Speaker: Paul Greene. Paul reviews the Buddhist perspective on anger and identifies a variety of skillful means to work with it. Although Western culture sometimes seems to accept anger as appropriate and inevitable, Buddhism recognizes it as a poison that threatens our well-being and impedes our path to enlightenment. We can work with anger by recalling the egolessness of the self, the enlightened Buddha nature of all beings, the causes and conditions that give rise to situations, the negative karmic results of aggression, and the positive karmic results of allowing negative karmic seeds to ripen. From the perspective of the Mahayana path, the bodhisattva intention to benefit beings is dependent on our ability to overcome aggression.

Speaker: Gretchen Kahre-Holland. Gretchen offers an appreciation of the tremendous power of prayer to heal and transform, and guides listeners through a session of tonglen practice dedicated to our mothers. Over the years, Rinpoche has provided us with prayers to respond to difficult situations like the death of George Floyd, the fires in Colorado, and the war in Ukraine. One particular form of prayer, the tonglen practice of giving and taking, is essential to attaining enlightenment. On this Mother’s Day Gretchen reminds us that, over the course of our countless lifetimes, all sentient beings have been our mothers. Soliciting specific prayers from listeners, she leads a guided tonglen practice devoted to benefiting our all our mothers.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la reflects on working with our emotions and neuroses by examining our determination to practice the Dharma. Where are we investing our freedom? Are we making time for practice and retreat? Are we working with our habits? Are we accumulating merit?

Speaker: Stanton Dossett. Stanton conveys the importance of deeply contemplating the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma: precious human birth, impermanence, karma, and samsara. Appreciating our precious human birth and its impermanence inspires us to make the most of our opportunity to practice the Dharma. Grasping the power of karma to shape our future lives focuses our attention on engaging in right action. Being aware of the unnecessary suffering samsaric beings experience, lifetime after lifetime, opens our hearts and cultivates bodhicitta, the “mind set on enlightenment.”