Obstacles

Brief Review of the History of Mind Training Texts We have been discussing the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, by Dharmarakshita, which is included in the collection of mind training texts and seems to be the forerunner of them. Dharmarakshita was one of Atisha’s teachers and Atisha...

Questions about the Clear Light Mind If the clear light mind is not influenced by causes and circumstances and it's not independently existing, then by what is it influenced? When we speak of clear light mind as being an unaffected or unconditioned phenomenon, we need to...

Verses 11 through 14 Verse 11: Living Happily without Unease or Attachments How to Act When We Meet People Even When We Are Living in Seclusion Let me rid myself of hostility and uneasy mental states, and go happily everywhere. Here, Atisha is continuing the discussion...

Viewing Others as Respected Teachers Verse six of our eight-verse text expresses a similar sentiment to what Togme Zangpo communicates in the verse we previously cited in our discussion of verse five, in which he refers to someone we’ve raised and cherished like our own child...

(11) Teaching Voidness to Those Whose Minds Are Untrained We’ve been going through the bodhisattva vows. We have covered ten of the 18 vows and we’re up to number 11. What we want to avoid with this vow is teaching voidness to those whose minds are untrained. This is talking...

What Are Impure and Pure Appearances? Now let’s discuss the variable of impure and pure appearances. The variable of pure and impure is applied in terms of whether or not an appearance is adulterated and stained with faults. “Faults” here refers to items that arise from our...

Review We have been analyzing the various causal connections between clear-light mind, these winds of karma, the creative-energy drops, and everything that’s involved in our experience of these mental holograms. And we proposed that the winds of karma are the mounts of the...

Brief Review The Eight Verses of Mind Training comes from a long tradition, beginning with Shantideva’s text Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, then with Atisha, who heard of these teachings from Dharmarakshita, who wrote Wheel of Sharp Weapons, and then traveled to Sumatra to...

We need to exert effort to rid ourselves of all obstacles to concentration, such as flightiness and mental dullness, during whatever meditations we may be doing.

In “A Filigree of Realizations” (“Abhisamayalamkara”), Maitreya explains the progression of the five levels of mind we achieve that serve as pathways leading to liberation and enlightenment.