Four Buddha Bodies

All the details of the four points for analyzing the increased efficiency of general tantra pertain to anuttarayoga. Beyond that, however, the same four points may help us to understand why the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, is even speedier than the other three...

Transforming Our Behavior through Our Thoughts We’ve covered the first two points – the preliminaries and the actual training in bodhichitta. Now we’re ready for the third of the seven points, which is transforming difficult circumstances into the path to enlightenment. This...

Buddha-Nature  What do family-traits mean?  A family-trait is “gotra,” which is family or caste. The traits are characteristics of someone who belongs to a certain family or caste. It can be the family or caste of those who can become Buddhas, so the Buddha-family. There are...

Review We were speaking this morning about deepest bodhichitta. We saw that it was not enough just to have relative bodhichitta, either: Just the aspiring state in which we aspire to attain our not-yet-happening enlightenment Or, in addition, the pledged state of aspiring...

Review  Yesterday, we were speaking about the seven diamond-strong points which are presented here in the text. We saw that these seven are the Buddhas, the Dharma, the Sangha, the source (which refers to Buddha-nature), then enlightenment, the qualities of that state and the...

(1) Closer Analogies The Kalachakra Tantra has many unique features not shared in common with the other anuttarayoga Buddha-figure systems. The upward and downward analogies of general anuttarayoga still pertain to its practice, except that Kalachakra does not entail practice...

Exceptional Resolve  The next step after tonglen (giving and taking) is developing the exceptional resolve (lhag-bsam), which is the even stronger wish to be able to eliminate all the suffering of others and bring them the happiness of liberation and enlightenment. What is...

Do a Buddha’s extraphysical and extrasensory powers make any sense or are they just interesting stories?

Understanding and appreciating Kalachakra’s unique features and methods for attaining enlightenment grow based on first understanding and appreciating the unique features of Mahayana sutra, general tantra and anuttarayoga tantra.

The tulku system of reincarnate lamas is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Learn the minimum stage of practice required for generating a line of tulkus.