Preliminary Practices

Review The six-session yoga practice is a way of helping us to fulfill our commitments from anuttarayoga tantra initiation, by reminding us of the vows that we’ve taken and also the nineteen closely bonding practices, or damtsig (dam-tshig), to make a close connection with the...

Reaffirming the Motivation We need to have a proper motivation for listening to the teachings; otherwise we will miss an opportunity to build up a great deal of positive force and to incorporate this teaching in our mental continuum. We try not to be motivated by wanting...

Recognizing Our Mental Blocks The mahamudra teachings also emphasize the importance and need for extensive preliminary practice. The point of such practice, for example making hundreds of thousands of prostrations, is to purify ourselves of the grossest levels of obstacles...

An Environment Conducive for Meditation To actually engage in meditation, we need circumstances conducive for it. There are many lists of factors that will be conducive for meditation, but these are usually discussed or presented within the context of doing a meditation...

(1) To gain hold of that precious mind, I offer sincerely to you, the Thusly Gone (Buddhas), to the stainless Rare Gem of the hallowed Dharma, and to you, the offspring of the Buddhas, with oceans of good qualities: (2) Whatever flowers and fruits there are and whatever...

The second preparatory practice is taking care about obtaining offerings without hypocrisy and setting them up in a beautiful arrangement. Different Types of Offering When Atisha went to Tibet, he recommended that people make water offerings. People were poor, obviously,...

Taming the Mind All of us wish for happiness and none of us wish to have any suffering. This is true of everybody, but it is very difficult to come upon all the circumstances that will bring this about. If we look merely at external circumstances, we find it nearly...

The Salutation The text begins with the verse of salutation in which a distinction must be made between the eight qualities of Ishvara (dbang-phyug), the king of the gods, and the eight king-of-the-god types of qualities. The former are the qualities of the king of the gods,...

Reasons for Preliminaries Becoming Flat People engaged in preliminary practices sometimes find them becoming flat. The primary fault lies with our motivation. The main measure to prevent this is continually reaffirming our reasons for engaging in the preliminaries. If, as...

The third preparatory practice is to arrange a proper seat, sit in the eightfold posture, and in a positive frame of mind take safe direction, or refuge, and reaffirm our bodhichitta aim. Arranging a Proper Seat According to the text, it is best (if you can do it) to have...