Flower Ornament, Lotus, Pure Land Sutras + Asanga : Force For Good 2016
In this two hour teaching Tibet House US President Robert AF Thurman gives an introduction to “The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra” by Thomas Cleary providing it’s history, context and place within Buddhist Philosophy.
Includes a discussion of the Dalai Lama’s relationship to the Asanga and the Great Pandits of Nalanda, a guided meditation and dialog with class participants.
“The Flower Ornament is a sacred book, in the Buddhist sense. It is the doorway into the Realm of Reality, the reality witnessed by enlightened beings whose vision is no longer clouded by egocentric addictions. It manifests the sacred through its expressions, communicating from the Buddha’s mind to our minds the vision he first obtained under the tree of enlightenment.
It is said that this sutra records the very first revelation given out by the Buddha, wherein he transformed himself into Vairochana, the Radiant Buddha, and exalted the infinite cosmos in the bliss energy of his enlightened heart as it soared free from its beginningless bondage to ignorance and delusion.
It is said that all other sutras subsequently taught were adaptations of this overwhelming revelation, which was apparently too much for most people, gods, and other mythic beings. The revelation of this sutra is the direct encounter with the completely perfect buddha-verse of enlightened beings. It is initiatory, beyond esoteric and exoleric.
It is immediate, beyond sudden and gradual. Its very existence as a text that we can read, that can empower our imagination to enter into the total goodness that embraces everything and always has and always will, is itself an inconceivable liberation.
Robert AF Thurman from www.tricycle.org.
‘A Force For Good’ is a Tibet House US course to further the Dalai Lama’s contemporary world initiatives, from His Holiness’ American Institute of Buddhist Studies and Mind & Life Institute science dialogues (Universe in a Single Atom) and His creation of Abhidharma 2.0 through the “Science for Monks” programs, his “secular ethics” (Ethics for the New Millennium and Beyond Religion), His nonviolent approach to conflict resolution, including His Nobel Peace Laureate activities to seek dialogue and a win-win reconciliation with China in the face of the ongoing ethnicidal policies in Tibet (Freedom in Exile and Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of Tibet’s Dalai Lama) & along with his emphasis on positive activism (A New Reality: Charter of Universal Responsibility).
To join the on-going #ForceForGood series please visit: www.tibethouse.us.
? Music by Tenzin Choegyal, Used with Permission www.tenzinchoegyal.com
