In the footsteps of the Buddha

My last post was about how ego operates. One aspect of understanding ego is with the intellect and the other is to experience how this unconscious identification with a false sense of self is happening in myself.  The first aspect is challenging enough but to actually be aware of my ego and being able to [...]

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The Buddhist teachings explain that we are not free because we are controlled by our negative emotions. For example, in the reflection on the suffering nature of samsara, which is part of brief version of the Four Thoughts from the Ngöndro practice, it says: “Driven by anger, desire, and ignorance, gods, men, animals, hungry ghosts [...]

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My teachers have emphasized that it is much more useful to focus on understanding how ignorance works than to get lost in speculation about how it could have arisen in the first place. In his latest book, Uncommon Happiness, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche gives a wonderful explanation of how ignorance works: “With the support of the [...]

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Buddha taught that ignorance is what imprisons us. The Tibetan word for ignorance is ‘marigpa,’ sometimes translated as ‘not seeing,’ whereas ‘rigpa’ means ‘seeing’ or ‘pure awareness’. As I mentioned in one my last posts, the only difference between a Buddha and a sentient beings is this: Buddhas are able to see the world as [...]

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A good way to contemplate the natural freedom of the mind, which I wrote about in last two posts, is to reflect on what keeps us from being free. In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche recounts the Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh’s beautiful description of the Buddha’s enlightenment: Thich Nhat Hanh [...]

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