Your true nature is like the sky, says Mingyur Rinpoche, its love and wisdom unaffected by the clouds of life. You can access it with this awareness meditation.

Humanity is currently facing some of the greatest challenges in its history, including climate change and a global pandemic. Many of us face difficult challenges and uncertainty in our own lives, from illness to job loss to traumatic relationships.

People are desperate for methods to ease their suffering in uncertain times. While many Buddhist meditation practices are helpful, none surpasses recognizing and resting in awareness itself. The reason for this is that the true nature of awareness is a source of lasting strength and resilience. Awareness is beyond conditions like pain and pleasure, suffering and ease. It is that which allows any and all experiences to arise, and yet is unchanged by them. more...

The teacher-student relationship in Vajrayana Buddhism is intense and complex. It is easy to misunderstand and can even be misused. The respected Tibetan teacher Mingyur Rinpoche explains Vajrayana ethics, how to find a genuine teacher, and what to do if a teacher crosses the line.

As a Buddhist teacher, I am often asked questions about meditation and profound Buddhist principles, like interdependence and emptiness. I am happy to share what I know on these topics. But I have noticed that people rarely ask me about ethics and how to live a virtuous life. more...

Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool some of us into thinking we’re evolving and growing when all we’re growing is our ego

• By Scott Barry Kaufman

“Ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.”—Chögyam Trungpa


A purported benefit of mind-body spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation and energy healing is that they will help “quiet the ego,” providing an effective antidote to the exalted self. Indeed, such practices do have the potential for such an awakening, allowing us to get more in touch with reality as it is right here and now, including the qualities we don’t like about ourselves. Spiritual practices also have the potential to help us cultivate compassion, concern and unconditional positive regard toward others—things that can truly evolve our consciousness as a species.

​However, this is all much easier said than done. more...

A new study has found that some popular forms of spiritual training — such as energy healing, aura reading, and, to a lesser degree, mindfulness and meditation — correlate with both narcissism and “spiritual superiority.”

An implicit feature of spiritual training is that it allows its adherents to distance themselves from their egos, and thereby from things such as the need for social approval or success. By encouraging self-compassion and non-judgmental self-acceptance, spiritual training should presumably make people less concerned with such things.
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But as a new paper explains, spiritual training may have the opposite effect. more...

Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you an innovative technique to turn your inner demons into friends.

Feeding our demons rather than fighting them contradicts the conventional approach of fighting against whatever assails us. But it turns out to be a remarkably effective path to inner integration.

Demons (maras in Sanskrit) are not bloodthirsty ghouls waiting for us in dark corners. Demons are within us. They are energies we experience every day, such as fear, illness, depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship difficulties, and addiction. more...

Perhaps, Adam Brandt ponders, therapeutic healing is predicated not in defining the ego, but rather in its liberation.

In 2016, I decided I wanted to become a therapist. After years of soldiering silently through unexplainable sadness, I found my way out of that headspace long enough to see hope for myself and others. I didn’t know what it meant to be a therapist at the time I enrolled in my master’s program. I had never really engaged in therapy before enrollment. But for some reason, I believed in the philosophical cure of self-discovery. Now I think self-discovery, on its own, might be part of the problem. more...

It’s a rainy morning in the picturesque Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in Karnataka’s Bylakuppe town, about 70km from Mysuru and home to one of the largest Tibetan settlements in India.
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Six Russian scientists are closely observing a Tibetan monk in deep meditative state. The scientists from Moscow State University and St Petersburg-based Institute of Human Brain are here to study thukdam, a post-death meditative state practised by highly realized Buddhist masters. more...

The Dalai Lama said that the Tibetan Buddhist system of recognizing reincarnate Buddhist teachers “may have had its day.”

On Friday the Dalai Lama said it may be time for the tradition of recognizing reincarnate lamas to come to an end. The Dalai Lama made the statement in a meeting with students in Northern India.
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According to a statement from the Office of the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama suggested that “the custom of recognizing reincarnate lamas may have had its day.” The Dalai Lama says that the reincarnation system has never existed in India, and there are no recognized reincarnations of great Indian Buddhist masters like Nagarjuna, or the Buddha himself. more...

These days, the realm of spirituality (and sometimes psychology) can feel fake. Instagram and other social media are jammed with influencer posts about positive vibes, about not allowing negative energy or thoughts to get to you, about surrounding yourself with only supportive, positive people.

Unless you live in a bubble or on Mars, this is not only unrealistic, but also a recipe for never growing or truly learning who you are. If you attempt to transcend or avoid difficult experiences, you can remain emotionally stunted. Spiritually minded psychologists and teachers refer to this as spiritual bypassing. Like it or not, the ugly parts of our humanity are where growth can occur. In the words of Buddhist teacher, author, and nun Pema Chödrön:

Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear… are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They’re like messengers that tell us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. more...

In 1973 I found myself seated before a colorful brocaded throne in a mediation hall in a small Tibetan Buddhist Monastery near Kathmandu, Nepal. I was amongst a large group of young Westerners waiting with some excitement for a Tibetan lama to enter. The atmosphere was electric with anticipation. After a few minutes there was a whisper ‘lama’s here’, we all stood up and most people bowed respectfully as a relatively young man entered the room made prostrations and rose to the throne. When he began to speak, I found myself immediately enthralled by his presence and playful humour. This man was to become an essential focus of my spiritual life from that point onwards. He became my ‘guru’. more...

New research sheds light on the physiology of gratitude, bringing us closer to being able to understand and harness the health benefits of this powerful emotion.

Imagine you are on the run from a Nazi manhunt and are taken under the protection of a stranger. This stranger spends the winter providing you with food and shelter—even traveling to other towns to relay messages to your family members—yet has no hope or expectation of repayment from you. While your loved ones are systematically ensnared by the Nazi machine, this stranger keeps you alive and nourishes your faith in humanity, offering proof that in the midst of widespread horror, many individuals still act with unfettered compassion and dignity.
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When you think about this stranger, what they risked, what you received—how would you feel? more...

How Madhyamika Philosophy Explains the Mystery of Quantum Physics

Abstract:
The theory of relativity informs us that our science is a science of our experience, and not a science of a universe that is independent of us as conscious observers (see the explanation in this article: Why Relativity Exists). This nature of our science is also reflected in the formulation of quantum mechanics, since the main formulation of quantum mechanics does not provide direct rules for the behaviour of particles. Instead, it provides rules that concern only the results of measurements by observers. This means that the observer is an intrinsic part of the main formulation of quantum mechanics, and what differentiates the observer from physical particles has to be mind and consciousness. more...

It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism.

Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance”, the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, “may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years”. more...

Twenty years ago this Sunday, The Matrix was released. I went to see it in theatres with my dad (I was in third grade), and it instantly became an all-time favorite. A lot of the movie went over my eight-year-old head, but even so the film’s central concept — that all of humanity exists in a simulation called “the Matrix” — blew my mind.
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The movie had that effect on a lot of people. Within a few years of its release, a popular theory arose that, statistically, it’s extremely likely that humanity only exists in such a simulation. To this day, philosophers, tech moguls, and journalists openly debate the question, “Do we live in a ‘Matrix’-like illusion?” more...

In a recent study, meditating on emptiness led to a 24 percent decrease in negative emotions.

Emptiness meditation may be more effective at improving wellbeing than mindfulness meditation, according to psychologists at the University of Derby, UK.
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Led by psychologist and lecturer William Van Gordon, an international research team conducted the first-ever study to investigate the impact of Buddhist emptiness meditation. A central Buddhist insight, emptiness is the understanding that neither we nor any phenomenon in the universe — sentient or otherwise — has a permanent, separate, and independent core, or soul.  more...