Online Teaching from Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 1 June 2020
In order to be able to teach the lives and liberations of authentic masters you must be learned in both history and the dharma, they are a vast and difficult topic, so I am not someone who can teach them properly. But as practitioners we need to hear about these life stories as a way […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 28 February 2020
I am not a lama, but I try to live like a lama. Since people think of me as being a Buddhist ‘lama’, I have this name ‘lama’, then I think I should at least try to be like a lama. And you too should try to be disciples, if you are considered, or consider […]
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 Center, Nepal, 27th April 2020
For those aspiring to practice the dharma there is nothing more important than meeting a good lama.
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, 7th April 2020
Some who run dharma institutions feel that if their students or members were to direct all their time and effort to study and practice that there would not be enough people to look after the daily running of the centre. For example it has happened more than once, and in both the East and the […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 12 April 2020
Do your best not to disappoint those who love you, care for you, who place their trust in you and want the best for you. Try your best to repay their kindness. Being able to recognise who has been good to one is a sign of a mature and intelligent person. Failing to recognise that […]
Teaching on 'A Torch for the Definitive Meaning' at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 28th May 2015
Photo: Fr. Giuseppe Berardelli, a 72-year-old priest in Bergamo, Italy, who gave a respirator (that his parishioners had purchased for him) to a younger patient (whom he did not know), has died from coronavirus. Many people think that one becomes a bodhisattva by helping others, but that is not necessarily the case. Giving a […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 24th Mars 2020
If you still have a worldly view, you could found a monastery and it would be a worldly act, you could start a dharma centre and it would be a worldly act, you could even teach the dharma and that too would be a worldly act. But if you have a dharma view, all that […]
Advice given to the western students in Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, Nepal, July 2016
Real Buddhism is not in the texts, not in the monasteries, not in the retreat centres, not in the shedras, not in the dharma centres, nor are you likely to find it in the towns and cities. And you might think, ‘If Buddhism, the dharma, is not in the monasteries, where is it?’ What we […]
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 10th February 2020
The word for dharma in Tibetan is ཆོས་ (chö), which is related to the word འཆོས, which means to repair or to correct. When I see those who consider themselves students of mine conducting themselves unskilfully, I may well tell them that they are doing wrong, with the hope that they will see why it […]
Kagyu Samye Ling, Scotland, 15th June 2019
What I have to say concerns me personally. At the moment I’m quite sure there are a number of people who are highly critical of me, who don’t like me. But in my eyes I don’t have a single enemy in this world. I don’t mind what people say about me, I’ve got nothing against […]
Admonition to students, Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 7th February 2020
Just be normal. I do not expect you to be accomplished yogis. I do not expect you to be great bodhisattvas. But if you can be normal, level headed, decent, polite people, the sort of person who is switched on, easy going and courteous, that will suffice for now.
Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal, 12th January 2020
Don’t think it doesn’t matter what people think about you. It makes a big difference to them and to you. If you do or say something that causes someone to have negative thoughts, that is bad for them and since you were the cause of that, it is bad for you. Every action brings a […]
9 February 2020, instructions given in the first practice session of the new six-year retreat cycle at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Center, Nepal
If we totally exhaust ourselves during prostrations, pushing ourselves against our will, our mind will resist what we are doing; we’ll get fed up and become averse to doing prostrations. We shouldn’t do that. If that happens, there’s no merit in what we are doing. Our body will be going through the motions and we […]
