Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 27 December 2016
This day, today, is of inconceivable importance for all of our myriad future lives. Why? Because what we do today has the potential to bring benefit or harm to those countless future lives. Suppose that today, through your practice, you reduce or dent your afflictions just a little bit, or gain a tiny nugget of […]
Most of the time, we don’t know what is really important. To give an example: if we were attending a puja and the substances were being distributed, but we didn’t get any, we would immediately make a fuss and say, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t get any.’ In truth it makes no real difference if we […]
The texts do teach about objectless or non-referential meditation, and having the mind naturally settled, but this meditation is taught only for those who are advanced, who have high levels of meditation. We are simply not able to do that yet because we are not clear about the mind, and that being the case, we […]
From childhood until now, how have we been working? Our motivation and aim has been to block suffering, and gain happiness and pleasure. This has been our main driving force, and we have been working continuously on that basis. Yet still, we haven't managed to gain the happiness we seek, and neither have we been […]
“Your mother is my sister. My sister is someone else’s daughter. She is Tony’s sweetest love, and Sam’s bitter enemy.” She is one object, experienced in various ways. What makes for these very different perceptions of this one person? People’s minds. The mind is what determines our experience. Furthermore, this truth also tells us that […]
What approach is needed for practicing the Dharma? Firstly, we should not see the Dharma as merely a hobby, a pastime, or a matter of simply accumulating a certain number of repetitions of something. Instead, what we really need to think is, ‘I’m not going to waste this life, I’m going to use it to […]
A dharma practitioner would see retreat as being essential, because they know it as being a conducive environment where there are fewer triggers for desire and anger. For beginners, it’s impossible for practice to go well with many disturbances, thus retreat is essential. Does that mean that everyone who stays in retreat will gain understanding […]
Why are we taught to give up concern for this life in Buddhism? Because in giving up concern for this life, our mind naturally easies, becomes balanced, and just as it should be. Now all we do is for the sake of this life, we are constantly reaching out for happiness and pleasure, and trying […]
Before we start to meditate, we first need to look at our motivation, or the way we are thinking. We shouldn’t be looking to feel good, peaceful and happy; we shouldn't be thinking about these at all. If we are, then right from the start, our very first thoughts regarding what we are about to […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, December 2016
What is it to study the Dharma? It is not about reading books, memorising the words, and bringing them to mind. The very purpose of the Dharma is to change and transform the mind. It is very important that we relate to the Dharma in this way; instead of thinking that it is something in […]
Thrangu Vajrayana Buddhist Centre, Hong Kong. 20 November 2016
A big misunderstanding that many of us have is that we think daily life and practice are separate. For us, practice means to put aside all activities and sit with straight backs, reciting mantras or meditating; as if there is something called practice that is separate from everything else we do. For people who […]
Hong Kong Thrangu Vajrayana Buddhist Centre, 19 November 2016
Since conviction in the existence of past and future lives, and karma and causality are the very foundation of all our Dharma practice, it is essential that we check to see how much belief we really have in them. To gauge how convinced we are in the existence of future lives, we can ask ourselves […]
Thrangu Vajrayana Buddhist Centre, Hong Kong, 19 November 2016
For those of you studying and training in Tibetan Buddhism, if you can receive the instructions from your lama in their own language, you will get much more benefit. It seems though, that most people don’t give a lot of emphasis to learning Tibetan. For example, many of the Nepalese and Indian traders around Boudhanath […]
Blessing is never some external force. You won't receive blessings by the lama bumping you with his mala or he blowing on your head – if that were the case, it would contradict the truth of karma, cause and effect. If a Buddhist thinks he has received a blessing which opposes the law of karma […]
Kagyu Samye Ling, UK, Teaching on Calling the Guru From Afar, 25 October 2016
It is all too easy to hear a lot of dharma and miss the point. Say if we’ve spent a whole week receiving teachings from a lama, and then still need to ask for an interview to ask; “Um, now what should I do when I go home?” Then we have to realise that we’ve […]
