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I have stopped publishing articles here and moved to a new site Clarke Scott's website

Clarke Scott is a fully ordained Buddhist monk trained in the Tibetan tradition. A student of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Clarke has received personal instructions—direct one-to-one instructions—on Madhyamaka philosophy and meditation from His Holiness. Recently Clarke moved to Tasmania to pursue a Ph.D in Buddhist philosophy from the University of Tasmania.

Dalai Lama in Australia 2008

His Holiness is coming to Australia in 2008 to expound on the famous text called Stage of Meditation by the Indian pandit Kamalasila.

I have blogged about this previously but now there is a nice looking website http://dalailamainaustralia.org to go along with the tour. Thank ’someone’ because the last one was rather plain to say the lest!

Anyways here is a little from Stages of Meditation.

Moved by compassion, Bodhisattvas take the vow to liberate all sentient beings.

Then by overcoming their self-centered outlook, they engage eagerly and continuously in the very difficult practices of accumulating merit and insight.

Having entered into this practice, they will certainly complete the collection of merit and insight. Accomplishing the accumulation of merit and insight is like having omniscience itself in the palm of your hand. Therefore, since compassion is the only root of omniscience, you should become familiar with this practice from the very beginning.

The Compendium of Perfect Dharma reads, “O Buddha, a Bodhisattva should not train in many practices. If a Bodhisattva properly holds to one Dharma and learns it perfectly, he has all the Buddha’s qualities in the palm of his hand. And, if you ask what that one Dharma is, it is great compassion.”

The Buddhas have already achieved all their own goals, but remain in the cycle of existence for as long as there are sentient beings. This is because they possess great compassion. They also do not enter the immensely blissful abode of nirvana like the Hearers. Considering the interests of sentient beings first, they abandon the peaceful abode of nirvana as if it were a burning iron house. Therefore, great compassion alone is the unavoidable cause of the non-abiding nirvana of the Buddha.

Hope to see you there.

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