Disturbing Emotions

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...

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...

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,...

Review We were speaking about the initial and intermediate level motivations in the lam-rim process for self-development on the spiritual path. We saw that on the initial scope, or with the initial scope, we are aiming for better rebirths. We want to avoid...

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...

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...

Verses 2 through 4 Today, you are going to listen to me talk. But the words coming out of my mouth have already been spoken by the Buddha himself many times, and by His Holiness the Dalai Lama many times. Gyalse Togme Zangpo, the author of the text, is teaching us...

Review of Day One Yesterday, we covered the smaller scope and looked at one of its primary topics, which is meditating on impermanence. That helps in reducing our attachment to the appearances of this life, because we see that nothing lasts. To recap, there are meditations on...

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...

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...