Monday, March 31, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Medicine Buddha Initiation
Visualize the Medicine Buddha sitting above your crown on a moon disc rising out of lotus blossom. Above the Medicine Buddha sits the root guru. Above him sits one on top of another five more Buddhas. As you pray to the topmost Buddha he dissolves into the one below him. Each in turn dissolves into the one below until the Medicine Buddha himself dissolves through your crown and into your heart, purifying all impurities. The mantra (Om bikensa bikensa mahabikensa bikensa ran sa samugati soha) rotates clockwise like a rosary or mala around the seed syllable in the center of the heart of the teacher. One by one the beads of the mala flow like seeds of bodhicitta up his central channel and through his throat chakra and out of his mouth as he recites the mantra, entering the initiate through the crown in her head. One by one like drops of bodhicitta the syllables of the mantra descend to the heart, where they once again rotate clockwise around the seed syllable. The Medicine Buddha and the initiate are now one for the benefit of all mother sentient beings.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Four Noble Truths
To know the truth of suffering, I paraphrase Rinpoche, is to know the path 
through it. It is not enough, though, he added, for wisdom to know it, unless there is compassion enough for a person to do it. Wisdom alone can create problems compassion cannot solve (the nuclear bomb was an example he cited), but fooly-heart compassion never allows wisdom to evolve. We need both, in other words, in the same way that we need a teacher to teach us such truths and also must investigate ourselves anything any teacher teaches us. What good does it do, the parable he taught taught, to save our own mother by killing everyone else's? All sentient beings are each our own individual mother in countless lives since the beginning of time. It is this mother and all mother sentient beings to whom we devote our wisdom and compassion.
through it. It is not enough, though, he added, for wisdom to know it, unless there is compassion enough for a person to do it. Wisdom alone can create problems compassion cannot solve (the nuclear bomb was an example he cited), but fooly-heart compassion never allows wisdom to evolve. We need both, in other words, in the same way that we need a teacher to teach us such truths and also must investigate ourselves anything any teacher teaches us. What good does it do, the parable he taught taught, to save our own mother by killing everyone else's? All sentient beings are each our own individual mother in countless lives since the beginning of time. It is this mother and all mother sentient beings to whom we devote our wisdom and compassion.Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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