Dharmata Moncton

04/19/2026

This week's Lojong (mind training) is:

Drive all blames into one.

This is advice on how to work with your fellow beings. Everyone is looking for someone to blame and therefore aggression and neurosis keep expanding.

Instead, pause and look at what's happening with you. When you hold on so tightly to your view of what they did, you get hooked. Your own self-righteousness causes you to get all worked up and to suffer.

So, work on cooling that reactivity rather than escalating it. This approach reduces suffering-- yours and everyone else's.

From The Compassion Box set by Pema Chodron.

04/19/2026

04/19/2026

A quick photoshoot following a heartfelt sharing by Dave at our weekly Saturday Gathering. Much gratitude to Dave and all who gathered. (Missing two from the photo.)

04/16/2026

Residential Chöd Retreat in Northern California

A Five-Night Residential Retreat with Anam Thubten
Saturday, May 23 – Thursday, May 28
Camp Navarro, Mendocino County, California
Hosted by Dharmata Foundation

Registration is open. More info: https://mailchi.mp/dharmata/cachodretreat2026?e=b82bf7ebe

04/14/2026

Sat, April 18, 10am-12pm: Meditation, reflection & discussion
~ "Hard Act to Follow" - reflection by Dave

Location: Dudjom (du-jum) Ling, 10 Newberry St., Moncton
~ Please arrive 10-15 min early to get settled.
~ Held every week in person on Saturdays

Thanks to Ashraf Rahmani for the image.

04/12/2026

Born from a sangha group poem inspired by the book Choosing Compassion by Anam Thubten, this song playfully explores the Buddhist teaching of “one taste” — welcoming joy, confusion, longing, and peace just as they are.
A simple, heartfelt reminder to relax, open the heart, and receive life fully.
LET’S HAVE A FEAST!!!

The poem was put to music by Ashraf Rahmani

This song emerged from a group poem created by our sangha during a book study reflecting on Choosing Compassion by Anam Thubten.Inspired by the playful and p...

04/11/2026

Lojong (mind training) slogan of the week:
#1 (image): First, train in the preliminaries

Commentary: The preliminaries are also known as the four reminders. In your daily life, try to:

(1) Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
(2) Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone.
(3) Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around.
(4) Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don't want does not result in happiness.

From The Compassion Box set by Pema Chodron.

04/09/2026

Sat, April 11, 10am-12pm: Meditation, Dharma talk & discussion

Location: Dudjom (du-jum) Ling, 10 Newberry St., Moncton
~ Please arrive 10-15 min early to get settled.
~ Held every week in person on Saturdays

04/08/2026

Not Your Thoughts

Notice that when thoughts arise in meditation, they are no longer actually yours. Usually we have this sense of "my thoughts." Let go of that notion. Instead, treat all thoughts as part of the natural world — as an expression of life. Thoughts are just happening by themselves. Some are random, some have an almost unbelievable number of pre-existing causes and conditions. You yourself are not even thinking.

In that space, welcome all sensations — sounds, the silence between sounds. Feel that you are experiencing life as it is. Not life as some idea in your head, but life happening right now. Feel that you are embracing life not from the ego or the conditioned mind, but from a place where the ego is no longer the center of your being.

Feel that awareness, compassion, non-judgment and non-self are now the center. Even though there is no real center — feel this intuitively. You are experiencing life not through the lens of deep-seated karmic habits like fear, judgment, aversion and grasping, but from unclouded intelligence. This pristine wisdom does not know how to judge or label. It knows the true nature of everything.

Relax in this nondual awareness. Enjoy whatever you are experiencing. Notice that thoughts — like all experiences — are transitory. Always dancing, appearing and disappearing.

04/08/2026

Today let's review this word adhiṣṭhāna. Let’s connect with this Sanskrit word with Anam Thubten Rinpoche's updated commentary in his recent dharma talk "Evoking the Divine Wildness of the Mind" on Feb 15, 2026 at Dhumatala Temple.

adhiṣṭhāna

In Vajrayana Buddhism,
adhiṣṭhāna (Sanskrit; often spelled adhisthana; Tibetan: བྱིན་རླབས་, jinlap;
Chinese: 加持)
According to Rinpoche in his recent dharma talk, "jin" means splendor / greatness
"lap" means to influence.
This word may mean blessings, but "blessings" doesn't really capture the full meaning of adhiṣṭhāna. Adhiṣṭhāna is the amazing extraordinary energy that you evoke and then influence your consciousness right there, that transform your consciousness right there.

Let's not only learn this word, but to allow ourselves to receive and feel the adhiṣṭhāna - the amazing extraordinary energy, the transformative and liberating potency from our lineage.

Wisdom Wednesday
Dharmata Hong Kong
April 8, 2026

Photo taken in Dharmata Hong Kong retreat in February 2024.

04/06/2026

"Faith is trusting there is a place that is unshakeable within you." - Dharma talk, "Grounded in the Unshakeable", April 5, 2026