Religious Harmony

There is a long history of Muslims being regarded by the Christian West as the forces of the devil. This began at the end of the eleventh century CE with the Crusades to take the Holy Lands from the Muslims. It continued with the fall of ­­the center of Eastern Orth­odox...

Introduction His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama emphasizes that religious harmony must be based on education, knowing about each other’s traditions. With thorough knowledge, we can acknowledge the common goals we share, while respecting the differences. In fact, from...

Setting the Motivation To differentiate from the non-Buddhists, there is the taking of refuge or safe direction, and to differentiate from the Hinayana path, there is the taking of the Mahayana refuge. We look to the Buddha Shakyamuni as our main example of a source of safe...

What does it mean to understand something is a very important topic because there are so many things that we need to understand. We’re not talking simply about understanding the various points of the Dharma, but this issue is very important in our daily life as well. We need...

General Assertions Buddhism does not assert creation or a creator. The mental continuums of all sentient beings have no beginning. “Sentient beings” are living beings that act with intention and experience happiness or unhappiness as a result. Like souls in Islam, however, the...

The Different Lineages of Mahamudra In general, we could gain a decisive understanding of voidness with respect to any basis characterized by voidness, or having voidness as its nature, such as a vase. There is no difference in the abiding devoid nature itself of a vase or...

The Extraphysical Powers of Rinpoche’s Father, Serkong Dorjechang Serkong Rinpoche never claimed himself to be a yogi or to have any special powers. If we wanted an example of someone who did, he said we did not need to look only to the remote past. His father, Serkong...

Participant: You have indicated there are many points in common between Buddhism and Islam, but can you also point out some of the big differences that you find, for instance regarding the issue of punishment? Dr. Berzin: There are two levels of so-called reward and...

From October 24 to 29, 1990, eight rabbis and Jewish community leaders from the United States and Israel visited Dharamsala as a continuation of a Tibet-Jewish dialogue that had begun during His Holiness the Dalai Lama's October 1989 visit to the United States. This was the...