Spiritual Teachers

Audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama before Moving to Germany April 1998, I returned home to Dharamsala, India, after a long lecture tour and intensive period of writing in Mongolia and the West. I had been living in the foothills of the Himalayas since 1969, studying and...

Recap We’ve been looking at some methods that help us to integrate our lives. We’ve also looked at the background from which these practices derive. In the larger Buddhist context, we are aiming to ensure that our future lives continue to have a precious human form like we...

In A Precious Ornament for Liberation, Gampopa cited three analogies from the sutras to elucidate the need for a spiritual mentor. Just as a traveler needs a navigator for traversing an unknown route, an escort for making a dangerous journey, and an oarsman for crossing a...

By studying the Buddhist path with spiritual teachers, we learn the teachings and the various methods for applying them to our lives. We train in these methods to bring about positive self-transformations. The process of change is never linear. Emotional and spiritual growth...

The Rectification of Terms Titles, particularly those in foreign languages, often mystify Western people. They frequently conjure romantic images that are inappropriate. This especially happens with the various titles for spiritual teachers, such as – in the Tibetan...

Basis, Pathway, and Resultant Viewpoints Most Tibetan texts that discuss tantric masters' being Buddhas explain the topic of impure and pure appearances from a specific viewpoint. Often, however, the texts neglect to state their point of view. This may cause confusion. In...

Verses 5 through 9 Brief Review We have seen that Togme Zangpo starts his poem with a presentation of the main points that we find in the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path. After paying homage to Avalokiteshvara, and the promise to compose the text, he talks of the...

According to Buddhist analysis, not only do a self that is hugging someone, the other person being hugged and an action of hugging arise dependently on and simultaneously with each other, a self that is hugging also arises dependently on and simultaneously with many other...

For the remainder of this seminar, I'd like to not follow a strict structure, but just answer questions you might have about tantra and let a wider p[icture of tantra unfold from that.Can Visualization Help with Dealing with Disturbing Emotions?When, on a practical level,...

We can have some questions about the points we’ve just covered and then we can go on. Let’s keep our questions specific to this topic. In the afternoon, we can open it up to more general questions about tantra. Questions and Answers Strengthening Belief in Rebirth You made the...