In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas

In this excerpt from “In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas”, Phakchok Rinpoche discusses discipline, and how it is essential to a strong meditation practice.

Within In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas, Phakchok Rinpoche clearly shows how genuine meditation is contingent upon bringing together many supportive conditions. However, Rinpoche also articulates methods for contained formal sessions that are effective, profound, and transformative.

Phakchok Rinpoche teaches that if we are holding any anger, we are not free. When you’re even mildly annoyed at someone, the mind is disturbed and there is some pain. When you are holding on to a twenty-year grudge, you are enmeshed in a story that is only issuing out distress moment after painful moment. From the standpoint of someone practicing to become free from suffering to help others, how can any grudge be worth holding on to? It makes no sense, actually, to teethe on a point of pain when the causes that produced that pain point have long ago come and gone. It is only the ego that feels the need to gnaw.

Phakchok Rinpoche shares a little bit of his new book, “In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas”, in which he teaches how the essence of meditation naturally arises when we properly line-up the right conditions within our lives.

Jack DeTar shares Rinpoche’s path of authentic meditation taken from “In The Footsteps of Bodhisattvas”