Traditionally intended to request permission and blessings from the earth in order to create auspicious conditions for building on the land and supporting future beneficial dharma activities, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche presided over a Land Blessing Ceremony in Colorado on February 1st (2025) and visited Nalandabodhi Colorado the next day.
What can we learn from the events or problems that encourage us to pause? My hope for us all is that we will not resist the challenges that arise, but see them as opportunities. I hope we will welcome these obstacles, these pauses, these moments of reflection. And while we do, let us practice loving-kindness toward ourselves and those around us.
What is the quality of your mind, right now? That was the question Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen posed at the beginning of a weekend teaching on the topic of Mahāmudrā and Bodhicitta at Milarepa’s Yak Horn, our center in Hong Kong.
Christmas, New Year, all samsaric things like this naturally come. However, to practice Dharma, making a deep connection with our own mind, requires a lot of effort. Rather than turning inward, Lama Rabten Tshering noted that we tend to choose samsara– suffering. Why?
It can be easy for me to fall into self-pity. I find myself clinging to a solid sense of self when I experience physical or emotional pain. But when I apply what I have learned in my longtime Buddhist practice, I can let go of my self-clinging and self-pity, and I can experience compassion for all suffering beings, including myself.
Engaging in self-reflection this way helps us to see things as they are, not as they seem. We invite ourselves to go deeper, to investigate our habitual patterns of judgment and values that we often take for granted. As we do so, we find that there is space there, a gap where we can decide how we want to proceed. We don’t have to be prisoners in our own mental cage.
