Questions Is There an Inherent Right to Happiness? Do beings have an inherent right to happiness? Do parents have a responsibility to take care of their children and love them as much as possible? I would say yes, if we make the decision to become a parent. However I can’t...

Jealousy is universal. Our colleague gets a promotion and we think, “They don’t deserve that!” Our friend finds a great partner and we think, “What about me?” From time to time we all have these feelings. Here we look at the different types of jealousy, and how we can overcome...

Ultimately, jealousy comes not from others, but from thinking too much about ourselves. As we become super-attached to one particular aspect of our life, anyone else who is doing even slightly better in that area will be a target for our jealousy. Underlying all of this is...

Jealousy and other disturbing emotions are symptoms of a larger problem: our basic, fundamental ignorance of how phenomena actually exist. Here, we look more deeply at convention, categories, and how things exist, and how we can use an understanding of it all to overcome...

(1) Through my constructive act of having (reflected upon and) composed Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, may all wandering beings become (adornments for the world,) engaged in the behavior of bodhisattvas. (2) As many beings as there are in all directions, diseased with...

A deep understanding of the various components of an empowerment is important for gaining the most benefit from the experience.

Review We have been discussing yesterday how we develop relative bodhichitta – sometimes that’s called conventional bodhichitta. We make a differentiation between relative and deepest truth: In the Gelug tradition, when we speak about deepest...

Meditation on emptiness as the way to develop deepest bodhichitta.

Levels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha So far in our discussion, we’ve seen the general structure of how we meditate on refuge, putting a safe direction in our life. Now, we can get into the specifics of where this direction is going. This is described and indicated by the...

Introduction To begin our discussion of the mind and five aggregates, let’s examine the importance of understanding what the mind is. The reason for that is very simple: we all want to be happy and not to suffer; we don’t want to be unhappy. The source of long-lasting enduring...