Mangala Shri Bhuti - The Link

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.

Speaker: Stephanie Kindberg. Stephanie discusses the importance of staying the course on the path of the Buddhadharma, and the power of aspiration for the upcoming new year. Several listeners shared their aspirations for 2022 for all to reflect upon, and Stephanie encouraged us all to join in making our own meaningful aspirations as well.

Speaker: Jennifer Shippee. Jennifer contemplates how dying without regret is possible only if we liberate ourselves from self-clinging and allow genuine compassion and devotion to arise. By developing mindfulness and vigilant introspection, we sharpen our awareness of our aversions and attachments, all of which are rooted in self-clinging. Confronting these habits enables us gradually to subdue our confusion, realize the nature of mind, and allow genuine compassion to manifest spontaneously. Just as contemplating self-clinging gives rise to compassion, contemplating the attainments, efforts, and kindness of our teachers deepens our sense of appreciation and gratitude, which are the roots from which genuine devotion spring.

Speaker: Amalia Steinberg. Amalia contemplates the tendency to fall into nihilism and eternalism and offers skillful means to adopt the view of the middle way. The view of nhilism rejects the idea of cause and effect and engenders fear, anxiety, and clinging. The view of eternalism engenders a false sense of permanence and solidity that leads to fundamentalism. The middle way is not "halfway" between these two view; rather, it acknowledges the interdependence of all phenomena and offers the opportunity to exert agency. In acknowledging our deep connectedness with all beings and situations, it fosters respect, kindness, and an open heart.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la teaches from the most famous lojong text, Seven Points of Mind Training, drawing on commentaries by great lojong practitioners in this weekend program held December 4-5, 2021. Lojong, the Buddhist practice of mind training, gives us the tools we need to journey through our constantly changing lives and meet unexpected and unwanted experiences with confidence and clarity. The training begins with getting to know ourselves and finding solidarity and friendship with our own minds. Gradually the practice frees us from the negative habits that prevent us from realizing our full potential to benefit others deeply.

Speaker: Wendy Conquest. Wendy reflects on how she gained a deeper understanding of the root causes of a life-long experience of anxiety, and how she applied the Dharma to work with it. During the pandemic, engaging in new and challenging service to the sangha heightened her tendency to be anxious and to worry, and led her to resolve to re-examine the assumption that this habit was a sign of conscientiousness. The realization that it was actually a form of suffering generated by self-clinging led her to contemplate how to apply the Dharma to overcome this obstacle. By applying the antidotes of self-reflection, mindfulness, vigilant introspection, and supplication, she was able to cultivate more awareness and equanimity and appreciation for the sangha and for the benefit of service to it.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la asks some big questions about how we are approaching life. As we ponder the changing world and issues like climate change and our own mortality, are we just trying to get by in samsara or are we truly applying the Dharma to cut through our negative emotions and cross the ocean of samsara? How are we responding to the challenges of life? Are we contemplating and applying the teachings in a way that penetrate samsara?

Speaker: Elizabeth Ready. Elizabeth unfolds the meaning she has gained from contemplating the "Supplication to Guru Rinpoche", a prayer written by Dzigar Kongrul Rinpoche for the MSB Sangha. She reflects on how the prayer, recited at the end of MSB programs and practices, invokes all the qualities that practitioners of all three yanas seek to cultivate: longing, refuge, aspiration, bodhicitta, conviction, confidence and devotion. She also includes details on the three types of devotion as defined by Khandro Rinpoche, and cites a recent program honoring the parinirvana of the 16th Karmapa, which is available on Youtube.

Speaker: John Cobb. John addresses the challenges that sanghas have to identify and work to overcome. He points out four questions that sanghas need to consider in the context of their aspiration to establish Buddhism in the West. First, sanghas need to examine how responsibility is assigned ("delegating upward"); second, they need to recognize when it is appropriate and beneficial to seek external guidance and expertise. Third, they need to distinguish the tendency to cling to the "good old days" from the valuable wisdom gained through experience, and to balance the value of their history with the benefits of welcoming fresh perspectives. Finally, they need to develop a beneficial and open connection to the external culture without sacrificing the integrity of the sangha ("barbarians at the gate"). He cites three principles of accountability, transparency and inclusivity that can guide the sangha in establishing a code of conduct that supports the other two jewels, the Buddha and the Dharma.

Speaker: Bill Filter. Bill describes therapies that use psychedelic drugs to help Navy SEALS struggling to cope with depression and addiction, and explains how he introduces meditation practices to veterans who have undergone these therapies, helping them integrate their therapeutic experiences and provide enduring relief from suffering. He teaches them the practices of shamatha and tonglen, using the metaphor of projector, light, film, and screen to enable them to understand and integrate their experiences of ego dissolution. At the same time, he notes that, however beneficial the use of psychedelics may be for people struggling to come to terms with such strong suffering, it cannot replace the practices of the Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana paths, which gradually cultivate the insight needed to dissolve the ego and prepare us for successfully navigating the experience of the bardo.

Speaker: Sasha Dorje Meyerowitz. Sasha explores how analytical meditation promotes our understanding of the truth and generates growth and faith on the path. Initiating the investigation by tracing the history of the concept of "being present" in the West, he cites the analysis of the Prasangika-Madhyamika philosophical school to explain the nature of time and the relationship between cause and effect. By breaking time down into smaller and smaller increments, we discover that we cannot find a single, discrete moment. Instead, we come to appreciate the interdependent, impermanent, and composite nature of past, present, and future. Similarly, questioning the concepts of cause and effect can transform our understanding of how objects arise and cease. Further, we can apply the insights gained from these investigations to our own experiences, using analytical meditation to understand their absolute nature as empty of objective existence. Engaging in the reasoning of analytical meditation ultimately leads us to a deeper faith in the Dharma and a richer appreciation of the magical, illusory quality of experience.