News

The Spanish Sangha of Northern California has been meeting monthly to study a preliminary English translation of three related discourses given by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III in 2015 and published as Learning from Buddha. The content of these three lessons is so important that His Holiness Dorje Chang Buddha requires that anyone wishing to receive a dharma transmission or initiation from Him, must bring this book with them and be interviewed to make certain they understand these lessons before they can even see the Buddha.

 

The first class was held on June 16 on the discourse given on “One Who Learns Dharma but Does Not Cultivate Oneself Cannot Attain Accomplishment.”  Zhaxi Zhuoma read  the text with Edwin Miranda and Natta Quintero translating each part into Spanish. In this lesson, the Buddha expounds on how one must practice self-cultivation to become accomplished or liberated from the suffering of birth and death and also practice dharma, especially the practice of yidam dharma. Your yidam is the holy being presiding over the particular dharma you decide to practice in order to attain accomplishment and is further explained in Lesson 2. This lesson also explains how to check yourself in your cultivation.

 

On July 7, the second bilingual class was also held in Stockton and began a discussion on the second discourse in this series on “One Who Cultivates Oneself but Does Not Learn Dharma Cannot Generate Realization Powers.”   The Buddha Master explains exactly what Buddha-dharma is and is not in this lesson including describing the three components that are necessary for a dharma to be considered a complete Buddha-dharma and why learning Buddha-dharma entails cultivation. We explored what was involved in the preliminaries and pre-preliminaries and how you prepared yourself to do dharma practice. We also studied the Buddha Master’s vivid and excellent explanation from the Sutra on Definitive Truth on how you used the worldly actions of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and undifferentiated generosity (the “Four Limitless States of Mind”) that do require attachment to develop what would become ultimate bodhichitta that has no attachment. The Buddha Master gave us the clear example of how you start with learning characters (in Chinese, “letters” or A-B-Cs in English), then words, then sentences until you can write essays and speak eloquently. Or put another way they are like “training wheels” on a bicycle. Eventually you don’t think about them anymore, but you need them to get where you want to be. The famous analogy of only needing the raft to get to the other shore, but discarding it once you arrived was also given.

 

The discussion on lesson 2 will continue on August 4 (date changed to August 25), again in Stockton, with a look at the various parts of a complete formal yidam practice and how to conclude it. The Buddha will also explain certain conditions and requirements of the Avalokiteshvara (Kwan Yin) Bodhisattva Great Compassion Empowerment Dharma. which we are planning on doing in English again in Clovis early next year. Hopefully, there will still be time in that class to hear and discuss lesson 3: “If One Does Not Put into Practice the Lessons One Has Heard on Cultivation and Dharma, It Will Be Like Trying to Scoop Up the Reflection of the Moon on Water.”   This lesson pulls together the previous two lessons and states that it is useless to just listen to them unless you understand what you hear or read and put that knowledge into practice. No results will manifest without action. You will not end the cycle of birth and death, achieve perfect good fortune and wisdom, and/or attain accomplishment and liberation. This lesson is about self-examination and taking real action.

These have been excellent classes and have enabled those present to more deeply enter the dharma.

Zhaxi Zhuoma has read preliminary translations of this text at the Sanger temple and elsewhere including Vietnam and Thailand and will continue to do so until it is published and readily available in English.

CLICK for August 25 news article on the continuation of Lesson 2 or Part II of Learning from Buddha.

CLICK for 2020 Zoom Class on Learning from Buddha.