A New Translation of the Buddhist Classic Who will master this world And the realms of Yama and the gods? Who will select a well‑taught Dharma teaching, As a skilled person selects a flower? One in training will master this world And the realms of Yama and the gods. One in training will select A [...]

by Drigung Kyabgön Padmai Gyältsen [An excerpt from Opening the Treasure of the Profound: Teachings on the Songs of Jigten Sumgon and Milarepa] OM SVASTI The victorious Shakya saw the five sights. He showed the victorious path, and, to expand the teachings, took birth again as the victorious regent Ratna Shri. I prostrate to him. Opening [...]

Meditations on the Roof of the World It was while I was living in England, in the jostle and drizzle of London, that I remembered the Himalayas at their most vivid. I had grown up amongst those great blue and brown mountains; they had nourished my blood; and though I was separated from them by [...]

Hermann Hesse’s Southeast Asian Travels In the morning I had chased butterflies on the byways, overgrown with grass and overhung with foliage, that run among the European gardens. In the white heat of noon I returned to the city on foot, and I passed the afternoon walking about, visiting shops, and doing my shopping in [...]

Would you like to keep your brain and nervous system happy as you age? These 20 pages provide must-have information about how aging affects your brain, central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, digestive system, circulatory system, and more. There are many easy things you can do to keep these systems healthy—learn how yoga can help! [...]

An Introduction to a Remarkable Life Youth Yunmen was born in 864 in Jiaxing, a town between Shanghai and Hangzhou on China’s eastern coast. His family name was Zhang; but because it was the custom for Buddhist monks to abandon their family names, he became known as Wenyan and later took the name of Mt. [...]

Prologue Homage to you, O glorious Samantabhadra! Your nature is the ultimate expanse, Primordial and perfect peace. Though free of all conceptual constructs, It is yet embellished by the kāyas and the wisdoms Present of themselves. From this there radiates a myriad rays of light Performing every kind of action In the field of those [...]

Rejecting the Idea of Gender Roles The Prison of Gender Roles What “it” has a greater hold on people’s imaginations or limits them more than ideas about what biological sex must mean, what I call “the prison of gender roles”? Almost all conventional people—often called “ordinary worldlings” in Buddhist texts—as well as many Buddhists hold [...]

Clarify Your Definitions We have all been in gardens—even very costly ones—that we find oddly uninspiring. There are the landscapes around mansions where money has been lavished on moving trees, building pools, patios, and fire pits, and planting lush lawns, yet we don’t much enjoy being in those spaces and may even find them stale [...]

Introduction This entire book hinges on the word faith. You may assume that you know what that means. You may think that it has a single, clear definition. But words are not definitive structures: one word can have limitless—even opposing—meanings. Language morphs over time, and words take on different meanings depending on their contexts. You’ll [...]