Samsara

The 12 links of dependent arising is a central and important topic in the Buddhist path; it’s important to know why it’s important in order to develop interest and motivation to study and learn about it. As an introduction, let me discuss this importance first. The Importance...

Twelve Links of Dependent Arising Describe Rebirth and How to Stop It The twelve links of dependent arising (rten-’brel yan-lag bcu-gnyis) describe the mechanism of rebirth. Rebirth concerns the continuity of the mind. When we speak about mind in Buddhism, we are not talking...

When You Have Parted from Clinging to This Life, Your Mind Has Gone toward the Dharma  Of these four main points, the first (when you have parted from clinging to this life, you have made your mind go toward the Dharma) has meditation on three topics: (1) firstly, as a...

Brief Review We started our explanation of Atisha’s text, and we saw that he was speaking about the stages by which we develop or progress along the spiritual path. We saw that one way of describing how we progress is that the scope or aim of our goal gets progressively...

We were talking about the first link in this chain of dependent arising and we saw that this is the link of unawareness and it has to do with unawareness of how we and others exist. The main emphasis that we need to focus on is ourselves. We saw that there are two levels of...

The next three links – eight, nine, and ten – are the causal links that actualize (bsgrub-byed-kyi yan-lag). They are what activate the karmic aftermath of throwing karma in the moments preceding death so that the karmic results will actualize. Thus, they serve as the...

General Introduction and Review The various Tibetan traditions coming from the Buddha – Kadam, Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma – all follow a presentation of ways to train our attitudes that comes from a common source: Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. Shantideva’s...

Review In this formulation, karma is exclusively a mental factor, an urge or impulse. It is the impulse that, while focused on an object, drives the primary consciousness and its accompanying mental factors to engage, in the next moment, in a specific action directed toward or...

The Sufferings of the Higher Planes of Existence An actual spiritual person, or Dharma practitioner, is someone who is working to be able to benefit future lifetimes and beyond. Such a person then, on an initial level, would follow the ethics of restraining themselves from the...

Review of the First Link: Unawareness  We have started our discussion of these 12 links, and we saw that they describe the mechanism for how we generate our uncontrollably recurring aggregates – the body and mind and so on – of each lifetime, and specifically our tainted...