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Tibetan

 The Tantric Buddhism of the Himalayas; its best-known teacher is the Dalai Lama
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    Equality Paid Member

    By Jeffrey Hopkins
    During a lecture while I was interpreting for the Dalai Lama, he said in what seemed to me to be broken English, “Kindness is society.” I wasn’t smart enough to think he was saying kindness is society. I thought he meant kindness is important to society; kindness is vital to society; but he was saying that kindness is so important that we cannot have society without it. Society is impossible without it. Thus, kindness IS society; society IS kindness. Without concern for other people it’s impossible to have society. The Dalai Lama is fond of saying that he feels he knows each individual just like his own brothers and sisters—even though, on lecture tours, he’s of a different religion, was brought up in a different part of the world, speaks a different language, and wears different clothes. More »
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    The Easy Middle Paid Member

    Part of a new generation of teachers who grew up outside of Tibet, Mingyur Rinpoche represents an era of transition in the Tibetan community. Trained by some of the great Tibetan masters of twentieth century, he serves as a link between his father’s generation, who studied in the traditional monastic environment of pre-Communist Tibet, and teachers who were trained in exile. More »
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    Wisdom and Compassion: Sacred Art of Tibet Paid Member

    By Tamara Wasserman Hill
    STRAINS OF LONG SILVER TRUMPETS and the deepthroated chanting of monks greeted the arrival of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in April. The religious and temporal leader of Tibet's exiled Buddhist population had come to grant a special blessing, initiating the creation of a large-scale sand mandala for the opening of "Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet." This stunning exhibition of Tibetan paintings, sculpture, and tapestries dating from 900 to 1900 C.E. has been assembled from prominent museums and private collections in North America, Europe, and the Soviet Union. Notably, none of the pieces were borrowed from either institutional or official sources in the People's Republic of China, to which Tibet has been politically bound for more than thirty years. More »
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    Renunciation Paid Member

    By Pema Chodron
    When people take refuge in the formal ceremony of becoming a Buddhist, they receive a name that indicates how they should work. I've noticed that when people get the name "Renunciation," they hate it. It makes them feel terrible; they feel as if someone gave them the name "Torture Chamber," or perhaps "Torture Chamber of Enlightenment." People usually don't like the name "Discipline" either, but so much depends on how you look at these things. Renunciation does not have to be regarded as negative. I was taught that it has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. You could say that renunciation is the same thing as opening to the teachings of the present moment. More »
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    Birds of Paradox Paid Member

    By Sylvia Beckwith
    THE LATE KARMAPA loved birds. Westerners called the regal guru "the St. Francis of Tibet," for he was often seen at his monastery in Bhutan with birds perched on his shoulders or eating from his hand. Song birds and birds of silence, those of brilliant plumage and dull-breasted females, carnivores and seed eaters—all were welcome in his court. More »
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    Dissolving the Confusion Paid Member

    By Tsoknyi Rinpoche
    The true, real view is the indivisible unity of emptiness and compassion. Confusion arises when something seemingly is, but actually isn’t, like mistaking a rope for a snake. That is a clear mistake, because in reality the rope is not a snake, no way. How do we actualize this view? We have a lot of thoughts, one after the other, involving the duality of subject and object. When the subject latches onto or grasps the object, that is what is normally called mind, the thinking mind. When there is this subject-object clinging, that creates karma. When karma is created, there is confusion. More »