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By Phurbu Thinley
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His Holiness the
Dalai Lama giving teaching on Jataka Tales at the
main Tibetan Temple on Thursday, February 21, 2008.
(Photo by Tenzin Dasel / Phayul.com)
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Dharamsala,
February 23, Phayul.com: Thousands of Buddhist devotees are
attending His Holiness the Dalai Lama's annual spring
teachings, which began Friday at the Main Tibetan Temple
(tsuglag khang).
Both Tibetan and non-Tibetan audience, including some 4000
Buddhist monks and nuns and several hundred foreign devotees
from around the world throng the Tsuglag Khang
courtyard each day to listen to His Holiness’ teachings on
Dhampada (tsom) and Lord Buddha’s 34 Jataka Tales (Khay-rab
soshi).
Earlier on Thursday, the Tibetan spiritual leader gave
teachings on Jataka Tales after presiding over the “Butter
Lamp Festival” (Choe-nga Choepa, held on the
fifteenth day or the full moon day of the first Tibetan
Lunar month), which is the highlight of the Monlam
Chenmo (the Great Prayer Festival). On Friday, His
Holiness began his spring teachings with Dhamapada texts.
Alongside main discourse, His Holiness has also been giving
teachings on “The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa” (Mi-la-ras-pa’I
gur-’bum).
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Foreigner attendees
fold their hands in reverence as the Tibetan
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama began giving
teachings at the Main Tibetan Temple in Dharamsala
on Thursday (Photo by Tenzin Dasel / Phayul.com)
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The small McLeod Ganj town located on upper Dharamsala, the
seat of the Dalai Lama led Tibetan Government-in-Exile, is
full to the brim with Buddhist followers.
The spring teachings will go on till March 2 and are
translated into English, Chinese, Korean and Russian on FM
channels.
From March 5 to 12, His Holiness will again continue
teaching on Guhyasamaja (sangwangdupa) that he began
in May last year. According to the official website of the
Dalai Lama, “only those who attended last year's
teachings” would be allowed to attend the teaching.
Below is a full text found on the Dalai
Lama’s website following the first day of the spring
teachings:
The two texts His Holiness the Dalai Lama is to teach belong
to the Six Major Texts of the Kadampa Tradition: the Jatakas
and Udarnavaga (Dhammapada); Asanga’s Bodhisattva
Grounds and Maitreya’s Ornament of Sutras;
finally, Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way
of Life and Compendium of Trainings.
His Holiness clarifies that his approach to presenting the
Buddhadharma is first to describe its benefit and second how
to put it into practice. All sentient beings yearn for
happiness, but not all know how to achieve it. Clearly,
material development counts for a lot, but not if it
increases your anxiety. More important is having a calm
mind. Recently doctors have demonstrated that medication
alone does not affect a cure; calmness of mind also has a
role to play. Cultivating love and affection,
warm-heartedness in our relations with others is a source of
inner calm.
His Holiness contrasts religious views of a creator god, the
self and so forth. Buddhism has no use for a creator god,
seeing instead that everything is subject to dependent
arising, the existence of causes and conditions. Likewise,
the self does not exist the way it appears, that is, as a
singular, independent entity apart from the body and mind.
The self is described as a merely designation on the basis
of these. With regard to the Four Noble Truths, the
existence of suffering, its causes, of which ignorance is
principal, its cessation and the path to that; it is
clarified that whereas mind has no beginning or end,
ignorance does have an end.
Beginning to read the Udarnavaga, a compilation of
the Buddha’s advice that, as the Dhammapada is a
major text of the Pali tradition, the first chapter concerns
impermanence.
Note: Live audio webcast of the spring teaching
and its Russian version are carried on by Phayul.com. Video
and audio of the spring teaching and its English and Chinese
version are accessible on www.dalailama.com |
