Mangala Shri Bhuti - The Link

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This is a re-broadcast of a LINK talk originally given by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on November 6, 2011 at Phuntsok Choling in Ward, Colorado. A life of meaning and true connection has to come from living a full life. Attachment does not allow that. Attachment is not the same as appreciation. When you are attached to life, life becomes a burden and can wear you down. You spend time trying to fix things rather than embracing life and what life may bring. Life and karma are not fixable. It takes more wisdom than attachment to fix the problems in life.

Speaker: Paul Greene. Paul reviews the Buddhist perspective on anger and identifies a variety of skillful means to work with it. Although Western culture sometimes seems to accept anger as appropriate and inevitable, Buddhism recognizes it as a poison that threatens our well-being and impedes our path to enlightenment. We can work with anger by recalling the egolessness of the self, the enlightened Buddha nature of all beings, the causes and conditions that give rise to situations, the negative karmic results of aggression, and the positive karmic results of allowing negative karmic seeds to ripen. From the perspective of the Mahayana path, the bodhisattva intention to benefit beings is dependent on our ability to overcome aggression.

Speaker: Gretchen Kahre-Holland. Gretchen offers an appreciation of the tremendous power of prayer to heal and transform, and guides listeners through a session of tonglen practice dedicated to our mothers. Over the years, Rinpoche has provided us with prayers to respond to difficult situations like the death of George Floyd, the fires in Colorado, and the war in Ukraine. One particular form of prayer, the tonglen practice of giving and taking, is essential to attaining enlightenment. On this Mother's Day Gretchen reminds us that, over the course of our countless lifetimes, all sentient beings have been our mothers. Soliciting specific prayers from listeners, she leads a guided tonglen practice devoted to benefiting our all our mothers.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la reflects on working with our emotions and neuroses by examining our determination to practice the Dharma. Where are we investing our freedom? Are we making time for practice and retreat? Are we working with our habits? Are we accumulating merit?

Speaker: Stanton Dossett. Stanton conveys the importance of deeply contemplating the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma: precious human birth, impermanence, karma, and samsara. Appreciating our precious human birth and its impermanence inspires us to make the most of our opportunity to practice the Dharma. Grasping the power of karma to shape our future lives focuses our attention on engaging in right action. Being aware of the unnecessary suffering samsaric beings experience, lifetime after lifetime, opens our hearts and cultivates bodhicitta, the "mind set on enlightenment."

Speaker: Bob Reid. Bob discusses the four opportunities for rebirth after death, with emphasis on the two Mahayana opportunities for rebirth in a pure land or the human realm.

Speaker: Anya Hunter. Anya emphasizes the importance of cultivating kindness and taming our minds. To be kind to ourselves we have to challenge conditioned beliefs such as perfectionism and self-aggression; to extend kindness to others, we have to widen our perspective and care to include all beings. To attain these qualities, we need to heighten our awareness and discipline our minds through practices like the four immeasurables, tonglen, and shamatha.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la offers his contemplations on bodhicitta and compassion as the universally profound, true source of courage. He describes courage as the flip side of fear, pointing to the source of fear as grasping, rejection and ignorance. Because of these three habitual tendencies, it takes a great deal of compassion, steeped in bodhicitta, to be truly courageous.

Speaker: Natasha Carter. Natasha meditates on how the longing to be free of suffering is at the heart of Dharma. It is important to understand this longing from a Dharmic point of view. Desensitizing ourselves to suffering will only render us immune to the Dharma; trying to escape it by pursuing worldly concerns will not work, either. The aim of genuine Dharma practice is to cultivate our capacity to cherish and care for all beings; to do so we have to remain open to suffering, surrendering to what is. Instead of trying to satisfy our longing we should view it as a source of inspiration and devotion, and as a sign of our connection to others. The yearning to free ourselves and all beings from suffering is the essence of "mugu" devotion.

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This is a re-broadcast of a Shedra talk given to the sangha on September 16, 2012 at Phuntsok Choling in Ward, Colorado.

Speaker: Sybil Boutilier. Sybil reflects on the importance of meeting old age and death with wisdom and confidence. In our ignorance, we have imprisoned ourselves in a net of self-cherishing. To navigate old age and death with less fear and suffering, we need to cultivate bodhicitta, acknowledge our regrets, and forgive ourselves and others. Preparing for death in this way enables us to create the conditions that make it possible to have a good rebirth.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la shares thoughts from his current retreat. Retreat is not vacation. The point is to face everything that arises in our mind. If we look closely, we see that in moments of fear and anxiety, we often default to the sense of self and the five afflictive emotions resulting in our acting with attachment and aggression. Moving beyond this worry, "what about me?" to asking "how can I benefit others?" opens up so many more options to us.

Speaker: Tomas Downey. Tomas relates how the practice of "allowing" enriched his Dharma practice. One way to connect to the Dharma and to progress on the path is to "fake it till you make it." While some people find this approach useful, Tomas discovered he benefited more from focusing on how loving kindness, compassion, and joy are already part of his nature. Instead of making an effort to arouse these qualities, he shifted his perspective and used an approach that simply allowed them arise naturally from his own experiences. He describes how warmth, peace, joy, awareness and awakeness arise naturally if we allow them to. He also notes that this perspective of allowing, which emphasizes our enlightened nature, is also a helpful way to approach Vajrayana practices that may initially appear strange or foreign.

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. Re-broadcast of LINK talk originally given on November 1, 2015 to the sangha at Longchen Jigme Samten Ling Retreat Center in Crestone, Colorado. Rinpoche provides detailed commentary on Gampopa' s ' Four Blessed Lines' prayer.

Speaker: Greg Moloney. Greg reminds us to keep our minds poised to recognize the magic that surrounds us and that provides inspiration, guidance, and support along the path. He identifies three categories of magic: the outer magic of the natural world and relative experience, the inner magic we discover through working with our minds, and the secret magic of the sacred world of the lineage masters, dakinis, and devas.

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. In a previously recorded LINK talk given on June 13, 2004 at Osel Ling in Crestone, Colorado, Rinpoche gives commentary on the text, "Vast As The Heaven, Deep As The Sea, Versus in Praise of Bodhicitta".

Speaker: Michael Velasco. Michael talks about the challenges and blessings of going on pilgrimages and how they contribute to our progress on the path. The challenges of encountering India can be disorienting, but the discomfort opens us to new experiences. The pilgrimage sites themselves offer transformative blessings that allow us to relate more directly to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the sangha.

Speaker: Bill Roberts. Bill reflects on the importance of relating honestly to the aggression both in our minds and in the external world. As Buddhists we are committed to recognizing our kleshas and to taming our attachments and aversions. The five poisons (aggression, desire, pride, jealousy, and ignorance) are the roots of suffering. However, we should also cultivate bodhicitta and extend our care to others. We cannot turn away from the suffering in the world by dismissing it as "just karma" or "just samsara." We have an obligation to relate to it skillfully, neither ignoring it nor making it our enemy.

Speaker: Allie Bauer. Allie reflects on how to purify obscurations and see through the allure of samsara. Taking refuge, generating bodhicitta, practicing the four immeasurables and making aspirations are all powerful antidotes to the deep fog of ignorance that confuses us when we succumb to the delusion that happiness arises from seeking happiness for ourselves.

Speaker: Chris Holland. Chris expands on the importance of developing, clarifying, and honoring our knowledge both of ourselves and of the Buddhist teachings. In coming to know ourselves deeply, we learn how best to engage on the path and avoid common pitfalls in relating to the teachings, the sangha, and the teacher. Understanding the teachings clearly is the most effective way to integrate them into our life and practice. Chris concludes his talk by sharing the guidelines he has developed to assess his progress on the path.