Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Many people want to re-experience what it felt like to be alive when they were a child. For many, the memory of that effervescent way of looking at life is remembered as feeling really alive. As time and daily stress take their toll, many begin to feel less and less alive. This is too bad because the sense of feeling alive has become mixed with the aging process. These two should not be connected; they are two completely different issues. However, the problem is that without a stabilized energetic system it is very hard to feel that special alive. As we all know, almost all children produce a tremendous quantity of fresh new energy and as they don't have a very clogged up system so they are able to be light, flexible and open to themselves and the world around them. They perform activities and feel very alive because there's not a whole lot there to be stabilized. As that child gets older, these physical energies that originally were produced as mental energies move and join to...

There are ordinary good wishes for others and then there are the extraordinary wishes. There already exists a wonderful buddhist model for an extraordinary wish for every living being to realize boundless good qualities. “May all sentient beings have happiness and the cause of happiness” This is the wish that desires to lift all living beings away from self-centeredness toward true happiness and freedom. It also lifts us toward the optimistic view that affirms and implies that living beings are truly capable of realizing those boundless and timeless great qualities. Our own personal qualities and ability to actually grant or to wish good qualities for others depends completely on our stage of development. Sometimes it might feel just like when we were small, creating a magic wand from a twig or toilet plunger and happy tapping everyone turn by turn. “Now you are happy”. I knew a little boy who would tap people on the head if they had a cold and he would say, “Now you’re ok.” I have see...

What makes this dharma talk different than most is that often the subject of enlightenment creates anxiety so people not want to discuss. Enlightenment is this thing that you should be trying to do, you are very bad and wrong not to be enlightened already, and you should be making more effort towards this enlightenment thingy. However, today I am more interested in knowing what you think enlightenment is.The reason for asking is because there is something inside you, which has produced energetic attitudes that are not easy to describe or even encouraged to be revealed by yourself or others. So, for the purpose of gaining progress for the benefit of all sentient beings, I am absolutely not interested in hearing you tell us something that even you don't believe is true, down deep. I am already bored to hear once again what you read in Tricycle Magazine or on the back of a bus by His Holiness the Dalai Lama exhorting you to peace and hope. Nah! For the purpose of this right now let’s...

Surfer rose long before dawn. In fact it was shortly after falling asleep that he woke again. Thinking to get an early start in the waves, he walked in deep darkness the few blocks to the ocean; new surfboard under his arm. He hardly noticed and did not much care that he was absolutely naked but did notice right away that he not wearing shoes. This made it painful to walk on the gravel path but forgot even that because he soon was standing on the cliff overlooking his familiar secluded beach and ocean. Tonight was unusually foggy, he thought. Although he could hear waves that sounded like easy 2 footers hitting the beach, he could not see them through the thick mist. However, surfer could just barely make out two campfires on the beach a distance from each other. “Great! there's a parties going on. I'll check it out” heading gingerly down the stony path toward the party places. suddenly feeling rather chilled from the fog that obscured any moon that might have lit his path, sur...

Although you have an interest in spiritual subjects, it is helpful to understand different kinds of mind, how they are produced, and what effects they have on your personal life. To understand the nature of mind is to understand the root of happiness and suffering. The study of Lorig, the nature and functions of the mind is introduced so that you become capable of discriminating between positive and negative minds and make strong determination to abandon negativity at the root, by your own decision. The many schools of Buddhism developed according to teaching lineages and philosophical points of view. This is not the emphasis of Lorig. We could spend time looking at this or that point of view or study who thought what and how that relates to another view. That is not a part of Lorig study, so we’re not going to do that. This is not the teachings on emptiness, not the teachings of healing techniques, or the Madhyamika Prasangika view. So I am telling you what it is not first. This is a ...

In a spiritual environment just about the last thing we want to discuss is the root center/chakra. We are willing to talk about anything above the belt and not, not, not dirty associations we have with the “lower energies”. So, let’s think about root center dynamics. Many negative root center-stimulating factors exist in other plexes stimulation also. However, they come alive most strongly in the root. Fear is felt in the root plexus or inner/outer nerve bundle as an attack that arises survival instinct. Now a days there is so little actual danger in comparison to danger of war, or wild animal attack that this can be trained to respond to attacks on reputation or disrespect as survival fear. Negativity stimulates root chakra activity in an unhealthy way. As that energy increases, it interacts with existing energy and begins to “talk to itself” in the root center. Fear further adds juice to that. Bad news on television might stimulate it. Judging others negatively and assigning negative...

Is there such a thing as a healthy ego? Yes, a healthy ego and the enlightened state could be synonymous. It is what becomes enlightened! You don’t dissolve like a cube of sugar, it’s you that becomes enlightened! You don’t disappear in a puff of smoke, it’s you that becomes enlightened! You will be an enlightened being, you and you and you and you, you all will be enlightened beings! Yes! Let’s not batter the old ego. Your ego is you, it’s you. Lord Buddha Shakyamuni, he was the one that became enlightened. He was the one who transformed into a Buddha an awakened one; they asked him “Are you an enlightened being?” He place his hand down on the earth and the earth acknowledged him as an enlightened being. It didn’t acknowledge some amorphous entity or the universal energies as being an enlightened being - he was the enlightened being. Every enlightened being knows this definitively, that they are the one who are enlightened. There have been great beings who have accomplished...