Traditions of Tibetan Buddhism

The Way to Listen to Teachings We have all come to listen to teachings on mahamudra, the great seal. But whenever we listen to teachings, we need a proper motivation. No matter how profound or excellent a teaching may be, if we do not listen to it with proper motivation,...

Developing Love and Compassion Even in the material world, we can’t put all of our efforts into one strong move and expect to get immediate results. Instead, we need to work progressively in stages. This is true in terms of working on our mind and working on our attitudes. To...

Other-Voidness Is an Implicative Negation Dr. Berzin: I’d like to ask you about other-voidness, zhentong (gzhan-stong). His Holiness the Dalai Lama acknowledges the Jonangpas as one of the proper Tibetan Buddhist traditions, but don’t the Jonangpas say that the deepest truth...

The four Tibetan Buddhist traditions – Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug – present slightly different division schemes of the six far-reaching attitudes.

It is very important to maintain a nonsectarian point of view of Bon with regard to the Tibetan traditions. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always stresses, these different traditions share the same ultimate aim: they all teach methods for achieving enlightenment to benefit...

The primary connotation of “ngondro” is preparation. These practices are absolutely essential preparation for undertaking and sustaining our “spiritual journey.”

Explore the graded path of practice as found in the Drugpa Kagyu tradition, written by the great Tibetan master of the 16th century, Pema Karpo.

When voidness is cognized conceptually, its superficial truth appears; this is known as denumerable voidness. When voidness is cognized non-conceptually, an absolute absence of truly established existence appears; this is known as non-denumerable voidness.

Gampopa’s way of combining the Kadampa and mahamudra teachings became the foundation for the Kagyu lineages that derived from him.

The various Tibetan Buddhist traditions differ as to the voidness non-conceptually cognized by each of the three types of practitioners – shravaka, pratyekabuddha and bodhisattva – when becoming an arya.