r/TibetanBuddhism

Is it a common thing when a student who is doing the 5-Fold Mahamudra accumulations is required not to cut their hair until they finish? And a related question, does this have the same meaning related to deities and dakinis as not cutting your hair in other retreats, plus being a visual reminder of passing time, or there's something more?

Lately, I’ve realized that no matter how strong we try to appear outside, inside we all search for one thing, Peace.

Not success.
Not attention.
Not temporary happiness.
Just real peace.

Mental peace. Emotional clarity. Inner stability. Protection. Calmness in the middle of life’s chaos.

Living in Mumbai, surrounded by constant noise, pressure, uncertainty, fast-moving life, and endless thoughts, I slowly started feeling mentally exhausted. There are days when anxiety, overthinking, confusion, fear about the future, and emotional heaviness become too much to carry silently.

And during this phase, I found myself moving closer to Tibetan Buddhism. I've also visited birth place of Buddha in Lumbini Nepal & visited twice Dalai Lama temple in Dharamshala, Himachal.

I genuinely want to build a deeper connection with the teachings of Gautama Buddha & Tibetan Buddhism for:

• Mental peace
• Clarity in life
• Inner healing
• Protection from negativity
• Emotional balance
• Calmness during difficult times
• Freedom from overthinking and fear
• And peace in general

Sometimes I wonder if others feel this too.

Has visiting a monastery, chanting mantras, or connecting spiritually helped you during anxiety, loneliness, depression, fear, or confusion?

How do you strengthen your inner peace when life feels mentally overwhelming?

I would truly love to hear your experiences, advice, prayers, or even simple words of encouragement.

Your words might help not only me, but many others silently struggling mentally and emotionally right now.

May Gautama Buddha’s wisdom and compassion bless everyone reading this with peace, protection, healing, and inner clarity. 🙏

A series about the life of guru padmasambhava.

This saturday Lama Kunsang will be giving an initiation, can someone help me understand what will be taught there?

It only says the following:

Dharmapala teaching and practice. But what Dharmapala is he teaching the practice?

Special Secret Mantra Empowerment of Mahakali Tsen Tika. Which Mahakali is this? What is Tsen Tika?

This event already has 120 likes which is huge, the last time I saw an event with so many likes was a Medicine Buddha empowerment from the Sakya Trizin.

So I know this event will be big and maybe a rare opportunity, but who is this Mahakali???

The most common representations of Padmasambhava are the one where he holds the vajra before his chest, the other one he is holding the vajra above his right leg. Can someone please explain what this difference symbolizes? And is it connected with different schools or traditions of vajrayana? Thank you very much!

Hard to find, people only talk about the other colours lol

For almost a year since I joined "Vajrayana Events" page on facebook, only one Red Dzambhala empowerment showed up, it's from Sakya on July, registrations aren't open yet but it seems like it will be only in-person. I'm looking for a online empowerment if possible. Thanks!

I read in a book by Lama Zopa Rinpoche that doing the seven-limb practice every day is essential for realizations. There are seven "limbs": prostrating, offering, confessing, rejoicing, requesting the teacher to turn the wheel of Dharma, requesting the teacher to remain for a long time and dedicating. How does one actually do these in practice? There is also a seven-limb prayer that presumably must be said. Does one simply say the prayer or is something more elaborate required (such as actually making offerings for the offering part)? Thank you.

How deep does this vow of not telling everyone go?

To this day, not even my own family knows I'm a Vajrayana practitioner, they only think I'm Buddhist.

But last week, I went to therapy to get some guidance in my life and career, and this question came up. She told me to tell her my whole life story during the first sessions.

When I get to the part where I became a Vajrayana practitioner, should I mention it, or should I do the same thing I did with my family — just tell her I became Buddhist and move on?

I've read some posts about it and find it interesting that some representations of Red Jambhala have a elephant head and others don't, and some consider him, with or without the elephant head, to be the equivalent of Ganesh in Vajrayana.

Is it true?

I have stopped practising for a week and worried about restarting properly. I am seeing my teacher in early July. I am doing the Ngondro so I know it is a case of just cutting out time in the day again.

In the meantime, does anyone have a suggestion for something I should do every day? Like for example, make offerings at the altar. I have a chant book, what chants should I do out of these everyday before I go to bed for example.

Thanks

I’m hoping someone more familiar with GBI can help me out. I took this initiation recently, after many years of preparation, but the link to the sadhana wasn’t immediately available (which I ended up not noticing until after the full thing had concluded).

Virtuous habits are formed?

Also what does it mean to see things “impurely”? I think it might just be a grammatical confusion for me. Does it just mean seeing distortedly through the lens of duality, with attachment, ignorance, and aversion and the other five poisons?

thank you!

Greetings to everyone, and thank you sincerely to anyone willing to read this post!

I (15M) am a teen, from western europe, (studying classical piano performance in a conservatory) deeply interested in the dhamma.

Over the last months, i began exploring buddhism. Initially this happened indirectly through interest in meditation, psychology, altered states of consciousness, and philosophical questions regarding selfhood and suffering. I have only read two books (i have though read multiple articles and texts) on this matter: "the practice of not thinking", by former monk ryunosuke koike; and later "what the buddha taught", work of walpola sri rahula.

I genuinely desire to follow the path, orient my life sincerely toward it. However, my greatest obstacle is confusion. Not disagreement exactly, but difficulty assembling the teachings into one coherent and comprehensive understanding. Every text clarifies some things while complicating others. I feel as though i possess fragments without yet grasping the structure of the whole.

For this reason, i would be extremely grateful for thoughtful responses to any of the following questions. I do not expect anyone to answer all of them. Even clarification on a single point may help significantly.

I ask especially for answers that are careful, analytical, informed, and intellectually honest. I simply mean that i am trying sincerely to understand, and brief answers such as "just go meditate" or "just practice" unfortunately do not resolve the confusion themselves.

At present, my principal objective is not merely intellectual curiosity, but attaining a coherent and comprehensive understanding of buddhism overall, such that the teachings become intelligible together rather than as isolated concepts.

Because of that, i would especially appreciate answers to the first section below, since it is the most urgent and central issue for me right now. The remaining questions follow from it.

I am currently writing a philosophy essay whose central thesis can be stated as follows:

The traditional problem of free will arises from reifying the self as a substantial and independent source of action. What we call the ‘self’ is better understood as a dependently arisen continuity of causally conditioned and interrelated processes without inherent or permanent identity. Because of this, libertarian free will is rejected not only causally but ontologically: the idea of an absolutely self-originating agent is incoherent. Nevertheless, practical agency and moral responsibility remain possible through stable patterns of causal continuity, functional authorship and relational intelligibility. Morality is therefore reconstructed not around metaphysical freedom or divine command, but around the reduction of suffering and harmful conditions within interdependent systems.

However, although this initially seemed coherent to me, i now realize that my understanding may still be incomplete or confused.

The main problem is this:

If there is no self, what exactly is the relationship between the aggregates, consciousness, mind, continuity through time, rebirth, moral responsibility, and subjective experience itself?

I understand abstractly that the self is not a fixed entity, but i still do not clearly understand what an individual actually is conventionally.

What exactly unifies experience into the appearance of being 'someone'?

Why are there apparently separate streams of experience?

If there is no enduring self, what exactly acts, intends, chooses, suffers, or is reborn?

Likewise, i suspect my essay may still unconsciously preserve some subtle notion of self through terms such as 'functional authorship', 'organizational continuity', or 'agent'. I do not yet know whether these are legitimate conventional designations compatible with buddhism, or whether they still conceal attachment to identity in another form.

In other words:
How should one correctly think about agency without self?
How should one understand responsibility without an ultimate subject?
How should one understand continuity without identity?

Related to this, i would greatly appreciate rigorous explanations of the five aggregates, dependent origination, the buddhist understanding of mind, and the distinction between mind, consciousness, and awareness.

At present, i think my lack of understanding of these doctrines is the principal thing preventing both my essay and my understanding of buddhism overall from becoming coherent.

The second most urgent issue for me concerns musical performance and anxiety.

Music is one of the most important things in my life (as i am an aspiring pianist), but performance is often accompanied by severe anxiety, self-consciousness, obsessive self-monitoring, fear of failure, and attachment to judgment and results.

This destroys clarity and sometimes even the joy of music itself.

How should one work with this kind of anxiety?

How should one approach practice itself?

What attitude should one cultivate toward performance, judgment, mistakes, ambition, and refinement?

One of my biggest difficulties is that buddhism often appears fragmented depending on the source.

Sometimes it is presented almost psychologically, other times metaphysically, philosophically, religiously, ritually, or devotionally.

So:
What exactly is buddhism fundamentally?
What is essential and central?
What is secondary, symbolic, cultural, or sectarian?
How should a beginner construct a clear and ordered understanding of the whole?

Likewise:
How should one choose a tradition or school?
Are there serious and reliable buddhist teachers or communities in portugal that may eventually be worth seeking out in the future (i will, i believe, only be able to get a teacher in 3-4 years)?

I began meditation some months ago, but eventually started experiencing increasing internal stress and suppression, almost as though i was trying forcibly to silence thought.

So:
How should meditation properly begin for someone psychologically obsessive or excessively analytical?
What is meditation actually cultivating?
What should one generally direct the mind toward throughout ordinary life?

More broadly:
What exactly is dukkha?
What constitutes the absence of dukkha?
How should one relate emotionally to life itself without falling either into pessimism or naive optimism?

I also still struggle with several practical ethical questions.

For example:
What exactly is the basis of the precept against killing?
Why are animals generally included but plants excluded?
How should one respond to genuinely dangerous or violent people?
Is lying always wrong even when it prevents suffering?
How should one understand 'right speech' realistically rather than abstractly?

Likewise:
How should one deal with compulsivity?
How should one respond wisely to severely depressed people who threaten suicide if abandoned?
How should one deal compassionately with suffering within one’s own family?
How should one act regarding situations such as insect infestations at home?

Finally, i still remain confused regarding several metaphysical and cosmological issues.

Such are:
What exactly is rebirth if there is no enduring self?
What, if anything, continues?
How should one understand traditional buddhist cosmology today?
How should teachings concerning mount meru, realms, heavens, hells, and non-human beings be interpreted?
Can emptiness meaningfully apply to atoms and particles, or is that a misunderstanding of śūnyatā?

Lastly, i would greatly appreciate comments regarding the following books, in order, and whether they form a coherent path of study for someone in my position:

"What the buddha taught", walpola sri rahula.
"The heart of the buddha’s teaching", thich nhat hanh.
"The miracle of mindfulness", thich nhat hanh.
"Why buddhism is true", robert wright.
"The dhammapada", translated by eknath easwaran.
"Buddhism in practice" donald s. lopez.
"In the buddha’s words", bhikkhu bodhi.
"Buddhist philosophy: essential readings", william edelglass.
"How to see yourself as you really are", the dalai lama.

I apologize sincerely for the immense length of this post. My intention is not merely to ask disconnected questions, but to seek a coherent understanding of buddhism as a whole. Metta

Greetings, everyone! I am just here seeking some advice on how to meditate and build a connection with Tara. I have heard many great stories of people improving their lives and even witnessing miracles because they meditated on this particular Buddhist Deity. Is an empowerment needed to begin meditating on Tara? How can I incorporate Tara into my daily meditations? Are there any prayers or a sadhana/puja I can do? Any book recommendations would also be great. Thank you very much.