We’ve been thinking about what happens after death. After death, rebirth will follow. But before our next rebirths, there is the bardo. It’s an in-between period, a seven-day period, usually, which can repeat up to seven times – so, forty-nine days. After that, there will be...

We’ve been discussing the worst states of rebirth that we could go to after we die. The very worst of these are the so-called hells, the joyless realms, in which we would be trapped. We would be trapped in the sense that, once reborn there, we would have to remain for a very,...

Meditation – Integrating the Teachings into Our Lives Today, we are beginning a new course, which is basically a practice group, in which I’d like to devote some of the time actually meditating on the teachings that we find in the lam-rim. I think that most of you have some...

The next topic is that of the desperately clutching ghosts. “Desperately clutching ghost” is how I translate the term yidak (yi-dags), which is preta in Sanskrit. They’re usually called “hungry ghosts” based on the Chinese term, which literally means “hungry ghost” (egui)....

We are going through the graded stages of the path. The graded stages are presented in many different ways, nevertheless, this is common material that we find in all the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism that derive from the Indian tradition. Here, we have a graduated way of...

Review We are continuing with our progress through the graded stages of the mind, the lam-rim.  The Precious Human Rebirth We have gone through the precious human rebirth, trying to recognize what it is, what we have, and that it is a respite – which means a temporary...

Last time, we discussed, dread, the first cause of taking safe direction, or refuge. We saw that dread is very different from fear. Fear is a state that paralyzes us and makes us feel helpless and hopeless. With fear, we grasp at a solid, truly existent horrible something and...

Refuge in General, Mahayana Refuge, and Bodhichitta What we were dealing with last time was recognizing the objects that provide us with safe direction so that we have confidence that going in that direction will help us to avoid worse states of rebirth. Safe direction is...

We have looked at the way in which we would approach this material of safe direction, or refuge, if we were going through it for the first time, which would be to look at all the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as described in the lam-rim texts. There are very long...

We have been looking at the various trainings that we need to put into practice as a result of taking refuge, of putting this safe direction in our lives. There are two sets of things to train in. The first set, which we covered last time, is comprised of actions that are...