To find out whether or not you are controlled by circumstances and situations, there are myriad things you can do, such as skip lunch. If you are a man, wear a bra and walk around in public. If you are a woman, go to a fancy party in your bedroom slippers. If you are married, […]
Spiritual practice is a bit like riding a bicycle. Once you have learnt how to cycle there is no need to go over the theory behind how the gears work or the best height for your saddle every time you go for a ride. All you have to do is get on your bike and […]
Most Vajrayana students are convinced they have boundless devotion for their guru, but in reality what they feel is more like admiration, in the same way they might admire a political candidate whose ethical and moral standing reassures them. Not only is that not devotion, it’s actually quite dangerous. If the politician ignores you or […]
Listening, contemplating, studying, and analyzing are common methods for seekers of truth, but in the end, the real understanding of emptiness can arise only when the mind is free of reference points, cultural hang-ups, values, the burden of logic, dialectics, reason, speculation, rationalism, and hypotheses. This is called devotion. Of all possible superior faculties, devotion […]
Before embarking on your search for a guru, your intentions should be clear. As with everything, motivation is of utmost importance. Why would you even want to have a guru? At the very least, the quest for a guru should be fueled by a revulsion of worldly life. If not revulsion, then at least some […]
What makes the Buddhist path so special is that it looks dualistic, but it has that ability to liberate you from the bondage of dualism. It is a deliberate and conscious knot that is consciously and deliberately designed to undo itself. All the skillful means and methods of the Buddhadharma are like a thorn that […]
All too often, though, even so-called Buddhists misunderstand bodhichitta and reduce it to little more than compassionate loving-kindness. Love, compassion and wanting to make people happy are very popular ideals these days and are often promoted as bodhichitta’s most important features. We forget that without bodhichitta there would be no mahayana or vajrayana Buddhism, and […]
The sutras tell us that Mara (Buddhism’s “devil”) is a tricky character and an expert archer. To avoid straying into the sights of one of his five arrows requires tremendous effort because each one is trained on our most vulnerable spots. The first of Mara’s arrows is aimed at those who feel great pride in […]
Doing prostrations, letting go of comforts, and going against principles all aim at the same result: dismantling the perfectly engineered machine of illusion. All these methods work. Don’t get fixated on the idea that all Vajrayana students who aspire to raze the walls of duality must follow the Tibetan tradition of doing one hundred thousand […]
Ignorance is simply not knowing the facts, having the facts wrong, or having incomplete knowledge. All of these forms of ignorance lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation, overestimation and underestimation. Suppose that you are searching for your friend and you see him in a distant field. When you approach, you discover that you have mistaken a […]
The only reason we have to feel confident that we will reach the top of the stairs or that our airplane will take off and land safely at our destination is that we are enjoying the bliss of ignorance. But this bliss doesn’t last long, for the bliss of ignorance is nothing more than constant […]
We usually appreciate only half of the cycle of impermanence. We can accept birth but not death, accept gain but not loss, or the end of exams but not the beginning. True liberation comes from appreciating the whole cycle and not grasping onto those things that we find agreeable. By remembering the changeability and impermanence […]
Sadly, in recent years, the word guru has all but lost its original meaning. The deluded beings of this time are greedy for everything pure and stainless, so they grab at the principle of the guru, spoil it, reject it and then move on to another perfect treasure to lay waste. It has happened far […]
In Buddhist philosophy, anything that is perceived by the mind did not exist before the mind perceived it; it depends on the mind. It doesn’t exist independently, therefore it doesn’t truly exist. That is not to say that it doesn’t exist “somewhat”. Buddhists called the perceived world relative truth – a truth that is measured […]
Those who do not pursue praise and gain, those who do not shun criticism and loss, may be stigmatized as abnormal or even insane. When observed from an ordinary point of view, enlightened beings may seem insane because they don’t negotiate, they cannot be lured or swayed by material gain, they don’t get bored, they […]
It’s probably safe to say that there can’t be a proper guru-student communication if the guru never steps down from the throne, unless the guru is a completely enlightened omniscient being who can communicate through telepathy, light, or supermagical powers. The guru is supposed to act like a doctor, and the disciple is the patient. […]
You may not not have been born in Buddhist country or to a Buddhist family, you may not wear robes or shave your head, you may eat meat and idolize Eminem and Paris Hilton. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a Buddhist. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
We think that the guru is only good for giving teachings, that the guru is only good for special things but not good for headaches or other problems. This is not the way to think. For every problem that you have, pray to the guru, receive his blessings and you will be free from it. […]
An appropriate question to ask a Buddhist is simply, “What is life?” From our understanding of impermanence, the answer should be obvious: “Life is a big array of assembled phenomena, and thus life is impermanent.” It is a constant shifting, a collection of transitory experiences. And although myriad life-forms exist, one thing we all have […]
We tend only to believe what we can see, and what we see is always filtered by our personal perception. Take the example of a man who is already extremely paranoid about imaginary problems and firmly believes he has ghostly tenants living in his cupboard. To tell such a person that the ghosts are a […]
