New Heart of Wisdom - part 2(A) Flashcards
What is the Buddha’s function?
Be the source of happiness of all living beings (for those whose minds receive Buddha’s blessings)
What is the profound path vs the vast path?
The profound path is training in the perfection of wisdom. The sutra directly shows the stages of the profound path.
The vast path is training in the paths of persons of initial and middling scopes, and the practices of love, compassion, and boddhichita. The sutra implicitly (not directly) reveals the stages of the vast path.
What are Atisha’s and Je Tsongkapa’s contributions to the study of this sutra?
Atisha wrote “Lamp for the Path”, which explains the way to practice the stages of the profound and vast path. This includes a practical form of all of Buddha’s teachings on sutra and tantra.
Atisha is the founder of Kadampa Buddhism.
“Lamp for the Path” is the root text of Kadampa Lamrim. It is very short, hard to understand until Je Tsongkapa appeared in Tibet representing the wisdom of all Buddha’s, and explained in commentaries and public teachings.
What was Nagarjuna’s contribution to the study of this sutra?
He brought the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures back to the human world and propagated them widely. Because he had a very lucid mind and great wisdom, Nagarjuna was able perfectly to understand the sutras and to explain them to others.
What are the stages of the vast path?
- The path of a person of initial scope
- The path of a person of middling scope
- The path of a person of great scope
What’s the meaning of a person of a initial scope?
Someone who has an initial capacity for developing spiritual understanding and realizations
What are the key realizations (focus areas) for a person of initial scope?
- The preciousness of human life (blind turtle)
- What does our death mean? And how to meditate on death
- Dangers of lower rebirth, and how to meditate on that
- Going for refuge, and how to meditate on that
- What is karma?
What is the ‘laziness of attachment’, and its solution?
A lack of interest in Dharma, and instead more desire for worldly attachments. This is the main obstacle to Dharma practice, and the solution is to meditate on death. This meditation trains the mind to spontaneously think that ‘I may die today’. This thought eliminates our laziness of attachment and opens the door to the spiritual path.
What’s the meaning of our death? (What actually happens?)
Death is the permanent separation of our body and mind. (Temporary separations include some kinds of meditation, and dreaming.)
What are the key concepts involved in the dangers of lower rebirth?
- It’s easier for humans to attain enlightenment than for animals to attain human rebirth
- Performing non-virtuous actions is the main reason for attaining lower rebirth
- Practicing virtue and seeking refuge are the main reasons for attaining human rebirth
How do we meditate on the dangers of lower rebirth?
Contemplate how animals and lower beings experience suffering, so that we generate a fear of taking lower rebirth. This feeling of fear is the object of meditation.
What does it mean to go for refuge? What are the three principal commitments of the refuge vow?
We apply effort…
- to receive Buddha’s blessings
- to putting Dharma into practice, and
- to receiving help from Sangha
What does ‘karma’ mean?
Generally it means ‘action’.
It means that from non-virtuous actions comes suffering, and from virtuous actions comes happiness.
Every action we perform leaves an imprint (plants a seed) on our very subtle mind. Those seeds develop at time of death depending on our state of mind at time of death (like mood when falling asleep affecting our dreams).
What does it mean to practice ‘moral discipline’?
Abandoning non-virtuous actions and applying effort to purifying our previous non-virtual actions
