Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

There are three stages of training. Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana, as well as within each of those, the outer practices and the inner practices. New Buddhists should understand the different approaches most clearly in the similarities and differences between the first two stages. There were 18 original Theravadin schools in the earlier times, but none exists in the pure form anymore. They have evolved into Buddhism practiced in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, as well as other places. Hinayana is a term used by the Mahayana. Hinayana means small vehicle. Mahayana means greater vehicle. You can see who named it. However, Hinayana practitioners call their tradition Theravadan or the path of the elders. The outer practices of the pure Theravadan emphasize a reduction in interest in samsaric or worldly involvement. We are calling this the first of three stages of training, which means that in Tibetan Buddhism, the Hinayana does exist, not as a process in and for itself. It is an...

Part 1. Our sense of identity is very mixed with our personalities and we take quite a bit of pride in its upkeep and practice. However, if we look more objectively with higher motivation, we can view personality as a set of strategies that we developed to interact with others, our environment and even ourselves without making effort to discover what it is we are using. Buddhism teaches us techniques of how to have a better relationship to self, other or the world without exclusively leaning on strategies of personality. Relying on ego centered interactions with the gross senses is not as healthy as higher dynamics such as understanding the illusory nature of ordinary reality so that we do not exclusively use memory of our own personality strategies that easily become mixed with the dysfunctions. Now we want to see fresh and not just use a collection of habitual strategies, distractions and disorders. In searching for the words and description of the underlying dynamics of personal...