Four Buddha Bodies

The Sangha Gem  We were speaking about the seven diamond-strong points, which are first outlined in chapter one. We’ve covered the Buddha Gem and the Dharma Gem, and now we are up to the Sangha Gem.  The Sangha Gem here is referring to the arya bodhisattvas...

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....

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...

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,...

(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...

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...

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...

A detailed look at the methods we use in anuttarayoga tantra to purify ourselves of experiencing the true suffering of uncontrollably recurring death, bardo, and rebirth.

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

To put a safe direction in life, we need to correctly identify the Three Precious Gems.