Preliminary Practices

The Ceremony for Wishing Bodhichitta, Together with Advice  When we talk about developing bodhichitta, of course, this is a process that we need to work up to and that requires a great deal of work and effort to sincerely feel. There are stages of meditation for...

Preparation for Tantra Practice  The practice of tantra needs to be done within the context of the four noble truths, which is the context of all the teachings of Buddha. It’s the most fundamental thing that Buddha taught. It was the first thing that Buddha taught, these...

To purify ourselves of the various negative potentials that we have built up, it is necessary to do Vajrasattva meditation. To build up a great store of positive potential, there are the practices of guru-yoga, the methods to integrate with our spiritual master. These are the...

Purification of the Environment and the Offerings  In our discussion of this practice, The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, we’ve done the safe direction and reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation and the four immeasurable attitudes. Then, we...

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...

Questions about Initiations (Empowerments) You said that after the preliminaries or preparation, then we take the empowerment. Does that mean that we have to have completed our ngondro before receiving an empowerment? That’s a very good question. It depends on what level we...

Introduction In outlining this third of the six preparatory practices, the texts say first you do prostration, then you sit down, then you clear the mind by focusing on the breath, and only then do you reaffirm your motivation of refuge (safe direction) and bodhichitta....

We have been speaking about the necessity for preparation for engaging in tantra practice. We have the common preliminaries (or preparation), which are shared in common with all Mahayana practices, sutra as well as tantra. In addition, we have the unshared or uncommon...

The Fourth Practice: Visualizing a Bountiful Field for Spiritual Growth The fourth of the six preparatory practices is to visualize a bountiful field for spiritual growth (tshogs-zhing, Skt. punyakshetra). That’s usually called the merit field, but there is a meaning to...

The Basic Prerequisites for Achieving Shamatha Having presented the various traditions that transmit methods for meditating on mahamudra, the Fourth Panchen Lama now begins his discussion of the actual methods for mahamudra practice. He explains that there are two...