The Early Yarlung Kings According to the traditional account, the first king of the Yarlung Dynasty (Yar-klungs) in Central Tibet came there from the central North Indian kingdom of Magadha. He was called Nyatri Tsenpo (gNya’-khri btsan-po) and it was thought that he descended...

We need to know the basis, the conventional “me,” that does exist – then the false “me” that we are projecting on it, and then the negation and total absence of that impossible “me.”

How to Use the Five Forces in This Life The fourth of the seven points is the condensation of the practices for one lifetime – how to condense all the practices into the essentials for a lifetime. This process is divided into two stages: what we do during one lifetime, and...

Review of the Qualities of a Spiritual Teacher A guru is a great teacher, a great spiritual master or mentor, someone who is not only able to teach from knowledge of the texts but is also able to teach us by his or her own example. A living example of what Buddha has taught, a...

Introduction The topic of karma is central to the Buddhist teachings and relates very closely to ethical self-discipline. We use ethical self-discipline to overcome and rid ourselves of karma. This fits nicely within the context of what are known as the “four noble truths,”...

The true suffering in life that we all face is that, with the types of limited bodies and minds that we have, we perpetuate our problems.

Overview of the Initial Scope In the past few sessions, we’ve been speaking about reliance on a spiritual master and the precious human rebirth. Both these topics serve as a foundation for the subject matter that follows. It is possible that there are people of extremely sharp...

Examine the contents of the first two chapters as they appear in “The Abridged Kalachakra Tantra” and its commentary, “Stainless Light.” The first concerns the external cycles of time, the second the internal cycles.

Review In the first session, we started our discussion of the five types of deep awareness. These refer to Buddha-nature factors, which we all have that enable us to achieve the state of a Buddha – the various Buddha Bodies. We discussed how we can work with these on a basis,...

Examine the various aspects of the five Buddha-family traits (factors of Buddha-nature) in anuttarayoga tantra and their representations in terms of the five aggregates.