We’ve gone through the four general principles, or laws, of karma and have looked at why we would believe that the Buddha is a valid source of information about all of this.  The Two Mental Factors That Make an Action Destructive We’ve seen that the main reason for...

The Mahayana Context of the Lam-rim We’re going through the lam-rim meditations, the graded stages of the path to enlightenment, these stages of insights and realizations that we need to develop within ourselves in order to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha. One of the...

Review  The Precious Human Rebirth We are going through the presentation of the graded stages to enlightenment. The way that we started it was with the precious human rebirth, thinking how fortunate we are that we have attained one. We need to recognize and acknowledge...

Review We have been going through the graded stages of the path, which refer to the different levels of understanding, levels of mind, that we want to develop progressively, one after the other, to serve as a pathway leading to liberation and enlightenment.  The Precious...

Getting Settled before Meditating Before we begin to meditate, regardless of what the topic may be, it’s very good, first, to quiet down and, then, to set the motivation, offer prostration, and sit down. But even after we’ve sat down, we might still need to get a bit more...

Review We are going through the graded stages of the path. To give just a brief review here, we started with the precious human rebirth, appreciating that we have such a rebirth now and how difficult it is to get. We saw what the causes for a precious human rebirth are and...

Review We have been going through the graded stages of the path, these pathway minds that can lead us, first of all, to higher rebirths – particular emphasis being on gaining a precious human rebirth – then, to liberation and, finally, to enlightenment.  The Precious...

Review We’re working through the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path. Without going through an elaborate review, we have spoken about appreciating the precious human lives that we have with its respites or temporary freedoms from the worst states in which we’d have no...

Review We have been going through the graded stages of the path, which are the graded levels of mind, which are levels of insight or understanding that we need to gain in order to make progress toward the spiritual goals of, first, continuing to have one the better types of...

Review We’ve been going through the graded stages of the path to enlightenment, which are the various stages of mind that we need to develop to reach that goal.  The Precious Human Rebirth We’ve covered the precious human rebirth, recognizing the temporary freedoms that...