A “blogroll” of chosen links would be a good idea, but in the meantime here are some of the links I had on the old version of this site. I’m open to suggestions as to improvements or broken links, and I guess I could go through my “favourites” to see what else there is.
While the Gyalwa Karmapa was so much in the news since his flight from Tibet, Nalandabodhi were providing links to news stories, video and audio clips etc., and although that is now a thing of the past, a lot of interesting material is still accessible there.
I used to have a huge collection of links, but I never had time to keep checking them for content, availability etc., and there are others who do that kind of thing much better than me. There are always search engines, or you could go to Quiet Mountain. So this is just a small selection of personal favourites:
If you are looking for an introduction to Buddhism on the web, there are some very clear teachings presented by KTD, over there in New York State, and the teachings at Samye Ling in Scotland are also well worth a look – see links to these centres below. You could spend many happy hours browsing on the base of Simhananda, where Anthony Bruno has, amongst other things, a long list of rather well-chosen teachings.
You wanna know more? Read a book! You wanna book? Try Snow Lion, possibly the best bookstore in the world - there is a link at top right too, and you might also like to sign up for their newsletter.
Don’t know what to buy? Let me suggest Dharma Paths which is a good clear basic summary by Khenpo Karthar, Luminous Mind by Kalu Rinpoche, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (I would suggest the Khenpo Konchog version), the Life of Milarepa, the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Mahamudra Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance, Words of my Perfect Teacher … but I’m not trying to provide a bibliography.
If you can’t afford to spend, spend, spend, there is excellent reading in the on-line newsletter that used to be issued by Shenpen Osel. The site stopped growing years ago, but the old issues are still available, and well worth downloading.
Time to put some of it into practice? You might, for instance, like to take a trip to Scotland and stay at Samye Ling, but if you are on the left of the Atlantic you might nip to NY to visit Karma Triyana Dharmachakra – the site also includes reading in Densal Online. When in Kathmandu, if you can tear yourself away from the stupa at Baudha, why not visit Benchen, the monastery of Tenga Rinpoche and of Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche. Last and perhaps this time really least, as a Birmingham lad, I can’t close this paragraph without including Birmingham Karma Ling, but the site is currently unavailable. Recently (did someone say “at last”?) a simple site, but useful if you are thinking of going, has opened for Marpa House (between Cambridge and Saffron Walden, England), dear to my heart, where I took refuge back in 1974!
A few links related to individual teachers: Thrangu Rinpoche has a site that might well be worth a visit, a site was opened recently for the great Khenpo Tsultrim, while Ringu Tulku Rinpoche has a site worth checking. Not so much an individual teacher, the Tibetan Government in Exile‘s website contains a lot of good information, both religious and political.
Feel like a chat? I wouldn’t recommend usenet these days, but how about joining up at the Kagyu discussion list at “yahoo”.
Karma Samten Choeling here in Sydney now has a new, working site. Traleg Rinpoche’s centre unfortunately still does not.
And when it’s time to DO something, what about helping Rokpa?
I enjoyed reading the teaching on wisdom which I found from your link to Ringu Tulku Rinpoche. Particularly the following bits
Enlightenment is like putting on the light. In the darkness we can’t see things. From the Buddhist point of view, enlightenment is not something new that we gain and that we didn’t have before. Neither do we get rid of things that we had before. We just discover what we didn’t know or see before. It’s like clearing a misunderstanding. When we clear a misunderstanding, we don’t change anything. Nothing is changed; everything remains just the same as it was before. Only the mistaken way of seeing is gone and we now see differently, in the right way.
………..In the same way, we don’t change the world, we don’t change others and we don’t change ourselves. We just change our wrong, confused or distorted way of seeing. Sometimes enlightenment is described as nothing more than clearing a misunderstanding, seeing slightly differently. That is also why enlightenment is possible. Enlightenment is possible because, from the Buddhist point of view, it is just clearing a wrong way of perceiving, no more than that – at least in theory!
………………So wisdom doesn’t necessarily come from developing an intellectual understanding, but from deeply seeing things as they really are. There are many different ways of developing it. From a Buddhist point of view one way is not necessarily the best way for everybody, because there are many different kinds of people. Each person has a different way of seeing, understanding things and of reacting. So people may understand it through teachings and learning. Some may understand it through devotion. Some may understand it through compassion. Some may understand it through yet another way