One familiar grouping of emotional obscurations in Buddhism is the five poisons – greed, hatred, pride, jealousy and ignorance. I was reflecting this morning that my predominant poison has changed from what it was 6 months ago … so …. Let’s ‘name and shame’ !!!! My predominant poison at present is anger / hatred. (It’s […]
What’s your Poison? Read Post »
How often it is that our response to our own suffering is to grasp at the very things which bring about our suffering! We seem to have a wrong ‘gameplan’ – one which says that having or grasping this or that experience will make things ‘right’, and not having or pushing away something will lessen
The Response to Suffering Read Post »
To use Chogyam Trungpa’s phrase – all situations are workable. After reading part of a teaching by Trungpa Rinpoche on a forum today, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to label situations as either easy or difficult from the point of view of practice. And, beyond that, how easy to label certain situations
All Situations Are Workable Read Post »
Looking at a situation with a group of people, what do you see? Suffering However you look, you see either immediate suffering, the suffering that comes from the nature of change and therefore loss of present happiness, or existential suffering – the suffering that comes simply through being embodied. Looking at beings, you see beings
Suffering, Compassion and Meeting Needs Read Post »
Since things neither exist nor don’t exist, are neither real nor unreal, are utterly beyond adopting and rejecting – one might as well burst out laughing. Longchenpa Rabjampa Tenzin Chodron’s post to the Kagyu Online Study Group reminded me of this wonderful quote from the 14th Century Nyingma master, Longchenpa Rabjampa. So often recently I’ve
Reflections on Longchenpa – The Middle Path Read Post »
It has really struck me over the weekend how much the continuity of meditation is facilitated by a daily practice. For many years when I started on the Dharmic path, I was fiercely concerned that I should meditate every day, following my teachers advice. Like many things in those days, there was a sense of
Mahamudra meditation instruction is often presented in terms of two-fold advice – the common, and the uncommon. These could be said to be the general and the detailed or specific instructions. The common or general instructions seem intended to be the base or background upon which all the uncommon or detailed instructions build. For me
Reflections on Tilopa – Mahamudra Pith Instructions Read Post »
