is that the Bodhisattva has training, has walked the Lam Rim, has reached the various milestones that each contemplation is designed to evoke, and collectively those experiences have brought confidence. Our natures are the same. It‘s in your DNA to become a hero. As heretical as it may sound to some, there is no inherent specialness to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is not inherently different from you. If you had his modeling, training, support, and devotional refuge, you too could be a paragon of hope and goodwill. Now, hopefully you will recognize cow critical it is for you to embrace your training (the Bodhisattva Path), so that we can shape-shift civilization through the neural circuitry of living beings. (pp. 139 - 140)

Love is the natural flow or outgrowth of the wisdom of oneness (p. 145)

The final disappearing act of the great magician, the great medicine itself, is that a correct view of emptiness prevents even emptiness from being the final source of clinging. The point is that we have nothing to hold on to – not the world of forms and differentiation, not the formless realm of oneness, and not even the dissolving method of emptiness. „Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, hail awakening“ as the Heart Sutra pronounces. (p. 204)

In a vague way, it began to seep into my mind that if I didn’t under­stand impermanence, I would always be hoping for relationships, situ­ations, and even my own body and mind to provide some sense of stability, when in fact they are changing all the time. I started to see that seeking for stability where it does not exist keeps the mind in a constant state of grasping and anguish.

If someone has compassion, he is a Buddha; Without compassion, he is a Lord of Death. With compassion, the root of Dharma is planted, Without compassion, the root of Dharma is rotten. One with compassion is kind even when angry, One without compassion will kill even as he smiles. For one with compassion, even his enemies will turn into friends, Without compassion, even his friends turn into enemies. With compassion, one has all Dharmas, Without compassion, one has no Dharma at all. With compassion, one is a Buddhist, Without compassion, one is worse than a heretic. Even if meditating on voidness, one needs compassion as its essence. A Dharma practitioner must have a compassionate nature. Compassion is the distinctive characteristic of Buddhism. Compassion is the very essence of all Dharma. Great compassion is like a wish-fulfilling gem. Great compassion will fulfill the hopes of self and others. Therefore, all of you, practitioners and laypeople, Cultivate compassion and you will achieve Buddhahood. May all men and women who hear this song, With great compassion, benefit all beings!

Tibet became a laboratory for the enlightenment movement to create its model society, to evolve into an actual manifestation of a buddha‘s pure universe, a „buddhaverse“. A social buddhaverse is a place where everything is geared toward enlightenment, where every lifetime is made meaningful by dedication to optimal evolutionary development. Because that nation embraced the enlightenment movement for more than a millennium, Tibet is the prime example of a sustained attempt by an entire people to create a society, culture, and civilization that cherish the individual‘s pursuit of enlightenment over the needs of society. Instead of believing that a strong central government can force a group of people into making a better place to live, the Tibetans, influenced by ancient India, saw that helping the individual is what transforms society. Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises out of their wisdom. Once an individual attains enlightenment, society at large automatically becomes enriched. This was the heart of the Buddha‘s social revolution. (p. 32-33)

One central question here is whether there is any true separation between life and death, or whether it all unfolds in, and is somehow shaped by, our intimacy with and within the gap.

Death is a natural part of life, which we will all surely have to face sooner or later. To my mind, there are two ways we can deal with it while we are alive. We can either choose to ignore it or we can confront the prospect of our own death and, by thinking clearly about it, try to minimize the suffering that it can bring.

Practice had given my master a complete knowledge of what death is, and a precise technology for guiding individuals through it.

There is a Tibetan saying that just as a pure stream of water must have its source in pure mountain snow, an authentic teaching of the Dharma must have its origin in the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. That is why there is such emphasis placed on the lineage of the teachings.

The purpose of life is maybe just to be. In order to be, you have to live life, which is not boring at all. In fact, there are a lot of exchanges taking place, and there is more of a sense of celebration than before. The qualities of celebration and groundlessness make for a delightful world. So you live that life. I think the conventional idea is that we lead our life because we have to struggle and we have to achieve something, which keeps us occupied. But maybe that’s just one way, and there’s an entirely different approach altogether.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there is the understanding that each person is fundamentally good. There is not a story of the fall of Adam and Eve. There is no story of being born into sin. There is no shame of being human. Human Design looks at life through a similar lens as the Dalai Lama does. You are not bad. You are not deficient. Your incarnation is a precious human birth, as the Buddhists would say.

Dilgo Khyentse. The Excellent Path to Enlightenment: Oral Teachings on the Root Text of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion, 1996.

Dharma literally means 'truth' or 'norm.' It is a particular way of thinking, a way of viewing the world, which is not a concept but experience. This particular truth is very painful truth—usually truths are. It rings with the sound of reality, which comes too close to home. We become completely embarrassed when we begin to hear the truth. It is wrong to think that the truth is going to sound fantastic and beautiful, like a flute solo. The truth is actually like a thunderbolt. It wakes you up and makes you think twice whether you should stay in the rain or move into the house. Provocative.

Timely Rain In the jungles of flaming ego, May there be cool iceberg of bodhicitta. On the racetrack of bureaucracy, May there be the walk of the elephant. May the sumptuous castle of arrogance Be destroyed by vajra confidence. In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

Similar to the yogic tradition, in Tibetan Buddhism it is understood that the siddhis arise only after one is able to sustain the deep absorption of samadhi. However, it is also recognized that not everyone who meditates will be able to achieve samadhi, nor will the siddhis that do arise necessarily be stable. As Roney-Dougal explained: Tibetans separate two types of “clairvoyance.” They consider that the one Western parapsychologists research is a low-level ability that is unreliable and subject to fraud. Many people are considered to have this ability and Tibetans consider that it is an inherent ability resulting from past life karma, which could, however, benefit from training by meditation. The clairvoyance you attain after reaching Samadhi is a high level ability which is reliable. In interviews with various monks, it was stressed over and over again that only a few people attain Samadhi and clairvoyant abilities, and even then the clairvoyance is no more than 80% reliable. Omniscience arises only with full enlightenment. Not everyone who practices meditation will attain Samadhi, so not everyone who practices meditation will become psychic.

Dalai Lama Even given positive results of experiments, it is exceedingly difficult for the Western-acculturated mind to accept that supernormal abilities really do exist. The Dalai Lama is often asked about this issue, and he wrote about it in his autobiography: Many westerners want to know whether the books on Tibet by people like Lobsang Rampa and some others, in which they speak about occult practices, are true. They also ask me whether Shambala (a legendary country referred to by certain scriptures and supposed to lie hidden among the northern wastes of Tibet) really exists.… In reply to the first two questions, I usually say that most of these books are works of imagination and that Shambala exists, yes, but not in a conventional sense. At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that some Tantric practices do genuinely give rise to mysterious phenomena.6 This statement is cautiously worded, and appropriate for a spiritual leader who was also a political leader for many years. The upshot of his answer is that yes, advanced meditative practices do give rise to some strange effects, and for the most part these practices have been ignored by science. The Dalai Lama has been personally interested in promoting science-spirit dialogues, but at the beginning these talks were not easy to arrange, even for him. Within meditative traditions advanced methods are considered a secret doctrine, and as we’ve seen repeated in the Yoga Sutras, demonstrating one’s abilities for secular reasons is strongly taboo. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama believed it was important to get science to investigate these phenomena: I hope one day to organise some sort of scientific enquiry into the phenomenon of oracles, which remain an important part of the Tibetan way of life. Before I speak about them in detail, however, I must stress that the purpose of oracles is not, as might be supposed, simply to foretell the future. This is only part of what they do. In addition, they can be called upon as protectors and in some cases they are used as healers.… Through mental training, we have developed techniques to do things which science cannot yet adequately explain. This, then, is the basis of the supposed “magic and mystery” of Tibetan Buddhism.6

In Japan, there is no question of the existence of ishin-denshin, a mutual understanding that arises through unspoken communication.  The word itself means “what the mind knows, the heart transmits” and suggests the same esoteric heart transmission as is found in Tibetan Buddhism.  There, the true understanding of the nature of reality cannot be communicated in words, and the understanding must instead be transmitted from the heart of the master to the student.  In Original Wisdom, Robert Wolff described the uncanny knowledge of Malaysian aboriginal tribes.  But in these cultures, psychic ability is not a goal to be strived after.  Instead, it is merely a fact of living.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

Another way of contemplating the virtues of Enlightened beings is to read accounts of their lives, whether the life of the Buddha himself or, say, that of Milarepa, the Enlightened yogi from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. One can also contemplate the spiritual qualities of the Buddhas by means of visualization exercises, as developed particularly in Tibetan Buddhism, by conjuring up a vivid mental picture, a sort of archetypal vision, of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. What one does in these practices – to summarize very briefly – is to see this visualized form more and more brightly, more and more vividly, more and more gloriously, and then gradually feel oneself merging with it, one’s heart merging with the heart of the Buddha or Bodhisattva, the heart of Enlightenment. In this way one contemplates, one assimilates, one becomes one with, the virtues of the Tathagatas.

We recognize that this moment is everything. The seed of our being, all our future states, the product of all our past states, infinity stretching in both directions, infinite expanses in both directions, is now here in this moment, and this moment begins to become more and more infinite. We find more and more fruition in this moment, especially when we know already how deeply wonderful the human life is. We see what a great opportunity for freedom this life is, especially since each moment of it could be the last. What is essential in each moment is the quintessential experience of that moment. When we know this in the deepest part of the soul, then we begin to have a soul life. We begin to have soul intensity in life.

The first two steps of the path: the recognition of the preciousness of human life, which is endowed with liberty and opportunity, and the awareness of the immediacy of death. (p. 79)

We are being developed by what we have done, and what we do, not only physically and verbally, but mentally also. What we now do in mind and speech and body will determine how we will become. The different forms and idiosyncrasies of all beings and things – all worlds in fact – depend on this inexorable causality of evolutionary action, or karma. Karma is not mysterious. Karma doesn‘t mean „fate“, although in a way it occupies the place of fate. Karma means „evolution, evolutionary causality.“ (Pages 79-80)

The Tibetan term for Dharma is chö, which has the literal connotation of “changing,” or “bringing about transformation.” When we talk about transforming the mind, we are referring to the task of diminishing the force of destructive thoughts and emotions while developing the force of those that are constructive and beneficial. In this way, through the practice of Dharma, we transform our undisciplined mind into one that is disciplined.

The real guru is always within, and while we may need an external guide to serve as a mirror to reflect our highest potential, we should never abandon our innate common sense, intuition, emotions, and wisdom. (p. 163)

As we progress along the path we should adopt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is uniquely ours.

The way we relate to all of phenomena alters when our mind perceives phenomena as a process and expression of flow […] why does it matter? Because we realize we can‘t hold on to processes, just as we can‘t hold a stream of water. We can savor and skillfully work with dynamic things, but we can‘t control or own them. Meditate on this idea; it‘s healing. (p. 174)

Our hero's journey combines two arcs: the inward arc involving leaving home, slaying the demon, and gaining insight into selflessness, and the outward arc involving finding the treasure of compassion and returning home with the elixir. (p. 205)

Renunciation essentially means simplifying one’s mind, one’s words, and one’s activities, by letting go of what obstructs inner freedom. Constraint creates frustration; renunciation produces a real sense of joy.

The afterlife is mostly a dream state where you confront the good and evil within you. The text repeatedly explains that the images the deceased sees and the sounds one hears are hallucinations created by one's own thoughts.

Our ancient sources of wisdom call on human beings to rise to their highest capacity and behave in extraordinarily open and generous ways to one another, under difficult circumstances to transcend differences and create understanding across all barriers of convention and fear. This wisdom is fragile as our environment is fragile, threatened by an overwhelming material culture. I believe in a spiritual ecology. In today’s world, Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism and other wisdom traditions are endangered species.

...the Chöd teachings attributed to Machik Labdrön both rely and innovate on Buddhist representations of mental functionings of a human being, including the onto-epistemological trope of the Universal Base Consciousness [ālaya-vijñāna] and the psycho-ethical trope of Negative Forces as Düd [bdud, māra, demon]. By drawing on and revising these traditional models, Chöd is able to develop effective techniques for "cutting through mind.

Machik thus maintains that what is conventionally referred to as a "god" is in fact the positive nature of reflexive awareness that characterizes the full potential of the enlightened mind when it is unsullied by discriminative thinking. In contrast, when "demons" are conventionally invoked, one should understand this as the obstruction of the full potential of the Universal Base [kun gzhi; ālaya] by non-aware emotional reactions (nyon mongs; kleśa).

Chöd is conventionally and misleadingly seen as analogous to, if not derived from, shamanic initiatory dismemberment visions, as well as dualistic anti-body ascetic practices. Two of the elements most commonly referenced by authors in their "identification" of Chöd and/as shamanism—the dismemberment/sacrifice of the body and "demonology"—are presented in an oversimplistic fashion. In the first instance, the numerous Buddhist precursors for the offering of the body provide ample testimony to the ethical and meritorious status such acts have in the Buddhist imagination. As for the "demonology" of Chöd, one must keep in mind the psychology and philosophy of mind that explicitly undergirds the discourse of Düd [Skt: mārā] in Chöd.

Tibetan Buddhism teaches that suffering is a feeling that our wishes are not being fulfilled. Or that no one is listening to us or does what we expect them to do.

The extraction of discrete parts of Chöd teachings from their broader philosophical contexts is symptomatic of how Chöd has been incorporated into and transmitted through other Tibetan Buddhist lineages. For example [...] Chöd practices gradually merged with pre-existing models of deity yoga, such the Vajrayoginī practices within Nyingma, Kagyü, and Geluk traditions. Fundamental Chöd practices such as those described in The Common Eightfold Supplementary Section do not tend to involve the kind of deity visualization common to *anuttaratantra practices, but many Mahāmudrā Chöd practices have been reconciled with other lineages through the employment of such visualizations. The incorporation of Chöd by the Geluk and Kagyü schools has thus had equivocal results: on the one hand, fragments of Chöd teachings are preserved, but on the other, the distinctiveness of Chöd is diminished in the service of different fundamental standpoints such as that of Mahāmudrā.

That is to say, attachments to signs of accomplishment (drod rtags) and circumstantial effects are precisely what are called Negative Forces [demons].

Nothing exists in isolation. In fact, all beings and phenomena exist only because of their relationship with other beings or phenomena.

Everyone takes refuge in something, so once again we work with transforming ordinary tendencies into skillful means for spiritual development.

If you nourish your hatred and your anger, you burn yourself. Understanding is the only way out. If you understand, you will suffer less, and you will know how to get to the root of injustice. . . . When you are a victim of injustice, if you get angry, you will suffer one hundred times more.

Each moment provides an opportunity to turn toward awakening; and we are more likely to take advantage of each moment once we accept that these moments are limited.

Rest as the awareness that is aware without using thought.

We can learn to return home to our open hearts at any moment.

The big realization when we go beyond the ego is simply seeing that we've always been ok.

As Buddhagosa explained in the Visuddhimagga, nothing solid continues after death, yet one moment of consciousness gives rise to the next. After the physical elements disintegrate, unless one has achieved a very high level of spiritual attainment and can consciously determine one's next state of existence, rebirth takes place as a result of karma and delusions. In line with the earlier Buddhist teachings, Tibetan scholars rejected the idea of a self that continues after death, yet they accepted the idea of a very subtle consciousness that continues into an intermediate state between death and the next life.

By the power of this, may the obstacles of those great beings who are doctrine holders be dispelled!!! May the lives of those who adhere to the teachings be prolonged and may benefactors power increase! May sentient being be joyfully happy and always practice the Dharma! May the fruit of benefiting oneself and other ripen like that of a wish~fulfilling tree! May good deeds and enlightened activity PROLIFERATE and be auspicious! I wrote this myself. May virtue prevail! May virtue prevail! May virtue and excellence prevail!

I think one of the big opportunities in the spread of Buddhism to the West is that Western students of Buddhism, especially in its Tibetan form, now have the chance to take a fresh look at the original Indian and Tibetan sources and to reevaluate the various Indo-Tibetan controversies without immediately getting caught up in centuries-long entrenchments of sectarian polemics. Fortunately, some signs of such a development are to be found.

***Not Religious October 31, 2017 I am an ordained Lama of the Celtic Buddhist lineage, a multi-decade student of many great Tibetan Buddhist teachers, a student of Brahmin/Hindu, Taoist, Wiccan, Animist and other traditions, a daily practitioner of sitting and moving meditations, with earlier roots in Judeo-Christian mysticism. I have recently faced enough folks remarking about what a “religious” person I am that it warrants a response. My response is, “Sorry. That’s just not true and pretty close to nonsense.” It is a very understandable mistake, my friends. I appreciate that you mean it as a compliment and I love you for the very kind intention. But who I am has somewhere between very little and nothing at all to do with the standard definitions of “religious.” I very highly recommend that you see the Why Celtic Buddhism Is Not A Religion section on the CB Homepage at celticbuddhism.org for clarification. I don’t disparage anyone who is religious (as long as they don’t use their religion as an excuse to kill, subjugate, demean or otherwise hurt anyone!) but for myself, it is not a label that fits. Be well, amigos. Much love, Ten (Lama Tenzin Roisin Dubh) p.s. Buy and read one or both of the two books at this Fearless Puppy website, or at Amazon. I say this for your benefit, not mine.

Shamatha and Vipashyana sometimes get confused due to the different usage of the terminology in Pali and Sanskrit etc. Sometimes Shamatha is Vipashyana and sometimes Vipashyana is Shamatha, but in Tibetan Shamatha is Shamatha and Vipashyana is Vipashyana. You would expect me to say that because I’m a Tibetan right? Shamatha for us is the first step, it is where you make your mind calm, and Vipashyana is the second step, where you observe and maintain that calm-abiding state of mind, clearly. Therefore, Shinay or Shamatha is first, and Vipashyana or Lhagthong is later. If you don’t have a calm-abiding state of mind, then what are you going to observe? You are going to observe your confused state of mind; not necessarily confused in a negative sense, but busy, chaotic, and then that will naturally lead to a neurotic state of mind. That is why Shinay comes first and Lhagthong is later in Vajrayana Buddhism, and especially in Mahamudra practice.

He knows he only has the choice of going crazy or going inside and finding his own mind, which is what Buddhism is all about. Buddhism maintains that one's reality is part of one's own mindset, and that through discovering your own mind, even in the direst situations you can make your world a pure realm.

Emptiness” is a singularly unappetizing term. I don’t think it was ever meant to be attractive. The Tibetan Buddhist scholar Herbert V. Guenther once translated it as “the open dimension of being,” which sounds a lot more appealing than “emptiness.” “Transparency” was a term I played with for a while, which also makes emptiness sound more palatable. Yet we have to remember that even two thousand years ago Nāgārjuna was having to defend himself against the nihilistic implications of emptiness.

this gives us an important clue to understanding the notions of emptiness and “no mind.” They do not mean that there is literally no mind; they’re saying that if you try to understand the nature of anything in the deepest sense, you will not be able to arrive at any fixed view that defines it as this or that. The Dalai Lama uses a quaint expression in colloquial Tibetan—dzugu dzug-sa mindoo—which means “There’s nothing you can put your finger oṇ” Again,

verbal tricks might be employed to trap an opponent; and the debate was always accompanied by vivid, ritualized gestures, partly contrived to mimic a combat in which one might be hard put to maintain his cool. (The point being, precisely, to learn to remain calm under pressure.)

But if you are not careful, spirituality can quite easily allow you to bypass the human dilemma, because spirituality can be anything you want it to be, whereas faith will challenge you. It’s not so comfortable. It carries with it the undeniable tension between your search for security and the limits of your ability to know. Faith keeps your spiritual quest relevant and connected to the heart of the human predicament.

will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low.

Meditation on the “seal,” that is, the “immobilization” of all dependent things, is for the purpose of liberation from the cycle of existence. The notion of “empti- ness” (Tibetan: stong pa nid) is central to Vajrayana Buddhism (as indeed it is to many schools of Buddhist thought) and is derived from Nagarjuna’s teaching that the essential nature of all dharmas (phenomenal existents) is sunyata, void or empty. As Tibetan scholar Herbert V. Guenther translates the term, sunyata or stong pa nid means “no-thing-ness,” all existents being inherently insubstantial.⁴⁵ The sense of “seal” (mudra) in Gyatso’s commentary is clearly the sense of being sealed in to this state of inherent “no-thing-ness.

In the Sangīti Sutta, Sāriputta mentions three kinds of intelligence (paññā).1 It is also a model I learned in the Tibetan traditioṇ There is intelligence that arises from hearing (sutamaya paññā), intelligence that arises from thinking (cintāmaya paññā), and intelligence that arises from cultivation or training (bhāvanāmaya paññā). In other words, you start by hearing the teachings, thereby acquiring informatioṇ But information alone is inadequate. You then have to think about it. You need to reflect upon what you have heard in a way that allows you to internalize it, so that it becomes part of a coherent and consistent view of oneself and the world. But this rational, conceptual exercise is still not enough. Whatever insights and understanding you have gained through such reflection need to be translated into actual felt experience.

Up north, where the air is cooler and crisper, quaint hill stations give way to snowcapped peaks. From Ladakh to Sikkim, the cultural influences came not from the coasts but via mountain passes. Tibetan Buddhism thrives, and multilayered monasteries emerge from the forest or steep cliffs as vividly and poetically as the sun rises over Khangchendzonga. Weathered prayer flags flutter in the wind, the soothing sound of monks chanting reverberates in meditation halls, and locals abound with holy offerings, all in the shadow of the mighty Himalaya.

Shamatha is presented in the Vajra Essence as a foundational practice on the Dzogchen path. Dzogchen, often translated as “the Great Perfection,” is the highest of the nine vehicles (yanas) in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Classically speaking, after achieving shamatha, the yogi will use his or her newly acquired powers of concentration to practice insight into the nature of emptiness (vipashyana), followed by the Dzogchen practices of tregchö (breakthrough) and tögal (direct crossing-over). These four practices comprise the essential path to enlightenment from the Nyingma point of view. The practice of Dzogchen brings one into direct contact with reality, unmediated by the individual personality or society.

Within Tibetan Buddhism, shamatha practice maps on to the nine stages of attentional development wherein thoughts gradually subside as concentrative power is increased to the point at which one can effortlessly maintain single-pointed focus on a chosen object for at least four hours. The accomplishment of shamatha is accompanied by a powerful experience of bliss, luminosity, and stillness.

...The words Dalai Lama mean different things to different people, that for me they refer only to the office I hold. Actually, Dalai is a Mongolian word meaning 'ocean' and Lama is a Tibetan term corresponding to the Indian word guru, which denotes a teacher. From Freedom in Exile, the Autobiography of the Dalai Lama

You can go on believing or not believing in God as you see fit. He, She, or They do not enter the Buddhist equation. Nonviolence

T he United States is the first, and perhaps only, country in the world in which every Buddhist sect is represented. Although

If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they are manifested in the present. And if you want to understand what results will be manifested in the future, look at the causes that exist in the present. Life,

What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions—such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka—is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don’t want to enter Nirvana.

From the earliest times until the recent past, the vast majority of people have believed in some form of survival after death. It is only in modern times that uncertainty about an afterlife or even complete disbelief in one has gained common consideration. Yet we are all faced by the same dilemma that tormented Hamlet as he contemplated suicide. Most of us really do not know what to believe anymore. Life itself can be bad enough but what if still worse awaits us after we have died? Inevitably, all religions, from the great world religions such as Christianity and Buddhism down to the myriads of small local cults, attempt to give answers to this mystery. They all claim to describe the events which will follow the moment of death and what the outcome will be according to our fate. Even if we ourselves adhere to one of these religions, most of us would rather not think too much about our own deaths. It is not surprising, therefore, that any spiritual teachings our particular religion might offer generally remain unheeded and unused.

According to the Buddhist point of view, there is no human problem that cannot be solved by human beings.

As we go through life, the experiences we encounter depend largely upon our own minds. Tibetan Buddhism teaches that the mind does not passively receive images of the world but actually creates and projects them onto the sense impressions of bare reality, using its store of memories and habitual traits. For this reason, few of us ever experience reality as it is in actuality, but instead overlay it with a host of our own projections. These projections are usually negative in nature. According to our level of inner growth, we may be able to modify these self-created visions into forms and images that are more conducive to our spiritual health and growth. Their hallucinatory nature becomes more apparent at the time of death as well as when we become more accomplished in meditation. In only we can let go of our needs and fears, then we can come to terms with such projections. If we can let go, we will come to rest in the natural state of the mind. For this profound experience to occur, our confused minds must be soothed and all our fears pacified by the compassion and skill of our spiritual friends and guides.

As we go through life, the experiences we encounter depend largely upon our own minds. Tibetan Buddhism teaches that the mind does not passively receive images of the world but actually creates and projects them onto the sense impressions of bare reality, using its store of memories and habitual traits. For this reason, few of us ever experience reality as it is in actuality, but instead overlay it with a host of our own projections. These projections are usually negative in nature. According to our level of inner growth, we may be able to modify these self-created visions into forms and images that are more conducive to our spiritual health and growth. Their hallucinatory nature becomes more apparent at the time of death as well as when we become more accomplished in meditation. In only we can let go of our needs and fears, then we can come to terms with such projections. If we can let go, we will come to rest in the natural state of the mind. For this profound experience to occur, our confused minds must be soothed and all our fears pacified by the compassion and skill of our spiritual friends and guides.

Whirling around and around, these feelings are all centered upon our notion of self. Yet Buddhism teaches that our so-called self, the ego, is a parasitical illusion without and substantial existence, something that has been constructed as a defense mechanism to deal with the experience of impermanence. It is the illusory self that suffers the full onslaught of our emotional turmoil. As it strives to create itself out of empty space and become solid, the ego-self always feels paranoid that it will be discovered for what it is-a hollow illusion. It works hard to maintain its status of "self importance" and suffers greatly as the all-encompassing reality of great space continuously dissolves the fabric of its being. Having no basis in reality, the ego-self keeps crumbling away and must be constantly reinvented. It reacts with delight when it meets with a situation that seems to protect it from damage.

There is a thin bright line between a sentient being and a Buddha, and this line is intrinsic to Dzogchen. Confusion just isn’t enlightenment. Yet the intrinsic nature of the confused mind is totally and already enlightened, always-already. There is a disturbing gap between this nature of mind (Tibetan, ngowo) and how it appears as confusion: disturbing because it seems so categorical, yet at the same time, I cannot locate it anywhere, since confused mind’s essence is totally enlightened.

Будучи ребёнком, я думал, что одобрение моего отца было лучшим показателем того, что я накапливаю заслугу, и я постоянно пытался найти способ ему угодить. Если у него не было посетителей, днём я часто приходил в его комнату, где он сидел в своём приподнятом ящике для медитации и смотрел в небо. Совершенно расслабленно. Я забирался к нему в ящик, садился рядом и пытался медитировать. Я хотел, чтобы он заметил мою идеальную позу и расслабленность ума. Но, если честно, моё тело было жёстким, как дерево, и ум тоже был довольно напряжённым. Однажды днём мы сидели вместе: мой отец – совершенно естественно, а рядом я – прямой как стрела. Очень тихо мой отец сказал: – Знаешь, аме, самый лучший способ накопить заслугу – это осознать пустотность. Он сразил меня наповал. После этого я пришёл в настоящее замешательство, пытаясь понять, как, ничего не делая, можно помочь другим. – Можно просто сидеть, медитировать на пустотности и ничего не делать, – сказал я отцу, – не молиться за других, не заботиться о больных. Так никого не накормишь, какая же от этого польза? – Причина плохой кармы – это неведение, – ответил мне отец. – Неведение – это неосознавание истинной природы реальности, неосознавание не-я, пустотности, или природы ума. Пока сохраняется неведение, сохраняется двойственность, сохраняются концепции и негативность остаётся там, где была. Это сансара – то, как мы цепляемся за ложные представления о реальности, и пока мы действуем исходя из своих ложных представлений и цепляемся за них, мы продолжаем создавать страдания для себя и других. Отец попытался объяснить мне, что без понимания пустотности мы ошибочно приписываем своему уму и телу плотное ощущение индивидуального, отдельного, особого «я». Это «я» всегда пытается удовлетворить нужды и желания цепляющегося эго, но в результате просто удерживает нас в цикле неудовлетворённости и разобщает с «другими». – Пустотность как свет, – продолжал отец. – Как солнце. Хотя ты думаешь: «Ничто, ничто, ничто», на самом деле ничто – это всё. Если ты поймёшь, что это ничто и есть пустотность, в тебе расцветёт мудрость. Мудрость порождает заслугу, потому что рассеивает тьму неведения. Что происходит, когда ты ночью зажигаешь свечу в своей комнате? – Она рассеивает тьму, – ответил я. – Она подобна мудрости, – сказал он. Повторю самое главное: в окончательной реальности, которая есть то же самое, что и наша природа будды, или абсолютная реальность, нет омрачений, нет плохой кармы, никто не обращается с молитвой, некому молиться, нечего очищать и нечего накапливать. Всё совершенно – именно так, как есть. Потрясающе. Очевидный вопрос, возникающий у ученика, таков: «Зачем тогда практиковать? Зачем совершать подношения мандалы для очищения ума, если ум уже и так чист и совершенен?» Затем, что мы не распознаём абсолютную реальность. Нам не хватает мудрости, чтобы осознать, что мы совершенны. Это омрачение, и поэтому мы практикуем.

The root of all that exists, Samsara and nirvana, is one's own mind. Primordially, mind is emptiness. Merge into the sky-like absolute expanse, Empty, luminous, beyond clinging. Outside, inside; eyes open or closed, Day, night; asleep or awake: No difference. During practice, after practice, Mind, appearances: Blend them. Continuously, without wavering, Merge completely with this vibrant, sky-like state.

Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness, and emptiness not other than form.

Total presence is the unstructured, natural radiance of your own mind, so how can you say that you cannot see the Buddha? There is nothing at all to meditate upon in it, so how can you complain that meditation does not arise? It is manifest total presence, your own mind, so how can you say that you cannot find it? It is a stream of unceasing radiant wakefulness, the face of your mind, so how can you say that you cannot see it? There is not so much as a moment of work to be done to attain it, so how can you say that your effort is unavailing? Centered and dispersed states are two sides of the same coin, so how can you say that your mind is never centered? Intrinsic knowledge is the spontaneously originated three modes of being, which is achieved without striving, so how can you say that your practice fails to accomplish it? It is enough to leave the mind in a state of nonaction, so how can you say that you are incapable of attaining it? Your thoughts are released at the moment of their inception, so how can you say that the antidotes were ineffective? It is cognition of the here and now, so how can you say you do not perceive it?

Taking and giving meditation (tong len) Tong len is a foundational meditation in Tibetan Buddhism in which we envision taking away the suffering of others and giving them happiness. There are many different versions of this meditation. The following is a very simple version, and no less powerful because of that. Adopt the optimal meditation posture—remember to keep a straight back. Take a few deep breaths and exhale. As you do, imagine you are letting go of all thoughts, feelings and experiences. As far as possible try to be pure consciousness, abiding in the here and now. Begin your meditation with the following motivation: By the practice of this meditation, may NAME of PET and all living beings be immediately, completely and permanently purified of all disease, pain, sickness and suffering. May this meditation be a direct cause for us to attain enlightenment, For the benefit of all living beings without exception. Focusing on your in-breaths, imagine that you are inhaling radiant, white light. This light represents healing, purification, balance and blissful energy. Imagine it filling your body, until every cell is completely permeated with it. Keep on breathing like this, with the focus on the qualities of the light that you inhale. After some minutes, change the focus of your attention to your exhalations. Visualise that you exhale a dark, smoke-like light. The darkness represents whatever pain, illness or potential for illness, negativity of body, speech or mind you experience. With each out-breath imagine you are able to release more and more of this negativity. Keep on breathing like this, with the focus on the qualities of the light that you exhale. After some minutes, combine the two, so that you are both letting go of negativity and illness as well as breathing in radiant wellbeing. Now that you have some practice, imagine that you are inhaling and exhaling these qualities on behalf of your pet/s. Whatever you breathe in, you direct into their being. Whatever you exhale, you do so on their behalf. You are a conduit for healing energy, and for letting go of all suffering. Make this the main focus of your meditation session—the taking away of your pet’s sickness and suffering and the giving of purification, healing and wellbeing. You may decide to assign, say, three or four breaths to each of the following qualities to give structure to your meditation: In-breaths Out-breaths Taking in healing energy Getting rid of all physical and mental disease Complete purification/cleansing/healing All physical sickness/pain/suffering Radiant wellbeing—energy and vitality All mental negativity/distress/anxiety Peace, balance, mental tranquillity Hatred, craving and all delusions Love and compassion End the session as you began: By the practice of this meditation, may NAME of PET and all living beings be immediately, completely and permanently purified of all disease, pain, sickness and suffering. May this meditation be a direct cause for us to attain enlightenment, For the benefit of all living beings without exception.

Silence is the Buddha‘s greatest expression. It‘s the Buddha‘s great teaching, what the Hindus call „You are That“ in the Upanishads. „You are the ultimate reality. You are God!“ the Hindus boldly declare. But the Buddha‘s way of affirming that fact is by being silent, because if you are that, after all, if you are what the theists think is God, you already know it yourself. (p. 15)

The Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet certainly does contain an unbroken oral tradition of teachings on the development of supernormal powers, which has passed from realized guru to disciple from the time of the Buddha himself down to the present ...