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1. How to Meditate with Great Confidence and Wisdom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
On April 16, 2013 at Padma Samye Ling during the One Month Dzogchen Retreat on Mipham Rinpoche’s Vajra Heart, Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche taught essential practice instructions that we need to remember as meditators and Dzogchen practitioners. Khenpo Rinpoche’s translation and commentary on Mipham Rinpoche’s text gives us exact advice on how to practice to gain complete enlightenment. Khenpo Rinpoche’s personal commentary begins at 2:40. Enjoy this exceptional treasure!!!
As well as . . .
2. Dzogchen Pointing Out Instructions by Khenpo Tsewang Rinpoche
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
On March 26, 2013 at Padma Samye Ling during the One Month Dzogchen Retreat on Mipham Rinpoche’s Vajra Heart, Venerable Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche gave pointing out instructions on how to bring everything together in our Dzogchen meditation.
The topics discussed include:
1. When we begin Vajrayana practice and “open the mandala,” what are we opening to?
2. What should we do about the negative karma we previously created?
3. Is it a mistake to look at a teacher as a buddha if (s)he is not a buddha?
4. Five Dhyani Buddha Families
5. How to not be attached to this life?
6. How to calm an incredibly over-active mind?
7. What are the benefits of practicing together as a Sangha?
8. Primordial purity and spontaneous presence
9. What role does desire play on the path to enlightenment?
10. Good energy of the Sangha
Palm Beach Dharma Center
March 10, 2019
“If we think about our conceptions, they are not stable or something we can rely on. They are not firm because they are dualistic, and duality is deluded. Therefore our conceptions are not perfect. For example, in the early part of our liveswemayhavebelievedinsomething100%,thinking that it was perfect.Yet later in life we might completely refute this and adopt the opposite idea. So what happened? Who created that? Who made that? It was none other than our mind. Deluded mind is not reliable. If we think something is 100% beautiful,and then change our mind 100% the other way, it is not real. Every creation and division comes from our deluded, unreliable mind.
The Dzogchen and Vajrayana teachings say that the first thing practitioners must realize is that all appearances and everything they hear and think is their mind. This does not mean that we have to think that this tree is our mind, this stone is our mind, or this building is our mind. At this time, just think that the perceptions of the tree are our mind, the perceptions of the stone are our mind, and the perceptions of the building are our mind. Similarly, the perceptions of happiness are our mind, and the perceptions of suffering are our mind.
In thinking this way, we may wonder where all the stones in the earth come from. As we have heard so many times, they come from atoms, and atoms come from emptiness. Each atom is in the state of emptiness. Therefore trees are emptiness, stones are emptiness, and mountains are emptiness because they are all constructed from emptiness. Everything is empty—even our ignorance and perceptions of duality. Our intellectual knowledge doesn’t see it this way exactly, but that is the reality, whether we believe it or not. Our experience is structured by our conceptions, names, and labels, which we turn into compounded things. However, if we investigate deep down, we see that these names and labels come from the mind. For this reason, the Prajnaparamita teachings say, “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.”
This knowledge of appearance being the mind is very important. It is not just important to think this way—we must also really believe that all appearances are mind, whether they are good or bad. We should not think this way just because the Buddha or Jigme Lingpa said it. We need to look closely at this point and realize it ourselves. Why do we have to think this way? Why is this realization important? Because it completely breaks our ego fabrication, our perceptions of duality, and our clinging to things as solidly existing. This is what Dzogchen is pointing out. It undermines the solidity of the ego and the solidity of grasping to subject and object by pointing out and knowing that all appearances are our mind. Mind is unreliable and mind is not firm, therefore appearances are unreliable and appearances are not firm.”
Venerable Khenpo Rinpoches
Supreme Wisdom: Commentary on Yeshe Lama (pghs 196-198)
Photo of Ven. Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche at Tashi Choling.
Palm Beach Dharma Center
February 24, 2019
The topics discussed include:
1. Three Kayas
2. Where does karma begin?
3. Relationship of Negative Emotions and Wisdom
4. How long can the mind be separated from a body before it reincarnates?
5. What are the four extremes of existence, nonexistence, both, and neither?
6. What does the “dharmakaya beyond mind” mean?
7. Does wisdom mind guide us during karmic rebirth and our life?
8. How do we integrate our practice with our work?
9. Does the sense of there being a “perceiver” during meditation lessen with practice?
10. How to cut through attachment and aversion once you’ve been introduced to the “view”?
11. Pure relative truth vs. impure relative truth?
Photograph by Greg Kranz.
The Sangha of the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center of Tennessee was so delighted to enjoy an incredible Day of Miracles meditation honoring and praising the Buddha Shakyamuni last night at the Yeshe Tsogyal Temple in Nashville.
Join us for weekly meditations, study, and time with our wonderful community.
Photos by Stuart Bernstein, Sandy Mueller, and Melina Sierra.
• Light of Peace: How Buddhism Shines in This World
(History of Buddhism)
• Ceaseless Echoes of the Great Silence: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra Prajnaparamita in Spanish
• Commentary on Mipham Rinpoche’s Wheel of Analytic Meditation
• Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha: The Path to Freedom
(Essential Foundational Teachings of the Buddha)
• Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend
(Practical Advice on Practicing Dharma in Daily Life)
• Commentary on Jigme Lingpa’s Bellowing Laugh of the Dakini Chod Practice
