What Is Death? When we talk about impermanence, automatically the subject of death always comes up. Why death? What is the definition of death? Any volunteers? An ending of life. Okay. When this embodied experience is over. Okay. When the consciousness leaves the body. Okay....

Setting a Good Motivation Now, please don’t forget the purpose of this course. As I mentioned yesterday, this is a very important subject – meditating on impermanence. Without this, whatever very profound teaching we find in our life, we won’t be able to practice it very well....

The Importance of Meditating on Impermanence and Death His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be giving some very precious teachings soon. Because of that, my Italian friend and I had a conversation about this and came to the conclusion that, before the teachings, we could have a...

Statistics clearly indicate the enormous cost to the environment and the global economy of meat production and consumption. Medical science, religion, philosophy, and common sense tell us to stop eating meat or at least to cut down on the quantity and frequency of our...

This variable of pure and impure refers to both aspects of the mental hologram: what it is and how it appears to exist.

To understand the Gelug Prasangika presentation of dependent arising and the voidness of self-established existence, we need to understand the distinctions between imputation, mental labeling and designation.

Following his attainment of non-conceptual cognition of voidness (emptiness), Tsongkhapa wrote this eulogy giving poetical expression to his enormous appreciation of Buddha’s kindness in teaching the non-contraction between voidness and dependent arising.

Sources of the Madhyamaka View of Karma Let us survey the Madhyamaka view of karma, starting with Nagarjuna (Klu-grub, Skt. Nāgārjuna) in the late second century CE. It follows the Sarvastivada abhidharma assertion, also found in the Mahayana sutras, that the karmic impulses...

Inciting and Incited Karmic Impulses  In A Discussion for the Establishment of Karma (Las-grub-pa’i rab-tu byed-pa, Skt. Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa) (Derge Tengyur vol. 136, 144B), Vasubandhu states: Suppose you ask, “Well then, has the Bhagavan (Buddha, the Vanquishing Master...

Disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes arise from our unawareness of reality, which is fed by incorrect consideration. With incorrect consideration, the confused mind projects something that is not there.