Today, I am going to consider the word visualize, or visualization. The Tibetan word is dmigs.pa (pron. mikpa). I've long suspected that there was a problem with the usual translation of visualize, but it was only when I was writing The Magic of Vajrayana that I was forced to face the fact that there was something seriously wrong with that translation. After a few conversations with other translators, my doubts were confirmed. The word dmigs.pa is used in a number of other contexts and seems to mean "to hold something in mind." It is also used in the phrase dmigs.med.snying.rje, which is ..read more

 Newsletter, Nov. 6, 2007 Nagarjuna said that Buddha nature is empty.  In the Tibetan Kagyu tradition, Thrangu Rinpoche sees buddha nature as the indivisible oneness of wisdom and emptiness. The Dalai Lama, representing the Gelukpa School of Tibetan Buddhism, sees buddha nature as the "original clear light of mind" but is at pains to point out that it ultimately does not really exist, as it is emptiness. The view of Buddha nature varies from school to school.  Do we just pick one? And what does a practice on buddha nature look like? The way that can be named Is not the way Nei ..read more

 Practice tip -- how to simplify your life.   (newsletter 29, June 2012)    Question   I wondered if you would ever consider writing on the subject of "how to simplify your life"? I'm thinking of how to use dharma teaching as a way to interact with our daily world -- such as suggestions on how to limit the amount of stuff, engagements, technological distractions, just to name a few.     Response It's a matter of inclusion and exclusion, what you include in your life, and what you ..read more

The seventh point of Mind Training in Seven Points is called Guidelines. Where commitments (point six) are about avoiding emotional reactions and approaches to life that break your connection with practice, the purpose of these guidelines is to keep you on track. Through these instructions, you develop ways to meet what arises in your life, internally or externally, that enables you to use what arises to deepen your experience of emptiness and compassion. Because the Tibetan word for guidelines is often translated as precepts, it is good to remember that in Buddhism these instructions are de ..read more

The sixth point in Mind Training in Seven Points is about maintaining a connection with the practice of Mind Training. This practice element comes into play when a fundamental shift in awareness and experience reveals to you the possibility of living in the union of compassion and emptiness. Such a shift needs to nurtured, not by trying to hold onto it, but by coming into it again and again until its place in your formal practice and in your life has become strong and stable. For this aspect of practice, Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, the 12th century author of Mind Training in Seven Points, uses t ..read more

The fifth point in Mind Training in Seven Points is mastery. Whatever the discipline, mastery comes through the blending of two abilities: the ability to move and respond to what arises and the ability to go empty in what arises. The first arises through constant refinement of technique, the second through resting in mind nature. Issai Chosanshi, in The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Art, writes: The essence of mind is selfless and without desire, and thus at peace and undisturbed. This leads to moving without moving. In the midst of ultimate peace and absence of desire, when external phenome ..read more

 So many things are changing so deeply that I and more than a few people I know are at a loss to understand exactly what is happening and why. Some of the factors on my mind: The pandemic, with all its inconveniences large and small, and more importantly, the constant sense of danger despite the vaccines and the very real loss of family, friends, and colleagues who have succumbed to this persistent yet unpredictable disease. Pollution, the results of which now include not only the steady poisoning of our environment but also climate change, with changing weather patterns, floods, wildfir ..read more

 The fourth point in Mind Training in Seven Points is a condensation of the essential points of Mahayana Mind Training—the Five Powers. Here, the Five Powers refer to five principles of practice for experienced practitioners. To my knowledge, these Five Powers have no connection or correlation with the five powers and the five strengths that appear in the thirty-seven factors of awakening.  The five powers describe how to make the transition from practice as something you do to practice as something that is part of you. This being the fourth point, it is assumed that you have a devel ..read more

 The third point in Mind Training in Seven Points is living practice. In living practice, you bring whatever you have developed in formal practice to how you live your life. In particular, you bring it to difficult situations.  Difficult times bring out deeper levels of reactivity, levels that in turn place more demands on our practice. In meeting those demands, we have to move to deeper levels of understanding, insight, clarity, compassion, and peace. In other words, difficult situations make practice easier: you don’t have to hunt for reactive patterns or try to get in to ..read more

 The second point in Mind Training in Seven Points is practice. In a spiritual context, practice is what you do to make an instruction come alive in your life. It involves a steady refinement of skills and capacities that typically proceeds through three steps. The first step is to learn how to do the instruction. The second step is to train that instruction until it becomes second nature. The third step is to remove everything in you that prevents the instruction from taking expression when it is called for.  These three steps, learning, training, and removal, must all tak ..read more