Vows

Review We’ve been speaking about the bodhisattva vows, and we have taken a look at their role on the Buddhist path. We’ve seen that in order to take them, we need to have already developed ourselves along the Buddhist way through the various stages of the lam-rim, the graded...

Point 7 Point seven, the last point, consists of 22 points to train in for cleansing our attitudes: 1. Do all yogas with one Whatever we do, we should do it in order to be able to help others. An example often used in India, where people frequently have worms, is the...

Refutation of a Pratimoksha Vowed Restraint as a Nonrevealing Form That Follows from a Revealing Form In response to the Vaibhashika objection that if the existence of nonrevealing forms were negated, the consequence would be that pratimoksha vowed restraints would not exist,...

(11) Teaching Voidness to Those Whose Minds Are Untrained We’ve been going through the bodhisattva vows. We have covered ten of the 18 vows and we’re up to number 11. What we want to avoid with this vow is teaching voidness to those whose minds are untrained. This is talking...

Vasubandhu, in his (Auto)commentary on “A Treasure House of Special Topics of Knowledge” (Chos mngon-pa’i mdzod-kyi rang-’grel, Skt. Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya) (Gretil ed. 196.04-06, Derge Tengyur vol. 160, 169A), explains further reasons that Sautrantika gives for rejecting...

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 Five Trainings from Developing Pledged Aspiring Bodhichitta The text continues: (8) Even if I have developed merely this resolve, if I lack the habit of the three types of ethical self-discipline, I will be unable to attain a (supreme) purified state. Seeing this well, I...

How Vowed Restraints Prevent the Commitment of Actions One Has Pledged to Abstain From In An Extensive Commentary on (Vasubandhu’s “Treasure of Special Topics of Knowledge”): Illuminating the Path to Liberation (mDzod-ṭik thar-lam gsal-byed) (Varanasi ed. 208), the First Dalai...

Tantra Is an Advanced Practice For our last session together, let’s speak a little bit about tantra. We also need to bring tantra down to earth. Often, Western people, when approaching the tantric teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, fall into one of two extremes. One extreme is to...

The 18 Closely Bonding Practices The sixth point is the eighteen closely bonding practices for mind training – in other words, for cleansing and training our attitudes. “Close bond” in Sanskrit is “samaya,” or “dam-tshig” in Tibetan, which means something that will bond us...