Sangha

Question about Method and Wisdom Could Your Holiness explain a little bit more about method and wisdom? When we speak of method and wisdom in Buddhism, method is referring primarily to the various actions and practices that will act as a cause for being able to generate a Form...

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...

The Sangha Gem We were speaking about the seven diamond-strong points, which are first outlined in chapter one. We’ve covered the Buddha Gem and the Dharma Gem, and now we are up to the Sangha Gem. The Sangha Gem here is referring to the arya bodhisattvas specifically,...

Sadhana Practice in Our Own Language  Do you think it would be good to do much of our sadhana practice not in Tibetan but in the language that is easier for us to understand, like English or Norwegian? If we look at the way that the Tibetans practice their sadhanas, they...

The Dharma Gem The first of the seven vajra points was the Clear Evolved Ones, the Buddhas. Now, we are up to discussing the second point, the Dharma Gem. For this, just as there were eight qualities for the Buddha Gem, there are eight qualities for the Dharma Gem. Of the...

Review We’ve been speaking about the bodhisattva vows, and we have taken a look at their role on the Buddhist path. We’ve seen that in order to take them, we need to have already developed ourselves along the Buddhist way through the various stages of the lam-rim, the graded...

Levels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha So far in our discussion, we’ve seen the general structure of how we meditate on refuge, putting a safe direction in our life. Now, we can get into the specifics of where this direction is going. This is described and indicated by the...

In an age where we turn to celebrities as role models, the Sangha provides us with the perfect example of a life lived with ethical self-discipline, concentration, and discriminating awareness.

Even if a Western Buddhist community is made up entirely of laymen and laywomen, with no monks or nuns, the monastic vows provide valuable guidelines that Buddha designed for building a harmonious spiritual community.

A detailed look at the different meanings of the term “Sangha” in the various Buddhist traditions.