LIFE LESSONS | PHILOSOPHY | MAHAYANA BUDDHISM
Thirty-six lessons from a crying Lama
(How to find meaning in life through the practice of compassion)
The present story is a brief, personal rendering of the 36 Practices for a More Meaningful Life by Exercising Compassion by Lama Gyalsé Tokmé Zangpo (official spelling: Thogs med bzang po), a mystic, philosopher, and epistemologist who taught in 14th century CE.
To most of my readers, it is no secret that I have spent a large part of my adult life studying and teaching Buddhism. Much of this was in Sri Lanka, where I lived for some time in a jungle hermitage in Buduruvāgala, occupied with reading and memorizing the Suttanipāta discourses and other Theravāda texts under the guidance of my mentor Rev. Obbegoda Dhammatilaka Thera. At other times, I stayed put for a few months every year in Bodhgāyā (Bihar, India), I traveled and studied Mahāyāna philosophy and practices in Nepal and Tibet, and I explored Zen teachings in Japan.
I was introduced to the teaching of Gyalsé Tokmé Zangpo through a dhamma talk presented by the 14th Dalai Lama in Bodhgāyā in 1974. In the course of three consecutive days, the Dalai Lama expounded the teaching of this rather obscure Tibetan Kadampa mystic who (at that time) nobody had heard very much about.
