Self-Cherishing

Review So far in our Seven Point Mind Training discussion, we’ve covered four out of the seven points. The first point focused on the preliminaries. The second point was about developing actual bodhichitta, which involves developing deepest bodhichitta and then relative...

Affection  In making cherishing others our main practice, we need to take into consideration the fact that everybody appreciates kindness and affection, but sometimes the word “affection” is misunderstood. It is more than just love. Love is (in the Buddhist definition) the...

Brief Review The Eight Verses of Mind Training comes from a long tradition, beginning with Shantideva’s text Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, then with Atisha, who heard of these teachings from Dharmarakshita, who wrote Wheel of Sharp Weapons, and then traveled to Sumatra to...

How to Practice Giving and Taking: Tonglen  Now, that leads us into our discussion of tonglen and the understanding of how important it is and why then it can be our core practice. “Tonglen” is giving and taking, and is an extremely, extremely advanced and difficult practice...

Differentiating the Various Aspects of Feelings Adjusting the ten mental factors is an effective means for increasing attentiveness to problems and for enhancing the intention to respond. Several factors, however, may still hamper this response. One of the more troublesome is...

To overcome the karmic obstacles we create for ourselves, we must forcefully destroy the self-grasping underlying our compulsive destructive behavior.

To reach enlightenment and benefit all others, we need to regard everyone as equal and instead of cherishing only ourselves, cherish all others as our primary concern.

The entire scope of mind training to transform negative attitudes into positive ones is summarized in eight verses.

An in-depth presentation of the self, self-centeredness and love in Islam, based on the “Quran,” and in Buddhism, based on the Mahayana teachings.

Renunciation is the determination to be free of our sufferings and their causes. When focused on others, with the determination that they be free, this is compassion.