AS WE GO THROUGH OUR LIVES, we undergo tremendous struggles; yet we do not seem able to accomplish or achieve what we would like. In additio...

With a wish to free all beings I shall always go for refuge To the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, Until I reach full enlightenment Enthused by w...

From the beginning of my practice, I was very moved by the sense of the Buddha as an integrated being. Most of us can easily experience our ...

'Bodhi' is Sanskrit for Enlightenment and 'Citta' means Mind. It refers to the wish to attain enlightenment (become a Buddha...

INTRODUCTION Perhaps because of both its profundity and its brevity, the Heart Sutra is the most familiar of all the original teachings of ...

The Bodhisattva depends on Prajna Paramita, and the mind is no hindrance, without any hindrance no fears exist. Far apart from ever perverte...

The cycle starts when an individual becomes aware of itself as a being separete from the universe. It becomes ignorent of its true nature an...

All dharmas are marked with emptiness they do not appear or disappear are not tainted or pure do not increase or decrease. The term dharmas ...

The Heart Sutra is a teaching by the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara , the Buddha of Compassion, to the monk Shariputra. It is chanted regularly...

The Ties that Unbind By Andrew Olendzki Imagine what would happen if you took six lengths of rope and tied one end of each to six creatures:...

Venerable Lama Karma Samten Gyatso responds to queries: Question: Please would you say something about Taking Refuge? Answer: Taking Refug...

The Refuge ceremony is reminiscent of the mediaeval ritual of swearing fealty to a liege lord. He/she offered protection and the possibility...

Finally, you will be given a new name symbolic of your "entering the stream" and will again repeat the formula but now with the id...

The Ritual In the presence of a representative of the Buddha' s sangha or community; that is, an ordained Buddhist teacher, priest, monk...

As is the case with other systems of belief, people may think of themselves as Buddhist having been born into a family of Buddhists, or into...

The question remains: how does this strategy of skillful renunciation and skillful indulgence translate into everyday practice? People who o...

How is this done? By bringing It out into the open. Both sides of sensual attachment -- as habitual patterns from the past and our willingne...

Part of our resistance to this resolve is universally human. People everywhere relish their passions. Even the Buddha admitted to his discip...

Sacrificing external pleasures also frees us of the mental burdens that holding onto them often entails. A famous story in the Canon tells o...

Buddhism takes a familiar American principle -- the pursuit of happiness -- and inserts two important qualifiers. The happiness it aims at i...