Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Before Tibetan teachers came to America, there were Buddhist teachers of other traditions; the Zen tradition, as well as from Sri Lanka, Burma, Viet Nam, and other places, who came to the West to teach. Even one hundred years ago, there were Buddhist teachers who came to America telling people about the nature of peace and goodness. They shared their cultural adaptations of ancient Buddhism and told the story of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni's enlightenment, so the transmission of Buddhism is not something that has just happened recently. Before Buddhism came to the West, it went from India to China, Japan, Tibet, as well as many other countries. How marvelous, how wonderful that the sayings and teachings of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni were preserved and written and made available in recipe form for 2,500 years. That is a very long time to maintain and preserve a lineage of teachings. Part of the recipe for enlightenment is contained within the preservation and dissemination of the teach...

I have been thinking about cooking lately and looking through my recipes trying new combinations. Living out in the countryside as I do, surrounded by hay fields and mooing cows off in the distance, getting  exotic ingredients is impossible. I often substitute what I have, lots of fresh eggs, goat and cow milk, and herbs from the garden for ingredients that we can only order on the Internet. While digging in the cupboard to make something new, it occurred to me how very similar meditation is to cooking. Over the next several days I would like to share my musings with you. You know, in Tibet, I do not recall that we ever followed recipes, but perhaps that was because I never cooked. In the monastery, we ate the food provided and upon arriving in America in the mid 70’s, I discovered creativity in the kitchen that made me somewhat famous with my students at that time. Some even encouraged me to write a cookbook. However, It is only here in my new life, since May of 2000, that...

Many human perceptions are related to and give rise to feelings of solidity and permanence of the human experience. This is good! Before I said it was bad. Now I say this feeling of solidity is good. This is because it helps the actual beings emanated form, which is you, to take more seriously the work of preparation needed for transformation. By your experiences created through your senses and consciousness, you become capable of deeper understanding that you need to change and learn. The heaviness and sense of suffering, both subtle and manifest, should alert you to the dilemma and cause you to seek methods to become free. If you had no suffering, you would not want to leave, but leave you must. Therefore, we must overcome the innate view programming and awaken to another way of being; the next stage of the journey to perfection, our actual home. Now we understand more clearly that we do not want to damage the innate view prematurely on our way to the transformed state. If th...

Using practical efforts to help others transform to the enlightened state, Buddhism sometimes changes into a system that attempts to erode the superstructure of the ego. This does not work as well as it should because the punishment of the ego will usually cause it to submerge, change or to adapt to the harsh methods to destroy it. You actually cannot crush the ego. The mind is very tricky and changeable, and so it remains, in spite of efforts to destroy it. However, it can very easily morph into a disgusting display of impoverished self-degradation that is totally fake. It is scary to watch a person attempt to control their ego by hiding self-cherishing in humility. They can even be hiding it from themselves. The ego is suffering and needs to be separated from the overactive, over stimulated, and unaligned energetic state of confusion. The self-cherishing that is a feature of unenlightened existence as well as inappropriate pride need to be destroyed in order to be rescued fro...

A traditional view of escaping the human dysfunctional state is very strong in Buddhist practice and meditation. The study of the workings of the ordinary and the evolving mind is unavoidable if we wish to become free of suffering. Buddha means Awakened One, and the process is literally one of awakening from the dream-like programming to a new alert state called enlightenment. The first stage of enlightenment, as a minimum standard is knowing that the perceptual knot that holds the dream like state to be authentic, is not real. So, how does the innate view damage evolutionary development? How is the innate view preventing you from being and living right now in a pure land such as heaven or in some Buddha field? The reasons are both complicated and very simple depending on the stage of development of the individual. It is simple because the innate view is deceptive and false for someone who is close to transformation. The inner signs of impending transmutation inside become more...

The innate view seems to be a primary cause of suffering in the human realm and has been given too much credit for its ability to make us suffer, in my opinion. This induced dream was created by a mixture of causes and conditions, and became a karmically caused result. We might see karma as a wrongness that we or others have perpetrated. This is not true, of course, as causes and conditions bring both positive and negative results, isn't that so? In the most basis distillation of the innate view, according to Buddhist synthesizers, is a mistaken inner and outer worldview that takes the transitory and illusory to be real. However, it is an error to indoctrinate people with a view that everything is bad and wrong due to primal ignorance of true nature and also encourage them to rejoice in appreciation of human life. This will require a closer examination of the innate view to gain a careful understanding of these seemingly contradictory teachings. Very simply, the encoding of ...

In the previous column the nature of the inner being that is the real you inside was described. This being is the real practitioner inside; the energetic alive being that is capable of attaining the transformation of enlightenment after considerable preparation. This dramatic and sudden change causes it to transform energetically to another kind of being that has a profound effect on the emanation being, the ordinary person. This change also brings closure to its cycle of lives in the human realm even though its emanated form will continue to live out a human existence. The dramatic change usually causes the transformation to affect the person in the illusory human realm to wake up and become aware of their illusory nature. There should also occur a definitive break with the innate programming of the human realm. Before that transmutation happens, you might wonder, if that inner one is the real you, then exactly who are you? What is your function? You should become a more carefu...