Mahayana

This article explains the various non-conflicting contextual presentations of the Buddha’s life, and teaches us how these can be practically applied to our spiritual path.

A brief picture of Buddhism in Asia and the West.

We’ve been speaking about the bodhisattva vows and we have taken a look at their role on the Buddhist path. We’ve seen that in order to take them, we need to have developed ourselves already along the Buddhist way through the various stages of the lam-rim, the graded stages...

(11) Teaching Voidness to Those Whose Minds Are Untrained We’ve been going through the bodhisattva vows. We have covered ten of the eighteen and we’re up to number eleven. What we want to avoid with this one is teaching voidness to those whose minds are untrained. This is...

The terms Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle or Modest Vehicle) and Mahayana (Greater Vehicle or Vast Vehicle) originated in The Prajnaparamita Sutras (The Sutras on Far-Reaching Discriminating Awareness, The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras). They are a rather derogatory pair of words,...

Linear and Nonlinear Models of Progress We all wish to make progress on the spiritual path, but because we have unrealistic ideas about how progress happens, we are frustrated. Many want instant and consistent results, and that does not happen. Consequently, following an...

A short introduction to how Buddhism spread from its beginnings in northern India to become the major belief system across much of Asia.

The Source of the Tantras Tantra practice requires conviction in the authenticity of the tantras, correct understanding of their procedures and theory, and certainty of their validity as methods leading to enlightenment. According to the Tibetan tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha...

The 37 Factors Leading to a Purified State The four close placements of mindfulness (dran-pa nyer-bzhag, Skt. smrtyupasthana, Pali: satipatthana) are the first four of the 37 factors leading to a purified state (byang-chub yan-lag so-bdun). There are three purified states...