Suffering

Samsara This evening, we’re going to begin a series of talks on how the understanding of voidness (emptiness) helps us to overcome our uncontrollably recurring rebirths, samsara. Samsara is not some place that we want to escape from and go instead to some transcendent realm...

Brief Introduction to Nalanda Monastery Today we are here at Nalanda Monastery in France. In ancient India there was also a Nalanda Monastery, or Shri Nalanda in Sanskrit, meaning the great all-around perfect Nalanda Monastery. Many great masters studied and taught there,...

Dharma-Lite vs. The Real Thing Dharma I’m very happy to be back here in Seattle once more and to have the opportunity to speak to you about the meditations for developing bodhichitta.I suppose that it would be appropriate to give an introduction. Bodhichitta is something that...

Definitions of Love, Compassion and Bodhichitta Today I’ve been asked to speak to you about the practice and methods for equalizing and exchanging your attitudes concerning self and others. The subjects of love and compassion, and developing a dedicated heart of bodhichitta,...

The Rarity of a Precious Human Life In our first discussion, we spoke about how this precious human rebirth that we all have is a perfect working basis for our Dharma practice. This working basis is complete with all of the eighteen qualities: the respites and the enrichments....

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...

Review of Day One Yesterday, we covered the smaller scope and looked at one of its primary topics, which is meditating on impermanence. That helps in reducing our attachment to the appearances of this life, because we see that nothing lasts. To recap, there are meditations on...

Review of the Three Principal Pathways  Tsongkhapa emphasized that there are three principal paths, meaning three principal pathways of the mind, or ways of thinking, ways of understanding that are the essence of the graded path. These are renunciation or the determination to...

Verses 8 through 37 Reaffirming Our Motivation and Review Look at all the people around you, whether they are close or distant, rich or poor, all of us are equal in wanting happiness and no suffering. The best way to accomplish this is the practice of Dharma. We have fully...

The Relation between Incorrect Consideration of Nonstatic as Static and of Suffering as Happiness We were speaking about our incorrect consideration of things that change. We consider that something like a relationship is going to last forever, whereas, in fact, it is...