Freedom In Bondage
By Adeu Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
Adeu Rinpoche took the trauma and suffering as an opportunity not only to accept the vicissitudes of life without bitterness but also to transcend the unjust treatment by not harboring ill-will against the perpetrators, instead developing compassion for them. In the end he turned suffering into happiness, for even while imprisoned he was able to meet many great masters, receive teachings from them and even do some serious practice. It is truly inspiring that people exist in our world with such profound realization and accomplishmentthey are examples to us all.
This tale together with wonderful teachings presents a compassionate and wise face to the hardship Adeu Rinpoche and so many others endured and triumphed over. It is a banquet of realization, pith instructions and dignity.
Read more from Adeu Rinpoche
Skillful Grace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tara Compendium: Feminine Principles Discovered Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Freedom In Bondage
Related ebooks
Great Accomplishment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Works of Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAs It Is, Volume II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vajra Heart Revisited: Teachings on the Path of Trekcho Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Journey to Certainty: The Quintessence of the Dzogchen View: An Exploration of Mipham's Beacon of Certainty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As It Is, Volume I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Natural Perfection: Longchenpa's Radical Dzogchen Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Quintessential Dzogchen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Treasures from Juniper Ridge Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ngondro Commentary: Instructions for the Concise Preliminary Practices Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Clear Mirror Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King Doha: Saraha's Advice to a King Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lord of the Dance: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Lama Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dzogchen Deity Practice: Meeting Your True Nature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Buddhahood without Meditation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sun of Devotion, Stream of Blessings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Circle Of The Sun: Heart Essence Of Dzogchen Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tracts of the Sun: An Earth-Orbit of Vajryana Expressions Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Goodbye Forever - Volume One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava: The Indian Consort of Padmasambhava Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Creation and Completion: Essential Points of Tantric Meditation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoodbye Forever - Volume Two Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFearless Simplicity: The Dzogchen Way of Living Freely in a Complex World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sublime Lady of Immortality: Teachings on Chime Phakme Nyingtik Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How To Do Life: A Buddhist Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of the Great Perfection: Dudjom Lingpa's Visions of the Great Perfection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Vajra Essence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spacious Passion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Religious Biographies For You
Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing the Dragon: One Woman's Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Dens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paul: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Love and Be Loved: A Personal Portrait of Mother Teresa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Prayer Journal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Autobiography of a Yogi: The Original 1946 Edition plus Bonus Material Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heaven Is For Real Conversation Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Confessions of St. Augustine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bonhoeffer Abridged: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters With the Diabolical Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way out of the Mormon Church Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil in Pew Number Seven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not by Might, Nor by Power: The Jesus Revolution 2nd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Pilgrim's Regress Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Elisabeth Elliot Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Freedom In Bondage
2 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Freedom In Bondage - Adeu Rinpoche
PART ONE: FREEDOM
1
DEVOTION AND RENUNCIATION
Please form the resolve set upon attaining supreme enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings as numerous as the sky is vast, and continue to read while maintaining such an attitude.
From the start, every practice requires three steps: learning, reflection, and application. To begin with, we need to receive the teachings in an authentic way. Real learning involves gaining understanding about an instruction. To do this we need to hear it clearly from someone who is part of a living tradition, who has a true transmission for the teaching, and who can pass it on clearly. Having received the teaching, we then need to reflect upon it for ourselves. We need to gain some confidence and conviction about the value and methods of the teaching. Finally, we need to put the teaching to use by familiarizing ourselves with the practice and integrating it into our life. I want to stress this: after understanding a teaching intellectually and establishing it with certainty, it is vital to clear up any misconceptions and doubts you may have about it. Then you must make use of it in a very personal and intimate way, by practicing. This is where any teaching becomes effective—by actually practicing it, not simply knowing about it.
It does not work to simply know about a teaching and not use it. Mere intellectual knowledge is insufficient. It is the same as trying to cure a disease by simply reading about medicine, or by setting the medicine out on a table and looking at it, but not taking it. No one has ever been cured by merely looking at a bottle of medicine—you must take it. We must apply the treatment. Likewise, teachings are meant to be applied.
All the masters of both the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages have agreed that for a beginner on the spiritual path, compassion, devotion, and renunciation do not come naturally from one moment to the next. It simply does not happen like this at first. You must begin by forming the attitudes of compassion, devotion, and renunciation, and deliberately training in these. Over time, compassion, devotion, and renunciation will come more and more naturally, and no longer need to be contrived.
Renunciation, the will to be free, is a quality that every Dharma practitioner needs in order to progress on the path. Without it, you will not move forward. The first part of the general preliminaries helps to nurture this wish to be free. The four mind changings involve facing some unavoidable facts, so that you do not want anything other than freedom, and samsaric aims fall by the wayside very naturally. That is why the preliminaries are so vital to becoming a genuine Dharma practitioner. In Tibet it is said that a person who wants to be a Dharma practitioner but who has no sense of detachment from samsara, is like someone who builds a many-storied house on a frozen lake in the dead of winter. The structure may seem very solid, but when spring comes and the lake thaws, the whole building sinks. Similarly, you may appear to have a bit of steadiness in your practice, but without renunciation your practice crumbles as soon as difficulties or hardships arise. That is why Dharma practitioners should focus from the very beginning on detachment and renunciation, the will to be free.
In the past in Tibet, instruction manuals were designed in such a way that practitioners who started the preliminaries only received teachings on the first part. The teachings were then stopped until the students completed their practice. Teachings resumed when the students returned for the next instruction. After getting that instruction, students would go off and practice it, and so on, until they had completed both the general and specific preliminaries. Nothing was freely given in advance, and there was no assumption that you could practice at your own whim. If you didn’t practice you didn’t get instructions. The same method was used for the development stage of the yidam deity: you would receive instructions for a particular part of the practice, and then train in it. Having completed that, you would come back for more instructions. At the very least you needed to have completed the preliminaries before receiving instructions on Dzogchen or Mahamudra.
These days it appears to be a bit different. Many people want to skip everything and go directly to the completion stage. There are also those who, without having done any yidam practice or preliminaries, immediately want to do the yogic practices involving the subtle channels and energies. I, however, have great doubts about the effectiveness of such an approach—whether any actual understanding is developed, and whether this type of method is authentic and correct. Still, many people would like to jump ahead, skipping all the steps in between.
The Buddhist path is laid out in a progressive order from the very beginning. There is a particular reason for this. Having taken the first step, it is much easier to take the next because you are already a little ways along. Having completed the first step of the practice, you have already reached a certain level of accomplishment. It is then relatively simple to move on to the next level. That is why it was designed in this way. If people do not want to respect this system and try to skip ahead to unfamiliar places, difficulties will most likely