Greetings Dharma Friends! There are many types of prayers that exist in the Vajrayana tradition that came down to us from our teachers. One of them is called ‘Garland of Lives’ prayers. These special prayers arise as guideposts for teachers and students in a community to understand the embodiments of a Guru within a Vajrakula and to help orient the practices and trajectory of that community. I wrote relatively recently about the concept of the Nirmanakaya, called Tulku in Tibetan. The...

If you have studied and begun to practice Buddha Dharma as it exists in the Tibetan variant of Vajrayana, you have likely come across the term ‘Tulku.’ This is a political office associated with a major monastery that held land and power in a region on the basis of being an embodiment, erroneously called a reincarnation, of some important teacher who is considered to have attained Buddhahood, the freedom from the suffering of mental poisons and negative habits. An enthronement is a public...

A Special Instruction from Vimalamitra for Everyone In our Kula, a group of practitioners practicing under qualified teachers of Buddhist Vajrayana, we have many kinds of Upadeshas which are special and personalized instructions based on having proper training and initiations. We also hold vast Sutras that are generally more open to read and gain the benefit of their instructions and blessings. What has been really needed in our time is a way to bridge the gap between advanced...