2007
In 1999, the Dalai Lama meets with a self-titled "Synthesis" group, made up of 40 Western "renaissance" thinkers who hope to change the world and resolve many of the world's problems, but actually end up transforming themselves.
81 min
CLEAR ALL
Often, when teaching a new idea or practice, it helps to try to boil it down to its essentials. Getting to the pith of things is very important and being able to do so in a way that reaches and sticks with others is a sign of genius.
How can Buddhism and mindfulness help people?
Learning True Love, the autobiography of Sister Chân Không, stands alongside the great spiritual autobiographies of our century. It tells the story of her spiritual and personal odyssey, both in her homeland and in exile.
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Roxanne Dault, Meido Moore, and Lopön Charlotte Z. Rotterdam discuss what it means to understand Buddhism through the body — the heart of the Buddhist path.
Thubten Chodron on how to develop bodhichitta, the aspiration to attain buddhahood in order to benefit others.
Question: Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama, often speak of happiness as a goal (if not the goal) of Buddhist practice. I don’t begrudge anyone happiness, but making it so central to spiritual life feels self-serving. Am I misunderstanding what’s meant by “happiness”?
Venerable Thubten Chodron gives an overview of why we would want to learn about emptiness and teaches on the emptiness of persons and phenomena.
The Stages of the Path, or lamrim, presentation of Buddhist teachings (a step-by-step method to tame the mind) is a core topic of Buddhist study. The lamrim meditations remind us that the process of transforming the mind, unlike so much of our frantic modern society, is a slow and thoughtful one.
It can be hard for those of us living in the twenty-first century to see how fourteenth-century Buddhist teachings still apply.
An open heart is the dwelling place of compassion that extends toward all beings; a clear mind is the source of the penetrating wisdom of deep insight. Their union leads to the enlightened way of life that is at the heart of the spiritual path as taught by the Buddha.