Refuge

The Three Levels of Motivation for Real Thing Dharma The lam-rim presents three levels of motivation: Initial level – we think in terms of ensuring that we have one of the better types of rebirths, not just in our next lifetime, but in all future lifetimes. ...

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...

Review of the Main Points of the Lam-rim The lam-rim is divided into three scopes, each with different states of mind that act as pathways enabling us to reach enlightenment. This structure was first formulated by the great eleventh-century Indian master Atisha, who was...

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....

Letting Down the Walls toward Learning As we discussed yesterday, what we try to do is to feel open to being of help to others – relating to others directly with the walls down. The walls need to be down not only toward people, but also toward learning things. It’s a similar...

Visualizing the Spiritual Master When it comes to visualizing the objects of safe direction, of refuge, then we visualize the spiritual master in the form of the yidam (the Buddha-figure) or in the form of Shakyamuni Buddha. But more comfortable here would be in the form of...

Review We need to set the proper motivation; namely, that we wish to benefit all beings and to achieve a state of enlightenment in order to be able to do so. With this motivation, listen to these teachings on The Foundation for Good Qualities with the sincere wish to put them...

Verses 5 through 8 When we recite the refuge prayer, we have the line, “By the force of my giving and so on…” It’s good to know that we can change this line to suit the occasion. So, if we are prostrating, we can say, “By the positive force of prostrating to the Buddhas and...

Review: Precious Human Life We have been going through the lam-rim graded stages of the path from the point of view of how they help us to develop a healthy sense of self. We have seen how thinking about the precious human rebirth and realizing how fortunate we actually are...

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....