Mark your calendars for a viewing of Rigdzin Shikpo’s Heart of Buddha teaching “What is Buddhism?”, this Friday! Cinema Shikpo is an opportunity to watch previous recorded teachings of Rigdzin Shikpo together with other members of the Longchen Foundation. There will also be time for a short discussion afterwards. This…
Join Our New Open Meditation Group! Starting this Thursday, May 19, join us for the Longchen Open group, an hour’s session of teachings and meditation open to all. The hour starts with a Longchen instructor giving simple instruction on formless meditation, followed by roughly 20 to 30 minutes of formless meditation practice. The…
From Heart of Buddha: Mandalas and Longchen, Longchen Rabjam’s Notions of Mandalas (Oxford 2015) Longchen Rabjam talks about the mandala of reality, the mandala of the deities themselves that are—and I love to use this phrase that comes from a Guru Rinpoche text—“like the rays of the sun, distinct and…
As our view of the world changes, it becomes possible to love others in a way that we previously reserved for ourselves alone. This genuine love is self-existent, beyond all contrivance and manipulation. It arises spontaneously, simply because the obstacles to its arising have been removed. Consequently, we can’t command…
The word Longchen refers to a person, Longchen Rabjam, the great 14th century Nyingma figure without whom there would be no current Nyingma tradition, there’s no doubt. Longchen also refers to the great long, the vast space in which being permeates or being itself acquires this aspect of vastness. Trungpa…
From Heart of Buddha: Mandalas and Longchen Rabjam’s Notions of Mandalas (Oxford 2015) And it’s said in the Buddhadharma that this sense of the un-satisfactoriness of everything is much greater than we imagine. The reason why it doesn’t seem so universal at first is because we manage to shut our…
Monthly Dharma Quotation: The Ungraspable Self As you begin to allow thoughts and feelings to be there, the mind often seems to become more, rather than less, irritating. It is not really becoming more irritating, the fact is, it was always like that, and you are just becoming more and…
How can we know we are genuinely relating to direct experience rather than just fooling ourselves? The only way to tell is by feeling the general direction of your practice. If egocentricity and attachment seem to be increasing as you practice, you’re probably following the wrong path. On the other…
You have to notice whether you are clinging to particular ideas so that they become part of the way you think you are. You think, this idea is me somehow and I’m not going to give this up: it’s too much me. It is as though certain concepts and certain…
To be sensitive there has to be some degree of openness and awareness, so these three qualities are the basis of what it is to be a sentient being, whether animal or human or anything else. There is therefore a basic kinship between all beings that goes very deep; right…
