Background of the Text This text was written by Atisha, a great Indian master who lived about 1,000 years ago. He had been to study in Indonesia on the island of Sumatra. He had made a long, very difficult journey there. Buddhism had spread there long before, and he went...

Brief Review We started our explanation of Atisha’s text, and we saw that he was speaking about the stages by which we develop or progress along the spiritual path. We saw that one way of describing how we progress is that the scope or aim of our goal gets progressively...

We have been discussing the five types of deep awareness in relationship with the five skandhas or aggregate factors that make up our experience and the five types of disturbing emotions. There are many other systems with which we can correlate this structure of the five types...

Review: Precious Human Life We have been going through the lam-rim graded stages of the path from the point of view of how they help us to develop a healthy sense of self. We have seen how thinking about the precious human rebirth and realizing how fortunate we...

Review Let us set the proper motivation for listening to these teachings, namely a heart of bodhichitta, dedicated to helping others and to achieving enlightenment in order to be able to do so. These teachings have been presented in terms of the three levels of motivation. On...

Foundation for Development of Equanimity In order to generate the enlightening aim of bodhichitta with which we wish to attain enlightenment in order to benefit all living beings, it is first necessary to develop a sense of equanimity and an equal attitude toward everyone. If...

By studying the Buddhist path with spiritual teachers, we learn the teachings and the various methods for applying them to our lives. We train in these methods to bring about positive self-transformations. The process of change is never linear. Emotional and spiritual growth...

The health of a society arises dependently on each of its members developing a healthy mind and sense of ethics. See how the various world religions would tackle a disaster in accord with their own system of ethics.

Mental Activity and How the “Me” Exists We began our discussion of the healthy development of the self through the lam-rim graded stages. We established the need to clearly differentiate between the conventional self and the false self, the one that...

Review We ended the last session with an exercise in which we practiced enhancing our mirror-like deep awareness. It’s important to remember that this type of deep awareness is not like a mirror or a still camera; it’s more like a video camera. We’re taking in information...