We regularly go for refuge during our normal lives. We take refuge in food, money, sex, government, the police, a job, friends, family, etc. We routinely take refuge in ordinary things or people, thinking that they will be able to protect us or shield us from unhappiness and suffering. Those types of refuge can only help us temporarily, and we are eventually disappointed by their inability to bring us a lasting, permanent happiness. Spiritual refuge is very different. It is to rely upon things which are infallible and provide true happiness, without fail. This practice teaches what it really means to take ultimate refuge, and why one must pursue infallible, extraordinary objects of refuge to reach a complete, lasting happiness.
Topics include: what is the perfection of wisdom, what is refuge, the objects of refuge, the reasons for taking Buddhist refuge, the qualities of a Buddha, the different types of bodhichitta, what is nirvana, the divisions of nirvana, five different proofs that emptiness is the ultimate nature of reality, and the five paths which lead to full enlightenment.
After spending many years at His teacher’s side, Geshe Michael teaches us the Steps of the Path to Enlightenment using beautiful examples and stories of how His own teacher’s life reflected these Lam Rim teachings. One of the greatest ways to learn these teachings is simply to observe the behavior of a great teacher who has received and mastered these teachings themselves.
Around 1000 AD, 1500 years after the time of the Buddha, the Tibetans undertook a monumental task: to translate thousands of pages of Buddhist literature from Sanskrit into Tibetan. It took them 700 years to complete translations of the kangyur (the word of the Buddha) and the tengyur (the Indian commentaries). Now, as Buddhism has been making a big push westward, Geshe Michael’s aim is to complete an even larger task: to translate hundreds of thousands of pages of Buddhist literature into modern languages.
Based on the great Tibetan Classic, A Gift of Liberation: Thrust into the Palm of Our Hand written by Pabonka Rinpoche, this retreat focused on using death meditation to reinvigorate your life and your practice and included the popular 3 day “Retreat within a Retreat”. This 10-day installment finished the portion of the text describing the animal and hell realms, included a beautiful death meditation and began the section of the Lam Rim which discusses the beautiful practice of going for refuge.
Based on the great Tibetan Classic, A Gift of Liberation: Thrust into the Palm of Our Hand written by Pabonka Rinpoche, this retreat focused on using death meditation to reinvigorate your life and your practice and included the popular 3 day “Retreat within a Retreat”. This 10-day installment finished the portion of the text describing the animal and hell realms, included a beautiful death meditation and began the section of the Lam Rim which discusses the beautiful practice of going for refuge.
Based on the great Tibetan Classic, A Gift of Liberation: Thrust into the Palm of Our Hand written by Pabonka Rinpoche, this retreat focused on using death meditation to reinvigorate your life and your practice and included the popular 3 day “Retreat within a Retreat”. This 10-day installment finished the portion of the text describing the animal and hell realms, included a beautiful death meditation and began the section of the Lam Rim which discusses the beautiful practice of going for refuge.
Based on the great Tibetan Classic, A Gift of Liberation: Thrust into the Palm of Our Hand written by Pabonka Rinpoche, this retreat focused on using death meditation to reinvigorate your life and your practice and included the popular 3 day “Retreat within a Retreat”. This 10-day installment finished the portion of the text describing the animal and hell realms, included a beautiful death meditation and began the section of the Lam Rim which discusses the beautiful practice of going for refuge.
In this series of classes, Geshe Michael dives deeper into the subject of protection using a famous book called The Necklace of Understanding (Abhisamayalankara), which was revealed by Maitreya to Arya Asanga, in which he teaches about what it means to take refuge by covering the following three topics: 1. What it means to go for refuge, 2. Where you go for refuge (The Three Jewels), and 3. The Four Bodies of a Buddha.
Based on the great Tibetan Classic, A Gift of Liberation: Thrust into the Palm of Our Hand written by Pabonka Rinpoche, this retreat focused on using death meditation to reinvigorate your life and your practice and included the popular 3 day “Retreat within a Retreat”. This 10-day installment finished the portion of the text describing the animal and hell realms, included a beautiful death meditation and began the section of the Lam Rim which discusses the beautiful practice of going for refuge.
This collection of classes is for the purpose of having a regular daily practice. It’s different than many of the other courses here on The Knowledge Base which are meant to teach the philosophy, or intellectual background, of Buddhism. These classes were on monday nights and were taught in a completely different style, focusing on all the most practical and essential elements that should be done each day to really get the most out of all the other intellectual study.
The following story recounts in brief some of the events in the life of the great bodhisattva Shantideva. It is a paraphrase of sections from the Life Stories of the Lineage Teachers of the Steps of the Path (Lam-rim bla-ma brgyud-pa'i rnam-thar) written by Yongdzin Yeshe Gyeltsen (1713-1793), the teacher of the eighth Dalai Lama.
This is the original Sutra on the Four Powers. The teaching on removing our old bad karma was taught by Lord Buddha himself, and so is an authentic instruction that we can believe in and try ourselves. What follows next is the entire text of the work which is the original source of the Four Powers; it comes from the Kangyur, or collection of Lord Buddha’s teachings translated into Tibetan from the original Sanskrit.