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 [...]
How to Do Green Tara Practice
Lama Palden Drolma teaches how to visualize the deity Green Tara, who embodies one's buddhanature. Illustrations by Tomi Um. Tara, the savioress, is the most beloved by Tibetans of all the female awakened beings. Tara is known as “she who ferries beings across the ocean of samsara.” She is fully enlightened and is inseparable from genuine reality, or true nature, the [...]
The Art That Illustrates Another Reality
Do the strange and potent images of Tibetan art—so often misunderstood—represent a deeper and truer reality? Francesca Fremantle on the symbolism of awakened mind. Brightly-colored Buddhas holding strange ritual implements, meditational deities wearing human bone ornaments, voluptuous goddesses and terrifying, wrathful manifestations—the exotic Buddhist art of Tibet is [...]
Developing Pure Perception Through Visualization
We visualize deities to connect with their enlightened energy, purity, and sacredness, which is our own nature as well. Anyen Rinpoche and Allison Choying Zangmo teach us how to visualize Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of perfect compassion. We are constantly thwarted by our own expectations. For most of us, fantasizing about how things “should be” is a constant source of [...]
Buddhist Visualization Practice Is Pure, Clear, and Vibrant
Visualization practice sometimes involves traditional symbolism that Westerners have trouble relating to, says Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. He shows us how we can make the most of this powerful method for transforming perception. The technique of visualization is employed throughout the Vajrayana practices of Tibetan Buddhism. Its use of our imagination makes it quite different [...]
Visualization: Developing Pure Perception
We visualize deities to connect with their enlightened energy, purity, and sacredness, which is our own nature as well. Anyen Rinpoche and Allison Choying Zangmo teach us how to visualize Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of perfect compassion. We are constantly thwarted by our own expectations. For most of us, fantasizing about how things “should be” is a constant source of [...]
True Blessings
In this commentary on a traditional Guru Rinpoche visualization, the contemporary Dzogchen master Tulku Thondup Rinpoche reveals the deep nontheistic essence of Vajrayana practice. We receive the true blessings of the enlightened ones when our mind and theirs become one. The purpose of training in devotional meditations and prayers to great masters such as Guru Rinpoche is [...]
Visualizing Love
A meditation practice from Sangye Khadro on visualizing Maitreya in order to cultivate loving-kindness. It takes time and effort to develop immeasurable loving-kindness. At times we have enthusiasm for it, but at other times we feel indifferent or just lazy and think, why bother? Sometimes we may wonder why we should cultivate love for people we don’t know or who have [...]
You Are Avalokiteshvara
Eric Holm on how visualization practice helps us overcome ego and pacify obstacles. Includes "A Visualization Practice: Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion." The buddhadharma is renowned for its skillful methods of meditative training. In Vajrayana Buddhism, many of these methods are based on the visualization of archetypal wisdom forms, or deities. Visualization [...]
