These powerful words echo through twenty-five centuries of humanity to reach our ears today. It makes one's spine tingle to think how many voices—now long silent—have uttered these words in each of the one hundred generations that have come and gone since Sirimanda first composed them. How many have heeded their message? How many can hear it today? This is the kind of literature that leads some to view Buddhism as holding a pessimistic outlook on the world. But in fact it is merely expressing … [Read more...]
Freedom Through Not Knowing
I was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1974, and trained in that tradition—the Geluk tradition, the more scholarly tradition of Tibetan Buddhism—for the following six or seven years. Part of that training involved dialectics, the logical and critical analysis of Buddhist doctrine. One of the assurances I was given as a young monk was that, were I to devote myself to this critical inquiry, I would come to certainty that ideas such as rebirth and karma can be demonstrated by reason to be … [Read more...]
Shining the Light of Death on Life: Maranasati Meditation (Part II)
The first part of this article which appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of Insight ended with this quote from the great Tibetan yogi Milarepa: "In brief, without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial." What was Milarepa suggesting? When we forget about our own death, we may also be more likely to forget the dharma? If we don't recall death we will also lose the wish to train our minds in dharma? In forgetting about death do we become … [Read more...]
Shining the Light of Death on Life: Maranasati Meditation (Part I)
(Adapted from a workshop at BCBS on November 20, 1993) Meditation on death awareness is one of the oldest practices in all Buddhist traditions. In the words of the Buddha, “of all the footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme." The Tibetan Book of the Dead was one of the first and most popular books to attract the attention of Buddhist practitioners in America in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. The tremendous popularity … [Read more...]