Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Who was that early scientist - was it Giordano Bruno - who was tortured to death for heresy when he said that the earth went around the sun? Galileo, a contemporary of Giordano Bruno, advocated and taught the same view and was brought by the ruling committee to a prison. He was shown the actual torture chamber, where these same people took Giordano Bruno's life, and the chains that held him. They showed Galileo very pointedly the various objects of torture and demanded that he reverse his view or die. Galileo stood in the torture chamber and recanted. He officially stated that the earth did not go around the sun. As he turned to depart from the torture chamber, under his breath he said, "but still it does." We now know that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way but beings still persist in behaving like they are the center of the universe. Let's not let Bruno to have died in vain. ~ Domo Geshe Rinpoche ~~~

Of the three jewels, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, Buddha means awakened one, or the nature of the awakened mind. The Dharma is the body of teachings of the Buddha and the Path to the awakened state. The Sangha is the community of beings who follow the teachings, rely on the awakening mind, and in turn, become enlightened themselves. It might seem that the Sangha is not as important, but if the Buddha and the Dharma existed without the Sangha, it would be like attending a school where no one ever graduated! Sangha is our hope for the future, needed to help others become free. The very nature and essence of the Sangha means that somebody did it, and so can we! The Dharma jewel is beyond value and is always changing as it comes into creative contact with suffering living beings. Since we do not know what kinds of activities living beings will need in the future, the Dharma jewel must be infinitely flexible and responsive, active in highly skillful methods that are alive in the modern ...

So, we will explore a bit now about a aspect of Lorig; correct and incorrect doubt. A formal definition of doubt is a mental factor that vacillates with respect to its object. When the mind becomes mixed or associated with doubt, the mind itself, along with all other mental factors, such as emotions, motivation, and ability to distinguish between right and wrong, becomes blended with the qualities of doubt. In informal or everyday life, we may experience it’s effects, use it, or look at it, but we do not really analyze doubt itself, isn’t that so? Because we have to be very firm when practicing dharma to have confidence in the path and goal of our spiritual efforts, our mind must be free of wavering. Certain kinds of analytical meditation train us to observe two or more positions making dispassionate judgment regarding the correct view. That is not the vacillating mind-wavering kind of doubt. When doing correct analytical meditation, we not only observe, but we also enter a stronger ...

What could possibly motivate someone to renounce everything for the dharma? I know it has twelve letters, but somehow, renunciation has become a four-letter word for spiritual people. Because of that, teachers coming to the West rarely use the word renunciation anymore. Why is that? How can the lamas who arrive to teach about enlightenment, read from the old texts, (which is a lot about renunciation) and yet are concerned to mention renunciation? Could there be something about the word ‘renunciation’ that creates the opposite effect of the meanings of the texts to people in the West? Unskillful renunciation means to renounce what you already possess and now you have to give up. The other unskillful meaning is something you really want that has to be given up even before you get it. Both of these meanings are untrue and renunciation has a bad reputations in the West. A nameless student, one who was very interested in spiritual development sent me a frantic letter, “ Rinpoch...