Course Descriptions

The core of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition is wisdom and compassion. Wisdom is the living energy that comes from the insight that there are no fixed points in reality, an insight that is sometimes called emptiness. We go searching for fixed reference points like a you and a me, and we don’t find anything, so it’s said that the not finding is the great finding. It’s liberating; it’s openness. And with the loss of any fixed reference points, one can more easily be present with other living beings, hence empathy or compassion. Compassion is the living proof that one is in the process of embodying wisdom insights. These twin energies of wisdom and compassion are also the operating system or the lubricant that makes possible all of Buddhist Tantra, which can be seen as dancing with the apparent display that arises in one’s mind. Tantra proclaims that everything can be worked with, played with. What makes this Tantra dance possible is the Mahayana insight of a basic indwelling clarity and goodness, Buddha nature. Inside of us are these already enlightened qualities that are temporarily covered over, and Tantra gives us many ways to unleash, rediscover, and live in the light of that which has always been there.