Teaching on 'A Torch for the Definitive Meaning' at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 28th May 2015
Photo: Fr. Giuseppe Berardelli, a 72-year-old priest in Bergamo, Italy, who gave a respirator (that his parishioners had purchased for him) to a younger patient (whom he did not know), has died from coronavirus. Many people think that one becomes a bodhisattva by helping others, but that is not necessarily the case. Giving a […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 24th Mars 2020
If you still have a worldly view, you could found a monastery and it would be a worldly act, you could start a dharma centre and it would be a worldly act, you could even teach the dharma and that too would be a worldly act. But if you have a dharma view, all that […]
Advice given to the western students in Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, July 2016
Real Buddhism is not in the texts, not in the monasteries, not in the retreat centres, not in the shedras, not in the dharma centres, nor are you likely to find it in the towns and cities. And you might think, ‘If Buddhism, the dharma, is not in the monasteries, where is it?’ What we […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 10th February 2020
The word for dharma in Tibetan is ཆོས་ (chö), which is related to the word འཆོས, which means to repair or to correct. When I see those who consider themselves students of mine conducting themselves unskilfully, I may well tell them that they are doing wrong, with the hope that they will see why it […]
Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland, 15th June 2019
What I have to say concerns me personally. At the moment I’m quite sure there are a number of people who are highly critical of me, who don’t like me. But in my eyes I don’t have a single enemy in this world. I don’t mind what people say about me, I’ve got nothing against […]
Admonition to students, Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 7th February 2020
Just be normal. I do not expect you to be accomplished yogis. I do not expect you to be great bodhisattvas. But if you can be normal, level headed, decent, polite people, the sort of person who is switched on, easy going and courteous, that will suffice for now.
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 12th January 2020
Don’t think it doesn’t matter what people think about you. It makes a big difference to them and to you. If you do or say something that causes someone to have negative thoughts, that is bad for them and since you were the cause of that, it is bad for you. Every action brings a […]
9 February 2020, instructions given in the first practice session of the new six-year retreat cycle at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal
If we totally exhaust ourselves during prostrations, pushing ourselves against our will, our mind will resist what we are doing; we’ll get fed up and become averse to doing prostrations. We shouldn’t do that. If that happens, there’s no merit in what we are doing. Our body will be going through the motions and we […]
2015 Hwayue Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan
Buddhism encourages us to examine our life and situation carefully so that we can see things as they are. When we see the nature of our cyclic existence, we see that it is characterised by suffering and dissatisfaction, and we begin to long for freedom and the peace of transcendence. This insight and subsequent feeling […]
Namo Buddha Seminar, Nepal, 14 April 2019
We are not learning something new when we study the dharma. We tend to study the dharma in the same way that we learn a new language – but that is not right. In the study of dharma we are trying to recognise the desire that we have – desire is not new to us, […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 12 December 2019
We often see new Buddhists, or old Buddhists who have not studied much dharma, getting ahead of themselves and making plans to run off to the mountains. This shows a lack of understanding and experience of dharma. In order to practise alone in solitude, and to be able to practice properly, we must have first […]
Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland, 12 October 2017
Money becomes a real obstacle in forming a true lama-student relationship. So if it’s real dharma you want, if it’s a real lama-student relationship you want, then this is something you should keep in mind. For example, if you see me to be a lama of yours, and you genuinely wish to rely on and […]
Transcript of a conversation between Drupon Khen Rinpoche and Owen, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 2019
After yesterday afternoon’s teaching here in Johannesburg, Drupon Khen Rinpoche was on his way to meet someone when a young chap called Owen wished to ask him a question. Since we were already running late we arranged for him to see Rinpoche today. Rinpoche very much appreciated Owen’s questions and asked him if it would […]
Teaching on the fourth day (19 Oct) of the one-week meditation retreat with Hwayue Foundation, 2019
The worst thing you can do in meditation is to hanker after feelings of peace and bliss. Expectations are always followed by disappointments. Feelings of peace, bliss and deep well-being do not come to us very easily (and they’re not all that much use to us anyway.) But if you do get a taste, a […]
Teaching on the third day (18 Oct) of the one-week meditation retreat with Hwayue Foundation, 2019
In meditation the direction we are moving towards is that of non-doing. We already have so much that we need to do in our lives, and if meditation is seen as being something else that we must do, it becomes just another task to add to our to-do list. It will become a burden, a […]
