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Interview with Yangsi Rinpoche about Lineage

Enlightenment is the Potential of Your Mind

Your True Nature: Introduction to the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas

Wisdom Managing Your Mind in Difficult Times with Ven Robina Courtin - Part 1

A Protection in the Storm with Yangsi Rinpoche

The Nurturing Effect of the Linage on Our Spiritual Journey by Yangsi Rinpoche

Refuting Misconceptions About Meditation with Yangsi Rinpoche

In this, the second of a series of teachings on the lamrim and meditation, Yangsi Rinpoche explains how Buddhism took root in Tibet through the story of Lama Atisha, and how it is slowly taking root in the west. This episode also includes an introduction to developing a regular meditation practice.

In unique accessible language, Yangsi Rinpoche presents in summary the historic context of Atisha’s Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment. Rinpoche explains why the traditional spiritual journey is rooted in linage, Nagarjuna and Asanga’s influence on the tradition, and how lineage functions to create the merit that will support our spiritual life and progress towards enlightenment.

In this week’s episode, from Maitripa College’s Philosophy 302 class, Yangsi Rinpoche teaches on the Bodhisattva vow and gives commentary on exactly what it means to wish for and engage in actions leading to enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. In discussion, the class explores the differences between Aspiring and Engaging Bodhicitta, as well as the practice of wisdom and ethics that is the foundation of the Bodhisattva vow.

In this talk, Professor Willis focuses on a unique and quintessential teaching of the Buddha. Using narratives and key texts from the tradition, Professor Willis’ uniquely warm and approachable demeanor invites the listener to connect to and engage with the liberating wisdom of the Buddha’s foundational insight.

Among the Buddha’s most prominent female disciples were sex workers, mothers, and the nuns who formed the female monastic order. Narratives of the lives of these earliest Buddhist women show them struggling to emerge, with varying degrees of success and failure, from the places in which a patriarchal society kept them.This talk explores ways in which the limitations placed on women in early Buddhist communities were challenged or transgressed, and ways in which they were ultimately reinforced. We will ask what these narratives can teach today’s Buddhist communities as we seek to identify and liberate ourselves from our own notions of gender that restrict women’s spiritual potential.

In this talk, Enlightenment: Is there an App for that?, Rinpoche invites us to look closely at how we try whatever way possible to find the shortcut to happiness and even enlightenment. Rinpoche grapples with the reasons we seek an easy way out, and how meditation practice can help us cut through the tendency to look outwards for someone or something to take away our suffering and travel our own creative path of freedom.

In “Introducing Buddhism: Our View of the World and Our Place In It” with Venerable Venerable Damchö Diana Finnegan, who holds a PhD in Buddhist Studies as well as extensive translation and practice experience, we learn that the purpose of Buddhist philosophy is to function as a window through which to view the world. Venerable Damcho explains how studying the words of the Buddha leads to a greater exploration of how we see things and people and how we relate to them, and the way this profoundly affects our relationships with others.

In Integrating the Heart Sutra: Meditating on Emptiness, Rinpoche offers an approach to meditation on emptiness that reveals how to feel a healthy sense of self. Rather than “redecorating” our mediation, Rinpoche advises to “clean up” our practice through allowing our fundamental nature to arise. In this case, non-action, patience, acceptance and allowing can put us in touch with our Buddha nature.

Balancing the Mind in Meditation begins with an eloquent explanation of joyful effort. Rinpoche proceeds to guide us on a meditation journey analogous to the balancing act of a pilot flying a plane while keeping her eye on the horizon. Enjoy this rare and essential teaching about how to maintain an uplifted mind while facing the ups and downs of the everyday world.

In Finding the Source of Enlightenment: A Non-Dual Approach, Yangsi Rinpoche teaches that by traversing negative emotions, we gain access to the non-dual, fundamental source of meditation and, ultimately, to enlightenment. Compassion, Rinpoche offers, is the natural result of the healing that comes from familiarizing oneself with how our reactive minds habitually discern positive vs. negative, good vs. bad, this vs. that, and so on. Enjoy this beautiful, timeless teaching from Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle, Washington.

Yangsi Rinpoche addresses the Maitripa College Sunday Morning Community Program with a discussion on Getting Unstuck: Balancing Ultimate and Conventional Natures. In order to “survive samsaric suffering” Rinpoche advises to navigate through meditation on conventional reality with the ultimate, clear light nature of the mind.

Yangsi Rinpoche teaches on the space-like practice of compassion and emptiness in Seattle, WA at the Dharma Friendship Foundation. In order to overcome the “karmic chaos” in our own minds, Rinpoche recommends spending time each day meditating on compassion and emptiness in an expansive way, in order to develop practice with a spacious view that ultimately pacifies challenges before they arise. This is a precious teaching that covers both “wings of the bird” in a profound and practical way.

In reflection on the question: how do we deepen our meditation?, Rinpoche asks us to expand our concept of our relationship to others by considering the power of lineage. Although in the material world, self-reliance is most important, when it comes to spiritual practice, relying on the teachings, teachers, and our community become more relevant. Rinpoche explains how to create a healthy sense of self through a thorough investigation of the way our ego functions, without either trying to control or ignore our habitual patterns. From this healthy, nourished basis, we can deepen our understanding of the emptiness of self--the actual “lifetime guarantee” of a stress-free life!