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 […]
No matter which dharma practice you engage in, from ngöndro to offering a single candle, always do it with the intention that your practice will benefit all sentient beings. In this context, “benefit” does not only mean giving practical help, such as offering food or medicine, or feeding people’s emotions, egos and delusions. Here, “benefit” […]
Pride and pity are closely related. Believing that your life is harder and sadder than everyone else’s is simply a manifestation of clinging to self. When the self develops self-pity, it eliminates any space that others have to feel compassionate. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
We should really have this aspiration. We should pray that one day we reach a stage where we have enough courage to become just like these eccentric people. Right now, we can only afford to be slightly nonconformist. A little bit of craziness is okay. It’s kind of character building activity. But we are very […]
These days, though, just to find the time to be entirely alone to practise can be extremely problematic, especially for those with families, and so to organise the ideal place would be an unimaginable luxury. So keep it simple and do your best to be completely alone for an hour or two every day. As […]
Contrary to popular belief, buddhist renunciation is not self-flagellation or austerity. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
From a Buddhist point of view, each aspect and moment of our lives is an illusion. According to the Buddha, it’s like seeing a black spot in the sky that you are unable to make sense of, then concentrating on it intensely until finally you are able to make out a flock of birds; or […]
How much time do we really have left in this lifetime? Twenty years? Thirty, if we’re lucky? Given that everything we have understood so far is nothing more than a patch that’s holding together our version of samsara, are any of us really willing to spend another ten years believing in that reality? We must, […]
For aeons, almost everything we think and feel, all our interpretations have been rooted in hope and fear, which in turn, have bound our minds up in turbulent emotions, constraining them to such a degree that we no longer have any control over them. That is why, according to the shravakayana teachings, we need to […]
One day a monk noticed a tear in Gautama Buddha’s robe and offered to stitch it, but Buddha refused his offer. He kept walking and begging alms in his torn robe. When he headed toward the hideout of a destitute woman, the monks were puzzled because they knew that she had no alms to offer. […]
The quintessential teaching of the Buddha — the nature of mind — is difficult to understand, not because it is complicated but because of its unbearably naked quality. One common method for deciphering the truth is through commentaries, analysis, arguments, and research. But the more we try to decipher this simplicity through academic studies and […]
If it were not for certain people’s greed for wealth, the highways would be filled with cars powered by the sun, and no one would be starving. Such advances are technologically and physically possible, but apparently not emotionally possible. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
No matter which dharma practice you engage in, from ngöndro to offering a single candle, always do it with the intention that your practice will benefit all sentient beings. In this context, benefit does not only mean giving practical help, such as offering food or medicine, or feeding people’s emotions, egos and delusions. Here, benefit […]
Although Siddhartha realized emptiness, emptiness was not manufactured by Siddhartha or anyone else. Emptiness is not the result of his revelation, nor was it developed as a theory to help people be happy. Whether or not Siddhartha taught it, emptiness has always been emptiness, although paradoxically we can’t even really say that emptiness has always […]
The vast majority of us perform two activities almost instinctively; we like to throw out rubbish and love collecting goodies. This universal habitual pattern can be usefully employed as a format on the spiritual path. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
It’s vital always to bear in mind that we practise for the sake of all other beings, and that the enormity of this aspiration is what makes dharma practice both extremely powerful and inexhaustible, virtually guaranteeing that the result will be infinitely beneficial. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
In this dangerous and unhealthy world, it would be quite an achievement for someone who is fifty years old today to live to be eighty. The lives of most fifty-year-olds are already more than half over, and the older we get, the quicker time seems to pass. The thirty years we imagine we have left […]
The essence of retreat is setting up a boundary – and we are not actually talking about a physical boundary, but we are talking about a boundary of time, setting up a boundary between past and future, which ideally means we remain in presentness. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
If we are missing nonduality, our every act will lead to disappointment. How far do you go if you are a therapist trying to help an alcoholic or drug addict? If this person has somehow decided to become a drug addict for the next five thousand lifetimes, you, as a bodhisattva, must have the determination […]
