Verse 5 We have been going through Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend very slowly, trying to fill in all of the basic teachings that are there. We are on the fifth verse: (5) Always entrust yourself, with body, speech, and mind to the ten pathways of constructive karma. Turn away...

Verse 5 We have been discussing this letter that Nagarjuna wrote to his friend King Udayibhadra. We are on Verse 5, in which we have gone into a long discussion of karma: [5] Always entrust yourself, with body, speech, and mind to the ten pathways of constructive karma. Turn...

Verse 5 In our discussion of Letter to a Friend that Nagarjuna wrote, we have been going into a detailed discussion of karma which, hopefully, we’ll finish today. We are expanding on Verse 5: (5) Always entrust yourself, with body, speech, and mind to the ten pathways of...

Verses 6–11 In our discussion of this text by Nagarjuna, we have taken a very long diversion, I must say, in our discussions of Verse 5 in which we went through the various qualities of a Buddha – the body, speech, and mind of a Buddha – and then had a long discussion of...

Verses 1–3 This evening, I am very happy to begin a new course on a wonderful text by the great Indian master, Nagarjuna, called Letter to a Friend. This is a text I studied in India with one of my teachers, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. I'll try to explain it according to his...

Verses 12–14 In our discussion of the first seven verses in Letter to a Friend, Nagarjuna has given his basic, introductory discussion, and now he is going into more detail. We saw that there are several commentaries to the text and that each of the commentaries has a...

Verses 15–17 In this letter, we have covered the initial introductory verses. We have seen there are many ways to make an outline for this text. One way is to speak of the section we’ve been discussing so far in terms of the six far-reaching attitudes, or perfections. We have...

Verses 18–20 We have been going through Nagarjuna’s text, which he wrote to his friend the King Udayibhadra, advising him about Mahayana behavior. We have covered his introductory discussion. We have seen that there are many different ways of dividing the outline. One of the...

Verses 21–26 We have been studying a text written by the great Indian master Nagarjuna, who lived in the second century of the Common Era. Although he is very famous for writing so many texts on voidness and on logical proofs of voidness and so on, he also wrote some very...

Verses 27–29 We have been studying the letter that Nagarjuna wrote to his friend King Udayibhadra. We saw that there are many different ways of constructing an outline to this text. We have been primarily following the outline that Mipam made for the text. In that outline, we...