Author: Luna Kadampa

To rejoice is to appreciate something. … Examples of virtuous rejoicing are feeling happy when we see others engaging in virtue, feeling happy when we see others enjoying themselves, or feeling happy about our own virtuous actions. ~ Great Treasury of Merit The practice of rejoicing can really be as simple as that – we just appreciate or feel good about what other people are doing or feeling – their good deeds, realizations, or experiences. “Wow, that’s great, I’m really happy about that!” That’s it! How hard is that? That’s the thing – rejoicing can be so simple and yet so…

By Clare Morin There are moments in our meditation practice where we get a glimpse of our mind’s potential. Our otherwise incessant mental chatter ceases for a while and we meet our capacity for radiant, soaring peace. We meet our Buddha nature. There is a moment in Brooklyn-based composer Douglas J. Cuomo’s recent album and performance project, Seven Limbs, that captures this moment of radiant insight. And it makes me cry every time I hear it. It arises about 11 minutes into the 70-minute musical odyssey, in a section called ‘Offering: Parts II and III’. Nels Cline, the legendary guitarist of…

I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you this, but my favorite practice in the world is rejoicing. One reason for this may be that I’m basically very lazy and don’t like doing practical things. Anyone who knows me well would probably agree. If I could, I would just sit around all day long and do nothing. That’s my happy place. You may not believe me, but it actually is true. It may be why I have never minded long plane flights, let alone days (or years) off. Of course, I regularly have to come out and do stuff, like…

A guest article My name is Jan J and I’ve been a practising Kadampa for many years. I work full time and, like many, have family commitments and responsibilities, which means that finding the time for formal Buddhist or Dharma practice can be difficult. Some years ago I realised that I had to change my relationship with Dharma practice if I really wanted to make progress. Rather than trying to force Dharma practice into the tiny space of time I had ‘available’ between all the other responsibilities in my life, I had to take seriously the advice of my teacher,…

What do Buddhists like me have faith in? I’ll start with what I try not to have too much faith in. If we have faith in our Buddhist religion as a inherently existent system, and holy beings as saviors who are inherently different to us — “I am over here inherently unworthy and you are over there inherently pure! Save us!” – we could run the danger of falling into an ancient trap. Some good karma ripened on me yesterday when I met a gorgeous young Black woman – we got chatting in a café and spent the next three…

Buddha’s teachings on Sutra and Tantra are all designed to solve our suffering and center us in the solution. This is quite a big subject, so I’m going to try and streamline it by dividing Buddha’s teachings into five parts, called the “five seeds”. I didn’t make this up – Je Pabongkhapa, who is the Guru of my Guru’s Guru – my Great-Grand-Guru as it were – suggested we sow these five seeds together and let them all ripen together. In general within Kadampa Buddhism we touch on these every day in our meditation sessions and daily lives – once…

I’ve been watching a couple of gentle dramas unfold on the other side of this lake. First up, a group of schoolchildren skipping along laughing – such potential, and with their whole future ahead of them. What will this strange world look like for them? Will they be able to keep up this enthusiasm? Will these small human beings meet the path to enlightenment and realize their actual spiritual potential? Next was a group of mentally disabled adults, whose Buddha nature was shining through their innocent faces — as it was in their supervisor trying so hard to get them…

Buddhist meditation is said to be the path that leads from joy to joy, culminating in the spontaneous great joy of Tantric completion stage and full enlightenment. Sometimes we might think we have to postpone our joy to some point in the future, like when we are a proper decent meditator, and that it’s okay to be miserable practicing Buddhism in the meantime because, after all, we are creating the causes for future happiness. But there is something not quite right about this way of thinking, which is one reason we have this Kadampa motto: Always rely upon a happy…

A guest article My name is Jan J and I’ve been a practising Kadampa for many years. I’ve collected together some thoughts that have arisen as a result of mixing Buddhism (Dharma) with everyday appearances, including nature; and share them with you in this and future articles in the hope they might be of some small benefit to at least one person who reads them. These 4 anecdotes are all to do with birds. Flights of fancy Sitting in a garden yesterday, I noticed a bird behaving oddly – he was tapping on the shed window, flapping around a little,…

In a world of illusion, what matters? For one thing, I think it’s important to explore  the connection between our intentions and our experiences — the infallible law of cause and effect as applied to our consciousness — so that we’re in charge of where our daily actions are taking us. To be free, we need to observe the law of karma – practicing ethics and kindness and ideally bodhichitta so as to create the best possible intentions. Why? Because everything is mere karmic appearance of mind. Our intentions are what sow the seeds for what appears to our mind as…