Posts Tagged ‘Tibetan Buddhism’
Practice Circle: See Confusion as Buddha
I love the Tibetan Lojong slogans because so many of them provocatively explore the dharma from angles that we can tend to overlook. I often initially react negatively toward them, because they are trying shock us into understanding our practice in new ways. The slogan we will work with at Practice Circle on July 23,…
Read MorePractice Circle Live: Make Practice Your Whole Life
This guided meditation was recorded live at Practice Circle on June 25, 2017. If you’d like to learn how to join our online dharma practice group, check out the Practice Circle Page.
Read MorePractice Circle: Stay Close to Your Resentment
One of the interesting things about working with the Tibetan Lojong slogans is the way they so often seem strangely counterintuitive. The slogan we’ll be working with this week at Practice Circle is a good example: “Stay Close to Your Resentment.” What? As good Buddhists, aren’t we supposed to be releasing our clinging to illusory…
Read MorePractice Circle: Make Practice Your Whole Life
Those of you who have joined us at Practice Circle lately know that we have been working with the Tibetan Lojong text, fifty-nine slogans that present seven points of training the mind. There have been countless commentaries on the Lojong text; the one we’ve been working with is Norman Fischer’s wonderful Training in Compassion: Zen…
Read MorePractice Circle: Transforming Suffering with Compassion
As I sit down to write this, the late afternoon shadows have deepened nearly to evening, reminding me that the longest nights of the year will soon be upon us. The news is full of the angry protests over police violence and the systematic atrocities committed by the United States government in its program of…
Read MorePractice Circle: Finding Your Benefactors
For the last several months, the mindfulness group I practice with has been learning a set of meditation practices adapted by John Makransky from Tibetan dzogchen and mahamudra methods. Although these techniques have much in common with the mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism, such as vipassana and loving kindness meditation, there are some differences in emphasis…
Read MorePractice Circle: Tonglen for the Winter Solstice
This week’s Practice Circle coincides with the weekend of the Winter Solstice, the darkest and coldest time of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere (mudita to our Aussie and Kiwi friends!) I don’t know about you, but I always have a tangible felt sense of entropy about now. The cold and…
Read MoreEpisode 116 :: Yeshe Rabgye :: The Best Way to Catch a Snake
Yeshe Rabgye Yeshe Rabgye speaks about having the progressive attitudes of a Westerner within the religious institution of an Asian tradition, and his new book The Best Way to Catch a Snake: A Practical Guide to the Buddha’s Teaching. People are tribal. We tend to gravitate to our particular groups, adhere to the ideals of…
Read MoreEpisode 110 :: Karuna Cayton :: The Misleading Mind
Karuna Cayton Karuna Cayton speaks with us about his new book, The Misleading Mind: How We Create Our Own Problems and How Buddhist Psychology Can Help Us Solve Them. East meets West. In our global society, that interaction is happening more and more, and the lines between the two are no longer so straight and…
Read MoreEpisode 105 :: Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche :: Living Fully: Finding Joy in Every Breath
Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche joins us to speak about his new book, Living Fully: Finding Joy in Every Breath.
Hi, everyone. I’m recording this introduction while attending the Wisdom 2.0 conference in California. This is the second of the “W20” conferences, next month is the tenth annual International Scientific Conference, April is the inaugural International Symposia for Contemplative Studies, and then of course we’re looking forward to attending the second Buddhist Geeks conference in August. All of these are linked on the calendar on the SecularBuddhism.org website of course, but the point is our practice is growing. It’s finding new and vital ways to change people’s lives outside of traditional settings, opening the door for others who may otherwise not find the same wonder of this practice, that we do.
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