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[…] your attention. → Browse Talks Dip into a practice Looking for a place to begin or reconnect with practice? Try a short meditation, a reflection, or a prayer, and make it part of your practice. → Explore Practice Materials Follow a series Explore a theme in depth—such as karma, emotions, or mahamudra. Each multi-chapter […]
Article
[…] The spiritual path has many challenges. There are many things we need to learn or develop. A short list would probably include motivation, skills in meditation and prayer, contemplation, etc. Like music and painting, most of us learn spiritual practice better with someone, rather, than, for instance, by reading a book. When we interact […]
Practice Material
[…] awakened body, speech, and mind presence, the four visions unfold naturally, And thus, in the youthful vase body, all beings are free. Repeat three times. The Seven-section Prayer In natural awareness, direct and open, I pay homage. In sheer clarity, limitless and unfathomable, I present offerings. In the expanse where all experience, patterned and […]
Practice Material
Refuge Until I reach the heart of awakening,I take refuge in all buddhasAnd likewise in the DharmaAnd the host of bodhisattvas.Repeat three times. Seven Section Prayer With complete faith I bowTo Buddha Shakyamuni andAll the victorious ones and their followersWho abide in the ten directions and three times. I offer flowers, incense, light,Perfume, food, […]
Practice Material
[…] pray to my teacher, empty sound, natural and free.All thoughts from emotional reactions, the five poisons,Move as objects in my mind.Let me rest without craft, not awaiting or chasing them.When I let movement settle naturally, it releases in true presence.I pray to my teacher, empty awareness, natural and free. — Padmasambhava, Prayer in Seven Chapters
Practice Material
[…] should give rise to non-conceptual timeless awareness, if the timeless awareness of knowing itself does not arise, you are not doing the actual practice. In Ever-Present Good’s2 Prayer of Intention, it says: That vagueness, in which you do not attend to anything,Is the genesis of confusion and ignorance. Now, as you experience this vague […]
Practice Material
[…] and toss it far away.Grinning, your cannibal companions lick their lips with glee.For me what’s left now? What more can I do? Use either of these two prayers to pray with the deep devotion that comes when all hope is gone and you have nothing left to lose: Treasured teacher,In whose presence I awaken […]
Article
[…] energy (and, consequently, higher levels of attention) you are aware of patterns of emotional reaction that you couldn’t touch before. In the story of Milarepa, through his prayer and devotion to Marpa, the energy in his attention moved to a higher level, he had a spiritual opening (the vision), and then, he had to […]
Article
[…] devotion before, in the form of guru yoga, or union with the teacher. It’s a powerful practice, greatly valued in the Tibetan tradition, where there are numerous prayers with titles such as “Devotion Pierces the Heart.” The teacher at this retreat exemplified this. He felt such devotion for his own teacher that he could […]
Chapter 5 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
[…] be happy, may I be free of difficulties, may I have the strength and understanding and courage to meet whatever adversity that I encounter.” Or some short prayer or aspiration of similar intent. And what you are doing there is developing a sense of radiant warmth for your own being. And then, as that […]
Chapter 7 of “The Jewel in the Lotus”
[…] he and I got along very well. And so we had this dbu mdzad (pron. umze)—because he knew this ritual—come and teach us all of it: what prayer went here and all of this stuff, and it is very, very complicated, and what stuff had to happen on the shrine at this point, etc. […]
Chapter 3 of “The Jewel in the Lotus”
[…] unwholesome karma, we’re getting rid of it. So that’s why I don’t like to use the word purification; it comes up with that. Now, in the mahamudra prayer, which you don’t have in your chant book, but many of you know it, you find the same thing. The ground of refinement is mind itself—indivisible […]
Chapter 11 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] one that you’ve got here. Ken: They’re the same. John: They’re one and the same? Ken: They’re one and the same confusion. [Laughs] In one of the prayers that’s used for guru yoga in the Kagyu tradition ‘khrul ba rang sar zhi bar byin gyi brlabs (pron. trul wa rang sar zhi war hin […]
Chapter 8 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] knowledge, they come to rest in the realm of totality. Pure being. So, there are actually four levels of understanding there. And when it says in our prayers, “Give me energy to know mind, pure being,” it’s telescoping those four levels of understanding. Okay. Julia? Julia: Yeah, I had a similar, well, a related […]
Chapter 1 of “Learning Mahamudra”
A course on mahamudra Ken: Tonight, we will begin a six week course on mahamudra. A couple of practical points. First, we have a very wide range of experience in the room, from people who are really just beginning a meditation practice, to people who’ve been working with this, and other kinds of meditation, for […]
