If you take just a moment to explore sacred texts, spiritual teachings, novels, poetry, another cultural, essays from great historians, or travel somewhere because you just felt the need to go or exercise your faith, follow your dream or do something that fires your imagination, stirs your soul, and expands your circle of compassion, you first must believe in yourself and that everything is possible. You want change, look around you, look at every day as a gift. You and only you create your every day world. Everything that happens to you in your life is because of you. Cause and Effect, its real, and is happening now, but you need to recognize its happening. A journey can start for a reason not associated to the"why" factor, its synchronicity. It is like a spiritual practice to live everyday in happiness. And everybody can have this, the only condition is your 100% true decision to want change in your life for happiness. Whenever we give attention to something, this creative energy flows through us and expands, enlivens and charges the object of our attention. The tool we use to focus attention is the mind. Mind itself isn't the creator of well being, but it is the focus, the conduit, the medium through which unlimited creative energy, love, abundance, all that is, can flow through. We use mind power to create everything in our lives, including well being, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously. I hope that after reading this book, you will find a new insight, no matter how small, of understand that change is and always up to you.

SEARCHING FOR THE HEART OF SACRED SPACE is about Landscape, Buddhism and Awakening - spoken in the same breath. The author personally explores ways of being in sacred landscapes, foundations for designing the contemplative garden. The book candidly reveals a path of transformation. Discovering the riches of the woods in Finland, the author investigates the natural environment for local government in Upstate New York and USAID in Nepal. He begins to taste the meaning of a spiritual home. Mentored by Tom Johnson at Cornell University, he designs a Tibetan Buddhist meditation centre, one of the first in North America. During a private audience, H. H. the Dalai Lama questions the basis for the design. Firmly linking the design of landscape to a spiritual path, the author questions, - "What is the truth of design? How deep would I go to draw inspiration? How deeply am I willing to know myself in order to design sacred landscape?" His search for the heart of sacred space points to an astounding historical connection between Kyoto's temple gardens and Pretapuri in Western Tibet, one of Buddhism's twenty-four sacred tantric sites. Guided by Zasep Tulku Rinpoche, he dissects the reference, an old Japanese garden-making text designating the first stones set upright in the landscape - 8,631 stones on the Tibetan Plateau guarded by the Eight Naga Kings. He makes a pilgrimage to Pretapuri, a landscape charged with the power of spiritual agreement between pilgrims and deities, revealed as three layers of discourse. External explanations enrich physical descriptions with tales told by rivers and terraces about the meaning of life. Internal explanations relate stories and legends investing a place with subtle attributes accorded to a sacred landscape. Secret explanations present a landscape produced by the power of the Six Perfections, graced by the purity and wisdom of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, corresponding to a structured pattern of focal points of energy and subtle channels. As a landscape architect and Buddhist, the author personally speaks with these provocative landscapes and the historical characters who previously addressed their mysteries, calling extensive textual references into the discussion. By disarming the feral conditions left by others, and awakening to the perfection and beauty of sacred landscapes, he uncovers profound tools for designing gardens for contemplation. Discovering layers of subtlety enhanced with hand-drawn maps and sketches in this book, you may never look at landscape the same way again; instead, seeing the world unbound wonder and reverence - naked - in silence ... and the unbearable lightness of space.

The ancient Tibetans devised a unique system to prove, logically, if something is true or not. Learn how to form a correct argument, how to determine whether an argument is true, and what are the follow up strategies on a line of argument. Applications for their techniques extend into every aspect of one's life: job, family, health. The ability to process information and arrive at a correct, logical conclusion is something we can all benefit from

"If you recite this when you arise, then you will accomplish all of your wholesome aims for the day. If you recite it when you go to sleep, then you will have nourishing dreams. If you recite it before you go to into action, you will be virtuous and successful. If you recite it when you begin an activity, then the good that you aspire to will increase. If you recite it daily, then health, longevity, glory, prosperity, auspiciousness, happiness and virtue will accompany you according to your thoughts and actions. All harmful actions and obscurations will be purified. Both the higher realms and the resplendent Buddhahood - all aims will be accomplished. This was said by the Supreme Victor - Jamgon Ju Mipham."

Buddhism is in many ways a visual tradition, with its well-known practices of visualization, its visual arts, its epistemological writings that discuss the act of seeing, and its literature filled with images and metaphors of light. Some Buddhist traditions are also visionary, advocating practices by which meditators seek visions that arise before their eyes. Naked Seeing investigates such practices in the context of two major esoteric traditions, the Wheel of Time (Kalacakra) and the Great Perfection (Dzogchen). Both of these experimented with sensory deprivation, and developed yogas involving long periods of dwelling in dark rooms or gazing at the open sky. These produced unusual experiences of seeing, which were used to pursue some of the classic Buddhist questions about appearances, emptiness, and the nature of reality. Along the way, these practices gave rise to provocative ideas and suggested that, rather than being apprehended through internal insight, religious truths might also be seen in the exterior world-realized through the gateway of the eyes. Christopher Hatchell presents the intellectual and literary histories of these practices, and also explores the meditative techniques and physiology that underlie their distinctive visionary experiences.
The book also offers for the first time complete English translations of three major Tibetan texts on visionary practice: a Kalacakra treatise by Yumo Mikyo Dorje, The Lamp Illuminating Emptiness, a Nyingma Great Perfection work called The Tantra of the Blazing Lamps, and a Bon Great Perfection work called Advice on the Six Lamps, along with a detailed commentary on this by Drugom Gyalwa Yungdrung."

The Buddha himself said in a Lesser Vehicle sutra: "Son of the family You are to become expert in the skandhas. You are to become expert in the ayatanas. You are to become expert in the dhatus. You are to become expert in pratityasamutpada. You are to become expert in topics. You are to become expert in non-topics." With these words, the Buddha indicated that there are six topics which must be learned, at least to some extent, by every one of his followers. Although the Buddha gave these teachings in the Lesser Vehicle, they are a necessary foundation for practitioners of all levels, from those studying the Lesser Vehicle to those practising Mahamudra and Great Completion. This book gives a thorough explanation of the six topics using a text written by Zhanphen Chokyi Nangwa, or Khenchen Zhan-ga as he is more commonly known, the greatest of all abbots to have presided over the famous Shri Singha monastic college at Dzogchen Monastery, Tibet. The author of the book, the well-known teacher and translator Tony Duff, supplements the explanations in the text with many clarifications in an extensive introduction. The text is very similar to Mipham Namgyal's famous "mkhas 'jug" or Gateway to Knowledge as it has been called. Unfortunately, Mipham's text is difficult for beginners. Zhan-ga's text is quite different; it was not written merely as a piece of scholarship, but was carefully composed so as not to exclude beginners with excessively difficult explanations and moreover to be helpful to practitioners of all levels. For these reasons, Gangteng Tulku has selected our book rather than Mipham's Gateway of Knowledge in order to teach this topic to students in the second year of his shedra. Extensive explanations of the meaning of the six topics are provided by the author from his own knowledge gathered during forty years of studying with the Gelug, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions, not to mention his extensive stays at Dzogchen Monastery where he learned the approach of Zhan-ga directly from Zhan-ga's successors. Ample footnotes, an extensive glossary, and a carefully corrected edition of the Tibetan text are also provided.

Dragpa Gyaltsan's writings in Tibetan fill four volumes of almost a thousand pages each. He was a statesman, a physician, an historian, and a poet, not to mention an adept in Buddhist practice, both exoteric and esoteric. The present volume of translations represents a mere sampling of his extraordinary literary acumen. I have made selections from his poetry and historical writings, an account of his dreams, and a few practice related works. These works will be interesting to many kinds of readers, depending on their personal inclinations. I have included one work written by his brother, Sonam Tsemo: The Six Dharmas of Guru Vajrasana. I present these to you as literature for you to enjoy. The practices that are described in some of the works are meant to be pursued under the instruction of a qualified teacher. Readers who find them intriguing are encouraged to seek out such guidance. My translation of a biography of Dragpa Gyaltsan, written by Sakya Pandita, is to be found in the first volume of the Sakya Kongma Series: Sakya Pandita's Poetic Wisdom. A Melody of Experience for Yeshe Dorje, included in this volume, was first published in Melody of Dharma, the official magazine of the Sakya Drolma Podrang.

The present volume is devoted to the writings of Sakya Pandita, and includes a biography of him written by the King of Gungthang, Zhang Gyalwa Pal. Sakya Pandita is famous among the Tibetans for his contributions in the fields of logic, ethics, and folklore. His Treasure on the Science of Logic (Tshad ma rig gter), Discrimination of the Three Vows (sDom gsum rab dbye), and Treasure of Eloquent Aphorisms (Legs bshad rin chen gter) are monumental contributions to their classes of literature. These works have attracted enormous attention throughout the world, particularly among the scholarly. The present collection of translations is intended to reveal Sakya Pandita's character as a poet who contributed to many fields of art and leaning. In his lifetime he worked hard at the reconstruction of Samye Library, one of the very first edifices constructed during Tibet's dynastic period. He contributed largely to efforts at public education and a clear presentation of the Buddhist teachings. He is best known to political historians for his travel to China, where he went with his two nephews and was effectively Tibet's ambassador to the Mongol court there. In his senior years he retired to Wu Tai Shan. I have translated short works, correspondence, and poetry he wrote over the course of his life in an effort to let my readers see Sakya Pandita's humanity and enlightened spirit as he himself expressed it. I do not wish to analyze or comment on these works, as I believe they speak for themselves. The Sakya Kabum, or Collected Works of the Sakya Founders, consists of about fifteen thousand pages of writings in fifteen volumes by five men: Kunga Nyingpo, Sonam Tsemo, Dragpa Gyaltsan, Sakya Pandita, and Chogyal Phagpa. Sakya Pandita's writings take up three volumes of this collection. The translations you are reading represent a sampling of the contents of Sakya Pandita's life's work, and are part of a larger translation effort for which I have, at this writing, completed volumes representing the works of all five Sakya Founders, soon to be published. My intention is to continue with this translation effort toward a comprehensive collection of their writings, while it is my hope that the present compendium will give readers a taste for the quality and variety of the literature you may discover. Critical readers will, of course, find much room for improvement. Please note that I have followed Sakya Pandita's own spellings of Sanskritic loan-words in his work, rather than normalize them into a corrected form of classical Sanskrit. Throughout most of these translations, Tibetan names are converted into a form that will be easy for English readers to read and pronounce. In the case of historical passages, such as those you will find in Sakya Pandita's Biography of his guru, I have transcribed the Tibetan into Wylie Romanization, so that the historically minded will be able to use this information in their research. I apologize for any inconvenience this compromise in the rendering of Tibetan words may cause. There are many loan words that are already commonly used in English, such as "nirvana." You will see a very few loan words that I have not translated. One of these is "Upadesha," which refers to a kind of direct, person to person, often mouth to ear, and experiential advice regarding a teaching or practice. The word "samaya," indicating the vows or obligations one takes on in entering the esoteric Vajrayana path, is another. I do my best to employ the King's English, avoiding hybrid usages and terminology that might be confusing for all but a certain class of insiders. The present volume does not contain esoterica for which special empowerments or privileges are considered requisite. There will be content that excites inquiry and discussion, which I consider a good thing.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1884 Edition.