Karma

The Complexity of Karma This weekend we’re going to be speaking about karma, and although the topic is announced as “karma: free will versus determinism,” that will be just a part of what we’ll talk about. I’d like to go into some detail about what karma is, what the various...

There are several different discussions of karma in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. I should also point out that all of them are quite different from the Theravada presentation of how karma works. Within Tibetan Buddhism, there are three basic explanations. We are going to discuss only...

Sources of the Madhyamaka View of Karma Let us survey the Madhyamaka view of karma, starting with Nagarjuna (Klu-grub, Skt. Nāgārjuna) in the late second century CE. It follows the Sarvastivada abhidharma assertion, also found in the Mahayana sutras, that the karmic impulses...

Introduction Today we’re going to discuss a very important topic: How do we develop bodhichitta for the first time? Is it free will, determinism, or something else? You see, if our motivation is to help all beings and in order to do that we need to become liberated and...

The Complexity of Karma Karma is a topic that concerns what happens to us and why. It is something that is very relevant to all of us on a personal level, not something outside of the sphere of our lives. If we can start to understand karma and how it works, we can begin to...

Methodology Karma is a prominent topic discussed throughout the history of Indian thought, with several different explanations found in the varied schools of Indian philosophy, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Even within the Buddhist fold, there are several different...

Introduction I’ve been asked to teach about Kalachakra this weekend. There are of course many, many aspects of Kalachakra that we could discuss, but I think that what is most important is to maintain the proper Buddhist context for our Kalachakra study and practice, which is...

The Four Creative-Energy Drops and the Mental Holograms to Which They Give Rise [For further elaboration, see: Kalachakra: The Four Creative Drops] Introduction As a Buddhist practice, Kalachakra fits within the context of the four noble truths and its practice is a method...

Samsara This evening, we’re going to begin a series of talks on how the understanding of voidness (emptiness) helps us to overcome our uncontrollably recurring rebirths, samsara. Samsara is not some place that we want to escape from and go instead to some transcendent realm...

This evening, we shall be beginning a seminar on what does karma actually mean in terms of Vasubandhu and Nagarjuna’s presentations. This is an extremely important topic, since karma is one of the things that we need to overcome. We need to rid ourselves completely of it so...