Four Noble Truths

The Necessity of Dharma-Lite before Real Thing Dharma When we’re working on the bodhisattva path, we’re trying to overcome our selfish concern, and have concern just for others. However, we’re not going to overcome all of our disturbing emotions until we become an arhat, a...

The First Aspect of Close Placement of Mindfulness on the Body: The Body as Being Nonstatic, Impermanent We saw in the Mahayana tradition that with the general way of focusing on the body, what we distinguish about it is that it is unclean and impure. We take our body to mind...

Once we have a little bit of an understanding of the twelve links of dependent arising and how our uncontrollably recurring rebirth, samsara, actually works, then we can focus with close placement of mindfulness on the feelings in terms of being the true origins of suffering....

Introduction By nature, everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy. No one wants to suffer. That nature is what drives an infant to suck milk; it drives us to eat, to find shelter, etc. – it is a natural drive. In order to rid ourselves of unhappiness and...

We have been going through the text of the Heart Sutra, which is presenting in a condensed fashion the teachings on Prajnaparamita, which is “far-reaching discriminating awareness of voidness.” And inspired by the Buddha, who is sitting in deep concentration, we have a...

What I have been asked to speak about is the four noble truths in the Vajrayana tradition. We can look at the Vajrayana tradition in two ways, either specifically the way that the four noble truths are approached in tantra, or we can look at Vajrayana as being a way of...

Introduction: The Lam-Rim Graded Stages and Levels of Motivation This evening we’re going to start our seminar on a very vital topic. The topic is how to meditate on the voidness of a false “me” experiencing the four noble truths. That sounds complicated and it is complicated....

Working toward a Spiritual Goal There are two ways that we can work toward a spiritual goal: On the basis of faith – we have faith that it’s possible to achieve that goal. On the basis of this faith you work toward it, and as you proceed further in your training, you...

The Four Creative-Energy Drops and the Mental Holograms to Which They Give Rise [For further elaboration, see: Kalachakra: The Four Creative Drops] Introduction As a Buddhist practice, Kalachakra fits within the context of the four noble truths and its practice is a method...