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Compassion in living and dying

Compassion in living and dying

A talk given at Sakya Monastery in Seattle, Washington.

  • Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness: A Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, by Khensur Jampa Tegchok and edited by Thubten Chodron
  • Higher rebirth via practicing compassion, ethical conduct and generosity
  • Relationship between higher rebirth and highest good, latter being liberation from cyclic existence and achieving full awakening
  • Helping others is helping ourselves
  • Correlation between eight worldly concerns and suffering
  • Moral: Spend your current lifetime accumulating merits and planting seeds for your good rebirth so that at the time of death you can rejoice in spending your life in goodness and your mind will be propelled properly.
  • Questions and answers

Venerable Thubten Chodron

Venerable Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners. She is well known for her warm, humorous, and lucid teachings. She was ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1977 by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan. Read her full bio.