Mangala Shri Bhuti - The Link

Speakers: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel speaks with her teacher, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, about the paramita of patience. A common misconception is that patience is a passive ability to "grin and bear it", or to endure suppressed anger. Rather, it is better understood as a creative and active way of working with the mind. Patience becomes a kind of inner armor, protecting us from afflictive states such as pain and aggression. Rinpoche describes it as "the ability not to be bothered"—a quality of non-reactivity that, when cultivated, invites grace and opens us to the experience of unconditional well-being and universal love.

Speaker: Peter Lauritzen. Peter reflects on the meaning of refuge in a time of personal and global disruption. He discusses how meditation on the four thoughts that turn the mind toward the Dharma offers a true refuge and lasting protection from anxiety, distress, and distraction. Cultivating the four thoughts is particularly helpful as a way to orient the mind on compassion and the law of cause and effect, or karma.

Speaker: Aline Gomes. As a member of MSB Brazil, Aline joins her sangha's regular efforts to release crabs and other animals back into the wild. More than 200,000 beings have been freed to date. Today's LINK illuminates the practice of life release as a direct and tangible expression of aspiration and application bodhicitta. Aline describes how saving a life moves practice beyond the theoretical into the living, visceral field of experience. Life release becomes a direct way to cultivate the six perfections: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration and wisdom. In caring for beings on the threshold of death, practitioners encounter the generative qualities of intention and motivation and also directly penetrate the nature of cause and effect.

Speaker: Bob Reid. Bob explores bodhicitta and the heart practice of the four immeasurables. He shares an approach he learned from Pema Chödron that enables him to work with the difficult tendencies of self-aggression and lack of warmth towards his own experience. In this approach, one begins with loving kindness towards oneself instead of loved ones. He further describes how the four links can be supportive in cultivating bodhicitta. The fourth link of prayer has been particularly helpful in cultivating a tender heart of ‘tsewa’- the sincere wish for beings to find peace and liberation. Bob concludes that bodhicitta is the heart of the whole path and therefore reminds us that we can turn our everyday experiences into a paramita practice and thus become a bodhisattva.

Speaker: Sharon Lukert. Sharon explores how the Buddha's teachings on birth, old age, sickness, and death can be brought directly into the lived experience of illness. Sickness brings us into intimate contact with our deepest attachment, which is the body itself. Drawing on her lived experience with Alzheimer's disease, Sharon shares how she has adapted her Dharma practice in response to this diagnosis. As outer cognitive capacities diminish, illness offers a deeper recognition of impermanence, and a tender cultivation of compassion for herself and others. She offers a line from the great Dzogchen master Jigme Lingpa for our contemplation: "Do not place the sickness on your mind, but place your naked intrinsic awareness upon your sickness."