Spiritual Teachers

Nine Attitudes to Hold toward Ourselves in Our Relationship with Our Spiritual Teacher Might Rinpoche offer some advice about how we should approach our teachers and Dharma studies? The sutras describe nine types of attitudes to hold toward ourselves in our relationship with...

Dealing with Problematic Situations We were speaking about this whole issue of what I should do and what I shouldn’t do and the fear that comes from that, and so on. We saw that the entire issue revolves around a misconception about ourselves. We need to make a clear...

The Fourth Practice: Visualizing a Bountiful Field for Spiritual Growth The fourth of the six preparatory practices is to visualize a bountiful field for spiritual growth (tshogs-zhing, Skt. punyakshetra). That’s usually called the merit field, but there is a meaning to...

The Extraphysical Powers of Rinpoche’s Father, Serkong Dorjechang Serkong Rinpoche never claimed himself to be a yogi or to have any special powers. If we wanted an example of someone who did, he said we did not need to look only to the remote past. His father, Serkong...

Making Offerings Now, we’re up to making offerings. I present you with an ocean of clouds of assorted outer, inner, and hidden offerings: these I possess and those that nobody owns, both actually arrayed and mentally created. This fulfills the Amoghasiddhi bond to make...

In our final session, we have quite a lot of text left to cover, so I will just read each of the verses and comment very briefly on them.  Prayer for Inspiration to Develop the Graded Pathway Minds (Lam-rim)  We start with the lam-rim review. As I said, what we’re...

This bibliography was originally published as an appendix to Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy Relationship (Ithaca, Snow Lion, 2000), reprint: Wise Teacher, Wise Student: Tibetan Approaches to a Healthy Relationship (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2010), and...

Being Considerate toward Our Spiritual Teacher Serkong Rinpoche always stressed being considerate of all lamas and not wasting their time. He suggested avoiding the example of the devout people of Spiti. When lining up to present him with ceremonial scarves (kata), his...

The Importance of Vows in Tantra  Attaining enlightenment through the sutra path takes a very long time, three zillion eons, and if our bodhichitta is really, really strong, then we want to find a method that is going to build up this positive force more efficiently and...

Doing “Part-Time” Tantric Meditation Retreats Although full-time tantric meditation retreats continued over long periods are beneficial, most people do not have the luxury to undertake them. Therefore, Rinpoche felt it narrow-minded to think that we can only do this type of...