Dharma Glimpses with Judy Lief

Images of the Buddha sitting in meditation posture give the impression that the buddhist path is quiescent and still; but actually it's a very dynamic, ever-evolving, and important journey  •  personally, I connect this idea of journey with a sense of something within us that we have lost and are trying to get back to  •  I think of this missing thing as our “heart of hearts”  •   it’s as tho...

Early Buddhist meditators spent quite a lot of time alone in retreat in remote, rugged areas  •  as a result, they were very much in tune with the the five basic elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space  •  they observed that everything inside is mirrored by what is outside, and everything outside is mirrored by what is inside  •  we can observe these elements for ourselves, and we can emul...

A common idea about the spiritual path is that it is punctuated by gigantic breakthroughs, by big revelations  •  but many deep and important insights don't come in that way; they come in through glimpses  •  glimpses can be sudden or they can just kind of seep in; they are little openings or gateways into a sense of the whole  •  in some ways glimpses are similar to a jigsaw puzzle  •  we ha...

Through infusing mindfulness awareness into our everyday actions, we can invoke or evoke a magical quality of existence, a natural wisdom, which is known as “drala”  •  there is a famous line from the movie Field of Dreams that is often repeated: “If you build it, they will come”  •  in some ways, through our mindfulness and awareness, we're building a world that will attract this magical qua...

A large part of our reality involves talking, or working with our speech; it is one of the main ways we connect with our world  •  but our speech can also get us into a lot of trouble, including using it as a way of escaping from reality  •  Trungpa Rinpoche said that paying attention to speech is a way of paying attention to reality  •  but often we use speech just in the opposite way — as a way...

The image of remaining like a log comes up in a number of different traditional Buddhist texts  •  think of a log rotting slowly in an ancient forest — it just lies there placidly, providing sustenance and a home for various critters as it gradually dissolves into the forest floor  •  sometimes remaining like a log is talked about in terms of vigilance: maintaining vigilance over one's mind a...

In exploring the idea of transmission, we're looking into how the teachings are passed on, how the teachings are taught, and how the student can access the teachings  •  but what do we mean by transmission?  •  a helpful analogy is to think of music: you can learn to play all the notes in a song, but the music is not there  •  so what makes the actual music?  •  there's a famous jazz phr...

I'd like to introduce three simple short meditation practices that help us tune in to the rich and ongoing process of exchange that marks our lives altogether  •  we're always giving something out to the world and receiving something from it  •  we are affected by others and we affect others in so many ways; and we're also quite susceptible to the energies and the outpourings from t...

One of my favorite nursery rhymes contains quite a bit of wisdom: “Row row, row, row your boat gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream”  •  if we think of the stream as a stream of teachings, then we could consider the Buddha as the source of the stream  •  from that beginning a great river continues to flow over thousands of years  •  where does this stream flow?  i...

We tend to think of hope and fear as opposites, but they are intimately entangled with one another  •  they are both based on our desires and our hopes, our expectations of what the future might bring: what we want to happen, what we don't want to happen, and what we fear might happen  •  sometimes hope describes a positive outlook, one that is connected with a certain kind of confidence  • ...

Trungpa Rinpoche often spoke about the importance of a sense of humor on the spiritual path, but what did he really mean by it?  •  he was obviously not referring to telling jokes or being some kind of a comedian  •  instead he seemed to be pointing to a kind of a carefree quality or lightness of being — something very different from how seriously we take ourselves and everything we do  • spiritua...

Many people associate the practices of Buddhism with stillness; but actually the path of dharma is one of continual movement and growth  •  it's an organic process, one where everything cycles and everything is interconnected  •  it's like having a seed in the earth that grows and bears fruit and flowers and produces new seeds, and then another cycle begins  •  in my tradition, the diffe...

Continuing our discussion of the sense perceptions, and how they are connected with a subtle kind of grasping  •  in Buddhism we talk about the senses as having three components: the sense organ, the sense object, and the sense consciousness  •  every sense perception we have is a meeting of those three elements  •  it is an active process, one that involves a great deal of selection and interpret...

In Buddhism there is a lot of interest in the sense perceptions  •  traditionally, it is said that there are six senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking  (in Buddhism, the way we perceive thoughts is similar to the way we hear sounds or see sights)  •  the sense perceptions can be compared to the windows of a house: if the windows are clean, you have a clear perception o...

When we contemplate impermanence, we're basically looking at the facts of life  •  the fact is that we all die; we all have losses, sorrow and heartbreak  •  we don’t contemplate impermanence as a way to overcome it, but as a way to figure out how to live with it—and even how to honor it  •  this is the world that we have, and without this ever-changing world, none of us would be here  •  imp...

Of all the contemplative practices of Buddhism, it is said that the contemplation of impermanence is the most useful  •  dealing with change isn’t easy: we’d like to put things together and have them stay together  •  we tend to see change as disruption rather than as the way things are  •  but in reality, change is not a disruption, it is fundamental  •  change just is; it is the nature of everyt...

The six paramitas challenge the mistaken view that we can make ourselves secure by grasping more and more tightly  •  to practice the paramita of generosity, we need to make a point of letting go, of giving away  •  the paramita of discipline challenges our attachment to sloppiness and comfort, to cruising through life in a superficial way  •  the paramita of patience works with our attachment to...

In continuing our exploration of the prajna paramita, I'd like to focus on the inseparable trio of prajna (knowledge or wisdom), shunyata (emptiness), and compassion (karuna)  •  according to Trungpa Rinpoche, the freshness of prajna insight and the warmth of compassion are always connected  •  this challenges some common assumptions: that intelligence or sharpness of mind is harsh and aggres...

The sixth and final paramita is the prajna paramita  •  the sanskrit term “prajna” means supreme knowledge—the best of knowing, the best of cognitive mind  •  even though the Buddhist tradition is widely known for non-conceptual practices such as sitting meditation, there is also a great reverence and respect for learning and for knowledge at all levels  •  prajna is not just about knowing this or...

The topic of meditation reminds me of the old saying, “all roads lead to Rome”  •  in the Buddhist tradition, all teachings seem to lead to meditation  •  sometimes we think of meditation as just stillness, but as one of the six paramitas, meditation is considered to be one of the skillful actions of a bodhisattva, essential for cultivating wisdom and compassion  •  meditation helps us to settle a...

In the Buddhist tradition there’s a lot of talk about practice, which is connected with the paramita of exertion  •  practice is something that you do over and over again, and as you do so, hopefully you get better and better, and develop more and more understanding and sophistication about what you're doing  •  in the paramita of exertion, the development is from a kind of self-conscious or...

In the English language, the words “patience” and “patient” derive from the same word, meaning “to suffer” •  the Tibetan term for patience has more of a sense of forbearance; in Sanskrit, it has more to do with a of a sense of equilibrium  •  the practice of patience has to do with boycotting our addiction to rushing through things, aggressively trying to force life to move in the ways we would l...

Coming from the vast and expansive ground of the first paramita, the paramita of generosity, we now turn our attention to the second paramita, the paramita of discipline  •  discipline has to do with meticulousness of behavior and a sharpening of mindfulness and awareness  •  when we work with generosity and discipline, we're really working with a fundamental challenge: when do we need to tig...

[Continuing our exploration of the paramita of generosity]  •  generosity is like the expanding universe: it just keeps expanding and expanding without limit  •  the practice of generosity challenges us to stretch beyond our fear and territoriality and sense of impoverishment  •  Buddhist teachings recommend working with three dimensions of generosity: material generosity, psychological generosity...

The English word “generosity” comes from the Latin meaning “noble birth”  •  in talking about the bodhisattva path, this doesn't mean elitism or nobility in the sense of being kings and queens, but nobility in terms of a noble way of being in the world—with dignity, with skill, with love and with compassion, and with a sense of respect for one's own life and the life of other beings  • ...