Meditation

Introduction  This seminar is about how the five Buddha-family traits create our view of the universe. This is a topic that deals with what we call in Buddhism “Buddha-nature.” The word “family” in “Buddha-family” is actually the Sanskrit word for caste, a social system that...

Meditation is something that is found in many traditions, not just Buddhism; but while many aspects of meditation are found in all Indian traditions, here we shall limit our discussion to the way that meditation is presented in Buddhism. What Is Meditation? The word...

Introduction The six preparatory practices (jorcho, sbyor-chos) derive from Atisha, who learned them from his teacher in Indonesia, Serlingpa, and then transmitted them to Tibet. They are preparation for any meditation session that we do. We find them discussed in the standard...

Having a Quiet Mind and Caring Attitude In the development of balanced sensitivity, there are many different variables involved in overcoming the extremes of being either insensitive or oversensitive regarding ourselves and others. This has to do with how we pay attention to...

Introduction In our weekend seminar we will focus on refuge. If we look at any of the Buddhist texts, we find that refuge is always described as the most fundamental aspect of the Buddhist path. In fact, it is the entry way into Buddhism. Refuge defines the dividing line...

Homage Verse and Verse 1 The Author, Atisha A Bodhisattva’s Garland of Gems (Skt. Bodhisattva-mani-avali) was written by the great Indian master Atisha (Atisha Dipamkarashrijnana, 982–1054). As a great Buddhist master at the Vikramashila Monastery, he was very concerned about...

Kriya tantra (ritual tantra) is the first of the four tantra classes in the Sarma classification scheme and the first of the six tantra classes in the Nyingma scheme. It puts a great deal of emphasis on cleanliness, vegetarianism and purification. PreliminariesBefore sitting...

[As background, see Dzogchen in Comparison with Other Buddhist Systems. See also: The Major Facets of Dzogchen] What is Mind? The four facts of life (four noble truths) may be formulated in terms of mind, which means in terms of an individual being’s experiencing of them: The...

Questions and Answers Let’s start our session with some questions. Karma I wonder if this statement is right or not: Every perception that we have through our six senses, along with the mental factors, is our karma, our past accumulated karma. Are perceptions which I perceive...

Review In our first session, we had a basic introduction to the topic. We saw that when we speak about refuge in Buddhism, we are not speaking about some passive act of turning to some higher power to protect us, but rather, we are taking certain measures to prevent our own...