Contemplation on the Rare Precious Human Life, Certainty of Death and Necessity of Dharma  We’ve been talking about the precious human rebirth that we have all achieved. This precious human rebirth has the eight respites and ten enrichments necessary for Dharma practice....

Even if a Western Buddhist community is made up entirely of laymen and laywomen, with no monks or nuns, the monastic vows provide valuable guidelines that Buddha designed for building a harmonious spiritual community.

An examination of the steps of the empowerment so that, regardless of whether we observe or take part, we can follow the procedure and gain something from it.

The Great Benefits of Bodhichitta There are great benefits to be derived from the development of an enlightening aim of bodhichitta. The positive force built up by it of are discussed in twelve lines from a sutra of the Buddha which was requested by the householder Viradatta....

Questions about Visualizing Ourselves and Others as Deities  If we are practicing tantra and one of the tantra practices is to try to view everything in a pure way – in other words, all beings as Buddhas and all environment as mandalas, and so on – isn’t that an obstacle...

This weekend I’ve been asked to speak about a practice that was composed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama called The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, which is a practice of guru-yoga that focuses on the development and practice of compassion....

We have been discussing this practice, which has been composed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, called The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara. We have covered the taking of safe direction and reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation, the four...

In our discussion of this practice, The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, we have discussed taking safe direction and reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation, and now we are up to the four immeasurable attitudes, which is a very essential part of...

In our final session, we have quite a lot of text left to cover, so I will just read each of the verses and comment very briefly on them.  Prayer for Inspiration to Develop the Graded Pathway Minds (Lam-rim)  We start with the lam-rim review. As I said, what we’re...

Purification of the Environment and the Offerings  In our discussion of this practice, The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, we’ve done the safe direction and reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation and the four immeasurable attitudes. Then, we...