Sun, 16 Aug 2009
The Lama from Pittsburgh
I haven't been posting lately because Lama Gursam has been visiting Baltimore. He flew in from Pittsburgh on Tuesday evening, and I've been with him every day dince. Most of what he's doing this year is teaching shamatha practice, but today we went through the Green Tara practice. He's got a different teaching style, he intersperses periods of meditation with his talk, so you get half an hour of talk followed by fifteen minutes of meditation. It's an interesting style of teaching that I've never seen before. Today someone asked a questio about the eight fears that Tara protects against. Lama didn't remember them all, but I said that Google would, and here they are: (1) water, (2) lions, (3) fire, (4) snakes, (5) elephants, (6) thieves, (7) false imprisonment and (8) ghosts.
I received a new book order from the Buddhist publisher Snow Lion. The book I wanted was The Practice of Vajrakilaya, but I also ordered the third volume of Karma Chagme's Mountain Dharma and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, a compilation of texts from the sutras made by Ju Mipham. I've only glanced at the books so far. The Vajrakilaya text was based on a teaching given at KPC, which surprised me a little. I hope to get the Vajrakilaya text read before I start doing the practice. It looks like there's also useful information in Mountain Dharma.
