Buddhism

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In Inspiration

Dilgo Khyentse Fellowship

Dilgo Khyentse Fellowship and its affiliated Shechen branches throughout the world are dedicated to the continuation of the legacy of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Explore the Dilgo Khyentse Fellowship website to learn about our work and how to participate.

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In: Inspiration

Buddhism is a path of transforming the mind. It is from the mind that all happiness comes, just as it is the mind that causes the experience of suffering. Buddhism offers methods to change the mind. This means getting rid of harmful mental states such as hatred, obsession, jealousy, and pride. It also means learning how to put things in perspective and realizing that it is the way the mind misinterprets reality that causes suffering. Understanding this is true wisdom, and seeing that all beings suffer needlessly because of this misperception brings about great compassion, and the wish to help them all. This page shares some inspiration from the Buddhist path.

Inspiration

A remarkable life

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was born in 1910 in Kham, Eastern Tibet. Upon his birth, he was blessed by the renowned master Mipham Rinpoche. At Shechen, one of the six principal monasteries of the Nyingmapa School, he met his root teacher, Shechen Gyaltsap Rinpoche (1871-1926), who formally recognized and enthroned him as the mind incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and gave him countless teachings. It is also there that Khyentse Rinpoche meet Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, his second main teacher, who had also come to receive teachings from Shechen Gyaltsap.
Khyentse Rinpoche himself was to become the archetype of the spiritual [read more...]

Why do Buddhists venerate the Buddha?

The Buddha is not venerated because devotees see him as a God and worship him, but rather because he’s the ultimate teacher, the embodiment of enlightenment. The Sanskrit word Buddha means “the awakened one,” he who has realized the truth. In Tibetan, the word by which it’s translated, Sang-gyé, has two syllables, sang meaning that he has “dissipated” everything negative that obscures wisdom and “awoken” from the dark night of ignorance, and gyé that he has “developed” everything positive, all the spiritual and human qualities that there are, which can be condensed into wisdom and compassion.


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Reincarnation is not the rebirth of a self


First of all, it’s important to understand that what’s called reincarnation in Buddhism has nothing to do with the transmigration of some “entity” like an autonomous "self". It’s not a process of metempsychosis. As long as one thinks in terms of entities rather than function and continuity of experience, it’s impossible to understand the Buddhist concept of rebirth. As it’s said, “There is no thread passing through the beads of the necklace of rebirths.” Over successive rebirths, what is maintained is not the identity of a “person,” but the conditioning of a stream of consciousness. (to be continued) [read more...]