Mahamudra

Phakchok Rinpoche shares with us The Fivefold Ultimate, Essential Instructions and Eightfold Samayas of Mahamudra, given by the first throne-holder of the Drikung Kagyu tradition.

Samye Institute’s students share their experiences during 2020’s online retreats.

Understand ignorance.  Why would we need to do that if we are studying our minds? Most of us come to meditation retreats or Buddhist teachings because we are searching for answers.  We know that we are unhappy, or anxious, or we may just feel like something is not quite right.  If we have studied for some time, we may have heard a lot about how we are confused by ignorance.  But why do we need to understand ignorance?  Because if we just think that we suffer from ignorance, we may start to think of ignorance as something solid and unchanging.

Daniel Baruch shares some reflections of the first day of the 2019 Mahamudra retreat at Samye Hermitage New York.

Learning meditation requires both study and actual practice. Correct preparation before starting a meditation session allows us to experience authentic results

Let the Dharma resonate fully by accumulating merit. This is the best method, Rinpoche advises. But we do this without lots of expectations and thoughts that there is some sort of magical Pandora’s box that will transform us. That is not how it works. The journey of the path needs to bring changes.

Persistence in practice is something we often don’t talk much about. But being persistent can make a big difference in our progress on the path. Phakchok Rinpoche, in this video clip from a teaching in Taiwan, has some advice for us. The teaching is in English with Chinese translatio

Here he reminds us that if we remember the goal of our practice, we should achieve the goal. And genuine compassion and devotion can bring us rapid progress

Meditation can bring us good results. But, conversely, if our motivation is bad, it can also give us very bad results. If we start our meditation practice with a selfish motivation, the result will be selfish. Even though we may be selfish, if we start practicing meditation with a non-selfish motivation and keep reminding ourselves of this non-selfish motivation, the result will not be selfish.