Dharma Wheel

Sorry about the lack of a response. Thanks for the posts, everyone. They all gave me interesting ideas to ponder. I decided to go back and re-read some of the Mahayana sutras as it's been a while since I've read them. I'd been mostly reading the Pali cannon lately because it's a little easier to und...

I have to start off with a minor confession. After almost a year of practicing Buddhism, first Zen and now Tibetan, I still frequently have doubts about whether or not my beliefs on the soul or self actually fit with what Buddhism teaches or if they are actually more in line with a religion like Jai...

I have Fluent Tibetan vol. 1 and the audio, but it's an extremely difficult book to make sense of on your own. If used with a teacher, or in conjunction with other books, it might be more useful. It's laid out in a very illogical way and doesn't do a very good job of explaining grammar, syntax, or v...

I suppose it is true that Guanyin serves a very similar role in Chinese and Japanese Mahayana Buddhism as Tara serves in Tibetan Buddhism, so I suppose it is a little unfair to not take that into account. I think what bothers me about Chinese and Japanese approaches to Buddhism is that they're heavi...

My interest in Buddhism first led me to Zen, so I spent a while studying Chinese and Japanese. I quickly discovered my religious background inclined me more towards Vajrayana though. I was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic church which is essentially Catholicism heavily influenced by Ukrainian Orthod...

Yeah, it's kind of a tough call. Ideally, I would love to learn Tibetan, Pali, and maybe Sanskrit, but none of them really seem feasible. I've had an incredibly difficult time tracking down books about Tibetan in English and what I did find were books that were often 20+ years old and extremely poor...

Would it be worth learning Russian in order to learn more about Tibetan Buddhism? I know that Tibetan Buddhism has been practiced for centuries in parts of Siberia and that Russians have had continuous contact with the peoples who practice it there since at least the early 1600's. This contact, coup...

Of course this is acceptable! Faith and devotion open the heart, how could that be bad? Tara embodies the capacity to help immediately -- strong and swift. She loves everybody! I daresay most lamas pray to Tara. I believe two of my lamas recite a 21 Taras prayer everyday. These archetypes with arms...

That makes sense and accords with one of the most common perspectives I've been running across from people who favor the idea of Buddhist prayer. Generally, they say that the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and some deities serve as a kind of cosmic source for all the positive, compassionate, wish-fulfilling...

You might have to define profitable for me. I can't really tell if you mean it in the sense of "something that works and is beneficial", "something that makes money", or both of those things.

I know that lay practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism frequently pray to deities, bodhisattvas, and so on such as Tara for divine protection or intervention for everyday kinds of problems like health, finances, relationships, family issues, protection during travel, and mental or emotional problems. Wha...