Pema Chodron: Open Your Heart and Mind to Life

[Jundo]

Hi Tai Shi

A lot of Pema Chodron's talks are aimed at lay people and quite accessible to those of us who walk a Zen path. Otherwise there is quite a lot of difference between the Tibetan path and the Zen way.

Although there are a number of different Tibetan meditation practices, they do tend to split into shamatha (calm abiding) and vipassana (insight) techniques, sometimes together, sometimes not, rather than our shikantaza which sits with the whole universe just as it is in this moment with nothing left out. There is often an idea of stages on the path to enlightenment rather than our belief in practice enlightenment right here, right now.

Tonglen is one Tibetan practice which I do believe fits seemlessly into our Zen fabric, and Pema is a great advocate of that and is responsible for making it far more widely known that it might otherwise be, which (in my opinion) is a very fine thing!

Norman Fischer is one Zen teacher who has written about tonglen and other Tibetan mind training techniques and I am looking forward to asking him about this when he visits Treeleaf in January.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

In a nutshell, what Kokuu said. Right now, I happen to be reading a presentation of the Path by a Tibetan teacher in one of the Buddhist magazines (unfortunately, not available online). It is so filled with stages and steps, lifetimes, miraculous powers and incredible mental attainments, gods and other realms ... It is a powerful and beautiful path, wild stuff that I am sure is helpful to the person who walks that way.

We are pretty simple in compare. In fact, there is nothing more simple than the "Just This" of Just Sitting. Happy to add here and there a few lovely practices like Tonglen.

Gassho, J

STLah