Resting in the nature of mind
Teachings on the Heart Sutra by Thomas Dhammadipa and Dolpo Tulku Rinpoche
Dolpo Tulku Rinpoche taught according to the Tibetan tradition and Thomas Dhammadipa introduced us into Chinese tradition.
Place: Shanta Vana (shantavana.cz), Czech
Date: 22th – 27th April 2025
Audio and video: We’ll post it later when we process the recordings.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9224QYD
The ultimate step-by-step guide to meditation practice, with detailed explanations in plain language of the true original meaning of all the related important Sanskrit terms used in the times of Patanjali and Buddha, as well as in the context of advances in neuroscience in the study of the state of meditation.
This book is written for meditation practitioners who want to benefit from authentic self-development methods taught by Patanjali and the Buddha, and is based on my experience of studying Oriental methods of self-development since 1989. I have been visiting India since 1997, living there for a total of more than 7 years, including being in India continuously from 2001 to 2006. Communication with several yogarealized saints, living in various ashrams, receiving several spiritual names and translating several dozen books on Oriental topics allowed me to understand the essence of teachings of self-development. In addition, in 2004, I was perhaps the first CIS resident to receive individual sannyasa diksha – from Somnath Giriji, mahamandaleshwar (one of the chairmen) of the Hindu monastic lineage of the Shri Panch Dashnam Juna akhara, in his head Himalayan ashram.
In the book, I also explain the true practical meaning of various terms related to the practice of meditation, which are often perceived as stereotyped, and not always correctly. These are chitta (the “mirror” of the mind, and not the mind-manas itself), samyama (clairvoyant insight into the essence of things after achieving yogarealization), buddhi, vitarka, vichara, vipashyana, dhyana, samadhi, shamatha, nirvana, arhat (one who has trained real 3-hour shamatha and subsequently achieved the fourth jhana and, accordingly, siddhis) and others.
The book also contains a description of my many-year experience in using neuroheadsets in meditation practice (from early amateur projects of electroencephalographs to ready-made neuroheadsets), including the “EEG Meditation” applications I wrote for real assessment of the quality and duration of samadhi/shamatha meditation.
If this book allows someone to figure out the missing aspects of teachings of raja yoga & Buddhism and, as a result, even make significant progress on this path, not to mention achieving the goal of teachings of Patanjali & Buddha, it will be an incredible luck. If you read this book, the only thing standing between you and achieving Buddhahood is your daily personal proper meditation practice.
Review of the book by Buddhist scholar, Tibetologist, Indologist, candidate of historical sciences Andrey Terentyev, written in March 2024:
“The book by Vasyl Vernyhora ‚Meditation in raja yoga, Buddhism and according to neurophysiology‘ is truly a practical guide to real meditation, and not just another advertisement for a fashionable ‚esoteric practice‘. This guide is based on the personal long-term practice of the author, who studied meditation in India from Indian and Tibetan teachers. I don’t know any books in European languages that could compare in breadth and depth of coverage of the topic with this book by Vasyl Vernyhora.”
Andrey Terentyev, chief editor of Buddhist publishing house „Narthang“
Theme: Awakening Faith in the Mahayana (Mahāyāna śraddhotpādaśāstra)
Organizer: Indonesian Chan Community
Date: 21th April – the lecture series is still ongoing
Video: Indonesian Chan Community
Audio: Download or Archive.org
Everybody is welcome to join the lectures. The lectures are ongoing. Bhante is planning a longer series. The lectures are every Saturday, 19:30 Jakarta Time (14:30 CET).
We thank Indonesian Chan Community for the organizing these lectures, for their kindness and for sharing these great lectures.
You can find the official recordings on YouTube channel playlist. Please check audio recordings too. We are updating the audio recordings here from the YouTube channel and also from our backup recordings.
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86430732068
ID Rapat: 864 3073 2068
Hereby, the participants in the series of lectures concerning the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana are kindly requested to support the teacher, Thomas Dhammadipa, by making voluntary donations to support his Dharma activities and daily expenses. Donations can be forwarded to his bank account:
CZK:
Account number: 2113748014/2700
IBAN: CZ6627000000002113748014
SWIFT: BACXCZPP
EUR:
Account number: 2113748030/2700
IBAN: CZ2227000000002113748030
SWIFT: BACXCZPP
Beneficiary name: Tomas Gutmann
Address: Bobov 676, Mala Skala 46822, Czech Republic
Bank name: UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia, a.s.
Bank address: Praha 4 – Michle, Zeletavska 1525/1, ZIP CODE 140 92, Czech Republic
Date: 20. April, 2024
Place: Nirakara Institute, Compentensia Universidad Madrid, Spain (https://nirakara.org)
La versión en español está aquí.
Audio: Download or Archive.org
Why Yogācāra Buddhism Matters
Mahāyāna Buddhism arose in classical India and flourished in China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. While one of its major Indian schools, the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) focuses on the concept of emptiness—that all phenomena lack their own essence—the Yoga Practitioners school (Yogācāra) focuses on the cognitive processes whereby we impute such essences. Through everyday examples and analogues in cognitive science, author William Waldron makes Yogācāra’s core teachings—the three turnings of the Dharma-wheel, the three-nature theory, the store-house consciousness, and the idea of mere perception—accessible to a general audience. Countering the common view of Yogācāra as a form of idealism, he treats Yogācāra Buddhism as a coherent system of ideas and practices on its own terms, with dependent arising its guiding principle. He first examines early Buddhist texts that show how our affective and cognitive processes shape the way objects and worlds appear to us, and how we erroneously grasp onto them as essentially real—perpetuating the engrained habits that bind us to saṃsāra. After analyzing the early Madhyamaka critique of essences, he then examines how Yogācāra texts, such as the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and Stages of Yogic Practice, build upon these earlier ideas to argue that our constructive processes also occur unconsciously. Not only are we collectively, yet mostly unknowingly, constructing our shared realities—our cultural worlds—they are also mediated through the store-house consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna)—functioning as a kind of “cultural unconscious.” Next, Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses argues that we can learn to recognize such objects and worlds as “mere perceptions” (vijñāpti-mātra) and thereby abandon our enchantment with the products of our own cognitive processes. The author walks us through the Mahāyāna path to this transformation as gracefully laid out in Maitreya’s Distinguishing Phenomena from their Ultimate Nature. Finally, he considers how Yogācāra perspectives inspire us to rethink religion in our scientific and pluralistic age.
Book: https://wisdomexperience.org/product/making-sense-of-mind-only/
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/rangjung-yeshe-institute/prof-bill-waldron-making-sense-of-mind-only
Those deeply interested in mastering the proper meditation posture will certainly appreciate the following video. Our dear friend Honza Dlabal from the Sklenářka Сenter generously shares the fundamental principles of correct sitting posture. This lecture was arranged during the meditation course spontaneously, at our request. Honza also added a concise summary for us, available for download here.
The expertise behind this guidance on posture comes from yogi Dr. Jiří Čumpelík.
Everyone keen on delving deeper into the nuances of proper posture is welcome to join courses at Sklenářka or arrange for individual stay and personal consultation.
Finally, we would like to thank Ondra from Buddha Mangala for his excellent video recording work. A big thanks also goes to Zoe from Ilya Bondarenko’s group for flawlessly translating the subtitles into English and Russian.
Theme: Four Brahmaviharas
Place: Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre (yarrawarra.com.au), Australia
Date: February 20.-24. 2023
Audio: Download or Archive.org
We thank br. Tenzin and Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Center for their kindness and sharing these lectures.
Theme: Awakening Faith in the Mahayana (Mahāyāna śraddhotpādaśāstra)
Place: Buddha Pada (buddhapada.in), Kalimpong, India
Date: 13th – 22th Jan 2023
Audio: Download or Archive.org
Note: Recording from morning 20th failed.
Text: Mindfulness of Breathing is an extract from Asanga’s Shravakabhumi (Stages of Disciples), translated from Tibetan and Sanskrit by B. Alan Wallace. Please use this text only to supplement listening to the lectures. The text is not intended for free distribution.
We thank Buddha Pada and Br. Tenzin for their kindness and sharing these great lectures.
Retreat with Bhante Dhammadipa: The Study of Mahayana Shraddhotpada Shastra (Attributed to Ashvaghosha)
In the Mahayana tradition, one is encouraged to combine Shamatha and Vipassana even before realizing the Ultimate Reality. In the non-dual tradition, Shamatha is the base for the penetration of the non-dualistic nature of the mind. This penetration is done either on the Alaya tradition, or on the basis of the Buddha-nature tradition. Both are traced back to the teachings of the Bodhisattva Maitreya.
In this course, Bhante Dhammadipa will explore Shamatha practice from the point of view of Buddha-nature (Tathagatagarbha), explained with reference to Alaya or store-consciousness. We will discover meditation as the base for insight into the non-dual nature of mind, the mind which is pure and always present, and the application of this method in understanding not only the Zen tradition, but also Tibetan Vajrayana (Dzogchen / Mahamudra).
The Awakening of Faith in Mahayana is a text attributed to Ashwaghosha, who was clearly a Shravastivada poet and philosopher. In the Chinese tradition this text is widely studied as the philosophical foundation of the Zen tradition, and it is also related to the Pure land tradition.
Theme: Samdhinirmocana Sutra
Place: Somaiya Vidyavihar University (somaiya.edu), Mumbai, India
Date: 12th – 24th Nov 2022
Audio: Download or Archive.org
Video: KJ Somaiya Institute of Dharma Studies YouTube Channel
We thank Somaiya University for their kindness and sharing these great lectures.
These twelft lectures of the teachings by Bhante Dhammadipa, starting from 12th November 2022 to 24th November 2022, organized by KJ Somaiya Institute of Dharma Studies, Somaiya Vidyavihar University. These teachings are based on the 6th Chapter of the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, a foundational text of the Yogācāra school of Buddhism.
Bhante Dhammadipa was instrumental in developing KJ Somaiya Institute outreach project, Jetavan, at Sakarwadi, which is a wonderful collaboration with Godavari Biorefineries Ltd, Bhante Dhammadipa and the Centre for Buddhist Studies at KJSIDS.
