The Index Page provides an outline of the topics discussed in each of the lectures. Click on the headings below to go directly to a particular lecture.
Contents
SECTION ONE: LECTURES 1-8
- The purpose of reciting prayers and practices
- Mind is the creator of happiness and suffering
- Compassion and bodhicitta
- Preparatory practices to develop bodhicitta
- Continuity of consciousness and the definition of death
- Three divisions of impermanent phenomena
- Consciousness
- Existence of past and future lives
- Reincarnation
- Karma
- Consciousness, delusions and samsara are beginningless
- Possible to end samsara
- Samsara is suffering
- Need to break the continuity of the aggregates
- Suffering of the six realms
- Even arhats cannot do the work of Buddha
- The kindness of the mother
- Meditation on sentient beings as one’s mother
- Meditation on the kindness of the mother
- Meditation on the kindness of all sentient beings as the mother
- The suffering of mother sentient beings
- Meditation on the four immeasurables
- Buddha’s perfect power, omniscience and compassion
- Generating bodhicitta
- Three levels of refuge
- Levels of motivation
- Meditation on the great will, bodhicitta
- Consciousness has no beginning or end
- Samsara can be finished
- Renunciation and entering the path of merit
- Five paths to nirvana
- How delusions can be removed, emptiness
- The Mahayana five paths
- Enlightenment, the four kayas
- Quality and lineage of the lamrim
- Meditation on the four immeasurables
- Lineages of the lamrim
- Three ways of giving commentaries
- How to practice lamrim as a householder
- How to listen and meditate on the lamrim
- lamrim commentary has four basic outlines
- Story of Lama Atisha
- The three Kadampa lineages
- Four qualities of the lamrim
- No contradiction in the Buddha’s various teachings
- Buddha’s teachings cannot be changed
- Negative karma of discriminating Dharma
- Importance of motivating each day
- Buddha taught to suit various levels of mind
- Three particular qualities of the lamrim
- Important to understand and practice the complete lamrim
- How to listen to and explain the Buddhadharma
- Worldly friends are unreliable
- Visualization for reciting the refuge prayer
- Training the mind in strong motivation
- Benefits of extensively listening to Dharma
- How to plan your daily lamrim meditations
- Why lamas listen again and again to lamrim teachings
- Second outline: respecting the Dharma and teacher
- Five points of listening to the teachings
- Serkong Rinpoche
- Taking refuge in Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
- Third outline, how to explain the Dharma
- Six recognitions
- The four immeasurables
- Listening to and understanding the Dharma
- Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche and Serkong Dorje Chang
- Need to practice continuously for a long time
- The six recognitions
- Dharma is the mirror of the mind
- Prince Moon and Sudhasa’s son
- Listening to the Dharma
- Explaining the Dharma, four outlines
- The importance of dedicating merits
- Importance of guru devotion
- Six preparatory practices
- What to do in the meditation session and break times
- Yoga of sleeping
- Refuge prayer with visualization
- Everything is created by the mind and karma
- Taking care of one’s own mind
- Creating karma with powerful objects, the Triple Gem and parents
- The importance of each day’s attitude
- The four motivations
- The outlines on how to follow the guru
- Meditation on the perfect human rebirth, eight freedoms and ten richnesses
- Meditation on the ten richnesses
- Precepts: Mahayana ordination
- Getting a general understanding of the lamrim outline
- The fundamental realization: refuge and karma
- Meditating on the eight freedoms and ten richnesses
- The three advantages of the perfect human rebirth
- The pure lands
- Advantages of the perfect human rebirth
- How it is possible to attain nirvana and enlightenment
- The great yogi, Milarepa
- One can achieve anything with this perfect human body
- Bearing hardships for Dharma
- Mahayana Precepts
- How infinite merit is accumulated
- Generating faith in Buddha’s teachings
- Relating to the Dharma
- Meditation on the preciousness of the perfect human rebirth
- The four wrong conceptions, clinging to the four attachments
- The preciousness of the perfect human rebirth
- Making this human life meaningful
- How to practice the path to enlightenment
- The importance of bodhicitta
- The path of the middle capable being
- How samsara is created by karma and disturbing unsubdued mind
- The root and secondary delusions
- The nature of attachment, binding us to samsara
- Should not be complacent
- Karma, shortcomings of heresy and anger
- The difference in numbers of humans and creatures
- Watch the daily attitude
- Meditation remedies to attachment
- Shortcomings of desire and attachment
- Shantideva’s advice on giving up attachment to the body
- Having a meaningful attitude
- Samsaric works are never finished
- Dharma work has an end: enlightenment
- The evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas
- Remedies to attachment to others’ bodies
- The evil thought of worldly dharma
- Shantideva’s reasoning, techniques to control attachment
- Reading from Bodhicaryavatara, Meditation chapter
- How to meditate on the remedies to attachment
- Controlling attachment to food
- Renunciation is in the mind
- Anger
- Mahayana Precepts
- Death can happen at any time
- The evil thought of worldly dharma
- Holy Dharma and worldly dharma cannot be mixed
- Holy Dharma is defined by renunciation
- Shortcomings of anger
- Importance of controlling anger and developing patience
- Geshe Chengawa’s four methods for controlling anger
- Gen Jampa Wangdu’s story
- The shortcomings of the evil thought of worldly dharma
- How the eight worldly dharmas disturb our happiness
- Geshe Chengawa’s four methods for controlling anger
- Seeing the enemy as guru and oneself as disciple
- Seeing everything as a dream
- Pride
- The eight worldly dharmas
- Verses by the Tibetan yogi, Drokun Tsangba Gyadu
- Renouncing the eight worldly dharmas brings happiness
- Ten innermost jewels of the Kadampas
- The four reliances
- Overcoming pride
- Ignorance or unknowing
- Doubt
- Five wrong views
- The view of the changeable
- The ten innermost jewels of the Kadampas
- The four reliances
- The meaning of “living in an isolated place”
- How ascetic yogis live
- The three vajras
- The view of the changeable
- The extreme views of eternalism and nihilism
- Refuting a creator god
- Deluded beliefs
- Ignorance and the truly-existent “I”
- Attachment
- “Taking the essence” retreat
- The ten innermost jewels
- The disadvantages of disturbing unsubdued mind
- The importance of controlling delusions
- Karma
Lecture 44: Lama Thubten Yeshe
- Our nature is pure
- Attachment can be positive or negative
- Eight worldly dharmas can be positive or negative
- Have to overcome attachment slowly
- Practice of bodhicitta
- Renouncing grasping at temporary pleasures
- Necessary to have wisdom
- Question and answer
- Mahayana Precepts
- This perfect human rebirth is very rare and short
- Time of death is uncertain
- Death is definite
- The ten innermost jewels: receiving the line of the devas
- Importance of realizing impermanence and death
- Dying, transference of consciousness
- What to practice at the time of death
- The practice of giving and taking
- The experience of dying
- Intermediate stage
- The twelve links
- The right view
- Merely labeled I, body and mind
- Recognizing the object of refutation
- The four analyses, a concise meditation
- Motivation
- Pervasive compounded suffering
- Disadvantages of self-cherishing
- All happiness comes from bodhicitta
- The preciousness of each sentient being
- The six-syllable mantra
- Story of Gelongma Palmo