Mental Factors

Commentary on Blo-rigs-kyi sdom-tshig blang-dor gsal-ba’i me-long by A-kya Yongs-‘dzin dByangs-can dga’-ga’i blo-gros, (also known as A-kya Yongs-‘dzin Blo-bzang don-grub) (1740 – 1827), compiled from oral teachings by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, translated and edited by Sharpa...

 Mental Factors There are primary consciousnesses and mental factors. In any cognition there are always these two kinds of conscious phenomena, which share five congruent features (mtshungs-ldan lnga). They share a common (1) object (yul), (2) reliance (rten), (3) mental...

A Clear Mirror of What Should be Accepted and Rejected Homage to Manjushri. An explanation of the presentation of ways of knowing involves both knowing, which is something having an object, and the objects (it has). Of these, in general, something that has an object is...

Balanced sensitivity requires deconstructing the deceptive, dualistic appearances our mind creates and harnessing our underlying deep awareness and natural talents. We also need to work with other mental factors that structure our mental activity, but do not form part of our...

QuestionsLet’s start our session with some questions if you have some.KarmaI wonder if this statement is right or not. Every perception that we have that we perceive by our six senses, along with the mental factors – urge, discrimination, and so forth – these are our karma,...

Review The presentations of the various metaphysical topics in Buddhism, as I’ve explained, are useful in helping us to deconstruct various problems that we might face. And one way that we saw that we can deconstruct what we experience is to see within that experience… Like...

BackgroundWe are continuing our discussion here of how to adjust our mental factors within the context of developing balanced sensitivity.His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of different aspects of Buddhism, and he differentiates Buddhist science from Buddhist religion and...

The mind gives rise to many types of appearances, in terms of both the objects of cognition and the ways of cognizing them that arise. In both cases, what arises may be accurate or inaccurate, pure or impure, tainted or untainted, samsaric or nirvanic. Why is it important to...

Introduction This weekend I want to speak about the types of appearances that the mind gives rise to: accurate and inaccurate, pure and impure, tainted and untainted, samsaric and nirvanic. That’s an awful lot of variables, isn’t it? As I was preparing this, when one thinks...