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Atisha Quotes

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Atisha Quotes

“In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Pabongka Rinpoche explains how the great Atisha would purify any negativity, no matter how small, immediately. Even in public or when riding his horse, as soon as he noticed a breach of his ethics, he would stop what he was doing, drop to one knee and then and there, purify it with the four opponent powers—the powers of dependence, regret, remedy and restraint. Of course, compared to us, Atisha may not have had that much to purify. Still, he would say, “I never break my pratimoksha vows; I rarely break my bodhisattva vows; but my tantric vows—I transgress those like falling rain.” Atisha practiced purification in this way because of his deep realization of the psycho-mechanics of negative karma, especially its four fundamentals: negative karma is certain to bring suffering; it multiplies exponentially; if eradicated, it cannot bring its suffering result; and once created, it never simply disappears. Through the study and practice of Dharma, we should try to attain Atisha’s level of understanding. In the meantime, we should try to practice as he did.”

BuddhismEnlightenmentKarmaDharmaPurificationThe Path Of The BodhisattvaAtishaBodhisattva Vows
Book:Daily Purification: A Short Vajrasattva Practice
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“Buddhism originated from its founding teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha, who gave 84,000 forms of teaching. Lam-rim means “stages of the path to enlightenment.” It was the great Indian master, Atisha, who wrote the first lam-rim text, A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which condenses all 84,000 teachings into a single body of work. Atisha wrote this text in Tibet at the request of a Tibetan king. He then sent the text to India, where all the great realized scholars and mahasiddhas received it with praise and appreciation. It must be due to the good fortune and merit of the Tibetan people, they said, that Atisha had composed such a wonderful text.”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningThe Path Of The BodhisattvaLam RimAtisha
Book:Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment: A Commentary on Atisha Dipamkara Shrijnana's A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and Lama Je Tsong Khapa's Lines of Experience
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“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The great eleventh-century Nalanda pandit Lama Atisha understood this well, and with a mighty heart of wise compassion he set out to marshal the Buddha‘s eighty-four thousand teachings – found in hundreds of scriptures and thousands of verses – into a logical, sequential, and practical road map to help guide spiritual seekers on the path, from ordinariness to liberation on to full and final awakening. This unique style of teaching came to be called Lam Rim, or the Gradual Path to Enlightenment, and, attesting to its beauty and effectiveness, has been preserved in all lineages and schools of Tibetan Buddhism for the past thousand years. One of the unique features of the Lam Rim is that it recognizes an alternative to the path of sudden, spectacular enlightenment and instead proposes a more modest, gradual awakening. From the beginning of Tibet‘s history of receiving dharma transmission from India, with the great debates involving the eighth-century Indian scholar Kamalashila, it was clear that for the masses the gradual process of studying, contemplating, and embodying insights over the course of a sustained, lifelong practice would be most appropriate and beneficial. While all methods have their validity and are useful for practitioners of various dispositions, the gradual approach explained in these pages is as relevant to modern students as it was to Tibetans centuries ago. – Geshe Tenzin Zopa”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningBuddhaTibetTibetan BuddhismLam RimAtishaGradual Awakening
Book:Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human
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