Mindfulness

This evening we’re going to be speaking about how to use Buddhist methods to help us in daily life. When we talk about the Buddhist methods or the Buddhist teachings, the word for that in Sanskrit is “Dharma.” If we look to see what the word “Dharma” actually means, it means...

A brief look at the daily life of a Buddhist practitioner.

[For background, see: Shamatha and Vipashyana: General Presentation. See also: Concentration Terminology] Objects of Shamatha Shamatha (zhi-gnas, calm abiding) is a stilled and settled state of mind that has the accompanying mental factor (sems-byung, subsidiary awareness) of...

Question about Understanding Words When we are, for instance, doing a meditation retreat in a Buddhist context and reciting mantras. Although we might recite it and we have some concept of the audio category of the sound of the mantra, we could have no idea to the meaning. So...

In the discussion of ways of knowing things and the objects that are known, we touched on the division between conceptual and non-conceptual cognition, and these points introduce us into the topic of what’s called generalities (spyi) and particulars or instances (bye-brag)....

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...

Attention, Clarity, and Awareness Attention (yid-la byed-pa) is the mental factor (sems-byung, subsidiary awareness) that brings focus on a specific object. As an everfunctioning mental factor (kun-‘gro), attention accompanies all moments of mental activity (sems, mind) and...

Disturbing Emotions Are the Enemy Now for verse three of the Eight Verses of Mind Training: (3) Whatever I am doing, may I check the flow of my mind, and the moment that conceptions or disturbing emotions arise, since they debilitate myself and others, may I confront and...

Feelings as Having the Four Aspects of True Suffering As we have seen, the four aspects of true suffering also apply to feelings. All feelings – happiness, unhappiness and neutral – are nonstatic, miserable, devoid of a coarse “me” experiencing them and lack a subtle “me”...

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo discusses the value of mindfulness, how to find a teacher, and the role of women in Buddhism too.