Meditations for the rest of your life? Yes, meditation can change your relationships, your career, and your life! How does this happen? Geshe Michael Roach taught this series of short, powerful meditations from Master Kamalashila at the Lincoln Center in February, 2016.
This is the beginning of a new course series on the famous text called the Treasure House of Higher Knowledge (Abhidharma Kosha), written by the Buddhist master Vasubandhu in the fourth century AD. Abhidharma was one of the first forms of Buddhism to spread throughout India. It is considered to be part of Hinayana, mainly of the Vaibhashika (Detailist) school. There were seven original great books of Abhidharma composed by the original followers of the Buddha. Master Vasubandhu took all of those seven treasures and compiled them into the Abhidharma Kosha.
Geshe Michael teaching from his new translation of Je Tsongkapa’s Illumination of the True Thought — one of the greatest books ever written on emptiness. The subject of these two classes is the presentation of the perfection of giving as it's found in the explanation of the first bodhisattva level, known as “Perfect Happiness”. Je Tsongkapa's Illumination of the True Thought is one of the greatest presentations of emptiness in history. This work in turn is an explanation of Entering the Middle Way, by Master Chandrakirti, who lived during the seventh century and was commenting himself upon the 3rd‐century author Arya Nagarjuna, whose Root Text on the Wisdom of the Middle Way is considered the greatest commentary of all time upon the emptiness teachings of the Buddha himself.
This is a 2 day teaching that Geshe Michael recently gave in Taiwan on Master Kamalashila's Commentary to The Diamond Cutter Sutra. Please check below for the audio and video of the teaching and the accompanying meditations. There are also images for each of the 25 meditations that were designed to follow the content of the text. There's also a link to download all those meditation images to your phone or tablet and have them available to do your daily meditations.
The presentations of emptiness found in these textbooks are some of the most thorough and usable ever written. Students of Buddhism who avail themselves of these texts gain incredible insight into the every detail of this most profound and important teaching.
While at the top and in the teaching hall of this temple Geshe Michael gave a teaching on Master Kamilashila's commentary to The Diamond Cutter Sutra. There are two famous commentaries to The Diamond Cutter Sutra that were written in Sanskrit in India. This one by Master Kamalashila is one of them and was written around 750 A.D., the other was done by by Master Vasubandhu around 350 A.D.
If all things in our world are coming from the ripening of karmic seeds which were created by our actions towards other people in the past, then in a sense, you could say that all things are coming from you. Recently in Beijing at one of the DCI events, one of the students asked the following question: “if my husband is coming from me, if I kiss him am I kissing myself?”
We’ve all tried lots of different things to stop our favorite addiction, and we all know what it’s like to fail. Addictions make us miserable. Here’s a new way to stop. A new way to brake free from the cycles of addiction, take control of your life, and turn it into something beautiful.
These teachings are taken directly from The Angel Debates The Devil, an ancient Tibetan teaching on emptiness by His Holiness the First Panchen Lama, who lived 1565-1662. The text is at the same time, extremely funny and extremely deep. It will help us be successful in this life, and in the next as well. This is the 11th ACI program dedicated to this ancient classic. We’ll be focusing on how “me” relates to body & mind, and how to change body & mind into an enlightened being with a rainbow body and a clear-light mind. As the Lama says, we’ll be trying to hit emptiness with the arrow of our mind, even as we wear a blindfold.
Here's how disagreements go: Somebody else says they want to do something one way, and we gently suggest that we might want to do it another way. Then their opinion begins to harden, like cement—and our disagreement with them gets more concrete too. In the end, we reach a point where it feels like we’re completely, solidly stuck. It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a certain kind of meditation that we can do, for a few minutes, which literally melts disagreements away.
Our whole life, we've had thoughts going through our mind. They tell us if we're happy or angry, if we love somebody or we don't. The chatter is almost constant, year after year, for a whole lifetime. The ancient Tibetans said that we could learn how to watch these thoughts. And then we could learn how to make them more clear, more peaceful. And then we could improve our job, our relationships, and our happiness, day to day.