Disturbing Emotions

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 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...

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...

Unawareness of How We Exist and Disturbing Emotions  We are talking about the self, “me,” how we exist and how we establish that we exist. This is a very crucial question that is asked in Buddhism. When we are unaware of how we and everyone exists, when either we don’t...

Questions Is There an Inherent Right to Happiness? Do beings have an inherent right to happiness? Do parents have a responsibility to take care of their children and love them as much as possible? I would say yes, if we make the decision to become a parent. However I can’t...

Contrasting Bodhisattvas with Ordinary Beings The text, Wheel of Sharp Weapons, begins with Dharmarakshita contrasting bodhisattvas with ordinary beings. Bodhisattvas practice tonglen – giving and taking – taking from others the three poisonous disturbing states of mind or...

Disturbing Emotions Are the Enemy Now for verse three of the Eight Verses of Mind Training: (3) Whatever I am doing, may I check the flow of my mind, and the moment that conceptions or disturbing emotions arise, since they debilitate myself and others, may I confront and...

Not Getting Angry toward Those Who Are Negative toward Us When people react a long time very negatively toward me, I have a problem to still have this feeling of love and kindness toward this person. Sometimes I feel I need to be tough with this person; it can’t go on like...

Review In our last session we presented the first stages in the process for working ourselves up to developing bodhichitta. We saw that the first type of equanimity that we cultivate is the equanimity that tries to rid ourselves, at least...

Fear of "A Breach of Guru-Devotion" Almost every classical text on the disciple-mentor relationship includes a section on the hellish suffering that follows from what is usually translated as "a breach of guru-devotion." The material derives mostly from Ashvaghosha's vivid...