Impermanence

The Importance of Meditating on Impermanence and Death His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be giving some very precious teachings soon. Because of that, my Italian friend and I had a conversation about this and came to the conclusion that, before the teachings, we could have a...

Background The Bodhipathapradipa text was originally composed in Sanskrit. It was translated into Tibetan with the title Jangchub lamkyi dronma, which in English is Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. It starts: I prostrate to the Bodhisattva Youthful Manjushri. The text...

Introductory Verses and Verses 1 through 4 Introduction The mind training text, 37 Bodhisattva Practices, was written in Tibet in the fourteenth century by the Sakya master Togme Zangpo. Togme Zangpo was well known as being an actual bodhisattva, and his text is studied by all...

The Rarity of a Precious Human Life In our first discussion, we spoke about how this precious human rebirth that we all have is a perfect working basis for our Dharma practice. This working basis is complete with all of the eighteen qualities: the respites and the enrichments....

Setting a Good Motivation Now, please don’t forget the purpose of this course. As I mentioned yesterday, this is a very important subject – meditating on impermanence. Without this, whatever very profound teaching we find in our life, we won’t be able to practice it very well....

Verses 1 through 7 Taking Advantage of Being in a Holy Place As I explained yesterday, we are at a special place here where the Buddha manifested his enlightenment and where many enlightened beings have been. Nagarjuna and his two spiritual sons, for instance, and many...

What Is Death? When we talk about impermanence, automatically the subject of death always comes up. Why death? What is the definition of death? Any volunteers? An ending of life. Okay. When this embodied experience is over. Okay. When the consciousness leaves the body. Okay....

What Do We Know after Negating Something  We have been speaking about affirmations and negations, and we have seen that they’re very important. There are quite a few things that came up from yesterday and some questions that are still there. A negation is one in which...

During Life and at Death: The Dharma Is Our Guide We will now continue with the Training for How to Meditate on Impermanence, Written in Verse: (24) The Dharma is your guide on a path unknown; the Dharma is your food on a journey, arduous and long. The Dharma is your protector...

The Need for Deconstruction Methods Sometimes, we discover that we are overreacting to what we see, hear, or feel because we are mistaken about what we perceived. We thought, for example, that our friend was angry with us because he or she did not call for days. In fact, our...