Obstacles

This weekend I’ve been asked to speak about self-voidness and other-voidness, what is called in Tibetan rangtong (rang-stong) and zhentong (gzhan-stong; shentong). This is a very advanced, very complicated and very important topic. Therefore, it requires a great deal of...

When we talk about meditation in a Buddhist context, we’re talking about something rather specific. Nowadays, we often hear the word “meditation” in all sorts of places, because it has quite a good reputation and many people are using it as an aid to relaxation and so on....

Avoiding Overdependence on Others for Spiritual Energy Even after committing oneself to a spiritual path and establishing a disciple-mentor relationship, maintaining energy and motivation in one's spiritual practice may often present a challenge. Thus, seekers need a variety...

Introduction Tomorrow is the Buddhist holiday known as Lhabab Duchen in Tibetan, or the Descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-three in English. The best way to celebrate this special day is to have a Buddhist teaching on the four noble truths, the first teaching that the...

Voidness (emptiness) ̱̱is a very difficult topic, but a very essential topic. In order to approach it, we need to see where it fits into the general presentation of the Buddhist teachings. As we all know, Buddha taught his understanding, his realization in terms of what is...

The Meaning of Karma There are many explanations of karma in the different Indian Buddhist tenet systems. Let us use the least complicated of them, the main explanation followed by the non-Gelug Tibetan traditions. We also find it in the Gelug explanation of all the Indian...

According to Buddhist analysis, not only do a self that is hugging someone, the other person being hugged and an action of hugging arise dependently on and simultaneously with each other, a self that is hugging also arises dependently on and simultaneously with many other...

Setting a Good Motivation Now, please don’t forget the purpose of this course. As I mentioned yesterday, this is a very important subject – meditating on impermanence. Without this, whatever very profound teaching we find in our life, we won’t be able to practice it very well....

Brief Review We started our discussion of the Eight Verses of Mind Training by Langri Tangpa, with the first verse: (1) May I always cherish all limited beings by considering how far superior they are to wish-granting gems for actualizing the supreme aim. We discussed how...

Description of the Phenomena in Classical Psychoanalysis Transference and regression are phenomena that occur in most ordinary human relationships, but in classical Freudian psychoanalysis, as described by Menninger in Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique, they are...