Tag Archives: Parinirvana Anniversary

Intermezzo: Embracing Genuine Dharma Practice: Observing and Directing the Mind

Following our opening chants, we began our śamatha practice by establishing a firmly grounded yet balanced posture. Everyone was invited to look at the movement of  mind, which might be drawn to thinking about activities before our session or pulled towards what might follow. Without any judgement, we can practice śamatha through simply seeing this movement. In case the mind is attracted to any present sensory input such as sound, smell, memory, feeling, or something else, we simply notice it. In this way, along with being in touch with our body, we turn inward and observe the movement of mind. 

Once the mind starts to rest, we then can direct  its movement by giving rise to the thought of awakening. We connect with that intention, thinking: “May the stream of this mind be oriented towards buddhahood, towards awakening, for the sake of all other beings, without exception.” Sitting together is part of putting this into practice. 

Contemplative Meditation: When do We Practice?

One of the key functions of śamatha practice is to create a space for contemplating, allowing us to look deeper into the movement of our mind and the life that flows from it (when we take illusory thoughts to be real). During our meditation, everyone was invited to lightly reflect on the question: In which moments during a day do I feel I am practicing the dharma? Are there moments when I feel I am on the heroic path of the bodhisattvas? 

All participants were asked to consider three aspects of practice: how we think about it (seeing), how we sense it emotionally (feeling), and how it interacts with our surroundings (living). We ended our contemplative meditation by asking ourselves if any insight stood out, and then simply let go, and sat  at ease.  

After a brief conversation, we continued with commentary by and advice from His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, in Traveling the Path of Compassion, in which he put the question of practice at the heart of his teachings about the first verse: a precious human existence. 

Having the Freedom to Practice, Today

The first practice of a bodhisattva pointed out by Ngulchu Tokmé in this verse is that of hearing, contemplation, and meditation. His Holiness notes that we can think of the first as the desire to practice, the second as a way to gain certainty, and the third as the method to bring this into experience. He emphasises the importance of practicing now when we have the freedom to do so. 

Before our session started today, there was a brief informal conversation about wildfires, snowstorms, earthquakes, and similar natural circumstances. Along with a heart of compassion, wishing all affected to be safe and receive the support needed, the teachings also remind us there is no guarantee that our current conditions will remain supportive. What seems stable today might not be so tomorrow. Therefore, reminding us of Acharya Lhakpa’s commentary on this verse, we need to seize the opportunity to practice once it appears to us. 

Real Signs of Practice

His Holiness emphasizes the importance of understanding what genuine practice means by recognizing our freedom and sincerely wishing to practice,  To illustrate this, he recalls a story from the Kadampa tradition, the lineage to which our text, The Thirty-Seven Practices, belongs. During our session, the story was retold in detail, raising the question about the genuine practice of dharma. Below is a brief summary: 

There is a  person who is really determined to follow the dharma path and engages in practices like circumambulation (doing Korra), reading scriptures, and recitation. Each time he does so he encounters a Kadampa master, (most likely Atīśa’s main disciple Dromtönpa), who is offering words of praise while also asking: Wouldn’t it be better if you practiced the genuine dharma? 

This person decides to practice meditation as well. Yet, he receives the same questions and feels at a loss. “If none of these practices is considered dharma practice, then what is it?” The Kadampa master points out the answer by saying: “To cut through your attachments. That is the practice of Dharma.”

In his commentary, His Holiness the 17th Karmapa offers similar advice in the context of Ngöndro practice. He shares that he often hears people speak about the difficulty or ease of this practice, while others speak about certain special experiences. Meaningful as those may be, similar to the Kadampa master, His Holiness says: “The real sign of our practice should be how we work with our afflicting emotions.” 

Reflecting on these examples, it was pointed out during our session that any practice, including Korra, reading scriptures, recitation, and so forth, can all be a method to cut through our attachments and, more generally, work with our afflictions or mental disturbances. When we do so, each of these can become the genuine practice of the dharma. In addition, following His Holiness’s commentary, we need to go beyond separating our minds from dharma and bring these together. If we want to generate bodhicitta, for example, it can only arise in this moment, not in any other moment or somewhere else. It needs to arise in this mind right now, which is where bodhicitta can be present.

Making our Meditation Sessions and Sleep Matter: Two Pieces of Advices

In his commentary on the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, His Holiness refers to a Tibetan saying that can be understood as “bringing flesh and bone together,” meaning we should become one with our practice, in every aspect of our daily lives. In a teaching on the life of the Eighth Gyalwang Karmapa, Mikyö Dorje, he also emphasizes that genuine dharma practice consists of working with and changing our minds. Since our mind is with us 24/7, our practice is also 24/7. Not paying attention to our mind could, he taught, result in non-virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind. So, how do we practice throughout the day? To this end, His Holiness offered two practical pieces of advice. 

  • Before ending our formal meditation sessions, to prevent our practice from leaving us as swift as a finger snap or fading slowly , we could tell ourselves: “After I finish this session, throughout the rest of the day, I will try to retain the flavor of this experience and state of mind.” 
  • Before going to sleep, we can reflect on what our day was like. What did we do during the day? What was virtuous and what was not? “When we have separated one from the other, we can make a commitment that the next day we will try to increase positive actions and decrease negative ones.” If we can go to sleep in this way, His Holiness notes, “our sleep will not be useless or without purpose; it will turn into a positive state of mind, and thereby the power of what is virtuous will increase.” 

With these two practical pieces of advice from His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, we brought this session to a close and ended with dedicating the merit. In our next session, Acharya Lhakpa Tshering will continue his commentary and teachings on Ngulchu Tokmé’s text, resuming with the eighth verse.

Intermezzo: Following in The Footsteps of the First Karmapa

Our first session of the international New Year, 2025 was dedicated to commemorating the parinirvāṇa anniversary of the First Karmapa, Düsum Khyenpa. His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, shared a beautiful verse on Facebook, on January 3rd. While it is difficult, if not impossible, to capture the profoundness and beauty of His Holiness’s writing in Tibetan, we wrote an English translation for our session, which we read together:

“Water cascading from the ocean of all that can be known in the three times
Flowing into a single vessel of omniscience –
The great sage who takes in the whole universe of appearance and existence at once,
Glorious Jetsün Lama, today I fondly remember you.”

— Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje

Resting our Minds, Opening our Hearts

Since Acharya Lhakpa Tshering will not resume his teachings on The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva until January 19, we began our session by contemplating the verses covered so far, along with additional quotes from the sūtras and commentaries by His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa and His Eminence the 10th Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche. Before discussing those, we started with the usual practice of śamatha (calm-abiding). 

Reminding ourselves of the importance of our physical and mental posture, everyone present was encouraged to sit comfortably in an upright position—firmly grounded yet relaxed, not minding the past nor the future, resting in the present moment. Sitting with a sense of ease, everyone was invited to open their hearts and give rise to bodhicitta. Paying attention to the movement of our minds–what to do when there are a lot of thoughts and distraction or when we lose our mindfulness because of being sleepy–we practiced śamatha to let the mind settle. As Acharya Lhakpa usually says, simply be aware. 

The Thirty-Seven Practices: A Lamrim Text

In his introduction to A Guide to the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, Christopher Stagg writes about the format of Ngulchu Tokmé’s root text, which follows the lamrim, or stages of the path teachings. This means it stands within the long lineage of the Kadampa tradition, considered to be first taught by the great master Atīśa (c. 982–1054) who wrote the foundational text Bodhipathapradipa (In Tibetan: བྱང་ཆུབ་ལམ་གྱི་སྒྲོན་མ།), In English: Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment). 

Ngulchu Tokmé is a later commentator in this lineage, which traces back to Atīśa via the great Kadampa teachers Chekawa, Sharawa, Langri Thangpa, Potow, and Dromtönpa, Atīśa’s main disciple. Like Atīśa, Tokmé’s text follows a key aspect of the lamrim teachings: He categorizes the various practices progressively based on three types of beings’ or (humans’) ability–lesser, middling, and great. In verses 8, 9, and 10, he points to these, which Acharya Lhakpa will likely comment on in his upcoming teachings. 

It seems a somewhat auspicious coincidence to pause and contemplate verses 1 to 7. What we have covered so far can be taken as a collection of preliminary practices with one single wisdom intent: turning the mind away from saṁsāra and towards the Dharma. This ends with the verse about taking refuge–both outer and inner–as explained by Acharya Lhakpa during our previous session. 

Lojong: A Pithy Set of Verses for Everyone to Cultivate Bodhicitta

Ngulchu Tokmé also stands in the tradition of lojong. Christopher Stagg explains that this genre “concentrates specifically on the cultivation of relative and absolute bodhicitta, and on working practically and directly with one’s personal situation in everyday life.” 

To make the teachings workable for everyone, including those who have little time to study the many sūtras and commentaries, the text is composed in verse form and is only forty-three verses long. We can see this quality of the text already reflected in the first seven verses, which speak directly to our hearts. In his commentaries, Acharya Lhakpa further highlighted this by often relating the verses to our own lives and today’s world. Below is an overview of summaries of his teachings: 

The Meaning of the Instruction “Give Rise to Bodhicitta” 

With verse 10 pointing to the Mahayana path, the remainder of Ngulchu Tokmé’s text presents the practices for those with the third and highest kind of (human) ability. Here, cultivating bodhicitta is put at the very heart of each instruction. While Acharya Lhakpa will surely elaborate further on this in upcoming sessions, we briefly looked at a definition of the widely used term bodhicitta. 

In the great Kagyü master Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation, as translated by Ken Holmes and edited by Thupten Jinpa, bodhicitta is defined as follows: 

“The ‘thought of awakening,’ an altruistic resolve to attain buddhahood for the benefit of all beings.” 

Looking carefully at this definition, we can see that it is characterized by an object–the full awakening of buddhahood, and a purpose–the fulfillment of other’s welfare.

Furthermore, bodhicitta is typically divided into two parts, often translated as relative bodhicitta and ultimate bodhicitta. Whereas the first relates to the altruistic resolve, the second is about the direct realization of the emptiness of the fully awakened mind. 

What is called relative bodhicitta is again divided into two, described by Gampopa as follows: 

  • Aspiration bodhichitta: the wish to attain the genuine thought of awakening.
  • Engaged bodhicitta: the actual training in the thought of awakening. 

At the beginning of our practice, we are typically invited “to give rise to bodhicitta.” Knowing the above may help us to understand what that actually means, realizing that it is probably already a great sign of accomplishment if we genuinely feel the wish to attain the thought of awakening (aspiration bodhicitta). Acharya Lhakpa’s usual instruction is, therefore, illuminating and greatly supportive: “Give rise to positive thoughts, thinking ‘may this practice be a cause for all beings to attain enlightenment.’” 

Practice Brings Scriptures to Life

After delving a bit further into the background of the text and the thread of bodhicitta running through all verses, we had another look at the second opening verse: the purpose of the composition. 

In a commentary by the contemporary Kagyü master Sangye Nyenpa, only available in Tibetan and translated especially for Meditation for All, the meaning of “sources of benefit and happiness” is highlighted in connection with “depends on understanding their practices.” What does this mean? First, he posed the question: “How are the perfect buddhas the sources of benefit and happenings?” This is about the fact that the Buddha not only came to the world but that he also taught the genuine dharma, “without it, there would be no genuine dharma for us to practice to begin with.” 

So, we have the great fortune of a Buddha who came to our world and taught the dharma. However, that is not enough. Sangye Nyenpa somewhat playfully notes that we could stack many scriptures of the Buddha’s words together, yet, if we never study and contemplate them, forget about putting them into practice, that would be entirely pointless. 

On the other hand, if we engage with one single scripture, it could remove our mental afflictions and deal with the root of our confusion. “If we somehow separate the dharma from ourselves, putting one thing here and another there, so to speak, there is no benefit whatsoever.” Therefore, Ngulchu Tokmé points out the practices of the perfect buddhas so we can engage with those. 

I Have Given You the Lamp, but You Must Walk the Path

To further support the explanation given above, Sangye Nyenpa frequently quotes from the sūtras. During today’s session, we contemplated two phrases from the sūtras. Translated into English, the first reads as follows: 

“I have shown you the methods of liberation. Yet, know that freedom depends upon yourself.” 

Sangye Nyenpa comments that these two lines encompass all dharmas (in the sense of the  teachings of the Buddha). It illustrates that the Buddha taught what to reject–misdeeds,and what to adopt–virtue. He also taught how to attain freedom and traverse the five paths and ten bhumis. Yet, Sangye Nyenpa humorously comments: “The Buddha can’t just throw a stone in the air and then suddenly everyone is liberated.” Liberation, he says, depends on us. For that, we need to practice.

The second line from the sūtras says:  

“You are your own protector; you are also your own enemy.”

This is closely related to something Acharya Lhakpa also explained during one of our previous sessions. We may think of others as our protector or enemy. We may think that the hell realms, and so forth, are somewhere out there. We may think other forces lead us to fall into darkness and misery. However, as these words of the Buddha indicate, it is not like that. When we are very angry, our resident teacher noted, “hell is right there.” In this way, we are our own enemy.

This also means that if we engage in studying, contemplating, and meditating, as the very first practice of a bodhisattva, and work through the three higher trainings, then we can attain liberation and Buddhahood. In that sense, we are our own protector. 

In concluding today’s session, we summarized Sangye Nyenpa’s commentary by saying that we must know the practice and put it into action ourselves, otherwise we will not be able to accomplish the genuine Dharma. Reflecting on direct words of the Buddha and connecting them with Atīśa’s teaching, we can say that, like Ngulchu Tokmé with our text, they have given us the lamp, but we need to walk the path. 
Noting that we will do a contemplative meditation and look at commentary from His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, during our next session, we ended today’s Meditation for All with the dedication of merit: May we follow in the footsteps of the First Karmapa, and all attain the state of omniscient Buddhahood.