Disturbing Emotions

I make prostration to the Three Rare Supreme Gems. “The Throwing Star Weapon Striking the Vital Point of the Foe.” I make prostration to forceful Yamantaka. (1) In the case of peacocks strutting in jungles of poisonous plants, although medicine gardens have been finely...

Jealousy is universal. Our colleague gets a promotion and we think, “They don’t deserve that!” Our friend finds a great partner and we think, “What about me?” From time to time we all have these feelings. Here we look at the different types of jealousy, and how we can overcome...

We looked at the unawareness of behavioral cause and effect and how that underlies our experience of unhappiness. Now we need to look at the second type of unawareness, a much deeper type of unawareness, which is unawareness of reality: how we exist, how others exist and how...

Ultimately, jealousy comes not from others, but from thinking too much about ourselves. As we become super-attached to one particular aspect of our life, anyone else who is doing even slightly better in that area will be a target for our jealousy. Underlying all of this is...

Chapters 5 to 8 Five: Indicating the Behavior of Bodhisattvas (1) There are no actions of the Buddhas that are not causes (for benefiting others). Even their breath is issued only for the sake of (acting as a) medicine for limited beings. (2) Just as the word “Lord of Death”...

Introduction In the first part of this series, we looked at the initial level of motivation where we aim to avoid lower rebirths and gain a higher rebirth. In particular, we want a precious human rebirth so that we can improve in our practice. The intermediate scope is when we...

Review In the first session, we started our discussion of the five types of deep awareness. These refer to Buddha-nature factors, which we all have that enable us to achieve the state of a Buddha – the various Buddha Bodies. We discussed how we can work with these on a basis,...

The name of this work is The Wheel of Sharp Weapons Effectively Striking the Heart of the Foe. I pay heartfelt homage to you, Yamantaka; your wrath is opposed to the Great Lord of Death. [1] [notes by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey: see below] (1) In jungles of poisonous plants...

Review In our first session, we had a basic introduction to the topic. We saw that when we speak about refuge in Buddhism, we are not speaking about some passive act of turning to some higher power to protect us, but rather, we are taking certain measures to prevent our own...

Part One: Contrasting Bodhisattvas with Ordinary Beings Two Traditions for Developing Conventional Bodhichitta To destroy self-grasping and self-cherishing and to attain enlightenment, all mind training texts emphasize tonglen. This is the practice of giving and taking as...