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Tibetan

 The Tantric Buddhism of the Himalayas; its best-known teacher is the Dalai Lama
  • Tricycle Community 9 comments

    One Blood, Two Lineages Paid Member

    Revel: Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? You’ve mentioned the first contact you had with the teacher who made such an enormous impression on you without even speaking. In view of that first experience, are we talking about a conversion in the religious sense, or about some sort of purely philosophical breakthrough? Ricard: It’s hard to describe such a meeting. What gave it all its value was that it was nothing to do with abstract speculation; it was a direct experience, something I could see with my own eyes, and that was worth more than a thousand descriptions. More »
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    Consider Yourself a Tourist Paid Member

    By H.H. the Dalai Lama
    Within less than fifty years, I, Tenzin Gyatso, the Buddhist monk, will be no more than a memory. Indeed, it is doubtful whether a single person reading these words will be alive a century from now. Time passes unhindered. When we make mistakes, we cannot turn the clock back and try again. All we can do is use the present well. Therefore, if when our final day comes we are able to look back and see that we have lived full, productive, and meaningful lives, that will at least be of some comfort. If we cannot, we may be very sad. But which of these we experience is up to us. More »
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    Bite-Sized Buddhism Paid Member

    By Pema Chödrön
    If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained. If you are a good horseback rider, your mind can wander but you don’t fall off your horse. In the same way, whatever circumstances you encounter, if you are well trained in meditation, you don’t get swept away by emotions. Instead, they perk you up and your awareness increases.Abandon any hope of fruition. The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.Two activities: one at the beginning, one at the end. More »
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    Surviving the Dragon Paid Member

    Arjia Rinpoche was born in 1950, the same year Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet. His early years were ones of geographical and political isolation. His nomadic family herded their yaks across the high plains of the Tibetan-Mongolian border, their camp never far from the vast blue waters of Lake Kokonor. At the age of two, he was recognized by the Tenth Panchen Lama (the second-ranking figure in Tibet after the Dalai Lama) as the reincarnation of the father of Tsongkhapa (the founder of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism). At the age of seven, he was sent to live in Kumbum Monastery, one of Tibet’s six great monastic universities. More »
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    Family Practice Paid Member

    By Lama John Makransky
    I’d been away on a silent retreat for several weeks. We’d engaged in a Dzogchen preliminary practice of self-inquiry in which one asks, “Who is meditating? Who, what is aware?” By retreat’s end, wondering how my family was doing, I called home. Jonathan, who was three at the time, answered the phone. “Daddy!” he said, excited. “Yes.” “WHO are you?” I was stunned; my mind stopped. Jonathan giggled. “Just teasing, Daddy!” More »
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    The Heartbeat Sutra: Chaos Theory, Karma, and other Fluctuations Paid Member

    By Barbara Roether
    The first time I talked with “Dr. Chaos” about Buddhism was one twilit night a couple of years ago in a California January. We were sitting on the deck of a friend’s house in Big Sur, two hundred feet above the Pacific. It’s a place where you can both hear and see the waves break. As we listened and watched, the water stretching out like a vast mirror to the horizon, there, in glorious magenta light, the winter sun slowly set: metallic, then amber, then scarlet—one of those natural scenes so far beyond the viewer, so much grander and deeper, that a kind of vertigo swept over us.   “You know, I have never watched a sunset before in my life, not to that final moment,” said Dr. Chaos as the darkness rose up out of the ocean and covered us.   More »