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...

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...

Message from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

We gain a more balanced perspective of Bon by understanding Tibetan history and culture and how Bon’s approach to spiritual development relates to Tibetan Buddhism.

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.

The Prasangika-Madhyamaka presentation of how to achieve a union of method and voidness both in sutra and tantra.

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

The difference between the Gelug presentation of voidness and that shared in common by Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya concern the type of voidness that is cognized non-conceptually and how to attain non-conceptual cognition of it.