Tibetan Buddism

It’s Monday….What are you reading?

/ Debra / 4 Comments

What are you reading today?

Some you might know me well enough …that I read several books …or a better wording would be…I have several books going on.

 

I rarely just have one book that I read to exclusion of the others. I will read a little this one and then maybe some of that one…and so it goes.

For the sake of today’s post though….I will only focus on one book that *is* my primary read … No Time to Lose by Pema Chodron. I really enjoy it, her words are simple but profound. I am on Chapter 2. So far…I love it!

So? What are you reading?…and it does not have to be Buddhist reading. 🙂

Namaste…and be well,

Debra

An excerpt from Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron

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LIGHTEN UP

Have you ever been caught in the heavy-duty scenario of feeling defeated and hurt, and then somehow, for no particular reason, you just drop it? It just goes, and you wonder why you made “much ado about nothing.” What was that all about?

I’d like to encourage us all to lighten up, to practice with a lot of gentleness. This compassion, this clarity, this openness are like something we have forgotten. Sitting here being gentle with ourselves, we’re rediscovering something. It’s like a mother reuniting with her child; having been lost to each other for a long, long time, they reunite. The way to reunite with bodhichitta (awakened heart) is to lighten up in your practice and in your life.

Start Where You Are By Pema Chodron

Tuesday Public Talk ~ 31May11

/ Debra

 

 

Join us tonight for our free and open to the public talk at 730 PM with Geshe Ngawang Phende who will speak on “The Paths Common to Advanced Level – How to Attain Buddhahood”. This is the last of three talks on how the entire corpus of Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings can be systematically condensed into the spiritual paths to be followed by the three levels of practitioners.

Drepung Loseling Monastery

Human birth

/ Debra

 

H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama

H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama

Generally speaking, the Buddhist understanding is that Birth as a human being is one the most ideal forms of existence because it is conductive to practicing Dharma. ~ “The Four Noble Truths: Fundamentals of the Buddhist Teachings” by H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama

 

The First Noble Truth

/ Debra

4nobletruthsThe first of the Four Noble Truths is the Truth of Suffering.

What is suffering? Buddhism describes three levels or types of suffering. This is called ‘the suffering of suffering’, the second, ‘the suffering of change’, and the third is ‘the suffering of conditioning’.

The suffering of suffering: the suffering of birth, sickness, aging, and death.

The suffering of change: things we would normally think as pleasurable.

The suffering of conditioning: What is the nature of things? Eveything happens in samsara is due to ignorance

(complied from ‘The Four Noble Truths’ by H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama, fourteenth printing – 2009)