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In Tibetan we call the essential nature of mind Rigpa—primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. This nature of mind, its innermost essence, is absolutely and always untouched by change or death. At present it is hidden within our own mind, our sem, enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions. Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so, under certain circumstances, some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light of understanding, meaning and freedom.

This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding.

The heart of the whole thing is understanding. Not intellectual understanding, although that’s a way to begin. It’s deeply seeing into yourself. And that to me is different from concentration, which can of course facilitate such clear seeing. Many things help you with concentration, like chanting or bowing, so they can be useful parts of practice. But finally, there is no substitute for insightful seeing or for understanding how you create suffering for yourself; and in the process—in seeing into and through it - how to let go of it. It’s a life of awareness. That’s my passion. Now, there’s a school of Zen that emphasizes just-awareness of what is, and I could easily have gone in that direction. That’s Soto Zen, and a practice called shikan-taza—just sitting—and when that ripens, that to me is mature practice. It’s nothing. You sit and you’re just totally attentive to what’s there. What I teach, anapanasati, leads to that, to more and more simplicity until finally we don’t need techniques and methods, even the breath. [Anapanasati is where breathing is used as an exclusive object of attention to develop concentrated focus; then awareness grounded in the breathing is used to see clearly into the impermenant and empty nature of all formations. Letting go into freedom emerges into insight. - LR] I don’t impose it on people. I let them come to it naturally. But for me, I’ve always been much more drawn to just awareness of the way things are. Krishnamurti - whose teaching is a brilliant modern commentary on the fundamental teaching of mindfulness—started me that way, and I’ve always come back to it.--Larry Rosenberg is the founder of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) and a guiding teacher of Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. His new book, Breath by Breath, was recently published by Shambhala. Born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in 1932, Rosenberg grew up in Brooklyn; his father, who had Marxist leanings, came from fourteen generations of rabbis, but thought “that only an idiot goes into religion.”

You can think of the nature of mind like a mirror, with five different powers or “wisdoms.” Its openness and vastness is the “wisdom of all-encompassing space,” the womb of compassion. Its capacity to reflect in precise detail whatever comes before it is the “mirrorlike wisdom.” Its fundamental lack of any bias toward any impression is the “equalizing wisdom.” Its ability to distinguish clearly, without confusing in any way the various different phenomena that arise, is the “wisdom of discernment.” And its potential of having everything already accomplished, perfected, and spontaneously present is the “all-accomplishing wisdom".--Sogyal Rinpoche

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MIND BY DUDJOM RINPOCHE
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.

Buddha said, "This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds /
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. /
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, /
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain."

>Enlightened Wisdom of Siddhartha Gautama... "The Buddha"
(These words were taken from one of the original sources of the Buddha's teachings - [The Tipitaka] which was written around 80 B.C.)

"Be a light onto yourself.
"Those who are awake, live in a state of constant amazement.
"As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are, otherwise you will miss most of your life.
"The way cannot be forced.
"The Fruit falls from the Tree when it is ripe.
"If you can't find the truth right where you are, where else do you think you can find it?
"If you wish to feel the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
"To meditate is to listen with a receptive heart.
"Take time everyday to sit quietly and listen.
"Do not blindly believe what others say, even the Buddha.
"See for yourself what brings contentment, clarity and peace. That is the path for you to follow.
"When our heart opens, we will realize that we belong just here.
"Good-humored patience is necessary with mischievous children, and your own mind.
"If you could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, your whole life would change.
"Even loss and betrayal can bring us awakening.
"Words have the power to destroy or heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

BODHICHITTA PRAYER

Bodhichitta Prayer.pdf

The compassionate wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all others is called Bodhicitta in Sanskrit: bodhi refers to ourenlightened essence, and citta means "heart." So we could translate it as "the heart of our enlightened mind." To awaken and develop the heart of the enlightened mind is to ripen steadily the seed of our buddha nature, that seed that, in the end, when our practice of compassion has become perfect and all-embracing, will flower majestically into buddhahood. Bodhicitta, then, is the spring and source and root of the entire spiritual path. This is why in our tradition we pray with such urgency:

Those who haven't yet given birth to precious Bodhicitta,

May they give birth,
Those who have given birth,
May their Bodhicitta not lessen
but increase further and further.

article from www.alternet.org: MEDITATION MAY PROTECT YOUR BRAIN
By Michael Haederle, Miller-McCune.com
Posted on November 22, 2008, Printed on December 2, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/108204/

For thousands of years, Buddhist meditators have claimed that the simple act of sitting down and following their breath while letting go of intrusive thoughts can free one from the entanglements of neurotic suffering.

Now, scientists are using cutting-edge scanning technology to watch the meditating mind at work. They are finding that regular meditation has a measurable effect on a variety of brain structures related to attention -- an example of what is known as neuroplasticity, where the brain physically changes in response to an intentional exercise.

A team of Emory University scientists reported in early September that experienced Zen meditators were much better than control subjects at dropping extraneous thoughts and returning to the breath. The study, "'Thinking about Not-Thinking:' Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing During Zen Meditation," published by the online research journal PLoS ONE, found that "meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation."

The same researchers reported last year that longtime meditators don't lose gray matter in their brains with age the way most people do, suggesting that meditation may have a neuro-protective effect. A rash of other studies in recent years meanwhile have found, for example, that practitioners of insight meditation have noticeably thicker tissue in the prefrontal cortex (the region responsible for attention and control) and that experienced Tibetan monks practicing compassion meditation generate unusually strong and coherent gamma waves in their brains.

"There are a lot of potential applications for this," said Milos Cekic, a member of the Emory research team and himself a longtime meditator. He suspects the simple practice of focusing attention on the breath could help patients suffering from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and other conditions characterized by excessive rumination.

Meanwhile, a meditation-derived program developed at the University of Massachusetts called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is gaining popularity for treatment of anxiety and chronic illnesses at medical centers around the U.S.

As far back as the 1960s, Japanese scientists who used electroencephalograms (EEG) to measure the brain waves of Zen monks found characteristic patterns of activity. But the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the 1990s gave researchers a chance to see brains functioning in real time. Functional MRIs measure the blood flow in different parts of the brain, which correlates with how active they are.

The Emory team, which also included Giuseppe Pagnoni and Ying Guo, wanted to see whether Zen meditators were indeed better than novices at controlling the flow of thought, as meditators themselves report. Cekic and Pagnoni asked a dozen seasoned Zen meditators -- including several monks -- and a dozen control subjects to perform a simple cognitive task while undergoing an fMRI scan. The Zen practitioners all had at least three years of daily practice experience, while the control group members had none.

Inside the scanner, the subjects were all asked to follow their breathing while looking at a screen on which words or wordlike combinations of letters were flashed at irregular intervals. Students had to decide whether they were seeing a real word or a made-up word and signal by pressing a button and then return to focusing on their breathing.

The random word or letter combinations engaged what is sometimes called the "default semantic network," a resting state in which words and thoughts arise spontaneously -- what we experience as mind wandering, Cekic said. Practitioners of zazen (seated Zen meditation) are taught to notice when the mind has started to wander and quickly return attention to the breath.

When the word or letter combinations flashed on the screen, the experienced meditators were quickly able to leave the default state and return to their breathing, Cekic says. "You have these extended reverberations in the semantic network after you give people a word," Cekic said. "The meditators pretty much turn it off as soon as it's physiologically possible, while the non-meditators don't."

This is the second set of findings to have come from the fMRI experiments, Cekic said. Although people lose neurons -- gray matter — and have more trouble concentrating as they age, the study published last year by the Emory team found this wasn't true of the Zen practitioners.

"What we saw in the meditators was pretty much a straight line," Cekic said. "There was no decrease with age in their gray-matter volume." There was also no decline in attention -- in fact, the effect of meditation on gray matter was most pronounced in the putamen, a brain structure linked to attention. "We can't say causally that meditation prevents cell death, but we did see in our sample that the meditators did not see a gray matter loss with age," Cekic said.

Meanwhile, Harvard University researcher Sara Lazar made headlines in 2005 when she reported that Western practitioners of insight meditation -- a non-judgmental awareness of present-moment experience that resembles zazen -- had significantly thicker tissue in their prefrontal cortex and insula than non-meditators.

Lazar, who practices insight meditation and yoga, performed fMRI scans on 20 experienced meditators and 15 controls with no meditation experience. Lazar said that because earlier research had mostly been conducted on monks, she wanted to see whether the once-a-day meditation sessions typical of most American meditators might affect brain structures.

Unlike earlier research, which had focused on brain waves or measured neural blood flow, Lazar's experiment yielded the first concrete evidence linking meditation practice to changed brain structure. "The nice thing about (studying) the structure is it's something solid," she said. "It's not performance on a task. It's your brain."

Lazar says it's too soon to tell whether meditation causes new gray matter to form or whether it protects against the normal decline of brain volume. The greatest contrasts were seen between the cortical tissue of meditators and control subjects who were in their 40s and 50s, she says, while the insula, which integrates sensory processing, was thicker in meditators of all ages.

Future research will require longitudinal studies -- following subjects through time -- to see whether or not meditation is causing the neural changes. "Maybe meditators are weird," Lazar said, suggesting that perhaps people with unusual brains are especially drawn to meditation.

Where does all this lead?

Andrew Newberg, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who has written such popular books as Why We Believe What We Believe and who has conducted brain scans of meditating Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns engaged in contemplative prayer, believes the science shows meditation works.

"The overwhelming evidence is that meditation has benefits," he said. "If it makes your mind clearer and helps you focus your attention better, it should help people."

For more than a decade, Newberg has plumbed spiritual mysteries, using fMRI and SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) to measure blood flow in the brains of not only meditators but people in the throes of other religious experiences, including speaking in tongues, as well.

"The fascinating thing to me is that when people have these mystical experiences, they not only describe it as real, but they describe it as more real than our everyday experience," he said. It raises the question of just what is real.

"I recognize that studying some of the things I study may get me to an answer," he added. "A lot of this has been my own spiritual journey, which has become a lot more meditative and contemplative."

Miller-McCune magazine and Miller-McCune.com draw on academic research and other definitive sources to provide reasoned policy options and solutions for today's pressing issues.

Michael Haederle lives in New Mexico. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and many other publications.

By the power and truth of this practice
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness
Be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
May they never be separated from the great happiness, devoid of suffering
And may they dwell in the great equanimity that is free from passion, agression, and prejudice.

Integrating the Base, the Path, and the Fruit


Ha A Ha Sha Sa Ma Mamakolin Samata

The Flight of the Garuda.pdf

The above text can be read on Acrobat Reader.

Excerpt from THE FLIGHT OF THE GARUDA
EHMAHO! This carefree and free-speaking vagrant with the deep intelligence now sings "The Flight of the Garuda", a song of vision, facilitating fast ascent of all the stages and paths. Listen attentively, my beloved sons and daughters!

Like the roar of the dragon, the great name of Buddha resounds throughout the universe, in samsara and nirvana. Constantly vibrating in the minds of the six types of sentient beings, how wonderful that this resonance is not silent a moment! ....

Teachings on The Flight of the Garuda are available to persons who have registered to receive webcasts from Chogyal Namkhai Norbu. Replay of these teachings are available through April 20, 2008.

Eight Verses Commentary by Dalai Lama.pdf

Eight Verses Lojong.pdf


The essential training of the mind for every practitioner....

The slogan, "Purify First Whichever Action (Emotional Affliction) is Heaviest," the following lists such and remedies the apply:

If ATTACHMENT or DESIRE, meditate on impermanence and the impurity of the body.

If HATRED or AGGRESSION, cultivate love.

If IGNORANCE or SHEER INDIFFERENCE, meditate on emptiness and cultivate intelligent awareness.

If PRIDE and ARROGANCE, mediate on impermanence, the suffering of our own life, cyclic existence, and the misery of other sentient beings such as animals.

May All Sentient Beings Benefit!