Dependent Arising

Introduction This article is the result of a long-term dialogue between Alexander Berzin and Catherine Ducommun-Nagy, a psychiatrist and family therapist internationally known for her work on contextual therapy. The traditional Buddhist teachings address how best to relate to...

Introduction If we want to summarize the Buddhist teachings in one word that would describe what Buddha was trying to impart to us, I think that word would be “realism.” Realism means seeing clearly what is reality, and getting rid of our unawareness and confusion about that....

Introduction The text that I will be explaining is called The Furthest Everlasting Continuum, Uttaratantra in Sanskrit, Gyu Lama in Tibetan. It has five chapters and if I were to explain this slowly in a relaxed manner, it would take one or two weeks. But today we need to...

The Need for Understanding Correctly the Two Truths To gain a true stopping (’gog-bden; true cessation) of suffering and thus attain liberation, we need to gain a true stopping of unawareness (ma-rig-pa; ignorance) and of the rest of the emotional obscurations (nyon-sgrib)...

[Clarification of His Holiness' answers by Dr. Berzin are included within square brackets.] Relation between Westerners and Kalachakra Dr. Berzin: Do Westerners have a special relation with Kalachakra? His Holiness: I wonder, do they really have one? In general, the...

Suffering and Rebirth The Buddhist teachings teach us methods for overcoming various types of suffering. We have the general suffering of unhappiness, which can accompany either our sensory experiences or also our mental experiences. We also have a problem with our ordinary...

Question about Mediation of Disputes at Work When we try to apply this principle of looking at the validity of others’ points of view, particularly in a work situation when you’re a manager, sometimes we can be overwhelmed by the view of the workers and it’s hard to...

Designation Names, Words and Tags Designation involves the application of a name (ming; word) and/or a tag (brda; label, term) to some item, whether or not that item is validly knowable. Unicorns and self-established existence (rang-bzhin-gyis grub-pa), after all, do not...

Review Are there any questions left over from what we discussed this morning? We were discussing how voidness means the absence of impossible ways of existing, or impossible relations of cause and effect, and that it’s the same word as is used in Indian languages for the...

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...