Visualization

Now, 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. And as I said, what we’re...

The Blissful Understanding of Voidness Now we go on to the second half of the six-session guru practice: Requested like this, my supreme guru alights on the crown of my head. We merge – samaja. Samaja is the Sanskrit word meaning “to unite.” It’s the same word “to come...

The Buddha-Nature Factors Going from the basis level to the resultant level through the pathway level in tantra involves working with our Buddha-nature factors. Let’s look at what they are. There are evolving factors and abiding factors, as they are called. The evolving...

Brief Review The Eight Verses of Mind Training comes from a long tradition, beginning with Shantideva’s text Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, then with Atisha, who heard of these teachings from Dharmarakshita, who wrote Wheel of Sharp Weapons, and then traveled to Sumatra to...

How to Practice Giving and Taking: Tonglen  Now, that leads us into our discussion of tonglen and the understanding of how important it is and why then it can be our core practice. “Tonglen” is giving and taking, and is an extremely, extremely advanced and difficult practice...

There are many misunderstandings about ngondro practices, such as that they are a miracle cure for all our problems.

Mantra practice has many levels, from protecting our minds from mental wandering, to molding the energy-winds of the breath to facilitate bringing those energy-winds into the central channel, to building up causes for attaining the Enlightening Speech of a Buddha.

A look at common misunderstandings people have about tantra.

An outline of some varieties of the phenomenon of consciousness traveling with a subtle form outside the rough body, found in the written and oral records of the Buddhist traditions of India and Tibet.

Vajrasattva practice is a tantric meditation done for the purification of negative karmic potentials. On an ultimate level, Vajrasattva practice is non-conceptual meditation on voidness.