Practice Material
[…] all beings who are poor, hungry, or thirsty, may I be able to give them whatever they want effortlessly.All the great burdens of intolerable suffering, such as the hell realms, may I take on myself. May those beings be free of them. Composed by Karma Rangjung Kunchab (Kalu Rinpoche) and later translated by Ken McLeod
Article
[…] and other religious traditions. Within Buddhism itself, there is also a wide variety of methods: simple attention to the breath, contemplation of specific subjects (change, compassion, or karma, for example), complex visualizations of symbolic forms in the Tibetan tradition, koan practice in Zen, “contentless” meditation, and many others. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish between […]
Article
[…] effect, not statements about reality. What, then, do we make of all the teachings of various spiritual traditions and other forms of human knowledge? For me, God, karma, rebirth, emptiness, Brahma, Atman, heaven, hell, all of these are stories that people use to understand, explain, or give direction to their lives. The same holds […]
Chapter 6 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
[…] really have a pretty solid basis in resting attention. And there is a lot of other stuff: like assimilating quite deeply things like death and impermanence, and karma, and so forth. In other words, you got to clear out a lot of the underbrush. So, I know that for some of you this is […]
Chapter 5 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
[…] practices remove what prevents you from resting in experience. So in a very broad sense, purification practices. All the things on death and impermanence, the five dakinis, karma and the four immeasurables, yidam practice, etc., etc., that all falls into that category. That as some people have described in their experience, you meet feeling, […]
Chapter 3 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] the 33 level palace or whatever it is, and thinks he’s lord of the universe. But actually he just got a hell of a lot of good karma and it’s going to last him for a few billion eons, but then he’ll be back in the hell realms like the rest of us. And […]
Chapter 9 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
[…] you’re going to show them who’s boss. Right? All of those are reactions. And you set in motion the kind of processes we’ve been talking about in karma. If you take a breath, and you feel that impulse to oppose and you actually just experience it, which is anger in you. By experiencing the […]
Chapter 7 of “Being Mahamudra”
[…] that one reconciles the absolute contradiction in human life between the certainty of death, and the evolution of our actions into experienced results, or the law of karma, that each and every action we undertake is meaningful in and of itself because it is the direction of the present. And we set up no […]
Chapter 8 of “Guru, Deity, Protector”
[…] than looking at it as a shorter period of grieving or less intense grieving or less despair, you might look at it as not generating as much karma on the activity later on because it’s experienced fully in the moment. Ken: This is what Josephine was saying. That’s right. Student: It also makes it […]
Chapter 4 of “Ideology & Wisdom”
[…] in which he describes how many of the very highly regarded Zen teachers fully supported the completely bogus notion that the Japanese army was the instrument of karma—which was completely analogous to the crusades being regarded as the instrument of God’s will, equally as bogus—I asked myself the question, “What is the quality that […]
Chapter 3 of “The Unfettered Mind”
[…] or unwittingly collaborate. One way teachers collaborate in this is that if a person can’t work with the instruction, the attitude is “they just don’t have the karma, they aren’t ready.” And from my point of view, that’s a very convenient posture for the teacher. But from my point of view, lacks a certain […]
Chapter 7 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
[…] and big ways, and you begin to see that how your whole life has been shaped by that one pattern. [Ken leafs through book] Student: [Unclear] negative karma. Ken: Well, you’re getting into a bit of a complication there. Where is this? There’s only one trouble with this book—you can never find anything in […]
Chapter 3 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
[…] amount of Buddhist teaching, the sole purpose of which is to encourage you to work with what you see. All the teaching on death and impermanence, and karma, and samsara, etc. All of that motivational teaching—even some of the teaching on bodhichitta—it’s primary purpose is to encourage you to work with what you see. […]
Chapter 13 of “A Trackless Path II”
[…] people they don’t have that stuff in their past and so they just sit down and things open. In traditional explanations it would be good and bad karma, you see. But it’s just a way of explaining why things are different, and it doesn’t really do anything other than provide explanations. The fact is […]
Chapter 2 of “Stalking Death”
[…] teachers expressing attitudes which are very similar to Christian bishops and the crusades: “Kill the infidels.” “We are the instruments of God.” “we are the instruments of karma,” etc., etc. It was kind of nonsense. So, one of the questions I was mulling over: what is the quality that enables a person who is […]
