Vows

In this weekend seminar, we are going to speak about the bodhisattva vows. Obviously, to understand the bodhisattva vows, we need to know what a bodhisattva is, and what bodhichitta is, upon which the vows are based. We have many different quotations and sources which point...

[Clarification of His Holiness' answers by Dr. Berzin are included within square brackets.] Topics for Introductory Talks for Taking the Kalachakra Initiation Dr. Berzin: When I go to the West next year to give introductory talks for the Kalachakra initiation, what would be...

I take safe direction wholeheartedly from the Three Supreme Gems. I shall free all wandering beings from suffering and secure them in everlasting bliss. To reach full enlightenment for their sake, I reaffirm my bodhichitta aim and shall train myself in bodhisattva behavior. In...

Premises People at Dharma centers often have difficulty relating to spiritual teachers, even properly qualified ones. Some may feel nothing toward the resident teacher, even if the person is a geshe or a lama. Others may be unimpressed with a famous teacher who visits,...

The six-session yoga is a practice which helps us to keep the commitments from receiving an initiation or empowerment in the anuttarayoga class of tantra. And so this evening what I’d like to do is give a little bit of introduction and background to what’s going on with this...

As an aid to those unfamiliar with the topics presented here, some background information and a few technical terms and dates have been filled in to the summaries of some of the papers. Introduction to the Bhikshuni Vows The Importance of Having Bhikshunis The...

I am very happy to be with all of you today. Although I am not a monk, still I have had the good fortune to have been able to study Kalachakra with a number of different great Lamas. Based on their kindness in teaching me, I shall try to pass on their wisdom to you by...

I have a stack of questions here in front of me. Let me try to answer some of them during the course of explaining what will happen today during the first day of the actual empowerment. Following the Visualizations One thing to keep in mind about what is going on here is...

We started our discussion of how to make our tantra practice effective or more effective. And we saw that the most fundamental thing to start with is to understand what tantra is and what is the essential point of tantra practice – how does it work. And we saw that tantra...

Preliminary Steps The actual empowerment begins with the disciples rinsing their mouths and prostrating, as the day before. Whether a participant or an observer, we still imagine ourselves as a simple Kalachakra on the black eastern porch of the mandala palace, and our...