Death

Advice on how to face death, and help those who are dying.

General Introduction and Review The various Tibetan traditions coming from the Buddha – Kadam, Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma – all follow a presentation of ways to train our attitudes that comes from a common source: Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. Shantideva’s...

Mara in Hindu Mythology In Hindu mythology, Mara (bdud) is equivalent to Kama (‘dod-pa’i lha), the god of desire. This equivalence is accepted in Buddhism as well. The Kalachakra Buddha figure, for example, has Kama under his right foot, representing all four maras. Kama was...

In the practice of Kalachakra, and any other anuttarayoga tantra, there is a special way of meditating on voidness (emptiness) in which we meditate not just on the actual meaning of voidness, but also we try to simulate doing this with a clear light mind. This we do because...

The way to avoid suffering is to hold ourselves back from acting out of ignorance, anger or greed.

We’ve seen that meditation is part of a threefold process that entails listening to teachings, thinking about them, and then meditating upon them. Meditation, as this third step, is actually about how we integrate the teachings into our lives, which comes about through...

(1) With pleasure, I rejoice in the positive actions that relieve the sufferings of the worse rebirth states for all limited beings and that place these, who suffer, in better rebirth states. (2) I rejoice in that build up of positive (force) that became the causes for the...

No Permanent Identity of “Me” from Lifetime to Lifetime Based on considering the previous points of analysis, and far more points that could be discussed, we gradually come to accept that we have had beginningless past lives and there will be endless future lives as well. Our...

The Three Levels of Motivation for Real Thing Dharma The lam-rim presents three levels of motivation: Initial level – we think in terms of ensuring that we have one of the better types of rebirths, not just in our next lifetime, but in all future lifetimes. ...

Taming the Mind All of us wish for happiness and none of us wish to have any suffering. This is true of everybody, but it is very difficult to come upon all the circumstances that will bring this about. If we look merely at external circumstances, we find it nearly impossible...