We have been going through these graded stages of how we develop ourselves spiritually on the path to enlightenment, which is in three stages of motivation. “Motivation” refers both to our aim, what we are aiming for, and to some sort of emotional state that draws us into...

Review The Three Scopes of Motivation We are going through these graded stages. Without repeating in too much detail, we are aiming,  (1) on the initial scope, to improve our rebirths and to get one of the better rebirths, specifically precious human rebirths, to be able...

Review We are going through the graded stages of the path, the lam-rim, dealing with how we develop ourselves along the Buddhist spiritual path. For this, we have three stages of motivation, what we are aiming for. Initially, we are aiming for better rebirths (this assumes, of...

We have been going through the meditations on mindfulness of death.  If we are not mindful of death, we won’t be mindful of the preventive measures, Dharma. Preventive measures are actions we take – something that we do – to avoid worse rebirths. So, we’re thinking in...

The Six Shortcomings of Not Being Mindful of Death (continued) We have been going through the meditations for becoming aware of death. These start with recognizing and thinking about the shortcomings of not being mindful of death. We’ve covered the first three shortcomings:...

We’ve started the meditations for becoming aware of death and appreciating the value of the Dharma, the preventive measures. Death will come for sure, there’s no way of knowing when, and only the preventive measures of the Dharma we’ve taken will be of any help at the time of...

The Nine-Part Death Meditation (continued) Last time, we started the nine-part meditation on death, which comes from an oral tradition of Tsongkhapa himself, who wrote it down in his lam-rim. For the death meditation, there are three root facts, three reasons for contemplating...

The Nine-Part Death Meditation (continued) Except for the Dharma, Nothing Can Be of Help at the Time of Death Last time, we began the meditation on the third root fact, which is that, except for having taken some preventive measures while we were alive, nothing can be of help...

We’ve been working through the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path. We’ve seen that this is graded according to three levels of motivation: On the initial scope, we aim to improve our future lives and to guarantee that we continue to have precious human rebirths.  On...

We have started the meditations on what will happen after we die, contemplating the type of rebirth we could have – either a better or a worse one. As we’ve seen, Buddhism asserts the existence of many different life forms, not just those found in the human or animal realms....