Student’s Question: What is the significance of synchronicity?
When we really commit ourselves to the path of Awakening that sense of synchronicity tends to increase because somehow the inner and outer spheres of experience become increasingly integrated. It is very strange and happens intuitively – we start to intuit what is meaningful and is going to open out into a significant direction. The reason for this is very deep and so not easy to explain. Continue reading Student’s Question: What is the significance of synchronicity?
Student’s Question: How can we be re-inspired by the liturgy and reconnect to the Buddha?
The word Buddha is the presence and the presence is the word – they come together as a complete experience and the most natural expression of what the Buddha is in essence somehow. Continue reading Student’s Question: How can we be re-inspired by the liturgy and reconnect to the Buddha?
Student’s Question: What happens When Your Ego Fights Back!
It’s as if we open to the Dharma and a whole new possibility opens up and then the grasping mind suddenly realises it can’t grasp this and use it to secure itself. So it reacts and tries to say ‘It’s all rubbish anyway. There is nothing to open up to, it’s all fantasy, I am all right as I am, I don’t need to change’ and so on. It lasts for a while and the best thing to do is just recognise it for what it is. It’s just thoughts and feelings that you don’t have to take seriously. They come and go and try to sound very authoritative while they are around. Continue reading Student’s Question: What happens When Your Ego Fights Back!
Student’s Question: How do we balance developing confidence and working with ego-clinging thoughts in meditation?
Keep looking at the essence of all those ego-clinging thoughts. It is quite wonderful how thoughts appear in the spaciousness of awareness. There is no trick for avoiding our ego-clinging habits except to just keep noticing them and letting them go. Continue reading Student’s Question: How do we balance developing confidence and working with ego-clinging thoughts in meditation?
Student’s Question: What is the meaning of worship in Buddhism?
A Student asks about worship in Buddhism A student asks: “I feel that in Tibetan Buddhism there is a worshipping of the Buddha and other deities – do you think that I have misunderstood things? I thought that the Buddha emphasised that he didn’t want people to follow him, even less worship him. So why do we seem to follow that practice?” Lama: The Buddha … Continue reading Student’s Question: What is the meaning of worship in Buddhism?
Video: The Metta Sutta
This is a wonderful teaching from Lama Shenpen on the Metta Sutta and the power of love and compassion: “Love and compassion are not contrived, it’s our default nature. You can’t crank it up, the more we let go of our struggle and anxiety, the more it comes out naturally…” Continue reading Video: The Metta Sutta
Teaching Weekend in March
Lama Shenpen will be teaching at a retreat weekend event in Birmingham, UK in March. Practising Dharma in Everyday Life, 22nd – 24th March, will be a weekend retreat to explore how we can bring the profound teachings of Dharma and Meditation into our busy lives. Continue reading Teaching Weekend in March
