In two long evenings talks, Lama Tashi Dondup provides detailed, profound, and extensive instructions relating to tantric practice. He first provides context by presenting the key points of Shravaka, Mahayana, and Secret Mantra practice. He then explains the essential foundations for practice including recognizing our precious human birth, generating renunciation, faith, confidence, compassion, mindfulness, awareness, and circumspection. These must be joined with devotion for the guru. Lama Tashi then explains how and why practice must proceed through the threefold process of hearing, contemplation, and meditation. He also explains the importance of view (absolute conviction in the true nature), Meditation (assimilating view into experience), and action (daily experience informed by view and meditation). After explaining the cause of our delusion, he explains how Creation and Completion remedy this confusion. In Talk 2, Lama Tashi explains that the essential point of both Sutra and Mantra practice is to tame or discipline our mind, which means transcending the influence of afflicted emotions (anger, desire, jealousy, pride, and ignorance). He then presents detailed practice instructions on the three approaches to working with emotions with a focus on desire: (1) avoid or abandon; (2) transform; (3) confront and recognize the nature of emotions. Translation provided by Jigme Nyima.
Creation and Completion: The Essential Points of Tantric Meditation, Lama Tashi Dondup, Vajra Echos Publishing, 2 DvD, +4h , $24.00
Lama Tashi Dondup was born in Tibet in 1952. From 1970 to 1988 he stayed at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India, seat of His Holiness Karmapa, and received teachings on the major texts from Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche, Sal-je Rinpoche, and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. He also studied ritual music and procedures, such as the making of tormas, the construction of mandalas, and the building of stupas. He completed a three-year retreat at Rumtek and then entered a one-year Kalachakra retreat under Bokar Rinpoche's guidance in Mirik, in the Darjeeling district of India. In 1988 Lama Tashi went to Kamalashila Institute for Buddhist Studies in Germany, where he served as resident lama for ten years.
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