Help them define their dream So far, we’ve been talking about how to get your students to come back to...
Here's a little gem from our archives. This is a guided meditation led by Geshe Michael Roach to a few of his close students and was recorded on the morning of April 4, 1999 at 6th Street in New York City. It's a very special guided meditation which focuses on the breath, and the sound and meaning of Om.
Here's a short video clip of Geshe Michael Roach where he discusses how transforming the world all hinges on our ability to change our instinctual behavior
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.
The Three Principal Paths, written by Tsongkapa the Great, King of the Dharma.
The following selections are from the monastic textbook entitled An Explanation of the Art of Reasoning (rTags-rigs), by the Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Purbuchok Jampa Tsultrim Gyatso (1825-1901)
The following story recounts in brief some of the events in the life of the great bodhisattva Shantideva. It is a paraphrase of sections from the Life Stories of the Lineage Teachers of the Steps of the Path (Lam-rim bla-ma brgyud-pa'i rnam-thar) written by Yongdzin Yeshe Gyeltsen (1713-1793), the teacher of the eighth Dalai Lama.
From the presentation on Nirvana found in the Analysis of the Perfection of Wisdom, by Kedrup Tenpa Dargye (1493-1568).
This is the original Sutra on the Four Powers. The teaching on removing our old bad karma was taught by Lord Buddha himself, and so is an authentic instruction that we can believe in and try ourselves. What follows next is the entire text of the work which is the original source of the Four Powers; it comes from the Kangyur, or collection of Lord Buddha’s teachings translated into Tibetan from the original Sanskrit.
A Thousand Angels of the Heaven of Bliss, A Prayer of Lama Devotion
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.
Four centuries ago there was a Tibetan master named the First Panchen Lama. He learned the traps that can ruin our meditation, and he learned how to beat these traps. He described all this in a book called The Devil Debates an Angel, a very funny and profound argument between the Devil and an Angel, inside of one's person's mind.
Four centuries ago there was a Tibetan master named the First Panchen Lama. He learned the traps that can ruin our meditation, and he learned how to beat these traps. He described all this in a book called The Devil Debates an Angel, a very funny and profound argument between the Devil and an Angel, inside of one's person's mind.
Four centuries ago there was a Tibetan master named the First Panchen Lama. He learned the traps that can ruin our meditation, and he learned how to beat these traps. He described all this in a book called The Devil Debates an Angel, a very funny and profound argument between the Devil and an Angel, inside of one's person's mind.
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.
Life is like this. You are driving you car down the street at dusk. Suddenly you see a kitten scurrying across the road. You slam on the brakes—it almost sends everybody through the windshield. You look out to see if you hit the kitten or not, and suddenly you realize that it wasn’t a kitten at all, just a tree leaf being blown across the street.
