Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, Spring 2022
A retreat lama once died in the retreat place where I and my main lamas and their root lama (Lama Tsepal) stayed. It was before my time though. The lama who had died was sitting upright on his seat in meditation posture, while other retreatants were doing prayers and meditating. When Lama Tsepal entered the […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 17th May 2022
If your view is wrong, your meditation will be wrong and the subsequent result will be wrong. First of all then, we need the right view, otherwise the rest of what we do will only take us in the wrong direction. So how do we get the right view? As it is said, ‘First, establish […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, April 2022
When we come to learn meditation we carry the assumption that we already know the mind. Right from the start we speak of, ‘my mind’ and ‘all these thoughts’ as if we know what we are talking about. Nobody has ever come to me saying that they do not know the mind. Through the meditation […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, November 2022
A reply to a student’s request for advanced meditation instruction. I sincerely wish for you to know Mahamudra. Perhaps I feel a greater sense of urgency about it than even you do yourself. You may wonder why I teach meditation when I travel abroad, but not to you here in the retreat centre. Well, truth […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat, Nepal, Summer 2021
It’s very important that right from the beginning we link our dharma practice and our everyday experience as much as possible. If we continue to see our practice as something we merely imagine as we sit on the cushion, unrelated to the rest of our experience that we call ‘real life’, we will never come […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 7th February 2018
If you are serious about learning mahamudra or dzogchen and you think you will have the opportunity to receive such authentic meditation instructions from a qualified lama, you should avoid reading any books or texts on these topics beforehand. To do so would be to commit meditation suicide. The vocabulary from such books that will […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 10th September 2021
In its simplest form, to recognise the nature of mind is to recognise the thoughts that run through our head and our habitual ways of thinking. It’s impossible to recognise the true nature of mind without first recognising the grosser nature of mind. The role of the lama is to first introduce us to the […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 27th August 2019
If we regard our afflictions as something like garbage to be thrown out and gotten rid of, then we won’t look at them very carefully. As soon as we notice an affliction, we will immediately want to get rid of it, won’t we? Taking this approach our practice will become more and more difficult and […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, Summer 2021
Our normal way of being will show us how our practice is going, not how long we can sit on the cushion.
Meditation Retreat, Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland, 10th Oct 2016
In general we should set aside a particular time for formal practice, and keep to it very conscientiously. Within the sessions we should apply the methods taught for clearing agitation and dullness, and do our very best not to fall under their sway. The level of concentration and care with which we should try to […]
Online Teaching from Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 13 June 2020
Many people see mahamudra and dzogchen to be rather easy. But the early masters of Kagyu lineages didn’t see them to be easy, just look how hard they worked and what they put themselves through to attain them. For example Naropa was already a pandita, had advanced practice generation stage practice, and even had visions […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 16 July 2020
You can’t practise that which doesn’t appear in your mind. If you are to practise developing loving-kindness, for instance, there is a particular order to it, and this order applies to any practice. Sticking with the example of love though, you first have to learn what love is. You have to be able to distinguish […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 16th May 2020
To understand meditation we must understand how our mind fabricates. When we understand the fabricated we automatically understand the unfabricated; then we are well on the way to proper meditation. At the moment most of us are stuck in the loop of fabricating what we think is an unfabricated state.
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 16th April 2020
If to talk about or communicate your meditation to someone you need to rely on words like ‘the nature of mind’, ‘clear light’, ’spacious’, ‘peaceful’, ‘blissful’, ‘emptiness’, or even need to talk of thoughts and mind, there is probably an issue in your understanding of meditation. If we were to sit listening to two meditators […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 12 December 2019
We often see new Buddhists, or old Buddhists who have not studied much dharma, getting ahead of themselves and making plans to run off to the mountains. This shows a lack of understanding and experience of dharma. In order to practise alone in solitude, and to be able to practice properly, we must have first […]
